In the 1970s – when we had another dogma-driven nonentity in the White House -- we used to say a neo-con is a liberal who was just mugged.
Today, we are all being mugged -- literally and figuratively -- by the feckless policies of a semi-sentient, septuagenarian who’s taking a wrecking ball to the economy, the culture and national security before he builds back whatever.
- Mugged at the pump – The price of gasoline has risen roughly $1.00-a-gallon since Biden took office. It’s expected to reach $4.00-a-gallon sometime this spring. In 2020, we were energy independent for the first time in decades. Then came the green jihad of Abu Joe and cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline, stopping oil and gas exploration on federal lands and other ozone insanity. At the same time, we made it easier for the Russians to export their energy resources to Western Europe by approving Nord Stream II. As kryptonite is to Superman, so Biden’s anti-energy policies are to the lifeblood of our economy.
- Mugged at the market –Inflation is roaring along at close to a 40-year high. In November 2021, meats, poultry, fish and eggs were up 12.8% over a year earlier. While the president enjoys one of his double-dip ice cream cones (two dips for a drip), middle-class families are taking a savage beating at the supermarket. This is driven by rising energy costs. Biden is too busy “saving” the planet to care about your wallet. Truck drivers can’t fill their tanks with empty rhetoric. In January, the leader of the free world admitted he was astounded when a family friend told him that hamburger meat is now over $5 a pound. “Earth to Planet Joe…”
- Mugged in the schools -- One of the few benefits of online learning during the useless school shutdowns, was giving parents a chilling glimpse of the propaganda shoved down their children’s throats: e.g., that whites bear a burden of racial guilt, that there are 72 genders, that face masks and shutdowns will save us from COVID, and that climate change will destroy the planet pronto, unless we destroy industrial civilization. When parents complained at school board meetings, Biden’s DOJ labeled them domestic terrorists. In San Francisco, last week, the unthinkable happed. In the most liberal city in the country, three woke school board members were recalled overwhelmingly, in what could be a sign of things to come.
- Mugged at the border – ICE has become a travel agency. (“Where would you like to go? We’ll have you on the next available flight.”) As border czar, the president found the one member of his administration more incompetent than himself – Vice President Kamala Harris. As many as one million illegal aliens have entered the country so far on Biden’s watch. With them came disease, crime, human trafficking and enough fentanyl to kill the country many times over. (By May of 2021, more fentanyl had entered the U.S. than in all of 2020.) In place of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, we have the Midnight Flights of Joe Biden -- not to sound the alarm, but to cover-up an ongoing crime.
- Mugged by crime – In February, crime in New York city was up 46% over the first two months of 2021. New Yorkers are afraid to walk the streets, go in the subway (where six stabbings took place last weekend) or take a bus. Thanks to the president who practically called cops racists during the 2020 riots, and the stuck-on-stupid policies of woke prosecutors, many blue cities are starting to look like Chicago on a typical Saturday night. Snatch and grab in high-end retail stores, organized shoplifting in the others, children killed by stray bullets in gang shootouts and police murdered in ambushes have become the reality of urban living.
- Mugged by the cancel culture -- High tech censors (led by Twitter, Facebook and Google) have become increasingly braven. In many cases, what used to be a matter of opinion has become “spreading misinformation” or dreaded hate speech, punishable by exile or death. The news media, once a champion of First Amendment rights, has turned a blind eye to this. In academia, cancel culture reigns supreme and you can be evicted for using the wrong pronoun. (Past commitment to liberal causes is no guarantee of future safety.) Even Donald Trump was cancelled by the twits of Twitter.
- Mugged with masks – The leitmotif of COVID mandates is “just shut up and do as you’re told.” They asked us to follow the science, as they make up the science as they go along. While mask mandates are being withdrawn for fear of retaliation in November, school kids (the least vulnerable part of the population) are still forced to mask up in many states. You can decide for yourself, they magnanimously tell us, but adults need to make decisions for children. By adults, they don’t mean parents, but politician and bureaucrats.
- Mugged beyond the border -- We were mugged in Afghanistan. Now we’re being mugged in Ukraine by an administration that mistakes talking tough with being tough. The badly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan – including gifting tons of sophisticated military equipment to the Taliban – was a disaster whose repercussions will be felt for years to come.
As recently as two years ago, comedian Bill Maher was the very model of a modern liberal talker. Today, he actually makes sense. Still a liberal, he’s reacting logically in a country where reality is being bashed, battered and bruised on a daily basis.
After they’ve had some common sense knocked into them, the more realistic among the liberal tribe may end up over here with the rest of us deplorables and bitter clingers.
