By Bethany Mandel
Thursday, November 10, 2016
“This is what democracy looks like!” That was my favorite
chant during the anti-war protests I participated in my senior year of high
school in 2004. Twelve years later, the same folks I marched down Sixth Avenue
with protesting outside the Fox News building are back at it, protesting the
victory of Donald Trump.
I’ve got some bad news for the thousands of my former
comrades marching through the streets: You saw what democracy looks like on
Tuesday night. The election of Donald J. Trump was perhaps unfortunate from
your perspective (and truthfully, mine), but he is now our president, and there
are no do-overs in a democracy.
The night after the 2016 election, we saw the Bush-era
protests, which had taken a hiatus for a Democratic president despite foreign
interventions during his administration, reborn for the Trump presidency before
it has even begun. The signs, flags, banners were standard far-left fare:
Palestinian flags were visible in television coverage, a projector with a
message of solidarity for Standing Rock reservation. Anderson Cooper reported
hearing chants of “Black Lives Matter” and men holding signs about gay rights
were present early in the evening in Union Square.
These Protests
Mean Nothing But Anarchy
Twelve years ago I was active in anti-war protests against
President George W. Bush’s actions in Iraq (sorry about that, sir, that’s my
youthful indiscretion). I was driven from the ranks of groups with words like
“solidarity” in their names because of rampant anti-Semitism among those I was
marching alongside.
I was there for one reason: I was uncomfortable with our
military’s actions in Iraq. I soon learned most of the folks I was marching
alongside had a much larger agenda: the destruction of Israel as a Jewish
state, a $900 per hour minimum wage (that’s only slightly hyperbolic), free
college education, etc. Each protest was aimless, with no clear objective in
mind besides anarchy. Chants about Palestine and overheard side conversations
made me uncomfortable standing among my fellow progressives as a Jew and a
budding Zionist, and soon I dropped out of the movement and began a slow shift
rightward.
I was driven from the progressive cause because I came to
learn that messages about inclusiveness, love, and respect were contingent upon
a very specific set of characteristics one had to already possess. We are
seeing that same hypocrisy in the present. Remember long ago, earlier this
week, when the winning team was duty-bound to respect the outcome of the
election and the fate of the republic rested upon a peaceful acceptance of the
results?
You’re Helping
Trump, People
A generation raised on participation trophies has changed
the rules of the game in the tenth inning, deciding only some electoral results
would be honored as valid because losing is not an option. Chants of “not my
president” are now heard reverberating through urban centers, shouted by the
same folks who just a few days ago were warning of civil unrest when Trump was
defeated.
By blocking the streets of Manhattan, Chicago, and more,
the progressives who staffed Bernie’s army are proving they still don’t
understand the first thing about the Trump phenomenon. The hyperbolic clickbait
about losing access to contraception and violence against gays is absurd.
During his campaign Trump said many ridiculous things, but fear-mongering about
birth control and gay rights is standard fare for the Left. Do they even know
what they’re protesting? It’s already unclear.
By painting Trump’s agenda with the same brush they’ve
used against the rest of the Republican Party while spending the day smearing
every single Trump voter as a bigot, racist, sexist, and more, the only thing
these city-wide protests are accomplishing is retroactively moving more
supporters into Trump’s camp.
Perhaps we should be thanking these protesters for
helping bring us all together, as President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton
implored we should, to stand behind Trump as he prepares to become president of
the United States. As we are reminded of how quickly the Left goes from
cheerleaders of democracy to hell-bent on anarchy once again, this “Never
Trump” Republican is thinking that perhaps Trump’s supporters were onto
something when they started to swing towards their preferred candidate when we
watched Black Lives Matters protests tear our cities apart in the last year.
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