ROGER KIMBALL ON POTEMKIN PROGRESSIVISM:

I believe that Trump would be well advised to leave the Democrats in their bawl room, their boudoir (French for “room for pouting in”) while he gets on with the business of running, and improving, the country, which, by the way, he is doing very well.

Still, it is worth noting that the deceiving nature of appearances cuts many ways and is often difficult to parse accurately. For the most part, the actions of the Potemkin progressives are just exhibitions of temperament, whining, childish static that cannot be reasoned with, only pampered and put to bed for a nice long nap.

The tantrum-like behavior is not quite irrational, however. The Democrats really are on an historic losing streak. In 2008, they came to town on a tsunami of hope-’n-change euphoria. But the wrecking ball that was Barack Obama soon brought that illusion crashing down. Now they are like some threatened animal that, largely defenseless, has developed the ability to appear threatening by puffing itself up, changing color, emitting startling sounds, bristling quills, and the like. Zoologists call this activity “deimatic behavior,” after a Greek verb meaning “to frighten.”

Deimatic behavior is all show and no spear: that is, the animal might look or sound or smell threatening, but it is all bluff. Really, it is just a tasty moth, frog, California Democrat, or whatever.

I rarely disagree with Roger K., but it’s difficult to consider the Democrats’ seething anger is all bluff when simultaneously, a Republican congressman is recovering from being shot in an assassination attempt, and a Trump supporter in California is recovering from stab wounds delivered by a racist California leftist.