The Joy of Hate

The election post-mortems continue to be written, to no one's surprise. Those from the Right mostly get it right. They note that Trump built a broad coalition by getting out to see everyone and talk to everyone and tell everyone about "making America healthy again." They note that Harris hid from voters, both in policy and in person. They note that she failed to connect with the voters outside her base of white college-educated women and the Trump-deranged. And, they note that voters woke up to the insanity of wokeness and all that the Left had foisted on the nation, and seized their opportunity to reject it.

Those from the Left continue to ignore the obvious. They ignore Harris's weakness as a candidate. They ignore her inability to communicate apart from prepared speeches. They ignore that voters rejected her views and platform, no matter how she tried to hide them, ret-con them, and fuzz them up. They ignore the tone-deafness of her message, which when distilled down to its essence was, even through her concession speech, about abortion and "Trump is the devil."

When Harris first hit the trail, the carefully crafted (or perhaps not) message was "Joy." What the [redacted] that was supposed to mean escapes me, especially since the campaign was mostly variations of "Trump is a fascist devil Nazi dictator baby-eating lizard man."

OK, that last bit was me playing with horseshoe theory, where the wacko Right that believes the Reptilian conspiracy theory meets the wacko Left that believes Trump will track women's periods via app in order to round up those who get pregnant in order to force them to have the babies.

No, the real message of the Left, and from product-of-the-Left Harris, was one of hate. Hate for anyone who disagrees with them, hate for anyone who doesn't rank near the top of their grievance hierarchy, hate for any black or latino or LGBTQetc or woman who didn't vocally side with Harris and vocally echo the Left's politics, and hate for all straight white men for daring to be born that way.

Hate and its partner-in-crime fear are enduring motivators. They are rooted in our lizard brains, and canny politicians and other manipulators know how to appeal to them, stoke them, and leverage them. Unfortunately for those manipulators, the Left told Americans they need to hate their nation and themselves. Thing is, love of America is deeply rooted in the nation's fabric, and no message of self-hate can sink roots outside of the Left's echo chamber of misery.

This, above all else, is why Trump won in spectacular fashion.

Trump's message echoes that of Bonasera the undertaker in the magnificent opening scene of The Godfather. Bonasera opened the movie by declaring "I believe in America."

He then revealed himself an example of the American Dream by noting that "America is where I made my fortune," and in doing so revealed two truths that the Left simply refuses to grasp. One, that people do see America as the land of opportunity. Two, that America is a land of immigrants who "did it the right way." As Konstantin Kisin recently noted, Americans are "the most pro-immigration people in the world."

Americans love an immigration success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming here illegally. They believe in having a border.

In their cynical abandonment of any semblance of border control, the Left set the stage for Trump, who recognized how angry the unchecked flood of migrants into the country made Americans. Including the immigrants who did it the right way. Including the descendants of immigrants who did it the right way. And, especially, including Latinos who did it the right way. The Left's pundits were shocked that Trump made major gains in the Latino vote, failing to understand that not everyone is their form of "you are your identity" racist. Honorable mention to Latinos' rejection of the white-created "Latinx" nonsense.

Trump pitched a positive, "I believe in America" message. A message that contrasted sharply with Harris's ‘joy of hate.’ A message that overrode all his flaws, and one that gave voters hope they could finally be rid of the woke-Left and their demands for self-loathing.

Much will be made of Trump's massive gains among young men, especially. It'll all be cast in sinister, even Nazi-esque tones, which will demonstrate that no lesson will have been learned. The lesson is a simple one: Don't expect people that you insist must hate themselves to remain on your team, when the other team tells them the opposite.

The saddest part of Trump's victory, for me, is in all the young people who have been so inculcated with fear that they are turning to social media to voice their dread and despondency. That they think that their world is going to end once Trump is inaugurated is another example of how toxic the Left has been for the nation. A generation already damaged by unnecessary COVID lockdowns is now twice-damaged by a passel of lies and disinformation pounded into their heads by people who, despite the success this Land of Opportunity has allowed them, hate America.

If the Democrats want to regain some of those they lost, they need to kick the hateful chunk of their team to the curb.

They won't, however, because that hateful chunk is now their base. They abandoned minorities and the working classes in policy, principle, and practice, but presumed that those constituencies' loyalty to Team Blue would override that abandonment. They got that wrong, and now face a Trump coalition that, if Trump policies produce any economic success, will continue to draw away from those traditional bases.

Trump Derangement will ensure that Rachel Maddow, Morning Joe, the harridans at The View, and all the other hate- and fear-spewing talking heads will persist. They won't change a beat, because, perversely enough, Trump's victory is good for their ratings.

As for Harris? Her political career is over - we won't be hearing from her again. How things unfold across the next couple years will tell us who the next Dem standard bearers are. Some believe that we might still see Michele Obama step up to the plate, but I'm of a mind that the Dems will, thanks to time and circumstances, finally move on from the Obama-Clinton-Biden-Harris arc. Will a moderate conciliator emerge, with a strong enough character and message to reject the hateful Left? Only time will tell.