It’s a bit of a stretch to channel Gabriel Garcia Márquez’ novel Love in the Time of Cholera for the Fourth of July 2019. After all, we don’t have any cholera, although apparently there is typhus on the streets of LA.
Still, we don’t have much Love in the Time of Typhus either. What we have is, alas, Hate in the Time of Peace and Prosperity.
Everybody’s angry for July 4, 2019, particularly the left. They’re angry about what people did two hundred years ago and they’re angry about what they might be doing today, even if they’re not. They think everyone is a racist, was a racist, or will be one. And if they’re not a racist, and even if they are, they’re a sexist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, a transphobe who hates people in wheelchairs and on and on.
And does it matter that people crying racism were themselves the scions of racists? Evidently not. We just learned Kamala Harris’ family were slaveholders. (Surprised? No, you’re not.) But that doesn’t stop her from attacking Joe Biden for his racial improprieties that were far less than her ancestors’ if they existed at all. Anger is in the air. Hate, not money, is the mother’s milk of our politics.
They’re angry at Donald Trump for celebrating Independence Day with the military. They’re angry at Betsy Ross for sewing a flag. They’re angry at people who drive SUVs even when they fly in private jets themselves. They’re angry at the administration for locking migrant children in cages (excuse me, concentration camps) when those cages (excuse me, concentration camps) were built by the previous administration. They’re angry at Trump for trying to make peace with North Korea because, well, he’s the one who’s doing it and not them. (They already failed.) The same is true of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the SJWs are inventing new terms of enmity every day, every one of them a crypto-fascist justification to hate someone, usually white males but if not them, the next target on the pecking order. Pick one.
Have you heard of “sealioning” yet? Get ready — you’re probably doing it.
And then we have Antifa, the supposed anti-fascist organization in Guy Fawkes masks, that fights fascism by smashing store windows and the heads of reporters — who happen to be gay and conservative — until they experience brain damage. None of this seems to bother the “progressive” mayor of Portland.
Happy Fourth of July?
Naturally enough, the right isn’t too pleased about all this and does a fair amount of hating back. How could it be otherwise? When you’re dealing with non-stop sociopathic behavior toward you, you can be the most Christian man or woman on the planet but a person only has so many cheeks to turn.
The USA today is a land that verifies, ratifies and sets in cement for posterity the old saw: “You can’t stand prosperity.” Suicide rates are breaking records. Homeless, mostly addicts, sleep all over the sidewalks of our big cities.
Ready to celebrate yet?
Our managing editor Paula Bolyard asked me to write something. about how great America was for the Fourth of July and this (sorry!) is what came out.
But there is a good side. Things are pretty great. We do have peace, prosperity and, more importantly, freedom (if we could only get rid of Google and Facebook and some government agencies).
Equally importantly, the left has gone so crazy (free medical care and college for illegal immigrants when our own citizens don’t get them?) they have made their anti-American insanity evident to the country. This is a gift to the rest of us, those my friend Kurt Schlichter calls the Normals. The future looks good for us if we play our cards right. Our adversaries are imploding before our eyes. Things, already good, could actually get better.
We Normals are going to be out there today, lighting firecrackers (safely, we hope) and watching magnificent fireworks displays (hopefully not all made in China), eating barbecue, burgers and fried chicken, drinking some of the best craft beer and bourbon in the world (I personally favor Belle Meade) and, if we’re not among the crowds in D.C., keeping an eye on the telly for the festivities in our nation’s capital. I wouldn’t mind having a look at those tanks myself — just out of curiosity, mind you.
Happy Fourth of July! (This time with an exclamation point.)
Roger L. Simon — co-founder and CEO emeritus of PJ Media — is an award-winning author and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. His new novel is coming in September. He thinks it’s his best, but it will be up to you to decide.
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