It is not plunging poll numbers and stunning electoral defeats that pose the most dangerous threat to the radical left’s agenda of national transformation. Rather it is the rapidly growing awareness of the utter fraudulence of their dominant narrative and the malignant methods they have been employing to advance it.
Central to the Left’s strategy has been the imperative of concealing from the American people the truth about what is actually happening in the country by substituting a compelling alternate reality and demanding that all pledge allegiance to this newly invented worldview or suffer dire consequences.
The instrument for promoting this ideologically driven project has been the phenomenon of race which has been used to fuel the astoundingly audacious effort to dramatically transform the way Americans think of their country and themselves.
To find a historical parallel for such a politically inspired national crusade we must go back half a century to the “Cultural Revolution” which Mao Zedong imposed on China, an upheaval that came close to destroying the coherence of that society.
Lest there be any doubt about the scope and boldness of this assault on the nation’s way of life, consider the following:
** President Biden solemnly informs the country that the greatest threat to America comes not from China or Russia or Iran, but from “white supremacists.”
** Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reinforces the message by telling us that the central purpose of America’s military establishment is not defeating Al-Qaeda, Isis, or other foreign terrorists, but rather the main enemy: “domestic terrorists.”
** If additional reassurance is needed, Attorney General Merrick Garland states that the Justice Department is fully committed to this existential struggle and further announces that the FBI is opening an investigation of places where potential domestic terrorists are ominously massing—namely, parents at local school board meetings.
If these fantastical assertions comprise what the Left and the current administration want Americans to think and worry about, it is instructive to deduce what they don’t want the people to think and worry about.
That would be the faltering economy, and particularly the raging pace of inflation, which last month hit a thirty-year high and has the effect of a massive tax increase that is crushing the lives of working-class Americans and dangerously ratcheting up income inequality.
For the public to focus on that would be expose the inconvenient truth that what is truly polarizing American society is not race but class warfare.
In order to further conceal this highly combustible reality, much of the misnamed “mainstream media” is misrepresenting the recent election results as a white temper tantrum
Electoral gains for the center-right in Virginia and across the land are portrayed as a backlash on the part of a privileged class who are not only racists, but selfish materialists whining about even a minor diminution of their ill-deserved life styles—thus shockingly failing to wholeheartedly support the Administration’s noble policy goals of justice and equity.
A valuable corrective to this leftist pipe dream is a November 11 article in City Journal by Charles F. McElwee—“Twilight of the Blue-Collar Democrat”—which at great length unfolds a granular county by county examination of down-ballot election results in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The evidence McElwee adduces demonstrates that the most ominous aspects of the Democratic debacle were not the victory of Glenn Youngkin, or even the near-death experience of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, but rather the unprecedented defeats in local races for county councils, township supervisors, judges, and state legislators where previously reliable Democratic voter blocs switched to the GOP in an acceleration of a long-developing party realignment.
Large numbers of voters, particularly in working-class South Jersey and Pennsylvania’s coal regions, writes McElwee, feel the Democratic Party has “betrayed their socioeconomic interests.”
He remarks further that Progressive commitment to “identity politics and accusations of privilege infuriate the [Democrats’] former base voters.” Illustrative of this sentiment is Democratic Hazelton (PA.) township supervisor Jim Montone who switched to the GOP, telling his local newspaper, “This isn’t the Democratic Party I signed up for.”
Very possibly what we are seeing is a preview of the next chapter in this great American melodrama: The emerging contest between “The Woke” and “The Awakened.”
History teaches us that income inequality grown too stark and unremedied for too long becomes a cancer on the body politic and an ominous threat in a democratic society. When class warfare reaches a tipping point, that is, things do not usually end well.
William Moloney is a Fellow in Conservative Thought at Colorado Christian University’s Centennial Institute who studied at Oxford and the University of London and received his Doctorate from Harvard University. He is a former Colorado Commissioner of Education.