Anti-Trump Resistance protest
Screenshot of Youtube video from the Next News Network

American progressives  are becoming increasingly unhinged as they push ever further toward the political Left. Their hysterical reaction to the political successes of the neoliberal Right is leading them to concentrate their attentions on innuendo and political smears; that is, on mostly emotional reactions to express how much they so thoroughly hate the American Right. They have become so rabid, one has to wonder if they may be about to commit  political suicide inadvertently.

Total Resistance to Trump

The hatred of progressives  for the political right can be summarized by a horrific picture, leaked by the TMZ website, of comedienne Kathy Griffin holding a facsimile of Donald Trump’s decapitated head. If this depiction of progressive emotions is accurate for a great many progressives, and I believe it is, how much room is left for a reasoned conversation between the Left and the Right?

Why should we believe this picture is indicative of many progressives’ emotions toward the political Right? I discussed some of the reasons in my last post, The Real “Colluders” With Russia. There I related how Democrats are continuing to attempt the forcing of Donald Trump from office. They want to do this by painting him as a lackey of Russia, who helped Russia to subvert our last elections. It does not seem to matter to them that there is really no evidence supporting this claim, an assertion I supported with five different video statements from people who certainly ought to know. One was from Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee; another was by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; a third was provided by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin; a fourth by Republican Senator Rand Paul; and finally, a fifth by ex-CIA Director John Brennon. A few of these individuals, particularly John Brennon, tried to obfuscate the final conclusion, but in the end they had to admit no real evidence existed.

In my last post I also discussed progressives’ motivations for their hysterical and emotional reactions to last year’s election. The continuing loss of political power, not just in the federal government but in state governments as well, was bad enough. However, adding insult to injury, they lost the American working class. Throughout history progressives’ entire raison d’être has always been to protect the working class from large corporations and the perceived depredations of the wealthy. If the working class no longer believes in them, for what reason does the progressive movement continue to exist?

For that matter, as progressives look around the western world, they see what Americans would call progressive elites under similar attack. The economies of the West, whether North American or European, as well as the Japanese economy, have all been stagnating under dirigiste management. American progressives must be experiencing a fear, not only about an on-going loss of political power, but a fear about being able to adequately describe reality at all!

Fear, then, as well as hatred motivates the progressive troops for the total war of resistance against Trump and the Republican Party.

What Would Happen If Progressives Realized Their Fervent Wishes?

One question  progressives should urgently ask themselves is this: What would happen if they accomplish all they currently desire? Suppose they are successful in driving Trump from office. Would the American people thank them? A very large number certainly would, but an even larger number would probably hate them. At the beginning of 2017, the Gallup Organization said that 36% of the American people considered themselves “conservative” and 25% thought of themselves as “liberal”. Hate engenders hate, and if progressives (a much more apt descriptor than “liberal”) continue to spew their hatred, contempt, and disdain toward neoliberals (also a considerably more accurate label than “conservative”), then they should expect that hatred, contempt, and disdain would be returned to them in spades. I suspect progressives would not find that situation to be much of an improvement. Should they successfully drive Trump from office, what is most likely is the “conservative” plurality would consider the act an undemocratic coup d’état, an attempt to suppress their views and desires. It is hard to imagine a situation in the United States more likely to blow up in violence.

However, suppose violence did not erupt. Suppose neoliberals meekly accepted such a coup. What makes progressives think economic developments under their renewed control would proceed any better than under Obama, or under the dirigistes of Europe or Japan? Then in the very next election they would be right back in the voters’ doghouse, even more discredited.

One problem in giving progressives their way is the manner in which they react to the failures of their policies. Rather than reconsidering the premises of any failed policy, they almost always assume they just did not use enough power or resources to make the policy work. Their answer to any government failure is almost always to propose giving the government even more power. Just providing a little more government power would surely overwhelm the problems to be solved! Later, when the accumulation of more government power does not do the trick, they conclude that clearly government needs even more! Those who know of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek will recognize this phenomenon as his Road to Serfdom, the road to a fascist government.

Historical examples of this process abound. Among the more recent examples are the government housing programs that created the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the Great Recession which followed it. The federal government had mandated private financial institutions to create the subprime mortgage market, which produced the crisis when it foreseeably collapsed. And what was the reward to private banks for doing precisely what the government wanted by providing subprime mortgages? Rather than blame government policies, Democratic politicians immediately castigated the private banks for their greed. The Democrats’ solution to the problem was to put banks in the straitjacket of the Dodd-Frank Act. Since the government management of the mortgage market had failed, their view was government needed even more power over it.

Yet economies do not fair well under strict government controls. The reason for this is that they are systems that depend on local balances between individual suppliers and consumers of goods and services. Because an economy depends on these local interactions of innumerable degrees of freedom for its well-being, government systemic management tends to disturb all these local, delicate balances. If the government accumulates even more economic power to “solve” previous government failures, the exercise of any new powers almost guarantees future government failures.

Because progressives do not recognize this pathology, they have grown increasingly authoritarian over the past century. They have travelled Hayek’s Road to Serfdom at least since the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. Below is a list of links to some of my posts documenting this growing progressive authoritarianism.

• The Corruption of the Democratic Party
• Progressives’ Disrespect for the US Constitution
• The Economic Nature of Fascism
• Democrats Want to Imprison Scientific Skeptics?
• Are We No Longer A Nation of Laws?
• Are You Unconvinced Democrats Are Growing More Authoritarian?
• Is the U.S. Becoming a Banana Republic?
• The Progressives’ War On the Separation of Powers

Political Impressions On the Electorate

Authoritarian tendencies  do not wear well on the American people. They especially do not wear well when they result in a deep economic malaise. These twin explanations — growing authoritarianism and economic failure — appear to be the explanations for why:

• The Democrats have lost all levers of power in the national government, both with the presidency and Congress.
  
  
• The Republicans now control 69 of 99 state legislative chambers, 69.7% of the total. This includes flipping both the Iowa Senate and the Kentucky House for the first time in about a century.
  
  
• In the last election Republicans picked up three new governors in Missouri, New Hampshire, and Vermont. This brings the tally of GOP governors to 33, which is 66% of the total.
  
  
• In half the states the GOP holds both the governorship and both state chambers. The Democrats can claim to totally control four state governments in this fashion.
  
  
• The Republicans can also claim more state attorneys general, 29, which is 58% of the total, than ever before.

If progressives and Democrats waste time and effort in an effort to delegitimize Donald Trump, they will merely make themselves ever more irrelevant as they postpone the examination of just why their policies have been so counterproductive. For the Democrats, postponing their own introspection threatens them with an expansion of the trends listed above. Indeed, if this delay goes on long enough, it could threaten them with extinction.

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