There is no bridging the gap, squaring the circle, or third way

Here is a theme I have been contemplating since the election of Donald Trump.  You hear, amidst the anguish, the gnashing of teeth, and the vows of resistance, calls for unity.  "Can't we all just get along?"  I have come to the conclusion that unfortunately, the Left has gone too far, and that there really is no way to bridge the gap.  For one thing, we no longer have common goals with disagreements on how to accomplish them.  The truth is that Conservatives and the Left have diametrically opposed goals.  We have diametrically opposed understanding of the nature of people. There is no way to square the circle;  Clinton's third way is as dead as a door nail.

David Solway, writing in the American Thinker today expresses that thought very well in a piece entitled United We Fall. Solway's point is that the gap can no longer be bridged, and the attempt to do so, especially by appeasing them, will not work. Solway:

The left, which includes the majority of national institutions -- the legacy media, the academy, television, Hollywood, the social media providers, the judiciary, online and print groups, government departments, the Democratic Party and much of the Republican Party, the political class as a whole and the army of liberal voters -- will never be pacified. The left will never cease in its efforts to scheme against a Trump -- or any conservative-leaning -- administration.

Trump must take seriously Newt Gingrich’s warning against the temptation to “give in” to the left when opposition starts to mount from every quarter -- the Greens, government employees, the teachers’ unions, indeed the entire progressivist Category 5 hurricane of demands and vilification. Not only should Trump resist that temptation, he must not waste his time and energy seeking to heal what cannot be repaired, but needs to engage in a kind of domestic cold war, using every legislative means in his purview to contain a dangerous and implacable internal enemy. This is realpolitik applied locally.

The fact of the matter is that the people fighting on the Left will never give up. They can not, for their whole identity is tied up in the notion that believing in these causes makes them better that the poor benighted rest of us Bozos on the bus. We can pray for them, but we must not give them an inch. For their idea of compromise is us giving something up. They never give anything up. And whatever "compromise" you make is always a good first step.  Since their values are rootless, they are constantly moving the goal posts and can never be satisfied.

It is naïve to assume that the political fissure between left and right, collectivism and individuality, Socialism and classical liberalism, fantasy and reality, can ever be bridged. In essence, this is a perennial conflict, one which the great satirist Jonathan Swift in The Battle of the Books, drawing from the classics, described as the enmity between the predatory spider, who purls illusions out of his own entrails, and the foraging bee who produces sweetness and light and convulses the spider’s self-spun “citadel.” It is a conflict between opposed epistemological frames of reference -- in Swiftian terms, that of the fanatic parvenu and that of the companionable humanist. Today it is a war between progressivists and conservatives, between utopian experimentalism and traditional values. The rupture cannot be parged. One should not invest in a fruitless and destructive effort to create unity where none is possible.

Where the effort to achieve unity has real meaning is in the attempt to mend the surmountable divisions of opinion within the conservative family in order to form a strong front against the forces that would subvert the political coherence and even the survival of the nation. Unity only makes sense if it is accomplished within the often disparate group of genuine patriots who may disagree on many points, yet who are basically at one in struggling to establish the rule of law and a functioning democratic -- or rather, republican -- polity. But to work for the unification of oil and water is not only an egregious error but a recipe for social and political disunity.

In his own unique way, Kurt Schlichter is making the same point in a polemic at Townhall.com entitled And Now the Left's War on Normal Americans Truly Begins. Hillary said that half of Trump supports we a basket of deplorables, which we took as a badge of honor. After all, do be despised by the despicable is indeed a badge of honor. If forced to say who I stand with, I stand with the Deplorables.

President Donald Trump replaces President Faily McWorsethancarter Friday, but we’re not going to be able to Netflix and chill in the fight for freedom. The left and its establishment allies are desperate to regain the power they see slipping away, and we need to understand that the only way to stop them is to beat them to a pulp and leave them whimpering in the fetal position, crying out for their genderfluid mommies.

The left’s strategy is simple – deny normal Americans normalcy. After all, that’s what we really want, a return to normal. We haven’t experienced real normal since the Democrats denied the legitimacy of W’s election in 2000 – you know, during one of those time frames when denying the legitimacy of the president was cool, a phenomenon that coincidentally only occurs whenever a Republican wins. Then came 9/11 followed by 15+ years of botched wars and economic decline, along with an unprecedented cultural offensive against normal Americans. Once the only place you heard that average Americans were racist sexist homophobic everythingist everythingphobic was on college campuses; now, with the active assistance of Obama and his collaborators, it’s everywhere – in our entertainment, in the media, in our faces

. And we’re sick of it  #ThisIsWhyYouGotTrump

I did mention his own unique fashion, right? But seriously, putting aside his attempts at humor, and recognizing that he is speaking metaphorically when he writes that w need to "beat them to a pulp...mommies," the only way we will be rid of Leftism is to defeat the ideology. The only way to defeat the ideology is to defeat the proponents of that ideology. I propose we take a leaf out of the Trump playbook, and do not take them seriously. Laugh at them. Make fun of them. Shame them. Treat them like they have been treating us. And as always, defend yourselves.  Don't assume others watching know that you are not a racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamaphobe.  But have fun while making them squirm
 Leftists do not have a sense of humor, for everything everywhere, everyday is about virtue signalling and one-up-man-ship. Make fun of that too.