As a proud right-winger, I’m appalled and disgusted by Donald Trump. Nonetheless, I feel a certain schadenfreudean glee at watching leftists reel in horror at his unbridled incivility. They truly don’t seem to realize: he is only the loud and manifest avatar of their own silent and invisible nastiness. In a veiled reference to Trump at a recent lunch on Capitol Hill, President Obama declared he was “dismayed” at the “vulgar and divisive rhetoric” being heard on the campaign trail. “In America, there is no law that says we have to be nice to each other, or courteous, or treat each other with respect,” the president said. “But there are norms. There are customs.”
Are there? When I hear this sort of thing from Obama and his fellow leftists, what I wonder is: Have they not listened to themselves for the past 50 years? Do they really have no idea how vicious, how low, how cruel, and how dishonest their attacks on the Right have been?
Democrats have mastered the art of accusing Republicans of wanting to kill grandma for proposing to lower the right of increase of some obscure spending program by some small fraction. So I don't know what the author means by "silent and invisible." It was only in stealth mode because the media never condemned the left-wing slander and acted like it was all true.
I share the writer's sentiment of being appalled and disgusted by Trump.
And I don't want to hear one goddamned word about civility from the leftists who have spent decades turning policy disagreements into moral tales of Republican cruelty.
And for this, Trump gets support from people long accused of being evil and seeing those bullies getting away with it.
So if "liberal" (in the classical freedom-centric style) democracy is under assault (tip to the Instapundit Borg), the Left should spend some time looking at their finger prints at the crime scenes where they refused to defend the champions of this classical liberal democratic thinking--the West--when it came under assault by thugs who appealed to the leftist biases of people like Roger Cohen.
