Nervous Breakdown

In a series of recent posts (here and here) I have lamented the increasingly unhinged behavior of the #Resistance. Angry criticism of everything Donald Trump does has escalated into vicious name calling, not only of Trump, but of all who voted for him or currently support some or all of his policies. But even this hasn't been enough. The #Resistance has recently sanctioned mob-like behavior in which members of the Trump administration have been verbally assaulted, not in a public forum where such "protests" can at least be characterized as free speech and opposition, but in their private lives (e.g., at a private dinner in a restaurant or outside their private residences). For a more complete list of the #Resistance's unhinged behavior over the past year, look here.

It's only fair to ask what's going on, and Roger Simon provides an interesting explanation:

[Those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome] are all having a nervous breakdown and it keeps getting worse, because... because.... because Trump.

But I have news for them. It's not at all about Trump. It's about them.

Trump is what the shrinks call the "presenting complaint." The real problem, as is often the case in psychotherapy, is something entirely different. And it is this: The left is dead. It's not only dead, it's decomposed with no there there or anywhere ...

So the left has nothing to say, only most of them don't quite realize it yet. But this blockage, this reluctance and even inability to deal with what is actually happening shuts down the brain and emerges as anger, the hamster wheel of constant rage against Trump.

Sure, as a person, Donald Trump can be infuriating. His personal foibles are well-documented and understood. But after almost two years, they should no longer surprise—anyone. But as president, Trump has accomplished good things and he is on a trajectory to accomplish even more. Despite a tsunami of negative press (93% negative at last count), vicious attacks from the so-called elites in both the Democrat and Republican parties, and clear evidence that a deep state cabal would like nothing more than to topple him, we have a vibrant domestic economy and a foreign policy that although not perfect, is infinitely better that the one offered by the preceding administration.

In the last election, the country rejected eight years of the previous leftist administration. It rejected the economic malaise delivered by high taxes and uncontrolled spending, its catastrophic foreign policy blunders (Syria, Libya, and Iran come to mind), and its big government ideology (more dependency, more regulation, more intrusiveness). And all despite the prevailing conventional wisdom that the Left was ascendant. It just might be that that rejection is as much a contributor to the rage we see as anything else.

But the Left is wrong if it thinks it's on a journey to victory. David French comments:

... if recent American history is any guide, the mob only sows the seeds of its own destruction. Americans don’t like political violence. They’re not impressed by men trying to physically intimidate women. They don’t like to see protesters disturbing the peace of a person’s home. The last time the Left turned to rage, it lost presidential elections in landslides. If given the choice between terrible tweets and chaos in the streets, voters will choose the tweets every time.

So, the choice is clear. Protest all you want, but the moment you turn vicious is the moment you turn dangerous. When you start to tear at the fabric of American political life, you won’t be able to control — and may not like — the forces you unleash in response.

Hopefully, the only response we'll see is Leftist candidates being crushed at the polling booth. That won't eliminate the rage. In fact, it might exacerbate it. Why? Because history also indicates another important thing. The left never, ever learns from its failures. It doubles down and does more of what everyone else rejects. Don't believe me? Take a really hard look at the chaos and human misery wrought by the Left in the failed state that was once Venezuela.

UPDATE-1:
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There are so many instances of unhinged idiocy coming from far too many members of the #Resistance, coupled with tortured defenses of vicious verbal attacks on opposing political views, and advocacy (think: Maxine Waters) of mob rule, one can't keep up. But this comment, by former Obama White House aide Peter Emerson is epic. On Saturday’s MSNBC Live with Alex Witt, Emerson defended the owner of Red Hen restaurant for refusing to serve White House spokesperson, Sarah Sanders, saying this: “... This is a time for moral and ethical courage. It's not time for courtesies.” ... So, I'm all in favor of that because, let's not forget what happened in Germany when people were silent, Cambodia, Rwanda, now Myanmar with the Rohingyas ...”

So ... incarcerating illegal immigrants temporarily as they cross our borders, giving them food, lodging, and health care when necessary, providing legal assistance when justified, and then returning them, unharmed, to their native country is a precursor to genocide? All you can do is shake your head.

UPDATE-2:
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A common meme in the unhinged behavior of #Resistance types is the Nazi metaphor—a wholly offensive and historically illiterate suggestion that Trump, his cabinet, and his millions of supporters are "Nazis."

David Harsanyi dismantles the #Resistance members (both nationally known and Facebook/Twitter trolls) who make the Nazi analogy:

In September 1941, the Germans took Kiev. On Hitler’s orders, the new military governor orders the round-up of all Jews in the vicinity and marched them north of the city to a place called Babi Yar. There, Jews were stripped naked and taken into a ravine in groups of ten. Once at the bottom their fate was clear. Among the cries of children (many already separated from their parents), Jews were made to lie down atop others who had already been murdered. German soldiers then walked across the bodies in the large pit and meticulously shot every man, woman, child and baby in the head or neck. Then the next group would be brought down and it would happen all over again and again over a period of two days — until almost 34,000 people were no more.

Babi Yar was only the third largest massacre of Jews during the war. But the killing of children — Jewish and otherwise — started in 1939, when German medical professionals were reporting any child with disability to the authorities, and parents started handing them over to special “schools” where thousands were eliminated using drugs and starvation. All of this before the wholesale industrialized killing of humans was in full swing.

Now, if you really believed Donald Trump or Kirstjen Nielsen or Sarah Huckabee Sanders are keen on engaging in this sort of behavior one day, or anything close to it, you’re a depraved coward for not taking up arms and stopping them. And the only other possible reasons for you to constantly compare them to Nazis are that you’re tragically illiterate on basic history or a hopelessly unimaginative and dishonest partisan — or maybe both.

"Depraved coward" seems just about the right description, but "tragically illiterate on basic history or a hopelessly unimaginative and dishonest partisan — or maybe both" also covers it pretty well.