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Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and classicist. He also contributes columns
to PJ Media and National Review online. Although he started off in the
NeverTrump camp in the now infamous Never Trump issue of National Review, I decided to give him another look today.
His
column today (“A Party of Teeth-Gnashers”) is about the fallout from the election
and what has become of the Democratic party and the Progressive agenda. Here
are a few paragraphs:
After the Democratic
equality-of-opportunity agenda was largely realized (Social Security, Medicare,
overtime, a 40-hour work week, disability insurance, civil rights, etc.), the
next-generation equality-of-result effort has largely failed. What is left of
Democratic ideology is identity politics and assorted dead-end green movements
as conservation has become radical environmentalism and fairness under the law
is now unapologetic redistributionism. The 2016 campaign and the frenzied
reaction to the result are reminders that the Left is no longer serious about
formulating and advancing a practical agenda. In sum, for now it is reduced to
a party of teeth-gnashers.
. . .
Progressive outrage should not
be taken too seriously because it is not intended to be serious. When Barack
Obama invites rapper Kendrick Lamar into the White House and announces that his
“To Pimp a Butterfly” is the president’s favorite song of the year — whose
album cover shows the corpse of a murdered white judge, with Xs in place of
eyes, on the White House lawn, as African-American youth toast his demise with
drinks and cash — do we really assume that progressives like Obama believe in
stopping hate speech and imagery, or perhaps even believe in anything at all?
Donald Trump, to progressives,
supposedly harmed the Constitution and threatened our democracy because he
would not say, after the WikiLeaks revelations, that he would accept the
outcome of the election if he thought it was rigged. Yet after Clinton’s
defeat, suddenly irate progressives have lodged conspiratorial charges that
voting machines (miraculously only in swing states Hillary lost) were
supposedly rigged, that the Electoral College should be dropped, and that
electors should be bullied to ignore their pledges. Did anyone ever believe
their original outrage at Trump’s suggestion that election results might be
rigged? Are we now to have recounts in Nevada, Colorado, New Hampshire, and all
the close states Trump lost, and then on into spring more recounts of recounts,
until the last count achieves the desired result?
The Democratic party leadership
is no longer an alternative to corporate wealthy America, but is
corporate wealthy America, albeit in a new garb of jeans and flip-flops, Silicon
Valley–style. The small-business person, assembly-line worker, and
non-government wage earner mostly now vote Republican.
Progressivism is a
pyramidal capstone of wealthy elites who have the influence and money to
embrace boutique positions and the cunning to profess egalitarianism, all while
they lead private lives that would otherwise be condemned as illiberal and
apartheid-like. So affirmative action ends up providing high-cheekboned
Elizabeth Warren entry into Harvard Law School, the same way that progressive
investigative journalism is reduced to Politico’s “hack” Glenn Thrush (who
asked the Clinton campaign to fact-check and approve his article), and in the
manner that philanthropy is reduced to the Clintons’ piling up of millions by
selling influence. We are a long way from Harry Truman’s working classes.
. . .
The Democratic party for now is
reduced to a loud racist/sexist/homophobe broken record that fewer and fewer
are listening to — including many of the Democratic elites who continue to play
it.
Hanson is not completely sold on Trump, though, as you will gather if you read the rest
here.
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