OPINION:
The 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind” is about the mathematician John Nash, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized for a time.
The Nobel laureate created an alternate universe populated by imaginary friends and spies and nonexistent threats. While his delusions could be controlled with medication, they never disappeared entirely.
Progressives are delusional too. Their insanity pervades every aspect of our politics and culture.
The more we follow their prescription for solving our race problems by teaching White people to hate themselves and Black people that America owes them everything, the worse it gets.
In 2001, national polling showed that 70% of Blacks and 62% of Whites thought race relations were good. By 2021, after eight years of our first Black president and the pandering that followed the 2020 George Floyd riots, just 33% of Blacks and 43% of Whites rated race relations as good.
The left’s response to these dismal findings is to keep piling it on — work harder to make Whites feel guilty and find new ways to subsidize failure in the Black community.
The left is equally bizarre when it comes to the southern border.
A staggering number of illegals are crossing into the country — 11,000 in one 24-hour period last week, and 7 million since President Biden took office.
We’re assured that refusing to secure the border, providing illegals with food, health care and housing, and handing out work permits like candy will prevent more from coming. That’s right — and welfare promotes self-reliance.
Since 2020, crime has exploded across the country. The progressive response is the “defund the police” movement, raising the threshold for felony offenses and eliminating cash bail.
Last week in Baltimore, police arrested the suspected killer of a 26-year-old tech executive. The man had served just 16 months of a 30-year sentence for aggravated rape. Baltimore’s mayor says there’s “no way in hell” the ex-convict should have been back on the streets. But he was — another tragic instance of a revolving-door criminal justice system.
In Philadelphia, more than 100 victims of social injustice looted stores over the course of two days. On the first evening, 50 were arrested and released in less than 24 hours to join on day two.
Instead of a war on crime, the left continues its jihad on gun owners. In August, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham suspended the Second Amendment for a “public health” emergency. A federal court overturned the ban.
For progressives, constitutional rights are mere suggestions, not limits on their authority.
The left is also rallying against fossil fuels. Progressive will save the planet by keeping the price of gas and home heating oil soaring, banning certain labor-saving household devices, making food more expensive to grow and transport, and forcing us into electric vehicles with batteries from China.
Enriching the most repressive regime on Earth, which could start World War III, is sure to save the planet.
The ultimate fantasy is the notion that you can change your gender by a combination of wishful thinking, drugs and surgery.
In reality, you can pick your pronouns, but not your genes. All you can do is mimic the opposite sex.
But progressives resolutely maintain that those suffering from gender dysphoria are transgender — that they were born in the wrong body and need the help of medical science to correct nature’s mistake and the support of government to force others to affirm their fantasy.
In Wednesday’s Republican debate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said, “Transgenderism, especially in children, is a mental disorder.” But some schools encourage students to “change” their gender while keeping parents in the dark.
One of the left’s favorite cliches is “follow the science.” It really wants us to follow the dogma — even if it means walking off a cliff.
How do progressives get that way? Coming from an upper-middle-class background, having a postgraduate degree, watching “The View” religiously and a suspension of disbelief all help.
During the Vietnam War protests, cartoonist Al Capp, a 1950s liberal turned ’60s conservative, used to say of those who assaulted cops with rocks and bottles in the name of peace, “The inmates are running the asylum.” Now, the inmates have escaped the asylum and are running public education, academia, corporations and government.
People who are delusional are usually treated with drugs or institutionalization.
But how do you treat an entire movement based on a steadfast refusal to accept reality other than by keeping it as far away as possible from sharp objects and power?
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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