Gaslit

Biden, denial and preparing for Trump

Guess what? I’m not done with this Biden shit. Sorry. For years, the American public have expressed their concern that Biden was too old, frail, mentally dubious. For years. And for just as long, his apologists in the White House and progressive media have been telling them that they’re dumb, hysterical and ageist. They not only kept telling the public that they were wrong – but that they were also morally suspect in having concerns about their President’s fitness.  

Well, fuck you. You reap what you sow. You’ve behaved in such a manner as to almost ensure the very thing you never wanted: another Trump presidency. But watch how quickly this history of deception and denial evaporates in the left’s collective memory. It’s funny how fast passionate assumptions are forgotten once they’re revealed to be false or stupid.

Last night, I spoke with David Runciman – professor of politics at Cambridge University, author of many books, including the wonderful Confronting Leviathan, and host of the podcast series Past Present Future (which I highly recommend). Anyway. I asked David if he shared my anger. He sure did. “They’ve been gaslighting you,” he said. “This seems to be one of the rare occasions where it’s exactly the right word. It’s not the crime, but the coverup that gets you in the end. Whatever [the Democrats] do now, they’re in real trouble. That feeling that people have been lied to by a party that’s been telling them for the last eight years that Republicans have been lying to them about Donald Trump being a danger to the Republic. I mean, Joe Biden is now clearly a danger to the Republic.

“Last night, the rumour was he might stand down. But he’s not standing down. So, he’s forcing Kamala Harris, forcing those who might ultimately replace him, to continue defending him and carry on with the lie. But we must protect this person from the accusation that Trump will level at them – which is that you were the enabler of Biden. I think they’ve got themselves in some weird, warped bubble and they can’t see it. It’s extraordinary. And terrifying.”

As I wrote last week, nothing seems to have been learnt from 2016. The left still reek of arrogance and superciliousness – and have behaved as if their presumed moral superiority was all that was required to thwart Trump again. That goes for journalists too. Here’s the New York Times’ former editor Jill Abramson: “I do think if enough reporters had pushed, the story was reportable,” she said. “I worry that too many journalists didn’t try to get the story because they did not want to be accused of helping elect Donald Trump.”

And yet, in their cowardly abrogation, they’ve helped do just that – and corrupted themselves in the process. Congratulations.

This is the same left that refused to condemn the torching of several cities after Black Lives Matter protests riotously devolved across the country. The righteousness of the protests became liturgical, and apparently any behaviour was permitted within them. No self-admiring white liberal could bring themselves to condemn the looting of small businesses – to do so would be racist, improper. It would fail intersectionality, I suppose, and other exotic tests.   

But, tell me: what do you think regular folks made of this? Made not only of the torching of cities, but also the left’s conspicuous silence about it? The implication was obvious to folks: that the left considered turning whole city blocks into anarchic ash as justifiable collateral – but if you don’t wear a mask outdoors then you’re reckless, anti-social scum. Arson good/non-mask wearing bad. Well okay, then.  

This is the left that has largely ignored the historic and staggering numbers of migrants crossing the southern border – averaging roughly two million a year for the past few years (as with the issue of Biden’s brain, if it wasn’t ignored, then those who expressed concern about it were attacked for being morally suspect – in this case, hysterically racist).

The left that loves to make sickly, triumphant hagiography that masquerades as art — like this inanely beatifying, world-travelling play about the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You know what doesn’t appear in the play, though? The bit about how she refused to relinquish her position while in the grip of advanced age and infirmity — denying Obama a nominee, and gifting another to Trump when she died. Slay, Queen.

And yet, every week, hundreds of op-eds are still published: How can it be possible that people might return Trump? He’s been serially indicted! He’s now convicted! He’s a creepy fraud! It’s not enough, folks. It was never enough. You lost in 2016 because you ignored America and called it virtue. And nothing has changed.

So good luck with Trump again. And good luck to the rest of us, too.

[Part 1 on Biden here.]