OPINION:
Halloween is a fun time for children who get to dress up as witches, vampires and other creatures of the night and haunt the neighborhood for candy. In the meantime, a growing number of real-life monsters roam the land, empowered by their friends in the party of root causes.
Halloween has antecedents going back to the Celtic festival of Samhain. It was believed that on this night, the boundaries between this world and the next could be breached and spirits entered ours, where they could snatch the living and carry them back to their realm.
People dressed in colorful costumes to confuse them. Offerings of food were meant to appease the dead. Hence, Halloween costumes and candy.
Thanks to the Democratic Party (Monsters Inc.), it’s now Halloween every day of the year.
In the latest Fox News poll, 79% of voters see crime as a major issue this year, only slightly less than inflation. Crime is both more ubiquitous and monstrous.
In May, an 18-year-old shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. In September, a woman was decapitated with a sword in San Carlos, California. On the New York subway system (where nine have died so far this year), a veteran EMS and 911 first responder was stabbed to death by a crazed loon.
On a D.C. bus last week, a woman was viciously beaten and kicked by a group of teenage girls for asking them to stop using foul language around children. On Oct. 13, two police officers were killed and a third was wounded in an ambush in Bristol, Connecticut. So far, 56 officers have been killed by gunfire this year, 45% more than in 2020. It’s open season on cops, due to the left’s anti-anti-crime policies.
The surge in violent crime is the work of the Dr. Frankensteins of the Democratic Party. Woke prosecutors are putting monsters with lengthy criminal records back on the street as they await trial.
Democrats such as Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and Stacey Abrams — candidates for governor of Massachusetts, Texas and Georgia respectively – are hiding from their records, and with good cause.
Ms. Healey applauded the riots that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd. (“Yes, America is burning. But that’s how forests grow.”) Mr. O’Rourke defended cutting budgets “that have overmilitarized our police.” A fund Ms. Abrams chaired handed out thousands to defund-the-police groups.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for senator, naturally said we could reduce the prison population by a third “and not make anyone less safe.”
The violence isn’t confined to public spaces. The Democratic Party’s latest crusade is for transgenderism — the myth that some people are “born in the wrong body,” a condition that can be cured with drugs and surgery, to make their physical body conform to their self-image. Increasingly, these people include minors.
Democrats are basing their prospects in the coming election on the party’s fanatical devotion to unrestricted access to abortion. It’s hard to imagine a horror worse than a procedure where an unborn child is dissected and the body parts are extracted piece by piece.
And let’s not forget the Creature Feature beyond our borders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens to unleash nuclear Armageddon to subdue Ukraine. China is preparing to invade Taiwan. And Iran’s mad mullahs, who want to recreate the Holocaust, are moving rapidly to acquire nukes, with our president’s support.
Whatever President Biden threatens to do to stop foreign aggressors, he’s given us a military that can’t meet recruitment goals and is trained to fight “white privilege,” “transphobia” and climate change.
Never has there been more fear abroad in the land — fear of crime, fear of what’s flowing over our unguarded borders and fear of rogue regimes with weapons of mass destruction — not to mention the political vampires who are sucking the lifeblood out of the economy. We’re afraid to walk the streets, ride public transit or turn on the nightly news.
It will take more than costumes and candy corn, or a lapdog media spinning crime statistics, to allay these fears.
It will take real leadership committed to defending the innocent, an end to no-cash bail, stricter sentencing, building more prisons, supporting police to the max and the return of capital punishment.
It will take an army of Professor van Helsings, armed with the modern equivalent of crosses, garlic and stakes.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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