I & I Editorial BoardI&I Editorial
One of the reasons the country should elect Joe Biden president, voters were told over and again last summer and fall, was that America needed to go back to the unexceptional days of B.T. – Before Trump. But if what we’ve seen so far is normal, then please give us the irregular, the unconventional, and the unorthodox.
When Democrats and the media (do we always need to say here, “but we repeat ourselves”?) said Biden would lead us back to the political and social lives pre-Donald Trump, they meant more than just putting the pandemic behind us. They insisted normalcy was getting rid of a president whose tweets upset them; transporting America to the days when we could disagree about politics but not let them divide us; making Washington a functioning machine turning out useful public policy; a staid rather than turbulent White House, and, according to a late November rant by Robert Reich, a labor secretary during the early Clinton years, recovering “a former America that, by contrast, might appear quiet and safe, even boring.”
On Inauguration Day, the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer marked it down that “many Americans” would exhale on that morning because “four years of chaos and lies and the presidential encouragement of America’s most malevolent elements will end when Joe Biden takes the oath of office.”
A few days before Christmas, Cook Political Report national editor Amy Walter said “Biden’s transition has been like his campaign; traditional, predictable and with little to no drama or surprises. His choices for his cabinet and White House personnel reflect a desire for restoration.”
Less than a month into Biden’s term, let’s take a look at America’s return to “normal”:
- Is it our standard-operating procedure to call, without evidence, those we disagree with racists and white supremacists?
- Is being obsessed with, and bowing down before, identity politics who we are?
- Is letting males compete with female athletes playing it straight in the U.S.?
- Is a militarized zone around the U.S. Capitol a long-standing American custom? What about a political witch hunt disguised as an effort to root out domestic terrorists?
- Is it normal for an administration to snub Israel, America’s only natural and traditional ally in the Middle East?
- Is it routine for the president’s family to conduct “corrupt business dealings in foreign countries”?
- Is it normal for public schools to be closed across the country because the teachers unions in a real sense own the party in power in Washington?
- Is it a time-honored American practice for the media to snuggle up to that party in power and treat the president as a celebrity, even a savior, and refuse to sufficiently fact-check him?
- Is pricing the unskilled, less-educated and most vulnerable among us out of the workplace part of our American heritage?
- Has it always been acceptable for Ivy league students and teachers to “demand revocation of all degrees earned by Republican politicians”?
- Is it normal for presidents to violate constitutional liberties, particularly the freedom to bear arms?
What our political-media class defines as “normal” is the entrenchment of elitism sprinkled with a few radical ideas for the purposes of virtue signaling and appeasing the extremists and wannabe revolutionaries embraced by the “That Party At Lenny’s” establishment. It’s about extending power and status and keeping the country on the road to serfdom, where inside-the-bubble elitists rule rather than govern or persuade. If this is normal, we prefer deviancy
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Bob Maistros
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
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‘Normal’ ended on election day.