The Silence of the Liberals

Am I the only one or have you noticed your liberal friends and family have been strangely silent lately?

I tweeted as much Friday and, given the number of retweets in a matter of minutes, I gather I am not alone.

So why are these normally voluble people suddenly doing a disappearing act? (I’m not talking about the politicians and pundits.  They’re being paid to move their mouths.)  It’s pretty obvious.

They are bewildered and embarrassed.  Some are even ashamed of themselves, not that they will readily admit it.  The man who was their hero has now been unmasked in every direction as the worst president since the Civil War and possibly earlier. Not only is he a cheesy liar, everything he has done, domestic and foreign, has failed, sometimes to extraordinary degrees. The domestic part is bad enough, but at least that might be reparable.  The foreign is another matter.  The world is spinning out of control.  Who knows where that will end?

Hence, the silence.

Easter and Passover celebrations will be a little easier for those on the right this year.  We won’t have to listen to as much stultifying palaver about global warming, income inequality, etc.  Some, of course, but not enough, I suspect, to ruin our dinners.

Unfortunately, however, we have nothing to gloat about.  Our liberal friends have left us with a pile of dung the size of  the Horsehead Nebula.  Digging out will be a titanic undertaking, especially in the aforementioned area of foreign affairs.   Ironically, Republicans have been jumping up and down about the inept Affordable Care Act, but the real problems left by the Obama administration will be global.  You don’t easily roll back an Iranian nuclear weapon or regain respect for America as the global leader when it is being dissed in nearly ever corner of the planet. (See Bret Stephens’ excellent column on the subject.) Just as nature abhors a vacuum, global leadership abdicated rapidly finds a replacement – usually a worse one. (Rand Paul and followers take note.)

Speaking of which, it might be interesting to direct the conversation to foreign policy at those coming family dinners.  I also suspect that our liberal friends and relations deep down are worried about what has happened to the state of the world.  Most of them were happy to see the Cold War over, even if the dreaded Reagan had something to do with it.  They’re also a little suspicious of Iran.  (I’m not talking about the left wing lunatics here – they’re hopeless.)

When bringing up the subject of foreign policy, it’s not necessary, although tempting, to bring up what incompetents Obama-Hillary-Kerry have been, or even to refer to such titanic moments of ineptitude as Obama’s whispered message to Putin about his future “flexibility” after election or the repellent non-reaction of our president to the freedom movement in Iran.

Those events may be a bridge too far for our liberal friends.  They may not be able to “contain” them, as the shrinks would say.  But they are perhaps ready to share a little mutual misery about the state of things, a furrowed brow or two, that could lead them to do some quiet thinking when at home –  that is, when not in front of you, lest they embarrass themselves.  People change – not many, but they do.