It’s time for the left to admit that not everyone shares our view
Hillary Clinton was right about one thing in 1998 when she told Matt Lauer there was a vast right-wing conspiracy against her husband “since the day he announced for president” in October 1991.
What she got wrong was that it was personal. Bill and Hillary were just the latest focus — albeit one that would last for the next 25 years. But it started much earlier. Names like John Birch, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan float up into the olfactory receptors like scent on a cow plop. But you can trace its tendrils all the way back through every regressive measure this country has ever taken, starting with the U.S. Constitution and the founders’ codification of slavery as a legal right.
Today, we view the Constitution as almost sacred. This is true for both the left and the right. The founders allowed for evil inside that document, not because there was no way they could usurp the property rights of slaveholders, but because it was not in their self-interest to do so. After all, many of them owned slaves, including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and even John Hancock — whose name is now a synecdoche (look it up) for a handwritten signature — but could also represent the willing acknowledgment that a good-versus-evil division in our country was sewn into its literary and political heart.
A heart that is willing to exploit another for its own gain is, indeed, a black heart. What would it take for you, a moral person, to believe in your heart that you could steal another’s labor for your own profit — to shackle them inside cage-like hovels and release them only when you needed them to do work that would profit you — not work that would benefit them in any financial way or give their families a sense of security or purpose?
If you say you could not do this, then you are now on the left side of that Constitutional seam. If you had no problem with it, you could say that you were on the right side — a euphemism for the wrong side.
We on the left — or even in the center or center right — are not equipped to fight those who are proudly, arrogantly on the wrong side of that seam. We’re not, nor can we ever be, cruel enough to wage war with them. We do not carry pitchforks; nor do we use language to bludgeon those who disagree with us. We still think that legal means — such as protest and petition — and the truly moral ideals of fairness, justice and liberty will win the argument. In short, we are tragically naïve.
Regardless of the losses we will endure, some of us will refuse to relinquish our values to fight in the political hellfire that has finally caught the tinder of uneducated and obedient minds. This intentional watering down of public education was no accident. Sheep are much easier to control than humans, because they don’t think for themselves.
Our sheep are now wearing wolves’ clothing, and their shepherd is Donald Trump. He has convinced them that they shall not want. But it is they who have been herded into position to protect their shepherd of darkness.
Instead of being tempted by the devil, liberal America tempted this devil into existence. Those on the far left, who thought moderately good was not good enough, are now settling for despicable, which is several degrees worse than deplorable. Most of us on the left are elite (which means we studied a bit of history and maybe even took a civics class in middle school). But it may have been to our disadvantage to be so idealistic about the sacred American ideals of openness, acceptance and freedom; our appreciation for our own values and our way of life blinded us with the almost absolutist view that everyone lucky enough to be born in America would share that appreciation.
Now we are like children being awakened on Christmas morning by people who aren’t our parents, telling us without apology — and even sneeringly — that there is no Santa Claus, and there won’t be any presents this year or ever again.
It’s time for the left, and center, to admit that not everyone shares our view that America truly is an ideal worth preserving — and improving. If we hold these values sacred, we must live them every day, fight for them and even be willing to die for them.
Scott is a resident of Taos.
