I&I Editorial

Bernie Sanders is mad. He fulminates about the abundance of consumer choices, such as “23 underarm spray deodorants” and “18 different pairs of sneakers.” He rails against credit card companies because he thinks their interest rates are too high. He thunders over the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs.

The Democratic senator from Vermont, who is truly a socialist, having campaigned for a Marxist group in the 1980s, is perpetually upset with the way private banks conduct their business, and forever enraged at corporations for making profits. When he speaks, he comes off as that bitter man who shakes his fist at those darned neighborhood kids. There’s a reason Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and others have called Sanders the “crazy uncle in the attic.” He’s mad because everyone won’t do as he says.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another angry democratic socialist. She rages when her sophomoric Green New Deal is questioned. She was incensed when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he was going to let the Senate vote on her legislation. She’s annoyed that cauliflower is grown in urban gardens, apparently because it’s a “colonial” vegetable. Columnist Peggy Noonan said Ocasio-Cortez was “sullen, teenage and at a loss” during President Trump’s State of the Union address. Her very manner is that of someone who is mad at the world and is always just seconds away from lashing out.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren carries anger around with her like a purse — it’s always there within easy reach. She’s “mad as hell at the influence of money in Washington, D.C.,” and is equally venomous toward Wall Street. Other things that make her furious: Congress’ reluctance to “refinance student loan interest rates” (whatever they are); “billions of dollars” in private sector profits; billionaires in general; the minimum wage.

The anger and negativity on the left isn’t gushing forth from only these three scolds. They’re just the most visible. As a party, today’s Democrats, which include nearly all members of the media, are constantly frothing about something. Taxes aren’t high enough, a good part of the country doesn’t wish to join their health care collective, so many Americans want to exercise their First and Second Amendment rights. The political left is unhappy that there are natural differences in incomes and in wealth, that people of faith dare practice their faith, that school administrations sometimes allow conservatives to set up tables on university campuses and hand out written material, and that the working class resists its demands to conform.

Democrats and their traveling comrades are enraged that Israel exists as a nation, snarl about “white privilege” and “whiteness” every time they see a microphone or an open reporter’s notepad, and curse that Trump is president. They’re indignant that the rest of us don’t want to behave and think exactly as they tell us we must.

Nor is the outrage new. In 2008, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman thought Hillary Rodham Clinton was too “angry” to win that year’s election. “And to hear Republicans tell it,” The Associated Press reported, “Clinton is just one of many Democrats with an anger management problem. Former Vice President Al Gore is angry. So is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The party is held hostage by the angry left.’ “

Four years earlier, Howard Dean shrieked like a madman after losing the Iowa caucuses.

The Left’s anger and seething resentment of the achievements of Western civilization is puzzling, especially when it’s directed toward America, and American institutions and traditions. To borrow the words of President Reagan in his first Inaugural address, no other nation has “achieved so much.” We have “prospered as no other people on Earth.” “Freedom and the dignity of the individual,” said the 40th president, “have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth.”

Is this country perfect? Of course not. It has flaws. There are things to be angry about. But they’re not the ones the Democratic-socialist-left-wing mob routinely has tantrums over.

— Written by J. Frank Bullitt

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