Uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists

Victor Davis Hanson writes,

The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands. And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.

It is proving as disastrous as it is bitterly instructive—reminding this generation of Americans what the Left does when it grasps power. As all restraints came off, the hard and now unbridled Left went to work to turn America into something like a looney, one-party California. A wide-open border followed. We may see 3 million illegal aliens cross at the southern border during the first 18 months of the Biden Administration. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allotted to reward those illegally entering America, who can expect free legal support from the U.S. government to ensure they are not subject to the laws of the United States.

When an American president predicts a food shortage in what used to be the breadbasket of the world, then we see the wages of socialism in all their unapologetic cruelty. When the Left can scarcely hide its glee that diesel fuel hit $7 a gallon in California, the public is finally seeing that the Bidens, Newsoms, and AOCs of the world care nothing for the real-life consequences of their elite utopian green fantasies. How did America ever stoop to begging communist Venezuela, theocratic Iran, and dictatorial Russia to pump oil for us that we have in abundance but will not produce? Which insane person thought up the idea of using Vladimir Putin’s Russia as our mediator to restart the Iran Deal?

We are learning that the likes of Anthony Fauci have all but destroyed the reputation of once time-honored federal health agencies. In their contradictions, about-faces, and deceit, they focused mostly on controlling their multibillion-dollar public fiefdoms, hounding critics, rewarding sycophants, politicizing “science,” hiding culpability about routing money to lunatic gain-of-function research in China, and marginalizing outspoken voices of audit.

When the evidence becomes overwhelming that the collusionary media lied about the laptop or the origins of COVID-19, there is never a retraction, only a Soviet-style silence about past untruth. And then it is on to the next false narrative.

Forty years ago, face slapper Will Smith would likely have been removed from the Oscar ceremonies for rudely shouting and interrupting the worldwide show. Twenty years ago, he might still have been rebuked for profanity and yelling the F-word in a live televised event. Now he is neither arrested nor even removed for physically assaulting comedian Chris Rock. His belated contrition is belied by his refusal to leave the ceremony and to go dancing and partying into the post-assault wee hours. Will there be open brawling on stage next year?

In sum, we are watching a rare laboratory experiment in which the traditional American fringe is now in control of the government. In pursuit of its utopian omelet, the Left cares little about the millions of middle-class Americans it must break to make it. The result is an unmitigated disaster that not only has tarred the Democratic Party, corrupted once-revered agencies, and alienated half the country from our cultural institutions, but now endangers the very health and security of the United States.