The Ahabs of the left

Desperate Democrats appear fixated on two narrow issues, which they regard as viable conduits in their vengeful desire to destroy Donald Trump: impeachment and abortion. Now, incredibly, we hear that old liberal warhorse Robert Reich has hysterically confused the two. In essence, he wants to abort Trump! Not impeach him, mind you. That would involve some sense of recognition of Trump's almost two years in office. By annulling ("aborting") the president, it would somehow seem as though his term as our national leader did not exist, period. It's like the TV commercial for a crack clean-up crew that claims to repair even the worst damage "as if it never even happened."

Reich's statement is even more appalling considering his purportedly prestigious place in academia. The prospect of his delusionary whims being promoted to graduate students in his occasional courses makes the situation even more hazardous. Robert Reich was a buddy of Bubba Clinton at Oxford. Over the long years, he forged deep personal and political ties with Bill and Hillary. Reich has been riding the academic gravy train ever since he served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Perhaps he was hoping his days of Cabinet service were not yet over. Professor Reich made a blip on the political landscape last year when he commented on the mayhem that took place at his beloved Berkeley. Antifa had used the occasion of protesting conservative speakers on campus as a pretext for smashing windows, setting fires, and otherwise destroying property belonging to the State of California. Perhaps some of the mayhem might have been prevented had the Berkeley campus police not been told by the administration to "stand down." Actually, they were standing up – lined motionless along a second-story balcony while a band of marauding thugs wreaked havoc, unopposed. Reich wasn't around for the ruckus, but that did not prevent him from afterward insinuating himself on national TV to strongly suggest that the real culprits had been agents of the treacherous right. After all, none of the villains looked at all familiar to him. He had, in fact, never seen them on his campus before. So they must have been a wild pack of conservative intruders associated with Andrew Breitbart. The fact that the rioters had their faces and bodies completely covered would have made any positive identification impossible. Robert Reich was conveniently delusional then, and he is even more so now. He is one of those Kool-Aid-guzzling liberals, driven to drink by the unanticipated results of the 2016 election. He had assumed that his pals would be back in the White House. Now reliving the glory days of the Clintons seems beyond his tantalized grasp – and his mind has snapped like a harlot's garter. He is not alone in his deep state of utter despair. Watching the way liberals "handle" disappointment is a clear warning that they cannot be trusted in a crisis. They could no more be expected to sanely steer our Ship of State than Captain Ahab was to take proper charge of his whaling vessel. In fact, Moby-Dick is the prototype for what is happening to the obsessed minds of the liberal establishment. Like Ahab, who lost a leg to a Great White Whale, the crazed swamp-dwellers lost an election to a Great "Orange" Creature who seems to have come out of nowhere. He has not only crippled them; he has blinded them with rage and plunged them into a vast sea of obsession from which they cannot seem to rescue themselves. The lasting popularity of Melville's novel speaks to the self-destructive power of obsession. To visit vengeance on Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab would destroy everything – not just his seaworthy nemesis, but his entire crew – and, indeed, what is left of his vengeful self. In the same manner, the all-consuming vendetta that grinds away at the leaders of the Democratic Party could end up destroying them and it. The last that readers of Moby-Dick see of Captain Ahab, he is lashed helplessly to the body of his mortal enemy. That is the risk fools take when they are unable to cut the punishing ropes of obsession.