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Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Vicotr Davis Hanson: Just How Far Will the Left Go?

There was no honeymoon for the unlikely winner of the 2016 election. Progressives have in succession tried to sue to overturn Trump’s victory using several different approaches. First on the bogus claim of fraudulent voting machines. Then they sought to subvert the Electoral College by bullying electors into renouncing their respective states’ votes.

Massive protests and boycotts marked the inauguration. Then there were articles of impeachment introduced in the House. Some sued to remove Trump on a warped interpretation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Others brought in psychiatrists to testify that Trump was ill, disabled, or insane and should be removed in accordance with the 25th Amendment. The former FBI director, CIA director, and director of the Office of National Intelligence have variously smeared the president as a coward, a traitor, and a Russian mole.

The Mueller Investigation
We are about 430 days into Robert Mueller’s investigation; the special prosecutor whose team of lawyers and investigators has in a large part been made up either of Clinton donors, clear Clinton partisans, lawyers who have in the past represented Clinton interests or employees, or partisans already removed for expressing clear Trump hatred. The media grew ecstatic over its creation, dubbing it an “all-star” or “dream” team, as leaks assured the public that next week, next month, or “soon” there would be a sensational indictment proving that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the presidency.

...

Killing Hitler Trump
The methods of rhetorically assassinating Trump all have been tried out by progressive celebrities, politicians, and academics: decapitation, high explosives, nightly ritual stabbing, hanging, death by elevator, death by escalator, shooting, incineration, and fisticuffs. The reason that Kathy Griffin, Madonna, Robert De Niro, Kamala Harris, or Snoop Dogg have been lately quiet about killing Trump is that the various ways to do so have long ago been exhausted.


Trump as Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin is now old hat. Trump as traitor was boring long ago. What can one say after she has compared Trump’s agenda to Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, and 9/11? If the tax cuts, immigration policy, or NATO and Russian summits are equal to killing 3,000 Americans, what is left to the imagination? If talking sloppily about Putin is tantamount to the Holocaust, then what exactly was the Holocaust, a bad press conference?

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The Roots of Trump Derangement
Is the anger, then, that we are in a depression, war, or plague?

Actually, no. The economy is growing at rates that we have not seen in over a decade. Unemployment, especially minority joblessness, is at a historic low. Even the stock market is at record highs. The United States is now the world’s largest producer of oil, natural gas, and coal. Consumer and business confidence is at a near all-time high.

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The Left lost what it thought was a sure-thing election. There is now no assured 16-year Obama-Clinton regnum that would complete what the Obamas had called the final “fundamental transformation” of the United States. It cannot accept that it blew certain victory. A huge fundraising advantage, a toady media, massive defections of Republican establishment intellectuals and pundits, the lack of prior military or political experience of candidate Donald Trump, and a popular vote plurality all proved for naught. The unimaginable then became all too real.

...

Trump is not a George H.W. Bush or Mitt Romney. He knows no etiquette. He is no gentleman. He is a bruiser, brawler, exaggerator, and performer. What created President Trump was not just “The Apprentice” or the Manhattan real estate market (such a résumé only honed his pugilist skills).

Rather, half the country was tired of Republicans grimacing as they were portrayed as throwing grandmothers off cliffs.

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The Left did not just lose the 2016 election, it lost the Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. And it lost them all to a rash, uncouth Queens-accented Manhattan billionaire reality TV star, who systematically planned to dismantle eight years of Obama Administration executive-orders. And unlike almost all prior politicians Trump when in office kept his promises and systematically went about to halt the supposed progressive future. Think of a liberal nightmare something akin to Sarah Palin as president in 2012.

The Obama apparat and the proverbial deep state never imagined Trump could win and thus to ensure that he would not just be defeated but humiliated, vied to use the power of government to destroy the Trump candidacy.

The National Security Council was weaponized and thus unmasked the names of surveilled Americans and leaked their names to the press to undermine the Trump campaign. The Department of Justice was weaponized to ensure Hillary Clinton was exonerated for her misdeeds concerning her email server and quid pro quo collusion with a variety of foreign and domestic influence peddlers and buyers. The FBI and CIA were weaponized to subvert the Trump campaign, by peddling an unverified smear dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, by implanting informants into the Trump campaign, and by undermining a FISA court through dishonest presentations of evidence for warrants to spy on American citizens.

There's more; read the whole thing.

 How far will the Left go? I fear that we have seen nothing yet.

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