Sanctimony in politics leads to violence

Violence by Antifa thugs in Portland, Oregon, this weekend -- while police stood by and watched -- is the result of the holier-than-thou approach to politics of Democrats.

Liberals created and fostered this atmosphere by branding the opposition as evil in 2016.

Topping the list were Hillary's basket of deplorables speech and Biden calling supporters of Donald John Trump the dregs of society.

Portraying their opponents as subhuman ogres gave license to their brownshirt brigade to attack Trump supporters, and the Antifa thugs have.

In 2016, liberals were not just trying to win an election but to punish us for daring to vote for someone other than the Democrats. Hillary and the rest fancy themselves as our moral and intellectual superiors.

Remember, she demanded to know "Why aren't I 50 points ahead!"



And when you lose to a subhuman, well, the game must have been rigged. Under those circumstances accepting defeat is a sin because you are enabling a lesser and inferior being to become president. You are complicit, a word that liberals started using to describe likeable people they could not demonize, such as Ivanka Trump.

Democrats began a resistance movement, which casts President Trump as Hitler and his supporters as Nazis.

The media promoted the resistance.

But the French resistance was made up of violent saboteurs. They were fighting a real evil. Hitler was not some guy who was cutting taxes. He slaughtered 12 million people in concentration camps -- real ones, not holding facilities for border jumpers.

These rhetorical excesses by the media and other Democrats fuel an anger that leads to violence.

John Hinderaker wrote, "The Democratic Party has abandoned all norms of civility and constitutional government. Somehow, though, liberals believe they are immune from having to live by their own 'new rules.' They sow the wind, but think they never will reap the whirlwind. Why?

"Liberals act as though they are spoiling for a civil war, or at least a slow-motion approximation thereof. Is that really what they want? Fighting in the streets? And, evidently, the restaurants? Do they have reason to think they would fare well if they actually got what they claim to want?"

As President Trump cements his presidency post-Mueller Report, Democrats worry. Two nights of debates -- for lack of a better word -- revealed a paucity of presidential material. If Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are the best you can do, maybe you should sit this next election out.

They are growing more desperate.

Byron York noticed this, too.

He wrote, "The toxicity of the resistance to President Trump has risen in recent days, with the nation's most respected newspapers publishing rationalizations for denying Trump supporters public accommodation and for doxxing career federal employees, while a journalist found himself under physical attack from the so-called anti-fascist group Antifa, which has stepped up its violent activities since Trump's election.

"The justification for denying public accommodation came from the Washington Post in an op-ed by Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of a farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. Wilkinson became famous in June of last year, when she refused to serve White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and and told Sanders and her family to leave the restaurant. Wilkinson's staff then followed the Sanders group in protest as they tried to find another place to eat.

"Wilkinson later told the press she ejected Sanders because the Trump administration is 'inhumane and unethical' and because the Red Hen 'has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.'"

When you believe you are so right that opposing you is immoral, then you not only rationalize violence but command it.

York does not see this ending soon. He wrote, "Shunning, shaming, doxxing, attacking. As the 2020 campaign reaches full speed, would it surprise anyone to see all of it increase? And all from people who congratulate themselves for standing against hate. Perhaps our politics will cool down at some point in the future. But not now."

I trust a landslide for President Trump and an unassailable Republican majority in each chamber of Congress would help quell the violence.

But even my unusually abundant amounts of optimism won't cover a bet that a big defeat would teach them a darned thing.