Crazy Policies of the Looney Left
– By Howard Sierer –
Long-time Democratic strategist James Carville told CNN, “Look, this whole noisy, identity left is 15% of the Democratic Party. Yet, we pay such a terrible political price for a slightly more than a fringe element of our party…” I would add that the rest of the country is paying a terrible price as well.
This “fringe element” is calling the shots for the party in Congress and the Biden administration and is so deeply embedded in the media, government bureaucracy, and academia that it threatens to drag the rest of us off the woke progressive cliff.
Many woke progressive policies are just plain looney and defy common sense and reason. Here’s a sampler:
With inflation running at a 40-year high of 8.5%, Pres. Biden claimed spending $4 trillion more on his Build Back Better program would reduce inflation! Sen. Chuck Schumer promoted raising taxes to fight inflation. Albert Einstein’s famous quote applies: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Biden and Democratic Congressional leaders call voter ID requirements racist. Yet polls show over 80% of Americans support requiring voter ID, including 67% of Democrats and 84% of blacks and Hispanics. More looney pandering to minorities.
America was energy independent when Biden took office. Only the looney would start to shut down our oil and gas industry when solar and wind power are not yet – and may never be – able to replace it.
Mindlessly pandering to progressives, a Biden Fed nominee advocates denying credit to oil and gas companies; Biden nominated a Marxist as Controller of the Currency. How far left can he get?
With inflation raging and gasoline approaching $5 per gallon and climbing, common sense would dictate encouraging production. Instead, Biden went for a one-shot fix, tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve while pleading with the Saudis and even with Iran, Russia and Venezuela, to increase production.
In mid-April, the Administration reaffirmed support for a leasing ban on public land and imposed new permitting rules that will make it much harder to build pipelines and the liquified natural gas export terminals desperately needed in Europe to replace Russian natural gas.
Our southern border was essentially secure in 2020; in the last 12 months, 2 million illegal aliens have crossed the border and many of them have been flown in the middle of the night and housed in cities around the country at government expense rather than returned to Mexico. On what possible basis can this be justified?
The farther left on the political spectrum people are, the more they support draconian measures to fight COVID. The liberal New York Times reports that in 2022, 48% of “very liberal” people still believed that COVID posed a “great risk” to children’s health despite widely available evidence that the risk COVID poses to children is minuscule.
Social scientists agree with parents that school closures have done far more long-term harm to children than the virus. Nonetheless, listening instead to teachers’ unions, Democratic governors and mayors closed in-person schooling and were still mandating masks earlier this year.
The progressive left sees libertarian Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter as an assault on democracy, expressing horror about a billionaire controlling a mass media outlet. Yet progressives are silent about the Washington Post’s owner Jeff Bezos, Comcast’s ownership of CNN, and Warner Media’s ownership of MSNBC. In short, tech billionaires enforcing speech rules that align with Democratic Party priorities are a benefit to society; Republicans or libertarians wielding that same power are a threat.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Progressives see every problem as oppression of some people or groups. Their tool is creating new “civil rights” for the supposedly-oppressed group, fanatic opposition to any proposal they see as diminishing those newly-found rights and creating a government bureaucracy to implement those rights.
A recent example: Florida’s law prohibiting teaching kindergartners about sexual orientation and gender identity is seen by progressives as an attack on LBGTQ rights. The left wants to sexualize five-year-olds rather than risk offending one of its identity groups!
At least one kindergarten teacher jumped on board. She was suspended for a day after she refused to take down a gay and transgender pride flag she had hung in her classroom. The local teachers’ union urged staff to wear rainbows in solidarity. The looney left puts political indoctrination ahead of education: government employees must be allowed to discuss sexuality in front of kindergarten classrooms.
Progressives have convinced the Biden administration to endorse government-sponsored “gender-affirming care,” the current term for altering teenagers’ sex with puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery. Never mind that a high percentage of those undergoing these treatments later regretted the unalterable changes to their bodies. Most of us see this as a crime against children and nature.
The looney left applauds lawlessness that supports its political objectives: Supports rioters and looters who they claimed were merely reacting to white oppression. Defunds the police who embody “systemic racism.” Applauds progressive prosecutors who refuse to prosecute shoplifters, drug dealers, muggers, and other “minor” criminals. After all, “law and order” are Republican themes that must be opposed.
The threat to our society is real. James Carville’s “15% of the Democratic Party” continues to invent new and novel social theories and to use its domination of the legacy media and government bureaucracy to impose its version of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” policies on the rest of us.
Viewpoints and perspectives expressed throughout The Independent are those of the individual contributors. They do not necessarily reflect those held by the staff of The Independent or our advertising sponsors. Your comments, rebuttals, and contributions are welcome in accordance with our Terms of Service. Please be respectful and abide by our Community Rules. If you have privacy concerns you can view our Privacy Policy here. Thank you!
Click here to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or a Letter to the Editor
Fascist and Progressive (synonymous) policies were very popular in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. There was a blatantly Communist (not all that popular) Populist Party in the late nineteenth – they wanted to nationalize the railroads (no cars then, Progressives want no cars now) and were opposed to private ownership of property. They melded themselves into the (more popular) Progressives. Teddy Roosevelt founded the Progressive Party in 2012 – All the Presidential candidates were Progressive in that election. Fascism was going to usher in an age of prosperous Utopia for all – the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini disabused most Americans of that promise – awakened us to to the reality of centralized totalitarian control, but now that they’re only vaguely remembered historical artifacts Progressivism has once again taken hold of a small but radically vocal portion of the Political Left. History repeats itself. We even have a modern Camicie Nere, a radical supported Sturmabteilung to suppress dissent. And a proposed Ministry of Truth.