At some point during the Obama administration it appears to have occurred to the left that its time had finally come and its patience was about to be fully rewarded.
Between the Gramscian march through so many of society’s institutions, the “fundamental transformation” Obama was working on, the coming-of-age of generations steeped in leftist education (including legal education), the mainstreaming of identity and grievance politics, and, most importantly of all, the full cooperation of the MSM and its heartfelt embrace of ends-justify-means lies, the left felt itself to be on the threshold of total dominance of American politics for the foreseeable future. In fact, it virtually knew itself to be there.
It was in the bag.
The results of the 2016 election were a seismic shock of immeasurable magnitude to them. Recovery involved a complete dedication to the undoing of that event. We’ve extensively covered their efforts here at LI.
Although much of the country seems oblivious to the outrages committed in Russiagate/Obamagate, for example, with many people persisting in the idea that Trump is Putin’s puppet and Michael Flynn a traitor, Trump and the right seemed to keep bouncing back.
In other words, propaganda works. But it hasn’t yet clinched the deal.
So more recently, the left has escalated. COVID was turned into an excuse to gravely wound the economy. And now that the COVID episode was beginning to calm down and there might not even be a lethal enough second wave to deal a fatal blow to Trump, we have the revival of the 60s civil unrest and racial riots, one of the most terrible aspects of that decade.
But there’s a difference, and it’s the leftism of a much larger segment of the American public, the willingness of virtually the entire MSM to voluntarily become Pravda, the courts’ desire to play along as well, the amount of money supporting the movement, and what I see as the increasing sophistication of the violent forces such as Antifa who are ready to exploit any and every incident that lends itself to it.
The 60s radicals were relative amateurs. These people, less so, at least in terms of organization. And we have not yet seen the worst of it, of that I am convinced.
I hope I’m wrong. But it’s something like a fireworks display. At first, there are pauses between the explosions, and some are smaller and some larger. But towards the finale, they come fast and furious and the reverberations are huge.
And we’re still more than five months from that finale. Did I say “finale”? If somehow Trump manages to get reelected, I believe that the left’s resultant fury will be even greater and the fireworks will be exponentially greater, as well.
I hope my pessimism turns out to have been unwarranted.
[Neo is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at the new neo.]
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