Don’t look now, but the political era of existential-crisis mongering may be reaching its overdue end. Thank Democrats for screwing the basics up so badly as to focus minds.
That’s the takeaway of
breathless Wednesday speech. It used to be that if a president scheduled prime-time air to warn the nation of a “threat” to “democracy,” from “dark forces,” that has placed everything from our “personal freedoms” to the “rule of law” “on the ballot”—he’d be referring to something like World War II, and get a listen. The Biden speech got a shrug. Voters have sat through this apocalyptic movie many times now, and know its anticlimactic ending. Besides, they’re busy searching for spare change to cover the rising grocery bill.
Not that the left isn’t giving it the old middle-school try. The Nation’s
Katrina vanden Heuvel
warns we are in a “polycrisis,” of “war, extreme weather, contagion, concentration,” coupled with “poverty,” “homegrown dictators,” “obscene inequality,” “big money,” “election deniers,” “nativism,” and “oceans of disinformation and dishonesty.”
Barack Obama
told an Arizona rally this week that democracy “may not survive” the midterm election: “That’s not an exaggeration.” The Atlantic’s
Tom Nichols
recently tweeted: “The United States is facing the greatest danger to its constitutional system since at least the 1950s, if not the *18*50s, and millions of people are like: Yeah, but gas, man.”
Yeah, but gas, man. And hallelujah. Bring on the non-drama election.
For those counting, this is the fourth cycle Democrats have made histrionic claims of external threat, internal menace and political demise.
became their foil, and no claim about him or his supporters became too absurd. Collusion with Russia! Institutions crumbling! Rule of law—gone! Climate melting down! Nation succumbing to nationalists, racists, misogynists, phobes of all kinds! Voter suppression! Minority tyranny! Insurrection! Along the way the left conjoined its agenda with the saving of humanity: If you want to rescue “democracy,” kill the filibuster, end oil, put the feds in charge of voting, censor “disinformation,” raise taxes,…
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