Killing the Messengers: The Democratic Party Embarks on Path of Personal Destruction
Up until last week, I had always thought that Adolf Hitler was the worst person who ever lived…writes Gidon Ben-Zvi.
Gidon Ben-Zvi
Well, the Fuhrer was apparently less of a menace to world peace and our common humanity than one Stephen K. Bannon, US President-elect Donald Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist and senior adviser.
Indeed, based on the screaming headlines of hyperventilating mainstream news organizations, the incoming Trump administration will be staffed by a rogues gallery of misogynists, homophobes and the occasional anti-Semite.
Instead of developing a set of new messages and a cadre of dynamic young messengers to expand the Democratic Party tent to include not only the very rich and very poor, the action plan to reclaim the White House and both houses of Congress is to dig up every single errant thought ever expressed at any point that portrays team Trump as a gang of ultra-nationalist bigots.
However, outraged Democrats, in a tizzy over Hillary Clinton’s shocking and resounding defeat, are too busy stocking up their bomb shelters to be bothered by a couple of inconvenient truths about the former head of Breitbart News.
Not only is Bannon unapologetically pro-Israel, as evidenced in his own writings and those of others who have contributed to Breitbart, the man who would be Lucifer has actually sought to give voice to traditionally underrepresented Conservative voices from the American Jewish, Asian and Latino communities.
Regarding Senator Jeff Sessions, a few moth worn quotes devoid of all context have transformed the man who desegregated schools and took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama into a major threat to civil rights in the United States, should he in fact become Attorney General.
And when Vice President-elect Mike Pence was recently booed by an audience while attending the diversity-celebrating hit musical Hamilton, it evidently didn’t dawn on the miffed theater goers that ‘diversity’ and its Constitutional manifestation, free speech, doesn’t only apply to the right to believe that you’re a perpetual victim of white privilege.
The ‘Hamilton’ cast was offended by the mere sight of Pence in their midst? Too bad: freedom of expression is utterly meaningless without the right to offend. Harassing him was both infantile and a direct frontal assault on the Vice President-elect’s right to hold views that are contrary to those of the Broadway glitterati.
Yet America’s cultural elite and its front, the Progressive Movement of the Democratic Party, are mad as hell and in no mood to be lectured on the finer points of Constitutional law.
Progressives simply cannot wrap their admittedly big brains around one earthshattering idea: not every American citizen is enthralled by utopian concepts of social, racial, economic and environmental justice.
On November 8th, the left-wing statist ideology was poked, prodded and otherwise examined by tens of millions of American voters. In the ultimate marketplace, the marketplace of ideas, Progressivism was deemed to be rotten to the core, and subsequently discarded into the ashbin of recent American political history.
Curiously, the Democratic Party, instead of engaging in a protracted and meaningful period of reflection as to how the hell Donald Trump managed to derail the coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has embarked on a personality killing spree, attacking anyone currently or potentially associated with the incoming administration.
Why so tense, Dems?
Because utopian thinkers aren’t in the least bit interested in lively public policy discourse. Their goals are much more grandiose: uniformity of thought, preferably of the politically correct variety.
What kind of world do Bernie Sanders, Susan Sarandon and the cast of ‘Hamilton’ want us to live in anyway? Not sure. But history leaves clues, and it’s replete with instances in which utopianism trumped crude nationalism:
In France, revolutionaries rallied under the utopian banner of ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.’ Within a few short years, their revolution had morphed into the Reign of Terror.
In Russia, the Bolsheviks came to power under the slogan ‘Land, peace, and bread.’ Within just five years, Lenin had insured a smooth transition from tsarist dictatorship to Soviet dictatorship.
At its core, utopianism is little more than thinly veiled intolerance, sprinkled with fairy dust to appeal to the intellectually vulnerable.
On November 8th, the people spoke, yet Progressives refuse to hear. This damn the torpedoes attitude will ultimately destroy the Democratic coalition, and turn it into a truncated, European-style socialist fringe party, utterly inconsequential but morally pristine.
Gidon Ben-Zvi is an accomplished writer who left behind Hollywood starlight for Jerusalem stone. After serving in an IDF infantry unit for two-and-a-half years, Gidon returned to the United States before settling in Israel, where he aspires to raise a brood of children who speak English fluently – with an Israeli accent. Ben-Zvi contributes to The Algemeiner, The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post , Truth Revolt, American Thinker and United with Israel.
