The Weariness Gambit

     Have you ever had the feeling that the wrong people are following Christ’s advice?

     And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. [Luke 11:5-10]

     Hearken to Stephanie at The Right Geek:

     But more than anything else, you need to stop forcing yourselves on your neighbors. The absolute worst way to get people to listen to your concerns is to scream at them and/or attempt to browbeat them into submission. And yet, you keep doubling down, hijacking every pursuit, no matter how apolitical, for the sake of your own ideological ends. Car forums? Local gardening clubs? Cooking groups on Facebook? These are not the places to air your fears about Trump. I'm sorry, but you need to have some sense of propriety.

     Stephanie might be right about that “absolute worst way,” and she might be wrong. Nevertheless, they – The Left – will not stop, for an obvious reason: It's their final tactic before going to guns.

     Consider: Electoral politics has failed them. The media have failed them. The entertainment industry has failed them. Street demonstrations have failed them. Slander and unfounded accusations have failed them. The Deep State is failing them. The forces that defeated them in November have resisted all those thrusts. What's left is invasive hectoring...and violence.

     The evidence is clear, and clearly indicative.

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     "The Federal Constitution must be obeyed, state rights preserved, our national debt must be paid, direct taxes and loans avoided, and the Federal Union preserved. These are the objects I have in view, and regardless of all consequences, will carry into effect." – Andrew Jackson

     This is not a subject that requires a great deal of explication. Read about Chadwick Moore’s experiences after interviewing Milo Yiannopoulos. Read about the ongoing assault on Ivanka Trump’s fashion business. Read about the spiraling anti-Trump hysteria in the Deep State. Ponder the pattern these things, and many comparable developments, make for the future of these United States.

     The Left is determined to claw back the power it has lost. Despite its deep entrenchment in the Civil Service and the federal and state bureaucracies, it knows its influence to be limited as long as it has no majorities in Congress and no ally in the White House. Moreover, President Trump has openly declared his intention to pare back the Left’s bureaucratic bastions. In a few cases, he might be amenable to eliminating them entirely.

     Like Andrew Jackson, and unlike several of our more recent presidents, Trump appears to mean what he says and to be resolved upon carrying his promises into effect. We haven’t seen much of that since FDR...and best not to dwell upon that particular enemy of the Constitution. As the entire federal bureaucracy, the main redoubt of the Left, serves at the pleasure of the president, he could wipe it out of existence with a stroke of his pen. No prospect could possibly terrify Leftist strategists more than that.

     What remains to protect their bastion are fatigue and fear. However, Trump and the stalwarts of his Administration show no signs of either. So they’ll do what they can to elicit them from the rest of us.

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     Can grassroots Leftists engender fatigue enough among ordinary, decent Americans to persuade us to surrender to them?

     It’s possible. I can’t say of my own knowledge whether it’s making gains at this time, as I keep to myself and refuse to join groups regardless of their agendas. (There’s a Senior Center around the block from me that the C.S.O. has urged me to explore, but I’ve resisted so far. It’s all too likely there’ll be people there.) From what I’ve heard from others, the tactics Stephanie The Right Geek has decried are being employed rather widely. Left-liberals respect no barriers to their politics. An occupational conference or convention? An awards ceremony? A family dinner, a birthday party, or a wake for a loved one? They’re all just opportunities to rant. And rant they most certainly do.

     It can be wearying. The question of greatest import is whether the fatigue it induces will impel us to concede, or will stiffen our resistance.

     In this regard, anecdotal evidence can be misleading. There’s no way to remove the innate skew from such reports, as nearly all of us associate by choice with persons of like mind and temperament. Moreover, we tend to remember, and to some extent to privilege, those reports that confirm our own preferences. Negative wishful thinking is as important as the positive sort.

     Given the excellent start the new Administration has achieved, I want to believe that the nation will largely rally behind President Trump and his lieutenants. I desperately want to believe that the hectoring from our “family leftists” will be shrugged aside at worst, met with scorn and heightened resistance at best. But I could be wrong.

     Wrong would be bad. Should the fatigue tactic fail it, the Left’s sole remaining resource would be fear: intimidation and outright violence, as we saw in the streets of Chicago, Berkeley, and the District of Columbia.

     Do my Gentle Readers have any thoughts on the matter?

     ADDENDUM: As it’s just about two years old today, this article about the political infestation within the Science Fiction Writers of America has renewed significance. Please review it.