OPINION:
To suggest that a reckoning is coming, even if it is, is an implied threat. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is not happy again.
“I’m angry,” she says in a tweet. “The American people are angry. And we’re right to be angry.” It’s all about President Trump’s tax reform. She derides “wealthy campaign contributors” for “a slap in the face to working people who trusted that Congress would put their interests first.”
America is a divided nation. No news there. The reckoning the senator sees may not be the reckoning she gets. But some people who are smart enough to know better insist on casting every public issue as the white hats vs. the black hats. The conservatives are cast in the black hats, and Pocahontas always wants to wear the virginal white.
The Tea Party, which only yesterday was a potent force in the life of the nation, was largely peaceful. There was little disruption at their rallies and everyone cleaned up the litter before everyone went home. The Antifa and other radical groups that have taken to the streets in the era of Trump usually leave broken windows and burned automobiles as calling cards, engage in riot, demand the White House be bombed and generally leave trash all over the city for someone else to clean up. What they, and Sen. Warren, must learn is that outrage, whether feigned or otherwise, is not the way to the moral high ground.
When conservative policies don’t work, as sometimes they won’t, they’re usually tweaked or abandoned. Liberal nostrums, however misguided, are never allowed to fail. There’s always an excuse, that not enough money was thrown at them, that conservatives interfered with the implementation; and, finally, the nostrums failed because sexists, racists, and white men conspired to keep everyone else under heel.
Much was written a quarter of a century ago about the “angry white male” and his role in giving Republicans control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Most of it was bunk. There’s work to be done to analyze the impact of the “angry liberal” on the political process, if someone would start the conversation, and keep it cool. There might be a reckoning approaching, but reckonings are rarely partisan operations. Reckonings are about everyone. Pocahontas should be careful what she wishes for.
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