By Victor Davis Hanson
A long time ago, the French foreign secretary, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, once remarked of the restoration of the French kings after the French Revolution. “Unfortunately,” he said, “they have forgotten nothing and they’ve learned nothing.” Meaning, the same thing is going to happen again and again.
That’s applicable to today’s angry, almost addicted Left, if you think about it. We have suffered now from almost a decade of Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, five criminal and civil suits, 91 indictments, efforts to get Donald Trump off the ballot. I could go on and on in a nauseating fashion, but they all have had two results.
One, the people are now bored and weary with all of these psychodramas and melodramas. And two, they’re starting to see them as substitutes for substantive criticism or substantive discussion. In other words, when you have nothing to say about the border policy of Donald Trump or nothing to say about his new Jacksonian foreign policy, you revert back to form.
And that’s what we’re seeing right now. They have forgotten nothing and they have learned nothing. So let me give you a few examples. You would think in these first hundred days of Donald Trump there would be robust debate about economic policies, border policies. There is not.
Now we’re talking about Elon Musk went like this, and he went like this to the crowd, this, and they said he was a Nazi. And then, of course, the internet almost immediately was awash in imagery of Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama. That swept over the entire world, almost, that Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute. There was no evidence he did not and that ate up a 24-hour cycle.
Pete Hegseth is going to be confirmed. He weathered all of the invective. It’s clear the Left failed to stop him.
There was no discussion in those ad hominem attacks on really critical questions for all of our security concerns. Are we short artillery shells? Is the traditional triad of submarine-based, missile-based, and airplane-based nuclear deterrent, does it still work? Are we short Javelins? Should we be looking more at drones after the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine? None of that came up.
It was, “Were you drinking? Did you have adultery, adultery, adultery?” He’s admitted he was a flawed person in his personal life for many years. And now, all of a sudden, he’s on his way to be the new defense secretary.
And what happens? Is there a great new debate over a defense issue? No, we’re told that his former sister-in-law, a very strong Democrat that his brother divorced, has now gone to a Democratic welcoming law firm to say that she heard his former wife say that he was cruel, or he was dangerous, or he might beat her, or he drank too much.
Samantha Hegseth, his second wife, has said it was not true and that her former sister-in-law was simply trying to work for the Democrats to stop this nomination. And the divorce settlement shows that neither one had any complaints about spousal abuse. And yet, again, that ate up another day.
Then Gen. [Mark] Milley came out of the woodwork. And now they’re releasing interviews that he thinks Donald Trump is a fascist and is the greatest threat in history to the United States. Are we having any discussion with Gen. Milley about the chain of command? Should we look at the Joint Chiefs [of Staff], the structure of them, to make sure that no one in this advisory capacity tries to interrupt the chain of command, as did Milley?
Should we make sure the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who’s an adviser only, does not call up his Chinese counterpart and warn him that he will tip him off if Donald Trump gives an order he disagrees with? No, we just heard “fascist, fascist, fascist,” and then that disagreed. Sometimes these distractions, these psychodramas, melodramas are very—what’s the word—trivial.
Now we’re discussing: “Is Donald Trump really president? He did not put his left hand on the Bible. Yeah, Melania had the Bible, but he didn’t reach for it. That must tell us something.” That took over 24 hours.
And, of course, we had Bishop Budde, I think her name is Mariann Budde. She was going to give this national prayer sermon. She gave it and then she hijacked her own sermon and started haranguing Donald Trump about being too harsh and he has to be merciful in the treatment of transgenders and illegal aliens.
Nothing about an open border where 80,000 to 100,000 people are killed through imported fentanyl. Nothing about criminal aliens that hurt and maim and kill Americans. Nothing about cutting in front of the line and hurt legal applicants. Nothing about overwhelming social services so that our poor don’t have the access that they previously had.
No, it’s just a, what? A performance art, virtue signaling way of getting attention. And indeed, the bishop went through all of the talk shows, “The View,” to highlight her confrontation with Donald Trump.
What am I getting at here in conclusion? The Left is out of ideas. They’re like an addict that is addicted and fixed on their next, I don’t know, melodrama. And they know that is destroying them. They know that people want substantive debate. They know they can’t do that because they’re on the losing end of that argument.
They know they should not continue with these psychodramas, the strife, strident, invective, and they can’t stop. Like a zombie addict, they can’t stop. In other words, to quote Talleyrand, again, “They’ve forgotten nothing and they’ve learned nothing.”
First published in the Daily Signal
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One Response
Of course the left cannot change!
Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose! But you can only gaslight people for so long.
Common individual experiences are often a good way of measuring the zeitgeist. And in my small world, it’s quite remarkable how many people I’ve heard recently saying things like: “The one thing I know for certain is I’ll never vote for the Dems again“; or “it’s difficult to believe that we used to think they were the decent alternative to the old Republicans“. The general disgust, not only with the left, but with the institutions they have corrupted, is palpable. And so it should be. These people are so contemptible it’s not worth attempting to engage them in serious debate. They are best ignored. Except of course, in cases involving brazen thefts of public funds and flagrant violations of the constitutional. Remember the refrain: “no-one is above the law“?