The Opposition

     “If you don’t have an opposition, you don’t have an issue.” – Saul Alinsky

     Hey, I might not like the guy – I particularly dislike what his acolytes have done to these United States – but he did have insights. Some of them are as valuable to the Right as to the Left.

     Let’s imagine that “the issue” is the increase of American prosperity and security. More specifically, let’s make it a condition of ubiquitous increases in American prosperity and security. To advance toward that goal would require a Reaganesque “rising tide that lifts all boats.” We who favor that end would cheer such a development. They who disfavor it would boo, or perhaps pull sour faces and argue that our “obsession” blinds us to “more important issues.” We would know our opponents by their deportment.

     And here they are:

     The ad is a good a portrayal of the natures of the two major parties. Granted, there are a lot of Republicans, especially in Congress, who prioritize holding onto their seats above any other consideration. Still, were they pressed on the matter, they’d agree that increases in American prosperity and security are good things and worth striving toward “as long as I’m secure in my position.”

     I find it difficult to name a Democrat in a federal office of whom that could be accurately said. To the Democrats, all that matters is power – and their collective strategy for pursuing ever greater power is the incitement of division and hostility among Americans, such that we all grow steadily worse off.

     During previous Republican executive administrations, the Democrats have at least tried to represent themselves as “for the good of all.” They had priorities that diverged from those of the Republicans, but they seldom tried to dismiss Republican concerns, much less condemn them. There seemed to be a greater recognition, throughout the political class, that the ends must be common – that the proper subjects for political argument are means and priorities. At least it was cosmetically so.

     The ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency might be credited for the seemingly new, warfare a outrance condition of federal politics. There’s some validity to that approach, as Trump generally upset the American political applecart. It had been a long, long time since we had a president who had never before held any elective office. However, the trend since the election of Ronald Reagan has been toward this state. It’s quite possible that with the election of “this upstart outsider,” the Left merely decided that it was time for the makeup to come off and the underlying reality to be shown.

     “America — and the West in general — has been ruled by people who, at core, don’t very much like the countries they rule. But they do like ruling them, and will do anything they can to keep doing it.” – Glenn Reynolds

     It can only be good for Americans to know who their enemies are. This is particularly important as regards the voting blocs the Democrats have herded for decades with promises of special privileges and subventions: Negroes, Hispanics, women, homosexuals, and others with whom the Left has played the identity-politics game. It should be clear to such persons that the Democrats aren’t really concerned with helping them toward more opportunities and better lives, but with retaining their political allegiance – and that Democrat strategists fear to lose that to Republican policies that actually work toward those ends.

     What’s less comprehensible is why nominally intelligent Democrats would want to display their contempt for the electorate so openly and so vividly. Did they think we wouldn’t be watching? Did they hope we’d be distracted somehow? Or did they labor under the misconception that they could make those damning visuals not matter?

     There’s no way to misinterpret the video above. There was no way to misinterpret any element of the Democrats’ treatment of Trump’s 2018 State of the Union speech. It’s just as hard to misinterpret the Democrats’ trumpetings and caperings since the release of the Nunes and Grassley memoranda about the FBI’s electronic monitoring of the Trump campaign’s communications.

     Ultimately, it won’t matter. By their deportment shall ye know them. We know them now. The president and his party are advancing toward ends that have already improved the prosperity and security of the entire country. Their opponents are too angry about it even to acknowledge their successes. I’d say the Left’s hopes of a 2018 “blue wave” have just been fatally undermined. Better still, the administration is gradually pulling its “Never Trump” detractors into its orbit. Trump is making the holdouts look like the sour-grapes killjoys they are.

     It looks like 2018 will be a pretty good year.