The Great Mystery in American Politics

isn't a mystery at all

All day, every day, we’re all awash in a constant stream of messaging telling us that Donald Trump is the MOST HORRIBLEST MONSTER in the history of forever, a vicious aspiring fascist who is destroying democratic norms, attacking gentle immigrants for absolutely no reason at all, and brutalizing his kindhearted opponents. Democrats are the righteous opposition, the good people, the warriors for decency. This is rhetorically obvious, uncontested, the deepest truth: Trump devil, Democrats angels. And yet:

This is shit, the news says, and this is a bowl of ice cream. And everybody keeps declining the ice cream.

I’m going to tell you why, and I’m going to tell you exactly why. I’d bet my life on this. You can love Trump and see the point, and you can despise Trump and see the point. This is not a “Democrats bad, Republicans good” argument; the Republicans, particularly the congressional kind, have their own problems. But the Democratic Party, and the progressive worldview more broadly, have simply collapsed. They don’t exist, functionally, as a force in American political life. They make noise, but it means increasingly little. They have nothing to offer. You don’t have to join the other team to see this.

Let’s start with a comparison to the good people in Canada, the wonderful warm kind progressives, the Maple Leaf edition of “hate has no home here.” Cheri DiNovo is, let me put this very gently, an instantly recognizable social type, “one of Canada’s best-known and most ardent queer ministers and an Ontario politician who would help pass some of the province’s most integral LGBTQ2S+ policy.” You already know her by her facial expression:

slay, girlboss

As the leaders of the Freedom Convoy face sentencing in court, DiNovo has this to say about their monstrous cruelty:

The Fredom Convoy: white supremacist homophobes who harassed and brutalized LGBTQ+ people and immigrants and the disabled, lashing out in a stunning wave of public cruelty. It was like a NUREMBERG RALLY with trucks, obviously. Here, look at some of the monstrous acts of public brutality committed at this mass expression of hate and rage:

YOU KNOW WHO ELSE DANCED TOGETHER THINK ABOUT IT

Rupa Subramanya, a journalist who uses the old and mostly forgotten technique of talking to people, wandered the crowds in Ottawa (in her own neighborhood) and reported that Freedom Convoy protesters mostly talked about their desire to recover a sense of hope. Their grievances were clear, thoroughly explained, and entirely defensible. Here’s a sample paragraph, a discussion with one of the VICIOUS WHITE SUPREMACISTS:

Kamal Pannu, 33, is a Sikh immigrant and trucker from Montreal. He doesn’t believe in vaccinations; he believes in natural immunity. He had joined the convoy because the Covid restrictions in the surrounding province of Quebec had become too much to bear. He said that he and his wife used to do their grocery shopping at Costco, until the government decreed that the unvaxxed would be barred from big-box stores. Since then, their monthly grocery bill had jumped by $200. “Before,” he said, “we didn’t look at the price of what we were buying. Now, we sometimes put items back because we don’t have that much money.”

See this clearly against Cheri DiNovo’s framing, and remember it:

The white supremacist protesters who hate immigrants; for example, Kamal Pannu, a Sikh immigrant and trucker.

In fact, Sikhs make up a substantial share of the trucking industry in Canada, and so had a significant presence at the Freedom Convoy:

See the WHITE SUPREMACISTS saying that they HATE IMMIGRANTS!?!?!? Because Cheri DiNovo does. She thinks categorically: good people who support the Liberal Party, Literally Adolf Hitler who doesn’t. She has no capacity for seeing the thing itself, as it was on the ground, in physical reality. Literally nothing, no evidence or substance of any kind, could ever have prevented her from saying that a protest against Justin Trudeau’s government was white supremacist and homophobic. She’s out of her fucking mind. She has no connection to any form of reality, at all, in any way, ever. She doesn’t see anything. She doesn’t know anything. She’s ignorant noise and infinite sanctimony, with a pair of legs to carry it around.

This is “left” politics in the Anglosphere. Symbol symbol symbol, you NAZI! It doesn’t connect. It’s all chanting and performance and status-signaling, and it never leaves the house. It left reality behind ten years ago, and now it’s out there sailing past Pluto. For adherents of the Manichean religion of wokeism, categorical thinking covers all bases. People who don’t get mRNA injections are misogynistic racist bigots, obviously.

What’s the connection between pharmaceutical uptake and hating women? MAYBE YOU SHOULD ASK THAT QUESTION AT YOUR NEXT KLAN MEETING, ADOLF. The argument doesn’t have to make sense, because the category makes all the sense that’s needed. Now, brave Gavin Newsom says history will judge us for tolerating mean Donald Trump’s dark cruelty:

Click the link to play the video, but you can see the framing from the screenshot:

See, Donald Trump is very mean, and we need to stand up to his cruelty. We need to stand with the good person, the warm and decent leader, the kindhearted Gavin Newsom, who won’t tolerate meanness. Meanwhile, back on earth, a quarter of the nation’s homeless people live on the streets of California, in a count that now rapidly approaches 200,000. Several thousand of those people die on the street every year:

This is warm and progressive California’s wonderful kindness (click the link to play the video):

Outside of an actual fucking death camp, you can’t find many things darker than the darkest parts of California during the Newsom years. The misery and ruin aren’t obscure — they’re written plainly on the streets. Walk around in the right parts of Los Angeles or Oakland or San Francisco (or San Jose or San Diego or…), and you can see the death and the pain. As I’ve written before, the most significant political leader in Oakland is an activist whose activism is that he walks around so you can see the place:

The greasy sociopath who leads this dying place lectures the country about decency.

Meanwhile, California is struggling with budget deficits, Los Angeles County is struggling with budget deficits, and the City of Los Angeles is struggling with budget deficits, without any form of decent infrastructure to suggest where the money is going.

California is imploding, and it’s imploding expensively. Government budgets are soaring against stagnating revenue; the state is sinking. This physical reality is crushingly obvious. See this post from May, which discusses things like this:

So yes, clearly, we need to stop being mean like Trump and start following California’s kind and decent lead.

If you see the Newsoms in your neighborhood, remember: garlic, crosses, and sunlight, and don’t try to see them in a mirror.

In the face of any unrelenting stream of darkness, misery, and avoidable decline, good progressives stand ready to perform symbols in an absolutely pointless narcissistic display:

foxnews

A post shared by @foxnews

See, she…hit a…metal tub. With a spoon. So.

They are this, the people who hit a pan with a spoon and look proud while they do it because their brave action is so important. They cannot penetrate to substance. They only make the symbol-noises, the performative gestures. They are TikTok. Everyone who isn’t insane sees this.

All the symbols are inversions of reality. Opposing human trafficking at the border is being a bigot and a xenophobe. If you don’t want to castrate young boys and cut the healthy breasts off the bodies of fifteen year-old girls, you’re full of hate.

Meanwhile, the former trans kid Jazz Jennings has a “vagina” that rots and splits apart, which is a wonderfully warm and caring gift to give a child.

In 2025, “progressive” ideology is psychosis coupled with endless theatricality. It’s a crazy person who can’t stop proudly showing you his madness. They are insane, they only do performance, and they’re destroying us.

A miracle they’re doing poorly in the polls.

Now, as a last thought, watch Democratic Senator Chris Murphy explain the road ahead, in a fascinatingly upside-down conversation with the formless gimp and dim bulb Tim Miller. Their answer is that they have to go harder, tear down norms like Mean Orange Man, be louder and more confrontational.

Interesting days coming.