The late, great Robin Williams joked a fair bit about alcohol and drugs in his career, and given that he came up in comedy during the 1980s, cocaine got its share of attention. One of his better lines:

We were talking briefly about cocaine…yeah. Anything that makes you paranoid and impotent, give me more of that!

“Paranoid and impotent” – what better way to describe the current state of Democrats in Donald Trump’s America?

Trump’s election has Democrats literally running through the streets, wailing that the apocalypse is upon us. There will be marauding gangs of racist rednecks with Confederate flags and Louisville Sluggers driving their pickup trucks up and down the streets of Chelsea and Harlem. There will be internment camps where all America’s minorities will be rounded up and fenced in (thanks for the precedent, FDR). Half a century of civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights progress will be erased.

As some of my political friends say, OFFS, knock it off already. You achieve nothing with your “earth is burning” hysteria. Nothing, that is, other than confirming to Trump’s supporters that they were right to vote for him because you’re out of your f—ing minds. Nothing, that is, other than making many who didn’t support Trump walk away from you, lest they be guilt-by-association accused of buying into your paranoia.

The Democratic Party has been decimated these past 6 years. This makes Trump merely the most obvious evidence of a much larger movement, and no, it’s not a movement of “racism, sexism, misogyny, and homophobia.” Its most bigoted element is the nativism fueled by populist demagoguery, but that was merely what opened the door. It is the dragging of the nation, kicking and screaming, in the direction of big government, absolutist political correctness and social justice, and down-to-the-details command-control of every element of our lives that unleashed the flood that washed the Dems out of power.

This is the message that the Left must heed. It first manifested in the Tea Party movement that gave control of the House to the Republicans. It was echoed when the Senate flipped to the GOP, as well, and it was happening, mostly unnoticed, at the state level in both governor’s mansions and legislatures.

Why did this happen? Perhaps we can look at cocaine again. One medical site indicates that cocaine produces a “rapid-onset, rewarding high.” Much has been written about how modern progressivism is about self-congratulation for “doing good,” how it is driven by intent rather than outcome, and how the best-and-brightest impose their will upon us because they know better. Sounds like a great recipe for producing a “rapid-onset, rewarding high,” doesn’t it?

The problem is, of course, with the long-term effects. Start with addiction. Power over other people is certainly addictive, and as we have all heard, power corrupts. Big-government progressivism is certainly addictive. Once you start believing that you are making things better for everyone else by running their lives, you’re bound to want to dome of it. Once you embrace the idea that you are the best-and-brightest, or that the person you elected is by proxy, you’ll brook no disagreement, no challenges, and no demands that you restrain yourself from further imposing your will on others.

As you develop a tolerance for the substance of your addiction, you need more and more of it to continue to get the high. You start pushing ever harder on the social justice angle, you start getting more deeply involved in minutiae, you interfere with everything you can think of. With the tolerance comes the paranoia. And, of course, the impotence. The Democrats’ addiction to big government and political correctness has rendered them largely impotent on the political field, and they have only themselves to blame.

Marx once called religion the opium of the masses. It seems, today, that big government is the cocaine of the progressives. As their source for their “cocaine” evaporates, watch for these withdrawal symptoms:

Depression
Anxiety
Chills
Body aches
Tremors and shakiness
Pain
Inability to feel pleasure
Exhaustion
Challenges in concentration
Intense craving for “cocaine”

Sound familiar?

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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