Donald Trump critics fancy themselves heroes

OPINION:

I have returned. From Europe, that is, and I hope I met with no Russian undercover agents while there. The soi-disant liberals are in a snit about the Russians. Supposedly, Donald Trump Jr. and the mysterious Jared Kushner met with an undercover agent of the Kremlin in June of last year, and they did not report their meeting to The Powers That Be. Who are The Powers That Be? Actually, I have no idea, but Messrs. Trump and Kushner should have reported their exchange, which had something to do with adoption or adaption, or possibly Hillary’s unwashed socks. You figure it out.

The stalwarts of American left (we no longer call them liberals — it is inappropriate) are in another of their tense moments with the Trumps and, of course, it has something to do with the Trumps and the Russians. The left has developed an irrational fear of the Russians, about whom they are positively obsessive. I am not sure why this is. Perhaps it is because today the Russians are no longer communists, and the erstwhile liberals had long admired certain aspects of the communist system. As I recall, they admired the Marxist-Leninist tax code, and its attendant slow-growth economy. Remember their great economists such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Lester Thurow, oohing and aahing over how prosperous Russia was in the 1980s, just before the crash of communism?

How did that crash come about, comrades? Was it caused by something Ronald Reagan did? Reagan was the Donald Trump of his era. Are our friends to the left still perplexed as to how a grade-B movie actor contributed to the fall of communism? Now what can they be expecting from a billionaire businessman?

The morbid preoccupations of the American left continue apace. Of course, there is their aforementioned paranoia over post-communist Russia. And there is the environment that is increasingly sickening them; and the civil rights of public toilet users in certain red states; and civil rights in general. The KKK is making a comeback and they are aided and abetted by the increasingly popular alt-right movement and the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy who object to the expurgation of five years of American history back in the 19th century. Then there is the Resistance Movement that has been a theme with the American left ever since Hillary Clinton had her meltdown on election night.

As David Gelernter pointed out last week in The Wall Street Journal, the American left has adopted “resistance” in response to Mr. Trump’s election in a free and democratic election. As Mr. Gelernter wrote: “Democrats, in their role as opponents of President Trump, have taken to calling themselves ’the resistance.’ ” They are co-opting the term “resistance” from the free French who in World War II were opposing, as Mr. Gelernter says, “the Nazis in occupied France.” In their delusions the members of the American left are modern-day freedom fighters and the Trumps are Nazis. Continuing the left’s fantasy, the American Army and its allies will eventually be called in to liberate “the resistance.” And who will march down our Champs-Elysees, Hillary?

I saw my first member of the resistance at Brussels airport wearing his black T-shirt with “Resistance” boldly emblazoned across our hero’s chest. He was asleep. I did not want to awaken him with troubling news. His fly was halfway down. Since then I have seen black T-shirts everywhere in Washington bearing variations on the Resistance theme: “The Resistance,” or simply “Resist,” or, harkening back to Hillary, “She Persists, You Resist.” Nowhere is it reported that Donald Trump has taken any notice, to say nothing of ordering out his Brown Shirts.

Is it possible that we shall endure such childishness into 2018? I believe it is. Comparing oneself to freedom fighters who faced torture and death while one lounges in the Brussels airport may seem like a leap into fantasy to normal Americans, but it is nothing to the American left. They have been inhabiting a fantasy world since the first Clinton administration. Those were the years in which they beheld Bill Clinton as the Virgin President and Monica Lewinsky as The Stalker. Ever since then, the left’s condition has worsened.

• R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is author of “The Death of Liberalism,” published by Thomas Nelson Inc.