The Enlightenment

If you are a frequent of mainstream media, you may be led to believe that the Democrats are the only thing stopping Donald Trump from a total, autocratic takeover of the United States.

You believe that the Democrats deeply hate Trump and will stop at nothing to impede his destructive agenda. They excoriate him on the floor of Congress; stand up and wag their fingers at him; clap funnily from behind; and rip up his speeches, in order to show him who’s really in charge.

Unfortunately, I am here to burst that bubble. Apart from putting on a show of “resistance kabuki theater,” Democrats have been offering very little in terms of resistance to the Trump presidency. In fact, in many ways, they are his biggest enablers.

Take the military budget, for example. We have consistently been told by Democrats for the past 4 years that Trump is a puppet of the Russian regime, acting on behalf of the Kremlin to sow chaos and division within the United States. And yet, House Democrats have voted overwhelmingly, most recently in 2020, to expand Trump’s military budget, including none other than resister-in-chief Nancy Pelosi. Senate Democrats also voted in lockstep with Republicans for the 2017 and 2018 military expansion, and the House also supported expanding the military in 2018 and 2019. Notable “Yea” votes include Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, 2016 Democratic Running Mate Tim Kaine, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, as well as media darlings like Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, and Cory Booker.

So, let me get this straight. The same people who holler to no end about how Bad-Man Drumpf is a crazy, maniacal, authoritarian, wacko, wannabe-dictator, then turn around and agree to give him more money to spend on weapons, armored vehicles, and other expensive toys. Yeah, okay.

Certainly that’s just one little hiccup, right? Oh, no. We are just getting started. How about giving Trump greater spying powers?

Key provisions of The PATRIOT Act, legislation passed after 9/11 to give the government greater surveillance powers, were set to lapse under Trump in 2019. Instead of letting them lapse, Nancy Pelosi slipped an extension of a key PATRIOT Act provision in an unrelated government funding bill.

More recently, however, a different #resistance darling, Adam Schiff, was also caught trying to give greater spying powers to Trump under a separate PATRIOT Act authorization; more powers than Trump was even requesting, in fact.

In May of 2020, Congress was debating the re-authorization of several PATRIOT Act sections. Civil liberties advocates, long critical of The PATRIOT Act, tried to attach an amendment to the bill that would curb the government’s spying powers, but it failed by just one vote. After that, House lawmakers wanted another vote on the amendment in the House, but Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, fought hard to weaken the amendment, to the point where it is useless. Consequently, privacy advocates in Congress who had originally supported the amendment withdrew their support.

What makes this whole scene even more laughable? President Trump said he would veto the bill unless it included the privacy provisions. After that, Nancy Pelosi pulled the bill, as she no longer wanted to give Trump a bill that included such provisions.

Incredible. The same people who stayed up until 2 AM during impeachment, flailing their arms about how dangerous “Mad King Trump” is, are now giving him expanded spying powers. Incredible.

The examples go on and on. It was Nancy Pelosi who full-throatedly pushed through Trump’s USMCA trade deal. It was Schumer who chose to fast-track Trump’s judicial appointments. And let’s not forget how quickly Nancy Pelosi stood up during Trump’s 2020 State Of The Union Address to support Trump’s position on Venezuela and Juan Guaidó.

How stupid do The Democrats think we are? Anyone can see right through this charade. The truth is this: Democrats either can’t be bothered about resisting Trump, or they agree with what he’s doing. One is dereliction of duty, and the other is accomplice to malice, but the answer is the same: we need a new party, or, barring that, we need to move The Democrats leftward, so that they become a real resistance party, and not a fake one.

Image retrieved from NBC News.