Everywhere I look, I see the telltale hysteria that gripped my former party back in 2016. I was a good soldier for the Left, fighting for what I believed was the right side. The hysteria spread, infecting every corner of the Left, and at some point, we lost touch with reality.
What was this that had happened to us, I wondered. Why had we abandoned our humanity? Why did the side that used to be the good guys, at least to me, feel so comfortable sliding into dehumanizing and degrading half the country? As I began asking questions, sooner or later, I would get the same one back again, “What happened to you?” But the right question was never what happened to me.
The Democrats have had almost ten years to figure out that the problem was never Trump. It was always us and the pristine utopian world we built for ourselves using the internet, social media, and a charismatic leader like Barack Obama. It was a New America where everyone got a seat at the table.
The Left always says the first Black president rousted the racists out of hiding, and they lost their minds. But the truth is, it was those of us on the Left who lost our minds with the first Black president. It became an addiction for us, this euphoric feeling of changing the world, of making history. Of being good.
Trump’s win kicked all of us into a level of mass hysteria we couldn’t control then or now. As you can see by the headlines, every day is the end of the world - it’s a threat to Democracy, a Constitutional Crisis, a Nazi salute, a fascist in the White House. Everyone is to be feared. Every decision they make is bad and dangerous.
The Democrats didn’t learn the lesson in 2016 that Trump represented a large portion of this country that had been abandoned and forgotten by us. We not only decided we were the chosen people to bring our new world to the promised land, but we also decided they were the bad people — the RACISTS — who must be kept out of our government, our culture, our institutions, our corporations — even our restaurants, our movie theaters, and our award shows.
As with most utopias gone wrong, there was no due process or presumption of innocence. It was accuse lest ye be accused. It was apologize or else. It was guilty until proven innocent. We all lived in fear of a tyrannical mob on social media with the power to decide who gets to stay and who must go.
What was all of this madness, this hysteria we were experiencing? It was a combination of algorithms our brains were not ready for, and how we’d cut ourselves off from the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. They at least still had one foot in normal. But us? We were crippled by delusion, ruled by hysteria.
Trump threatened everything. He knocked down our carefully constructed utopian diorama with glee, and his supporters loved him for it. We just weren’t prepared for how hysteria takes hold and scares so many of us all at once. It was pure madness, and we were helpless against it.
The hysteria spread to the corporate press, who got most of their information from Twitter, which was a mass hysteria delivery device. And that hysteria trickled down into the homes of anyone watching mainstream cable news. It was at the gym, airports, and the laundry mat. It was white noise in the background, selling our delusions as our new normal —quietly scaring Americans every day of the week.
The hysteria brought down the empire as we attacked every potential threat to our utopia - movies, books, history, statues, buildings, words, jokes, poetry, science, marriage, men, the color of our skin, the words that came out of our mouths, what we could say online and what we couldn’t. Obey the rules or else. Be quiet or else. Sooner or later, it was bound to get to the kids. And when it did, not enough of us stood up and said ENOUGH.
Usually, this would be when the FBI busts in and breaks it all up, but we controlled the FBI, so they would do nothing.
I was one of the lucky ones. I got out in 2020 after the mob turned on me one too many times. If it wasn’t true about me, everything they accused me of, there was a good chance it wasn’t true about MAGA either. And it wasn’t. If you wanted to tell my story as a former Good Liberal who was radicalized online, you can think of it like this: I was radicalized by kindness, decency, and a desire to be free.
All the Democrats and the Left ever had to do was snap out of it. See Trump and his supporters as actual human beings and not separate us and categorize us by the color of our skin and insist that the bloodshed of history still lives inside all of us. They could reach out and show some decency, let the rest of the country back inside the castle walls. But even that was too much of a risk for an empire in collapse.
But be that as it may, until the Democrats get a grip, they must be kept out of power. So herewith are guidelines for the Democrats on how to keep losing elections, and I really think they should listen to me, don’t you?
Keep Virtue Signaling
I had to laugh when this video of Jane Fonda landed on my For You page. In it, Jane Fonda explains to a crowd of clapping people how they should be open-hearted to those poor, sad Trump voters.
She might talk a good game, but the pro-woman group she co-founded, Women’s Media Center, dropped me like a bad habit this year to write their annual report on the Oscars and gender, which I’d been writing for nearly a decade. I was good at it. I knew a lot about it, yet one story about me in the Hollywood Reporter was all it took for Jane’s women’s group to punish this woman for thought crimes.
It’s just as well. The report was getting weird. It wasn’t just about women. It had to represent every marginalized group—women of color, trans and non-binary women; you know, the drill. But still, if they were truly open-hearted they would have sent me an email to tell me instead of just letting me twist in the wind.
I don’t think that’s very open-hearted of you, Jane.
Disavow family members who voted for Trump.
That makes you super unappealing to normies, and it will help you continue to lose, so by all means, keep at it.
Very open-hearted of the Kennedy family. How kind all of them are. That makes me want to run screaming as fast and as far away as I can get from horrible monsters like that.
Stay Nasty, Stay Mean
It’s funny to see the losing side so committed to spewing hatred on social media, casually dehumanizing Trump supporters as though they won the election and still have all of the power. What part of they got their asses handed to them is not coming through?
I think they must think this is a good look for the losing side to keep reminding all of us how much we can’t stand them. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Keep it up, Democrats. I beg of you. The last thing you should ever do is be kind, nice, normal, and decent. Then, you might actually start building a movement again.
The plan, Democrats, is to keep amplifying awful people like Suzanne Lambert, who calls herself the “Regina George” of the Left. Nothing will alienate voters more than these kinds of women - white saviors who have thrown themselves under the bus to be “good allies” for the cause, using trans people to justify the thing they really want to do: dehumanize Trump supporters.
To normal people, though, crazy ladies like Suzanne are off-putting and unwelcoming.
Keep Denying Reality
According to Dave Weigel and Kadia Goba, the #resistance is actually “winning.“ Yes, it is! I predict a landslide for the Democrats in 2028. While we’re at it, please keep calling yourselves the #resistance as if you ever were. You had all the power, all the blue pieces on the Monopoly board. You had it all. And guess what? You’ll never believe what happened next!
Their protests, their lawfare—who exactly does it attract? They look like fools, and worse, they keep reminding people what the Democratic Party's face actually looks like. It looks a lot like the past. It is not what the people want, especially not young people.
A recent focus group in Axios praised both Trump and Musk:
But to be fair, those of us who left the party aren’t all that concerned with what Trump is doing. Most of us aren’t Republicans or Conservatives, but we know what waits on the other side.
Here are Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi helping to explain why Trump met the moment and the Democrats did not and could not:
And whatever you do, Democrats, don’t remind people of who you used to be:
Amplify the Crazy
The Democrats hope to go viral on Blue Sky or Facebook, and they use every minute inside committee hearings to get that hit. They do it on the Right, too, but the Democrats somehow only expose how out of touch they have become with the country’s mood. The more we see of them, the less we like them.
Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, Eric Swalwell, AOC, and, of course, the most entertaining crazy person, the one they think is the key to attracting young people, Jasmine Crockett. In a clip from America This Week, she was ranting and raving at Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger purely for the benefit of social media. I’ve added music for dramatic effect.
Never Learn the Lesson
Trump was never the Titanic. He was always Carpathia. Maybe that wasn’t the ride some people wanted. Maybe it isn’t perfect. All I know is that I texted my daughter to say how sorry I was that she’s had to grow up among such insufferable bores and Puritanical scolds. She answered me back to say, “It’s slowly changing. I can feel it.”
So, you see, Democrats, it’s better for all of us if you are kept out of government and preferably every other major institution until such time as you can get a grip and join the rest of us out here in the real world.
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