The Green Curtain

Trump’s election in 2016 provided us myriad legacies. Some good, some bad. Among the good ones is the unmasking of the Left’s rank authoritarianism, an authoritarianism that has gotten so bad and so overt that a rift between “liberal” and “leftist” has not only manifested, it grows daily.

A few brave souls of liberal pedigree broke ranks with the Left, as its abuses of liberty became more overt and more sinister. Those early dissidents paved the way for many more, and while they continue to be vilified by the establishment’s lemmings, there’s strength in numbers, and those numbers are growing.

Trump, or more accurately Trump Derangement Syndrome, deserves credit for “inspiring” the excesses that produced this rift. The subsuming of the permanent State - the careerists in government whose jobs are not altered in the slightest by changes in Congress or the White House - by a Left that became more dictatorial and less representative with every passing year became too obvious to dismiss. The phrase “deep state” became a thing, as careerists undermined Trump policies, ignored directives, and actively worked to advance contrary agendas, no matter that he, not they, was elected by the voters.

All that’s apart from the misdeeds at the FBI and DoJ, the conscious promulgation of lies (see: Steele dossier, Russian collusion, etc.), abuse of the FISA and other courts, and political weaponizing of the government machine.

It’s understandable that trust in government by the Right is low as a result of all of this. No one should be surprised and no one should need much explanation as to why.

The real story is the fracturing on the other side of the aisle.

Not long ago, there seemed to be a looming conflict between the mainstream Democrats and the socialists (aka the Democratic Socialists, Justice Democrats, the ‘Squad,’ Bernie, and a handful of other far-left Dems). That crew, while still yapping, has become more of a sideshow than a threat to the Democratic establishment. While the socialists seem to have imbued some of their policy ideas into the Party, the Party has, as Parties always seem to, fixated on expanding its control and crushing its foes. With less and less shame, and less and less regards for the rights and liberties the rest of us consider fundamental.

This has alienated many liberals, people who align with “traditional” liberal social and economic policies but who have grown fearful of the thuggish ways of the Left. The Twitter exposes alone have led to the courts enjoining the Biden administration from coercing social media companies into censoriousness, and the water-carrying by the legacy media in defense of what appears to be blatantly indefensible behavior by the Bidens is its own growing snowball.

The relationship between government and the People has altered substantially in just the last few years, and it’s in no small part due to a certain Untethered Orange Id occupying so much real estate in the brain pans of our Best-and-Brightest. In a more “normal” time, we might never have gotten wind of “deep state” shenanigans. Deranged people are not usually circumspect people, so their excesses became their undoing. So, no matter what your personal opinion of Trump (regular readers know mine), we do owe him more than a morsel of gratitude for being our Toto in pulling back the Wizard’s curtain.

I also welcome the opportunity to reclaim the word “liberal” from the Left. Label-wise, I’m very much a classical liberal, a phrase which is more properly associated with libertarianism than with modern liberalism.

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Because it’s the elephant in the room, some more on the Hamas-Israel matter, on which I commented here and here. There is another “green curtain” being pulled back: that covering virulent antisemitism in academia and domestic leftist institutions.

Here, we figure a bit of TDS effect, as well. Trump made strong pro-Israel moves, to the great chagrin of the Best-and-Brightest who predicted dire consequences. Those consequences, again to their great chagrin, failed to materialize - the region didn’t erupt in flames from our embassy’s move to Jerusalem. The success of Trump’s shift really pissed off our “better than thou” crowd.

The Hamas attacks, or more specifically the plethora of “I side with Palestine” declarations (often from people who’d be oppressed by the culture they support) despite truly gruesome atrocities perpetrated by Hamas terrorists, are a big reveal. While I’m sure many of the young who “side with Palestine” do so out of ignorance, there is a shocking amount of blatant “blame the Jews” racism suddenly on open display. Which leaves us to wonder - how many of the Best-and-Brightest who warned against Trump’s actions were closeting their own anti-Israel and anti-Jew biases at the time?

Again, we see a fracturing on the left side of the aisle. The leftists, those America-hating authoritarians, are embracing the “From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free” mantra, and all it suggests (including, though they’ll deny it, the genocide that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran so fervently desire). Many good, humanity-loving liberals are finding out just how abhorrent their compatriots are, and if they band together to purge the Left from the ranks of the Democratic Party, the nation will be much the better for it.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll leave comment on Trump’s comments for another day.