“Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord. Yet we live in secular times. Many liberals are not religious, hence it never occurs to them to quote the Bible. Nor do the regard themselves as vengeful human beings. Suffused, as the see it, with the milk of human kindness, they never intentionally harm others.
Except that nowadays this is not even close to the truth. Contemporary liberals are consumed by a desire to get even with their enemies. Every day, they plot fresh slants on destroying their political opponents. Every day, they put these nefarious schemes into operation.
The spectacle is not an attractive one. Revenge for its own sake is raw and mean-spirited. Especially when dressed up as righteousness, it cowardly spitefulness is hard to miss. Vengeful people virtually salivate in their lust to inflict frightful injuries.
Today, every morning brings evidence of this liberal obsession. Scarcely a day goes by when there isn’t another effort to destroy Donald Trump. Most of these are based on nothing but hatred. No pretext, no matter how far-fetched or skimpily documented, is too slight to be ballyhooed as the latest scandal.
No president in my lifetime has been reviled to this degree. Richard Nixon was also hated. He was, after all, the man from whom you would not buy a used car. Furthermore, he was driven from office for offences that pale when compared with Obama administration corruption.
Nonetheless, there was a twinge of sympathy for Nixon. When he went down he was kicked a bit, but then allowed a modicum of rehabilitation. For Trump, there will be no mercy. Liberals not only want him impeached; they want him in jail. Solitary confinement would be more than welcome.
They say that vengeance is a repast that is best served cold. It is certainly a cold-blooded enterprise. It exhibits no empathy for the victim; no effort to understand his side of the story. The only thing on the aggressor’s mind is savoring the pain of the prey.
How ironic is it that revenge is seldom satisfying. Once the target is impaled, the joy goes out of the retribution. It soon becomes apparent that the agony of the quarry does nothing to assuage the cause of his tormentor’s malevolence. However much the victim hurts, it does little to relieve the persecutor’s original anguish.
The Trump derangement syndrome is a case in point. Liberals hate Trump partly because of his style. His lack of verbal sophistication in comparison with the eloquence of their hero Obama is galling. How could a man this crude have defeated one of their own at the polls?
Yet far more infuriating is the reason that Hillary lost. Beside the fact that she was a terrible candidate was the small detail that she did not have a compelling message. As a liberal who was defending a record of meager accomplishment, all she could do was drift further to the left.
Liberalism, as I have for years contended, is dying. It promise of salvation through ever bigger government was betrayed by an absence of effective follow through. Despite a burgeoning compendium of programs and regulations, mounting incompetence sabotaged most federal efforts.
Left-wing experts were never as expert as they pretended. The failures of ObamaCare proved that. Neither were these bureaucrats exempt from corruption. The FBI and IRS scandals demonstrated as much. On top of this, rising national deficits did not fully revive an ailing economy.
Were Trump crucified on the front lawn of the White House, it would do nothing to cancel out this history of failure. American families would still be broken. Educational achievement would continue to fall. The inner city ghettoes would remain breeding grounds of despair.
Liberals do not have an answer for the breakdown of their agenda. They do not know how to fulfill their myriad promises. And so they lash out. Yes, Hillary’s defeat was unexpected. But had they a counter-argument to Trump’s pragmatism, they would have been able to fight back on a even plane.
As it is, they can only fight. Theirs is an aimless belligerence, with the exception of the focus on harming Trump and anyone associated with him. This kind of cruelty is new. The America in which I grew of age was more optimistic. People were nicer because they were more hopeful.
Vengeance does not produce happy outcomes. Accordingly, wouldn’t be more agreeable if liberals tired of their hatred? Wouldn’t it be even better if moderates refused to condone their selfish animosity?
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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