Rejoice! For now.
The federal government is once more open for business—in whatever business it happens to be in every four years. We endured yet another civics lessons in arcane terms of congressional art like cloture, continuing resolutions and “nuclear options.”
Republicans and Democrats couldn’t reach agreement on the amount of healthcare tax credits and insurance subsidies provided under the Affordable Care Act. Temporary funding would not be extended even though it was all set to expire in January. Republicans wanted to negotiate these matters separate from the day-to-day funding of the rest of government, urging Democrats to agree to a provisional budget, deferring healthcare details to a later date.
The impasse resulted in the longest governmental shutdown in United States history—43 days. Nearly 675,000 federal employees were placed on furlough and another 730,000, deemed essential employees—active-duty military, federal law enforcement, federally funded hospitals, air-traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration officers—were expected to stay on the job without pay.
Moreover, 42 million recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, lost their benefits. Over 8,000 flights were canceled at airports due to an insufficient number of air-traffic controllers overseeing the skies.
Democratic Party leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, ultimately concluded that President Trump and congressional Republicans weren’t going to negotiate. Trump gambled correctly that Democrats would not be able to tolerate the public suffering, and feared they would be blamed for it.
So here we are—a lamentable reminder that our system of checks and balances and bicameral representation is an exercise in Olympian gridlock. No forward movement. No common courtesies of the road. The government remains at a standstill. The only things flying are accusations.
It is safe to say that Democrats and Republicans despise one another. The Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalist Party of John Adams, always at internecine war with one another, were fraternity brothers by comparison. You are far more likely to persuade Yankee and Red Sox fans to go bowling together than receive bipartisan support on any congressional measure nowadays.
It has only gotten worse in the era of Donald Trump. To the MAGA unfaithful, which represents nearly half the country, anything Trump says or does, no matter what, causes collective gagging. His foreign policy achievements are either ignored or dismissed. And blame is directed his way for all other national ills—whether he caused them or not.
Like the affordability crisis, for instance. Young people living in blue cities are seeing red when it comes to the possibilities for home ownership and economic security. Desperately, and mindlessly, they have turned to socialism to alleviate the money warp that living in coastal urban areas requires.
Such financially illiterate strategies would have come as a surprise to Marx, Lenin and Chairman Mao. Bourgeois niceties are the playthings of free markets, after all. Working from home, ordering Grubhub, watching Netflix while enjoying the conspicuous consumption of free childcare and college tuition, isn’t exactly what they meant by the slogan, “Workers of the World Unite!”
Laissez-faire is now just plain lazy.
Nonethless, while leading the parade of Warsaw Pact municipalities, New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, the new comrade-homeboy-in-chief, encouraged his more than 1 million X followers to boycott Starbucks.
Nice opening salvo against the capitalistic power structure: “Decaffeinate New York!”
New York and Seattle now join Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. as experiments in progressive politics: sanctuary cities for illegal migrants, cannabis- and cashless bail-friendly, environmental sustainability, subsidized housing and rent control, kooky crime-fighting strategies, planned economies, massive social services, shifting the tax burden to businesses and the wealthy—and, of course, legalized Jew-hating.
Bernie Sanders and the Squad have finally grown to an actual squadron, successfully hijacking the Democratic Party and holding its moderates hostage—lest they fear being primaried out of office.
Already a Gen Z socialist New York City councilman has declared his candidacy to run against Jeffries, and Schumer surely knows that his Siberian political exile is coming soon. AOC and fellow progressives are planning their own Night of the Long Knives. Political scores will be settled. Democratic moderates like Jon Fetterman will have to make new political alliances and find new political homes.
And there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Maybe it’s all for the best. A nation of 348 million people (many of whom are not U.S. citizens and are here illegally), are not properly represented by the existing two-party system. Much smaller Western democracies offer a variety of multi-party options—albeit pursuant to parliamentary systems run by prime ministers: the United Kingdom has 13 parties, France has 12, Germany 29, Sweden 8, Italy 15. Even tiny Israel can choose from 12 national parties.
The Israeli Ale Yarok Party, for instance, is primarily focused on legalizing cannabis. All those “progressive” marchers on behalf of Hamas and against Israel, take heed that no such ideological affiliation exists in any Arab or Muslim country. When they say “stoned,” they mean something else entirely.
So, let’s make it official. No more furtive sequestering in woke-filled rooms. It’s time to let the lunatics run their own asylums: carve out two new breakaway parties that will better represent each one’s respective crackpot fringe.
It’s time for a clean break. Donald Trump haters have gone way beyond mere derangement; it’s now a full-scale pathology—along with a dental catastrophe from all that teeth-grinding his political presence has caused.
Donald Trump haters have gone way beyond mere derangement; it’s now a full-scale pathology—along with a dental catastrophe from all that teeth-grinding his political presence has caused.
The Democrats are in desperate need of a “Free Stuff and Hate Jews Party”—one that is decidedly anti-MAGA, anti-police, anti-white, anti-rich, and openly antisemitic. It will possess all the critical race, intersectional, DEI and politically correct catechisms that ignite such ignorant passions on college campuses. And it will supply pink and purple hair-coloring—free of charge, of course—to all constituents.
As for Republicans, how about the “Go It Alone Space Lasers Party,” a political refuge for the likes of creepy bedfellows like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes? A tin-foil-hat alliance of conspiracy theorists and defiant isolationists who want nothing to do with foreigners—foreign or domestic—and that would include Israel.
As for the newly slimmed-down Democratic Party, if you want to see President Trump run and win a third term, keep doing exactly what you’re doing. Dictatorships arise out of the kind of political insanity that is becoming an American specialty. Obsessions with transgender rights. Sheltering illegal immigrants with criminal histories. Tolerating urban violence. Choosing avowed terrorists and medieval decapitators over a democratic ally.
As for the newly slimmed-down Democratic Party, if you want to see President Trump run and win a third term, keep doing exactly what you’re doing. Dictatorships arise out of the kind of political insanity that is becoming an American specialty.
Just the kind of platform to avoid at the ballot box.
And when it comes to more neutral policy planks, refusing to find common ground and compromise opens the door for an opportunistic authoritarian—and Trump surely fits that bill. Amid such sweeping and unstable chaos can a strongman convincingly, and forcefully, make the case that he is the only one who can get something done.
Saying “No” to anything out of his mouth may offer a cheap thrill, but it is not a winning political strategy—especially if you miraculously manage to regain power from the Comintern your party has become.
