At the risk of dating myself, I remember Death Wish, the 1974 movie in which Charles Bronson plays a mild-mannered New York City architect who resorts to vigilantism after three thugs break into his apartment while he’s at work, murdering his wife and raping his daughter.
I mention this because an anonymous House Democrat — they’re always anonymous, aren’t they? — recently told Axios that their Trump-deranged grassroots base doesn’t think the Dems are being tough enough in their opposition to the juggernaut that is our 47th president. According to this lawmaker: “Some of them have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot” when protesting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility or federal agency.
Democrat lawmakers, of course, don’t have the courage of these convictions. Not even close. Oh, a handful of them will engage in the sort of theatrical bullying that got New Jersey Congresswoman LaMonica McIver charged with assault, and that got unhinged California Senator Alex Padilla briefly detained at a presser hosted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but the vast majority of Democrats don’t have the stomach for such stuff, can’t even contemplate getting some dirt under their fingernails. After all, were any of them to take a round for the team, they wouldn’t be able to trade gossip or sip chardonnay at Café Milanoor Le Diplomate.
Instead, Democrat lawmakers are content to stand in front of a microphone and tell us what an awful Nazi King Trump is, and shamefully claim, as former VP candidate and current Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did, that our nation’s ICE agents are “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo” — or worse, as Seattle-based Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal did, that ICE is “acting like a terrorist force” and that “people across the country of all legal statuses — including U.S. citizens — are being kidnapped and disappeared off the street by masked men. No oversight, no accountability. Completely lawless.”
But nor do the people suggesting that Democrat lawmakers behave like jihadists have this kind of conviction either. As one lawmaker told Axios, “These voters tend to be white, well-educated and live in upscale suburban or urban neighborhoods.” Or, as another one put it, “What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence, and … a lot of times that’s coming from economically very secure white people.”
This isn’t just bluster, though. It’s irresponsible, inciteful, and dangerous rhetoric. Think about it: If you were a sociopath and you heard your politicians saying such things, would you perhaps be inclined to climb up on a roof or settle into some shrubs and take a shot at our Nazi president? Or maybe conspire to ambush an ICE facility and murder as many agents as possible? Or open fire on a group of Border Patrol agents?
Those are rhetorical questions. The answers are a matter of record.
Man, do these people ever hate America. Here, I can’t help but wish that our law enforcement personnel — the people who are duly sworn to enforce the laws that Congress passed — could be more accommodating of these modern-day Death Wishers. Years ago, General Norman Schwarzkopf was rumored to have said of the terrorist masterminds behind the 9/11 attacks, “Forgiving them is God’s function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.” Schwarzkopf never said it, but he did ultimately express admiration for the sentiment.
If only our law enforcement officers were free to drop the gloves a little sooner. If only they were a bit less encumbered, a bit less civilized, about using deadly force to defend themselves — as when someone is throwing Molotov cocktails into police vehicles or standing on an overpass and throwing big chunks of concrete at them.
Word would get out then. And maybe these phony tough leftists would think twice about their lawlessness.
As for Democrat lawmakers, they don’t really have a death wish. They just play like Charles Bronson on TV.
