The unhinged response of some on the left to the assassination of a healthcare executive gives an insight into the moral decline of the left.
Many years ago, Caroline Glick noted the political demise of the Israeli left. One might look into the country’s history to see that for the first 20-plus years, the left was completely ascendant. After the election of Menachem Begin, governments would alternatively switch between left and right. That was the case until the second intifada. With the bombings, shooting, stabbings and vehicular attacks, thousands were killed and injured. The left’s promise of bringing peace with the Palestinians was in tatters. While Shimon Peres could declare arch-terrorist Yasir Arafat a “partner” for peace talks, the Israeli public was tired of absorbing terror attacks in the name of some lofty dream of peace with people who made it clear that they wanted to destroy Israel. Since Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu returned to power, the left has no numerical way to form a government of 61 Knesset members. The last government without Bibi relied for the first time on an Arab/Islamist party to make up for the lack of numbers. The ultraorthodox, religious, and secular Zionists simply will not sit with the left, so they cannot return to power. That is the reason they are fighting to keep the courts on their side: they are their last refuge for controlling the direction of the country.
Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan. I doubt that very few people had ever heard of him prior to his murder. And while people generally do not like or trust insurance companies as they do their all not to pay claims or pay as little as they can, his death should have received little more attention than that of some tourist pushed in front of an oncoming train. But beyond the heightened press coverage and police activity in the case, there has been something else. Individuals on the left have been celebrating the murder of a CEO on the streets of New York. Well-known left-leaning news personalities praised the assassination. There was a competition in New York to dress as the killer did. Even shirts went on sale with the now iconic image of the gunman training his weapon on the unsuspecting victim immediately prior to shooting him. Why is there so much giddiness over the willful murder of a person pretty much unknown to everybody but his family and those in the industry? While he apparently was under investigation for insider trading, the joy on the left for the demise of this man would appear to have nothing to do with this aspect of his life. Rather, there is something far more insidious in the grotesque response to Thompson’s murder.
The intellectual and political left is losing favor with the voters who are needed periodically to either install them or keep them in power. The left promised Marxist utopias and in most cases delivered Dante’s Inferno. Open borders, endless uncontrolled immigration, promotion of trans ideology, printing of money and of course all of the Covid restrictions—these gifts from the left have caused many countries, including the U.S., to choose leaders who are dedicated not to far-out theories but rather to making the electorate safer and more prosperous. Look at Donald Trump’s proposals for closing the border, ejecting illegal aliens, working with RFK to make food healthier and drugs safer, strengthening the military, and making his previous tax cuts permanent: these are all steps to making America safer, healthier, and more prosperous. The left’s menu of millions of unvetted immigrants, threats of reparations, letting criminals back onto the streets, and drug companies that are safe from lawsuits over experimental drugs: these policies favor protected groups and not the people writ large. And the people have voted and they have had enough. Even in lefty England, if there could be a vote today after police have been protecting pro-Hamas protesters while throwing regular folks in jail over Facebook posts, England too would go back to the right.
And as the left finds itself out of power, it is becoming more like the Palestinians. The Palestinians know that they cannot militarily defeat Israel. They also know that they cannot have a state without giving up their dream of and the means for destroying the Jewish state. So with no victory possible, they simply get their joy by harming Jews and making their lives miserable. Look at their civilian-directed terror in Israel and the actions of their supporters in the West. The latter enjoy terrorizing Jewish students on campus or harassing diners at kosher restaurants. They gain nothing concrete but have the pleasure of making others' lives worse. The same goes for the anti-oil crowd who deface paintings or block you from getting to a doctor’s appointment. They fail to advance their aims but succeed in causing you misery. Those cheering the CEO’s death are happy that someone successful died violently. Unlike Fauci and Gates, whose actions have caused demonstrable harm, this guy did nothing to those who rejoice at his death. They are just happy that he is dead, even if his murder makes their lives no more better or successful.
And this will be the left’s playbook during the upcoming Trump presidency. They will not work with the president or accept that “elections have consequences.” Rather, they will do their best to block the actions of the president and his people. They would prefer people eat unhealthy food rather than give RFK Jr. a victory by banning potentially harmful additives. They would rather have poverty and crime from illegal aliens than aid in their removal from the country. The left will take actions that bring it no benefit, but as long as those actions hurt the president and his plans, they will gloat over their “victories.” That fellow citizens will suffer will mean nothing to them. They will push to blunt the will of the voters who sent President Trump back to the White House. When the left knows that it cannot win, it does no soul-searching to improve its product. It also will not work with the victors to find compromise that might bring some benefit to its side. Like those gloating over the murder of a young father in New York, they will enjoy it when Donald Trump fails to get one of his appointees approved by the Senate or when some event causes the stock market to go down significantly. They only want their enemies to fail, even if they benefit in no way—and even if it hurts them as well.
When the left ran out of practical ideas, it invented nonsense like totally open borders, reparations from people who never had slaves to people who never were slaves, no cash bail for violent criminals, and guys competing against women. Now that voters have rejected their defective ideas, the left finds solace in its perceived enemies—Trump, Musk, Israel, successful businessmen, etc.—failing or being harmed. Losers rejoice in others’ failures, and the left has become a group of losers with losing ideas and a shrinking electorate.