"D" Is For "Destroyers"
In 1938, construction began on a bridge traversing Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. The bridge, nicknamed “Gallopin’ Gertie” by construction workers due to its tendency to bounce in high winds, opened to traffic July 1, 1940, and collapsed in spectacular fashion just four months later during a period of high winds.
I won’t go into the physics and engineering behind the bridge’s collapse here, other than to note that there is still disagreement. Broadly, however, it was a structure that collapsed because it got pushed too hard by external forces.
Watching current events, I sometimes fear that our nation may be headed in that direction. In particular, the recent antics in Virginia, where Democrats attempted to gerrymander the state’s Congressional districts in a fashion that would virtually eliminate Republican representation in a state where 46% of the voters opted for Donald Trump in 2024 but got rebuffed by the state’s Supreme Court, cast a bleak picture. Unwilling to abide by the law of the land, the Democrats now want to upend their third branch of state government by immediately setting a mandatory retirement age of 54 so they can seat a fresh set of judges who, presumably, would rule differently and allow the gerrymander to stand.
This is pure banana republic shit, and it’s a signal for what they want to do on a national level if given the opportunity. It was just a couple weeks ago that James Carville tipped his hand by urging the Dems to pack the Supreme Court should they get the reins of power in 2028.
Why, and to what end?
Socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tipped her hand by noting that her aspirations were nothing as mundane or transitory as the Presidency. She wants to transform the nation into a socialist hellhole paradise. She seems to believe that she and hers can succeed where countless others have produced only misery, privation, and death in the past. In pondering her past public pronouncements, I cannot but conclude that she is a classic example of Dunning-Kruger Effect, but seasoned with an instinctive social media canniness that has enabled her to effectively pitch woo and bullshit to the gullible and ignorant.
Obama took the nation leftward. Trump put the brakes on that. Biden promised a return to normalcy but went even harder to the left. Trump, again, was something of a reset, but the Overton window had shifted and remained shifted leftward. A sprinkling of Dems (John Fetterman, Bill Maher) are now calling for normalcy, but they are in the wilderness compared to a crop of young leftists emerging as the new voice of the party, following in the AOC path, and continuing to cow the rest of the old guard into obeisance. Zohran Mamdani and his clones are popping up like mushrooms, and Abigail Spanbergers are lying their way into office by promising moderation then turning hard left.
There’s a ton of hope among the Trump-skeptical and Never-Trump middle and right that the Dems might go “normal” once Orange Man is out of office. Or, if they win the House or all of Congress in the mid-terms. This is the wishfulest of wishful thinking, from all I see. The evidence for it is nonexistent. All the Dems want is power. Unlimited, unfettered, and permanent. Power, first and foremost, to crush their foes under their boots, and reward their friends by taking everything they can from society’s wealth creators. Like the wind that tore down the Tacoma Narrows bridge, they are indifferent to the damage they will cause.
In the words of Daffy Duck, “consequences, shmonsequences...”
Of course, tearing it all down is the goal of some of the Marxist long-thinkers, and has been since the Frankfurt School’s inception nearly a century ago. They want to destabilize society because they believe they can built a socialist utopia out of the ashes. It’s the deep arrogance of intellectual elites who’ve never actually had to work productive jobs in their lives, an arrogance that has plagued many societies and will continue to plague many more.
And the Democratic Party continues to give them free rein and full sail.
In yet another “whatever it takes” moment, California Democrats, freaking out that their “jungle primary” system for Governor (intended to lock Republicans out of any chance at the governor’s mansion) might put two Republicans and no Democrats on the ballot for the general election this fall, are scrambling to rewrite the law they passed fifteen years ago. Hoist with their own petard, doth spake the Bard.
The panic is as palpable as the hatred.