The Left Achieves Peak Political Insanity
Robert Weissberg

Today’s Left is at peak political insanity. Who could imagine massive rallies supporting government bureaucratic bloat and wasteful spending? Or that young women, undoubtedly feminists, protesting on behalf of Muslim terrorists? Why do public officials defend boys participating in girls’ sports? Why would climate activists vandalize Tesla despite the company’s stellar environmental record? Meanwhile, college professors toss around terms like “Nazi” and “fascist” in ways divorced from their actual meaning. Why is a free sex-change operation for incarcerated illegal migrants a riveting presidential campaign issue?

Such madness defies rational explanation. America is not in an existential crisis. For nearly everyone, the day-to-day reality is nearly identical to the far less hysterical Biden era.

These events exemplify the “March of Dimes” phenomenon. The March of Dimes was a charity that, beginning in the 1930s, raised money to eliminate polio. Thanks to its funding, vaccines were developed, and by the 1970s, the disease was virtually eliminated in the United States. Mission accomplished, but what would happen to these employees and their organization? After some false starts, the charity refocused on eliminating birth defects, and it was back in business. The March of Dimes phenomenon is what happens post-success -- finding a new mission.

The current Democrat Party suffers from the March of Dimes phenomenon. The New Deal, begun by President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, has almost entirely been enacted and is sacrosanct. We have social security, unemployment insurance, protection of labor unions, a degree of national health insurance, multiple consumer protection laws, bank regulations, and countless other “New Deal” policies. Similarly, the Democrat president Lyndon Johnson’s massive “Great Society” program aimed at reducing poverty is also an inviolable part of the status quo. Nobody questions such programs as Head Start, Washington’s aid for local schools, and all the rest.

Ditto for the agendas of various racial and gender-oriented groups. Nearly every item in the historic black civil rights agenda is now a reality: anti-discrimination laws, extra funding for black schools, laws banning racial segregation, and the protection of voting rights. A parallel exists for government protection of women’s rights, including laws criminalizing sexual harassment and regulations to help women economically. Meanwhile, the gay agenda’s main goals -- decriminalization of homosexuality, legalizing same-sex marriage, and protection against bias -- are the law. Finally, since the late 1960s, the government has enacted multiple environmental laws focusing on clean air, clean water, and protecting endangered species. If a 1930s-era Democrat Party official were transported to 2025, he would see a political paradise.

It is no wonder, then, that Left-wing political activists focus on political ephemera versus more fundamental issues. Black civil rights groups rename school buildings as if this helps black students. Gay organizations agitate for a plethora of gay-themed holidays and memorialization, so we now have an International Transgender Day of Visibility. Women’s groups that once focused on access to higher education now focus on defining “women.”

This lack of seriousness surfaces when demonstration participants are asked to justify their outrage. The days when a civil rights demonstrator might respond with “the right to vote” are long gone and replaced with vacuous clichés. At a recent anti-Trump rally, Fox News asked activists why they were there. One responded, "For me, an ideal America is one where people can protest like this and have their voices heard, and they are the ones who are running the country -- not somebody who's taken over the country and no longer allows the First Amendment to be spoken." When asked about “an ideal America,” another protestor said, “An ideal America looks like a country where its citizens can live in dignity, can live in peace and prosperity, where, yeah, we are not afraid to exercise our right to free speech.”

Those who hate Trump and want to do “something” don’t know what to do, and lacking sensible, politically feasible alternatives, they embrace faddish nonsense that supplies only a sugar-high satisfaction. This is human nature -- active stupidity can soothe unease since, at least, one is “doing something.”

This madness also reflects the Democrat party's fragmentation. The Party is trying to herd cats. Once demonstrations were organized by groups such as unions that had a clear political message, and participants were instructed to heed a concrete agenda. Today, by contrast, attracting media attention is often the paramount goal, and participants are free to improvise to maximize this attention. Getting the largest crowd possible before the camera outshines presenting a succinct, appealing message.

The upshot is typically a cacophony of cliché-like slogans, bizarre costumes, and meaningless signs proclaiming, “Trump is a Nazi.” This is a theatrical politics whose purpose is not to inform the public. Rather, the aim is, instead, to show that people are “angry.” Indeed, unlike the 1960s-era civil rights and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, these events cannot even offer written statements of demands. Today’s rallies resemble therapeutic events to let off steam, not organized pressure politics.

Such incoherent politics is the politics of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This disorder is now rampant -- estimates put it at one out of every ten children -- and it should thus come as no surprise that today’s politics are often kaleidoscopic. The media surely grasps this shortened attention span, and so everything is simplified. A serious topic like tariffs becomes a 30-second soundbite that encourages people to “stop thinking” and “do something.” So little time and so many issues to protest, so why waste time mulling over complexities? Children in Africa are, supposedly, dying due to Musk’s budget cuts, our constitutional rights are being abused by oligarchs, senior citizens will lose Social Security, and all this before lunch, so you better get to the demonstration before you miss out on saving the world.

A deeper explanation for this theatrical commotion is the lack of solutions for the unease motivating participants. It's hard to organize a serious demonstration when nobody knows what to demand. Better just to congregate and shout. What feasible policy prescriptions are being offered by those carrying signs denouncing Musk as a Nazi? No Democrats call for restoring Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society solutions to ending poverty, and for good reason -- they don’t work. Do today’s screaming protestors know of better ways to cut the national debt or make the government more efficient? There is a political adage that you can’t beat something with nothing, and spray-painting “Nazi” on a Tesla is not a policy alternative.

Current political insanity further illustrates the growing dumbing down of American society. It is akin to college students “earning” degrees thanks to grade inflation while majoring in Gender Studies. Why think seriously about America’s unsustainable national debt, a falling birth rate, declining labor force participation, terrible schools, and the like? “Solve” the problem by yelling “Fascist” and hurling a Molotov cocktail. Demonstrators will soon demand participation trophies.

The current insane style of politics may persist even after President Trump leaves office. America faces serious problems, and many of these problems either lack solutions or call for solutions that are impractical or too expensive. Under such conditions, it is all too easy to “solve” the problems by organizing protests and shouting obscenities. Politics deteriorates into street theater run by those with limited attention spans. This may make for wonderful TV, but such behavior hardly solves anything. Political theatrics now replace governance and can easily escalate into rioting and mayhem. This is the mob rule that terrified the Founders.

 

 

Robert Weissberg born 1941 is an American political scientist and writer. He was a professor of political science at the University of Illinois and is the author of twelve books on politics and pedagogy. He published numerous scientific papers in leading journals in political science.[1]Weissberg has also written for outlets such as Forbes, Society, The Weekly Standard and American Thinker. 

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