Defying Democracy: The Left's Frantic Fight To Deny Power To Trump

When Donald Trump is inaugurated this week as the 45th president of the United States, a vocal portion of his electorate has decided it will not be so. “Not my president” say the sociology sophomores at Brandeis. Over 65 Democrats in Congress are sitting out the ceremony. If you were among those optimists who thought that the clever folk gorged on the eight years of Barack Obama’s leadership might relent after a little whining and moaning, there is bad news for you.

This could go on for while longer. Maybe four years. Maybe eight. Depends on the American public’s patience. Or the Democrats’ need to get their voters back by manufacturing outrage instead of policies.

The people who prospered in Obama’s two terms (and lost cushy jobs when Hillary Clinton flopped) have no intention of surrendering the cultural levers of power in America to Trump and those who made him president. The Hollywood B-listers and TV talking heads see it as their patriotic duty to ignore the fact that half the country thinks they’re stark, raving mad.

So in spasms since the fateful day of November 8 these nonsense ninjas have lectured about their staggering humanity. If you’ve seen one bleating YouTube hack creation from this crew you’ve seen a hundred. Rosie O’Donnell, a leader of the Hollyworst movement, says the inauguration should be delayed “UNTIL TRUMP IS ‘CLEARED’ OF ALL CHARGES”.

The banzai charges from the Washington Post or Buzzfeed have alleged insider trading, misogyny, Russian perfidy, hookers, secret deals with Saudis and that warhorse of Democratic ad hominems, racism. Much of the ordinance for these breathless shots on MSNBC or Media Matters has been leaked by disgruntled members of the U.S. Intelligence services (all 17 branches, we’re reminded by their water carriers).

So far, each attack has been repulsed when it emerged that, to O’Donnell’s eternal chagrin, there was no there there. These secrets were secret, because no facts could be found to prove a single syllable.

The hysterical pushback from the insider class has only buttressed suspicion during the presidential campaign that Hillary Clinton’s classified-security breaches had received preferential treatment from those who fervently desired her election— and their employment prolonged. 

These would be folks like attorney general Loretta Lynch, who took time during an investigation of Clinton’s email crimes for a private chat with Hillary’s husband, a former president who, like Lynch, should have known better.

There there’s National Intel boss James Clapper, who has repeatedly lied to Congress about his surveillance of it and its members. Then there are the good folks at the CIA who assured a gullible George Bush that Iraq bristled with WMDs and he should ruin his presidency by going in there to root them out. 

These and other failures of the intelligence community were duly noted on Twitter in Trumpian hyperbole about Nazi Germany. Which led to more leaks to eager media partisans and warnings from conservatives such as David Frum that worse was coming for Trump if he kept tweaking the tail of the leakers. (one irate intel veteran said Trump was “insulting people who’ve offered their lives to collect intelligence”.) 

The latest bid by the Forlorn Hope came from 1960s civil-rights hero John Lewis who described Trump’s election win as illegitimate. “I think there was a conspiracy on the part of the Russians, and others, that helped him get elected,” Lewis declared without a shred of proof. Then he said he’d be one of the Democrats boycotting Friday’s festivities.

If it sounds familiar it should. Lewis sat out George Bush 43’s inauguration because of racism. He also compared presidential candidate John McCain to the racists who killed children in Alabama. These scatter-shot lies from Lewis have been more desperate in recent years, with false accusations that Tea Party members spit on him and tossed racial insults at him. 

Lately he’s taken to carrying water for the thugs of Black Lives Matter as they try to make the case that blacks are victims of a police pogrom. IOW Lewis is an old hand at the game.

He’s even blasted poor (white) Bernie Sanders as being a faux civil-rights activist.

So it was no shock when Trump fired back in kind, calling Lewis “sad” and “all talk, talk, talk— no action and results”. The tweets engendered instant liberal outrage, best summed up David Remnick, editor of the Democrats’ style book. The New Yorker. Remnick cited Lewis’ role as the last witness to the civil rights history of the 1960s, a national treasure and the singular conscience of Congress. 

Pace Remnick, “because of all he has seen and endured”, Lewis is best person in America to issue moral judgements. “Who would think to call Lewis all talk, talk, talk— no action and results?” fumed Remnick. “… As it happens, the President elect of the United States.” 

Oddly, those of the Left employed no such standard in the ‘60s for the many who’d rid the world of Nazism or Japanese war culture in WW II. And in Remnick’s excellent reporting on the Soviet Union, there were no entreaties that the commissars who’d gallantly resisted the Nazis themselves at Stalingrad should be given a special moral dispensation into the dark days of Brezhnev— because of all they had seen and endured. Much of it far, far worse than Lewis’ abuse from Sherif Bull Connor.

Like the stopped clock, Lewis is sporadically correct. So are his fellow travellers of the left, frozen in the aspic of 1960s culture wars. That is no reason to constantly defer to their wild-ass notions in the second decade of the 21st century. And there is even less reason for a responsible press to rush leaked security info onto TV and the net before they can prove a shred of it.

But when you can’t argue the issues that got you dumped by Trump, then you go scare tactics. It’s the progressive way. The only thing that can make it work is Trump himself.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy. Bruce is the host of podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on anticanetwork.com. His career includes successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of seven books. His website is Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com)