Think back to the 1990s for a moment. Bill Clinton was president, and the GOP controlled Congress for the first time in 40 years. There were sometimes ugly partisan battles, and the Clintons famously railed against “the politics of personal destruction” while engaging in it themselves. But there was a balanced budget and welfare reform. Looking back now, it’s like an age of tranquility and harmony compared to the acrimony and hatred of today’s political scene.
We should all take a moment to reflect on our part in the degradation of political discourse and endeavor to do better.
However.
Again, thinking back 30 years, the Overton window — a ‘90s invention to measure commonalities and mainstream policy ideas — showed a fair bit of overlap between the political parties. Outside that window are the fringe ideas, the ones that shock normal people because they’re so bizarre.
The Defense of Marriage Act was bipartisan and signed by a Democrat president. The Clintons wanted abortion to remain “safe, legal, and rare.” There was general agreement on the fact that border security was important and illegal aliens should not be allowed to stay. Various Democrats even talked about a border wall. Nobody thought political violence was good.
Since then, one party has moved a long way down the political spectrum, and the other hasn’t. Since then, one party has embraced radical and sometimes downright insane ideas and declared itself on the “right side of history” for doing so, while yelling at the other side for bigotry and intolerance because that side remained in the same place it was in the 1990s.
Now, consider this statement from Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally for Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani: “We are not the crazy ones! … They want us to think we are crazy! We are sane!”
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
At times, a wild-eyed AOC was literally screaming as she railed for 15 minutes about how evil Republicans are and how much New York City needs a mayor like Mamdani, who wants to tax rich white people to redistribute “free” stuff to minorities.
Mamdani is a man who, over the weekend, told us with tears in his eyes that his saddest memory after Islamofascists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 was that his aunt “stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab.” He later admitted it’s not even his aunt; it’s his father’s cousin. And she wasn’t even in America at the time; she was in Africa. But he wants to lead the city that was attacked.
To AOC, “sane” is this statement: “To demand an affordable and decent housing, a decent wage, the right to healthcare that we pay to care for our people instead of the flattening of Palestinians and oppressed people abroad is not a radical act. It is basic and core humanity. That is why the election of Zohran is as important as our cause today. Child care, buses, rent, and our rights!”
One of those things is not like the others, but to an increasing number of Democrats, it’s all part of their oppressor/oppressed Marxist worldview. If you don’t want what they deem “a decent wage,” you probably want dead Palestinians and maybe “trans” people, too.
She called Donald Trump “a despot in a house built by enslaved people,” but she also decried his “demolition of the White House.” Well, which is it? Either contention is not exactly 1990s Overton window stuff.
My next point: Democrats have slandered Republicans as Nazis for decades, but that has ramped up against Trump. It’s primarily because they have no idea what a fascist actually is.
But when they have a Senate candidate in Maine with a literal Nazi tattoo on his chest, their response isn’t to condemn him or to push him out of the race. Instead, it’s to circle the wagons around him. “He sounds like a human being to me,” opined Democrat Senator Chris Murphy. “A human being who made mistakes, recognizes them, and is very open about it.” Actually, he lied about it, but whatever.
“I am not a secret Nazi,” protested Graham Platner.
“We are not the crazy ones!” shrieked AOC.
I’m not a campaign manager, but neither of those statements strikes me as the sort of thing you want on a candidate’s yard sign. Maybe that’s why Platner’s campaign manager quit last week, and then her replacement quit this week after three days on the job.
So, what’s the point here?
I fully understand that most of my neighbors and yours are completely normal people. They don’t scream about bigotry, they don’t have Nazi tattoos, and they don’t think the biggest problem with 9/11 is that some Muslims felt uncomfortable. I’d guess that the vast majority of Americans actually could have rational and cordial conversations with people around us, even about politics — even despite the taboo feeling that can sometimes have.
But make no mistake: The Democrat Party as an official entity stands for things now that are crazy:
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Illegals should come from anywhere for any reason, and they should be given taxpayer-funded benefits like healthcare (despite Democrat denials that it’s happening).
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Marriage is no longer a man-woman union that is the foundational building block of society, but a politicized arrangement between any two adults.
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Abortion should be legal on demand for any reason at any stage of pregnancy.
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Gender mutilation of kids, boys on girls’ sports teams and in their locker rooms, pornographic books in school libraries, reading time with men in gaudy dresses, and forced nationwide celebration on a calendar full of liturgical days are all part of the enlightened sex cult.
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Christian husband and father Charlie Kirk got what was coming to him for being such a “hater” because he … had conversations on college campuses.
I’m not even covering the whole gamut, but these are radical, crazy, and, in some cases, evil things and ideas. It’s hard to find common ground with people who no longer even know what a woman is, and that if you object too often, don’t be surprised if you die of a bullet to the neck.
I don’t want to be unkind or strident. I want to honor my Lord and Savior with every word I write. But Jesus didn’t shy away from calling people “whitewashed tombs” for their hypocrisy. He said, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
I can’t see into people’s hearts like Jesus can, but I know crazy when I see it. And AOC and quite a few elected Democrats are just plain insane.
