The danger of denigrating America’s ‘founding f**kers’ - opinion

The goal of these radicals is not to achieve a “better America” – as they pretend – but the “end of America.”

By RUTHIE BLUM
A protestor wraps chains and ropes around the statue of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, June 22, 2020 (photo credit: JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS)
A protestor wraps chains and ropes around the statue of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, June 22, 2020
(photo credit: JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS)
The fifth season of the hit HBO comedy series Veep opens with the fictional US president, Selina Meyer – played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus – panicking about the electoral tie of the previous day, which could result in her not being able to remain in the Oval Office for a second term.
Aptly titled “The Morning After,” the premier episode of the season highlights what happens in America when a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. Addressing the nation, Meyer insists that she is in “barefaced awe of the majesty of our democratic system,” while also saying that the “electoral college is a somewhat arcane institution that many scholars say we should do away with.”
Talk about prescience.
The episode aired on April 24, 2016, nearly seven months before the election in which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump beat his Democratic Party rival, Hillary Clinton, by garnering an electoral college majority – even though she had won the popular vote. Unlike Clinton, however, the protagonist of Veep ultimately obtained the electoral college coup that she needed to keep her coveted seat in the White House.
But before it was clear to Meyer that this was the case, she told her staffers sardonically that she had forgotten in her speech to “thank the voters for making our country look like a high-school Spanish
She added bitterly, “Didn’t those founding f**kers ever hear of an odd number?”
The irreverence of the character – whose brash political incorrectness is especially jarring in light of today’s cancel-culture apparatus – gained the series widespread critical acclaim, not to mention multiple awards. This is not surprising, considering that the series had viewers laughing hysterically for seven seasons, until its final broadcast in May 2019.
But the real-life figures who have been denigrating America’s “founding f**kers” with a vengeance since then are not the least bit funny. On the contrary, the current attitude of the increasingly radicalized Democratic Party and its far-left supporters is not merely sad; it’s horrifying.
That they never got over Trump’s victory – and blamed the electoral system for it – is one thing. Sore losers are a dime a dozen, and the Democrats have more than their fair share. Furthermore, nobody enjoys political defeat, certainly not to a contender like “The Donald,” a businessman and reality TV star with zero experience in the workings of Washington, DC.
Indeed, were Trump’s presidency the sole cause of the progressives’ shrill malaise, their initial and subsequent protestations would have been par for the course. Though their attempts to criminalize and oust him through impeachment have been beyond the pale, even those particularly appalling measures could be seen as acts of desperation against Trump in particular. Or so their more moderate fellow travelers like to believe and try to argue.
Conventionally, dissatisfaction with this or any other president finds legitimate expression in the op-ed pages of newspapers, through demonstrations in the proverbial public square and, of course, at the ballot box on Election Day – which, in this case, is less than four months away.
YET THESE are abnormal times, when COVID-19 is the least malignant of the country’s infectious diseases. While coronavirus invades the body, it doesn’t attack the soul, which is what the vociferous and violent “f**k America” camp is trying to do to the nation. Trump may represent everything that members of this motley crew loathe, but Uncle Sam is their greater target.
Evidence is on display daily, with rioters toppling monuments, desecrating flags and shaming dissenters. It is also revealed in the prohibition of freedom, the key value on which the republic was founded – not by “f**kers,” but by the likes of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
With the country under ideological and physical assault from within, Trump took to the podium in South Dakota last Saturday night to wish America a happy 244th birthday. At the foot of Mount Rushmore – with the engraved faces of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln staring majestically above the thousands of people in attendance – he delivered an address that included a tribute to each of the towering figures individually, and to the Founding Fathers and other notable Americans in general.
He also warned against the forces determined to destroy their legacies.
“No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America,” he said, in part. “And no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.”
He went on, “Yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled [and] bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.... Make no mistake: This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress.”
Yes, he continued, “against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but... villains.”
The radicals’ portrayal of American history “is a web of lies,” he stressed. “All perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified, until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.”
The goal of these radicals, he concluded, is not to achieve a “better America” – as they pretend – but the “end of America.”
This 40-minute speech drew the battle lines of the brewing civil war. It is impossible to tell at this moment what side Middle America is on. But one thing is clear: The results of the fast-approaching election will determine much more than whether Trump remains president or Joe Biden replaces him.
FOR ONCE in my life, I agree with the leftist American-Jewish pundit Peter Beinart, whose opinion of the United States is almost as repugnant as his view of Israel.
“If Trump loses reelection,” he wrote in The Atlantic on June 26, “it will be because the country changed and he did not.”
Beinart meant this as an insult, but it’s actually a compliment. Trump has been letting voters know where he stands and urging them to join or remain in his ranks.
Beinart further claimed in the piece that the president has responded to “a once-in-a-century pandemic, the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression and some of the largest protests since the 1960s” – with “public opinion [swinging] hard in favor of scientific expertise, a functioning welfare state and greater racial justice” – by “becoming an even more cartoonish version of himself.”
No, Peter, Trump is announcing that he wishes to wrest the United States from the intellectual clutches of people like you and revitalize the economy – not destroy it through welfare – and remind the rest of the population that “racial justice” is the opposite of what the cancel-culturalists are seeking. He will lose the election if this is a message that most Americans no longer want to hear.
Which brings us to Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Beinart would be happy to see dumped in the dustbin of history along with Trump.
Unlike Beinart, Netanyahu took time out on July 4 to tweet, “Happy Independence Day, America! The State of Israel sends our heartfelt appreciation to @realDonaldTrump and the people of the US as you celebrate the shared values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thanks for being such a close friend and ally!” He punctuated the note with side-by-side icons of Israeli and American flags.
Netanyahu was sincere. He is among many Israelis – and American conservatives – who fear a Democratic victory in November. They understand the far-reaching repercussions of an America whose leader is backed by a movement that considers the US to have been conceived in sin by its “founding f**kers.”
Beinart not only grasps this, he champions it.
The cat is also out of the bag where his professions of love for Israel are concerned. In an op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday, he declared wistfully that he no longer believes in a Jewish state. His reason in a nutshell: Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which allows for the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria, but demands that to achieve statehood, the Palestinians have to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism.
It would make for an HBO comedy even funnier than Veep, if it weren’t such a blood-stained tragedy.