Two Views Of America--And Hope
There are a lot of disturbing things happening these days, and we can't help but be immersed in them. It's the man bites dog stuff that gets covered. I've been talking about the same stuff, too, and will be doing more of that today. So, I thought I'd lead off the day on a somewhat upbeat note, by quoting Roger Kimball:
The Democrats own the anarchy they have unleashed and abetted
In most cases, prediction in politics is a mug’s game. ... There are just too many future unknowns that can intrude and spoil your carefully reasoned calculations. ...
Which is why I hesitate to leap from the Democratic and Republican conventions that just ended to the natural prediction that Donald Trump is likely to win in something approaching a landslide. Were the election held right now, today, I believe that he would win with a commanding margin, far beyond the margin of fraud or (as a lawyer friend likes to put it) beyond any margin of litigation. But November 3 is still some 60 days off. And the party that brought us the Robert Mueller entertainment, the Ukrainian telephone call distraction, the party that managed to weaponize a novel virus developed by China and deploy it against President Trump, and then encourage its proxies to riot and scream that everyone (except themselves) was racist — well, such a party is essentially unaccountable. Who knows what they will do next? Lincoln’s words, quoted by Ben Carson in his masterly speech last night, are to the point. ‘Your purpose,’ said Lincoln in 1860, ‘is that you will destroy the government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.’ Now as then, the opponents of the President are not engaged in politics but the sedition that follows when politics fails.
...
In a way, Trump’s observation that ‘Americans build their future, we don’t tear down our past’ epitomized the essential difference between Trump’s vision and that of the Democrats. As I say, political prediction is a mug’s game, and I won’t venture one now. I will say, however, that this election will be, and will be seen to be, between two sharply different ideas of America. One sees America as the sinful impediment to human flourishing whose only hope, as Joe Biden (echoing Barack Obama) put it, lies in being ‘fundamentally transformed’. The other holds up the country as a land of hope and opportunity, ‘the last best hope of earth’ (Lincoln one final time). My sense is that an overwhelming majority of people prefer the latter to the former, especially as the Democrats have been courteous enough to demonstrate what ‘fundamental transformation’ is likely to look like on the streets of Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kenosha, DC, St Louis and elsewhere across the country. The Democrats own the anarchy they have unleashed and abetted. People almost never embrace anarchy. Ergo, Donald Trump is likely to win. I offer that not as a prediction, merely a confidence.
Commentators have described what's going on using slightly different words, but the thrust is basically the same--the Dems and their Antifa/BLM proxies are trying to hold America hostage, to extort America: Give us total power or else--as Rand Paul put it the other night--America will become Portland.
Kamala Harris has been quite explicit about that, in a video clip I picked up from Kamala puts a gun to our heads :
Kamala Harris says that the riots are not going to stop, ever, and to BEWARE. With a smile on her face. pic.twitter.com/xkwAUOMJcL
— ð•”hið“ð“iຖ໐iˢ (@chiIIum) August 27, 2020
They own it, but the American people have it within their ability to disown them.