The Left Has No One to Blame But Themselves

Here we are just over a week after the U.S. presidential elections, and the meltdown among the political left, who are in full denial and finger-pointing mode, continues.  Instead of a truly needed introspection on this loss, the vocal on the left need to weed out which groups are responsible for this by failing to adhere strictly to the monolithic view of how they should have voted. I find it amazing that the most insightful analysis and criticism has come not from Democratic party leaders who need to learn how to adjust to this defeat, but from a fictional character created by a British comedian.

Jonathan Pie is a fictional reporter created by British comedian Tom Walker.  He has apparently been making these videos where the reporter supposedly flies off the cuff and goes into a explicative-laden tirade over the day's news.  Over the weekend, links to a video which supposedly catches Pie preparing for a day's broadcast, angrily laying it out to the left the reasons why they have lost a string of elections internationally, found their way into the newsfeed of many Facebook users.  The thing is, through the guise of a fictional character, Walker's criticism hits the mark.

Pie exclaims, "Our argument isn't won by hurling labels and insults."  On this, he is exactly right.  What has crept into leftist thinking is this smug arrogance that if you don't think like they do, you must not be intelligent enough to talk politics, let alone have a say in policy-making.

The hallmark of this arrogance can be seen all the way back in the 2000 presidential election when, during one of the debates, Al Gore got into George Bush's face to ask his about the Dingle-Norwood bill.  This arrogance was repeated in the 2016 election as the left had a collective fit when third party candidate Gary Johnson candidly admitted that he did not know what Aleppo was.  The idea being that we, the liberals of this country, spend countless hours pouring over our newspapers, periodicals, and Congressional Records to become much more informed than you.  How dare you think that you and your inability to recognize policy minutia have any business even being in the discussion.

And so, instead of educating, liberals assume that those who don't agree with them are less intelligent, and as such are only deserving of ridicule and insults.  Not satisfied with resorting to base insults, such as racist, bigot or sexist, the left engage in the mental masturbation of devising new ways of hurling insults by creating obscure terms or equating otherwise innocuous policy positions with ignorance.  Thus with arrogant smirks indicating knowledge of some inside joke, the left throw terms out like "alt-right," which are meaningless to the majority of Americans, but have derisive connotations within elitist liberal circles.

Having been accused of being "alt-right" for daring to openly criticize Hillary Clinton, I did research on the term.  I found that there is no clear definition of it, or where its boundaries lie.  It is merely the latest of epithets liberals have created to look down on dissention.

Of course, the derision doesn't stop with mere insults.  Stances on fiscal policy define whether or not a person is truly bigoted.  Thus, Democratic Representative Charles Rangel boldly proclaimed when the Republicans first broke the Democratic strangle-hold on Congress in 1994 that the new racists wear suits and call for tax cuts.

Going back to the video, after laying into the reasons why Clinton and the left lost, Pie confides that he dare not say these things to his leftist friends because he would get "f-ing lynched if he said this."  Pie laments that the left doesn't debate anymore because the left has decided that any other way of thinking is just unacceptable.  "So, if you're on the right, you're a freak, you're evil, you're racist, you're stupid.  You are a basket of deplorables." Exasperated, Pie exclaims, "How do you think people are going to vote if you talk to them like that?"

And surely, there were people who took pride in being the target of such criticism.  I had white female cousins proudly proclaiming themselves to be one of the "deplorables."  Back when Hillary participated in the character assassination of Monica Lewinsky to cover up her husband's disgusting behavior, she labeled his enemies as a "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."  Back then, I had business cards printed up proudly proclaiming myself to be part of that "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy."

"When has anyone ever been persuaded by being insulted or labeled?"  Pie continues.  Afraid of being attacked for raising their opinion, Pie postulates, people wait until they are in the privacy of the voting to express themselves honestly.

And there is truth to this as well.  While the left may dominate public discourse with their control of most major media outlets, that discourse is not a true representation of how Americans believe.  As an example, when I first came to Washington, I was one of few in my Government office who had fiscally conservative views. And yet, I had to endure office-wide emails deriding the conservative agenda.  I could, and did, respond at first.  But finding myself shouted down and only contributing to the discomfort others felt in having an unwanted political argument in their virtual in-boxes, I decided that it was better to ignore the office-wide email chains and avoid political discussions with my friends and co-workers.  Sure, conservatives found each other.  But it was usually through whispers and innuendo until in a surreptitious meeting we would confide our beliefs to each other as if we were the French underground during the Nazi occupation.

The left love to extol the virtue of diversity for its own sake, unless of course that diversity includes a tolerance of a difference of opinions.  And thus charges of narrow-mindedness, ignorance and bigotry are emerging from this defeat.  If you are a white woman, who dare you vote against your gender.  If you dared to vote third party, well you may claim not to be a racist, but you showed your tolerance for racism by not voting for our champion, Hillary.

And it is this monolithic intolerance of different view points that had blinded the left from recognizing the serious flaws in their own candidate.  It is as if the liberals in this country were so motivated to elect the first woman president that they forgot to consider whether this particular woman really deserved their support.

She's a woman who cares about all the people!  Really?  Because a look into her private conversations among her campaign staff showed her aloofness and tendency to look down upon those groups in society that don't offer unflinching support.

She has the right temperament!  Really?  Because we have all seen her break down into angry fits when challenged on her responsibilities and choices.

America is just too willing to reject an experienced and qualified woman in favor of an inexperienced and unqualified white man!  Really?  Because let's take a look at her so-called experience.  During her husband's administration she tried to forge a role for the unelected first lady in policy decisions, heading a secretive body to formulate a health care proposal.  It was a body kept secret specifically to avoid dissent and diversity of opinions.  And for that reason Hillary Care failed miserably.

After her husband's administration, she hand-picked an open Senate seat in a state where she had no connections, and which showed in the past to be friendly to carpet-baggers with popular political relatives who had presidential ambitions.  Her years in the Senate were meant to begin the creation of the myth of her experience by projecting a certain image.  To her surprise, this image was not enough as she found herself out-maneuvered by yet another inexperienced but charismatic Senator from her own party when she first sought the nomination.  Then, in a back room compromise, she was promised the all important Secretary of State position for her support of Barrack Obama in the general election.

And how was her tenure as Secretary of State?  Lost in this post-election shuffle is the sad fact that President Obama's foreign policy has been disastrous.  The key example of this was the naïve manner in which the Administration, which included Secretary of State Clinton, handled the so-called "Arab Spring."  Assuming that young people who rise up against a dictator must be fighting for greater democracy, the Administration ignored the power of fundamentalist Islam.  Indeed, our Ambassador and Embassy staff were not brutally murdered because of any security issues or any amateurish YouTube video.  They were murdered because the naivety of the Administration ignored the history of the spread of fundamentalist Islam and the power it holds over its followers.  (Indeed, to underline the point I made earlier on the hurling of insults, if any liberal Democrats were brave enough to reach this point in this essay, I fully expect that instead of resorting to history to refute me, at this point I risk being labeled an Islamophobe in making this argument.)

This election was not the triumph of hatred, ignorance and bigotry, as the left would have you believe.  As I mentioned in an earlier essay, it cannot even be seen as an ideological triumph for the Republican party.  But it was the result of a very negative campaign with two very flawed candidates.  The shame of it was that one of them had to win.  At any rate, at this point, instead of resorting to name-calling, and finger pointing, the left does need to engage in real self-examination.  And that self-examination should result in a realization that insults and derision are not the ways to win the hearts and souls of the electorate.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.