Beware the Boogeyman!

They might have lost the election, but they keep going and going about the hypothesized future evils of Donald Trump.

Unable and unwilling to cope with their having booted the election, the Democrats are now into their own frantic form of — ready now? — Election Denial, although of course their pals in the MSM are not about to call it that. The front story is that while, yes, their candidate got fewer votes (about 3.5 million fewer), the election didn’t really show the public mood because the public was, ummmmm, ignorant. (Never seriously considered is the possibility that the Democrats lost because, for years, they openly lambasted those same unwashed voters as…..well…..ignorant) (a sense of irony has never been the Democrats’ strong suit).

Their Election Denial largely takes the form of repeating the same Boogeyman fiction that flopped for the last three months.

Are you scared of the Boogeyman yet? As usual, Heather Mac Donald nails it in this piece:

Trump will tear down democratic norms. He will unleash the National Guard on Democratic voters. He will wreak vengeance on his enemies. He will usher in fascism. He will have Liz Cheney shot. He will be a dictator on Day One. He will use the military to round up millions of migrants. He will seek a national abortion ban. He will outlaw in vitro fertilization. He will suppress free speech.

And now that Trump has been elected again, in a historic political comeback, the press continues to lay down a marker against which to measure its own ideological blinders. On Wednesday, November 6, the New York Times issued the same parade of horribles that it has been hawking since Trump declared his 2024 candidacy: Trump will “use military force against his political opponents . . . crush the independence of the Department of Justice…”

Let me just interrupt for a minute to remind readers that the Justice Department is a component of the executive branch and hence, by design, supposed to be subordinate to the President. It’s intended first and foremost impartially to respect the law, yes, but (1) it would have been chipper if the Administration had remembered that when it decided to use a B-52 (Jack Smith) on Donald Trump and a crop duster on Hunter Biden and (2) there is reasonable disagreement on what the law is, which is why the Supreme Court docket consists largely of issues about which the lower courts have split. And not that the Administration and its spokesmen have any business belching about the “independent rule of law” when they’ve spent months pushing billions in student loan “relief” of which the Supreme Court disapproved; and figuring out ways, by disguise and deceit, to continue to implement racial preferences in college admissions, admissions of which the Court also disapproved. And then there’s the fact that the Administration is the first in American history to try to put the opposing candidate in jail — but let’s not dwell on that.

…use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad.” He will “turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters” and rule as a “dictator”—if only on Day One.

Did the Left, which has spent months hectoring Israel while breathlessly pushing so-called “humanitarian” aid to Hamas Gaza, just launch a zinger about Trump’s betrayal of America’s allies? Goodness gracious.

According to a Times headline, America has just hired a “strongman.” Its news reporting explains: “America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”

Whether a strong man is preferable to a senile one is not addressed.

Historian Ruth Ben-Chait tells the paper that Trump has prepared for authoritarian government by teaching the public to “see American democracy as a failed experiment.” His victory means the triumph of a style of government that uses “violence as a means of solving political problems.”

Here the Left abandons its typical massaging of language in favor of outright lying.

Ms. Mac Donald then holds the Left’s feet to the fire, emphasizing in particular its upside-down position about the “culture wars”:

None of these things will happen. Trump will not usher in authoritarian government or fascism. He will not shred the rule of law. His administration will not ask Internet platforms to censor information and opinion that opposes administration policies, as did the Biden administration. The press predictions are all on the record and can be consulted for accuracy from this moment onward.

Anyone care to make a bet on how much the MSM is going to “consult for accuracy” these scary predictions when they come up empty?

Of course, the press will spin Trump’s use of executive power, say, to pare back the unelected federal bureaucracy as an assault on democratic norms. It will claim that, as the Times put it on November 6, Trump is fostering “culture wars.” (This standard left-wing trope holding that it is the Right that wages a culture war is the most absurd allegation in the mainstream media’s portfolio of deranged distortions of reality. Here is how you wage a culture war: You ban teachers from telling parents that their child has “changed” his gender. You require everyone around that child to adhere to the child’s new counterfactual “pronouns.” You pass regulations making opposition to male athletes competing against female athletes in female sports a civil rights offense. You assign graphic novels depicting sex, in this case, gay sex, to school children. You make celebrations of sexual identity, in this case, “queer” and every other type of “non-heteronormative” sexual identity, a routine part of the school curriculum and calendar. You make race and sex, that is, non-white race and non-male sex, a qualification for scientific hiring and research grants. Opposing those radical changes is not waging a war; it is belatedly trying to play defense.)

All this is spot on, but I would add one thing: The Number One Boogeyman during the campaign was that, if elected, Trump would become a dictator. Specifically, the allegation — ubiquitous on the Internet — was that this would be the last American election, and that Trump would use force, up to and including lethal force, to remain in office past January 20, 2029.

All I want to do in closing is remind readers that, in fact, lethal force has been attempted in recent times to accomplish political ends. From this neutral site:

On June 14, 2017, a mass shooting occurred during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia. 66-year-old James Hodgkinson shot four people, including then U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika. A ten-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at the George Washington University Hospital. Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby hospitals where they underwent surgery.

Hodgkinson was a left-wing activist with a record of domestic violence from Belleville, Illinois, while Scalise was a Republican Party member of Congress. The Virginia Attorney General concluded Hodgkinson's attack was "an act of terrorism ... fueled by rage against Republican legislators.

Then more recently:

On June 8, 2022, Nicholas Roske traveled to the home of [Trump appointee] Brett Kavanaugh, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, with plans to break into Kavanaugh's home, kill him, and then commit suicide….

Roske told police he was frustrated with the leaked Supreme Court decision that was poised to overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion as a right, as well as a recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas and the possibility of the Court loosening gun restrictions under the Second Amendment.

Then less than two months ago:

Ryan Wesley Routh…is an American man who allegedly attempted to assassinate 45th U.S. President and the then Republican Party nominee for the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump, on September 15, 2024….

On September 23, the Department of Justice publicized a note written by Routh several months prior to his arrest in which he described an "assassination attempt" and offered a bounty for the killing of Donald Trump. In the letter, Routh reportedly stated, "This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you," and went on to offer "$150,000 to whomever can complete the job…."

On November 4, one day before the 2024 United States presidential election, Routh sent a letter to a local newsroom stating that if Trump wins the election, it will mark "the end of Democracy and the beginning of a Civil War" and that Trump "will not let go of the power given to him."

That — the would-be assassin’s slogan — is a virtual word-for-word recitation of the aforementioned Number One Democratic Boogeyman. Kamala Harris herself pronounced Trump a power-mad “fascist.”

To cut to the chase: What the Left wants to shove down our throats is fear-mongering predictions about what Trump and his conservative allies will do, while dropping down the memory hole the factual record about what those on the Left have already done.

P.S. Not wanting to end on such a grim note, I’ll give you one more of Ms. Mac Donald’s delicious observations:

The press will continue to flog the Trump-as-dictator theme because it is secure in its ideological bubble. Before the election, the New York Times newsroom had brought in popcorn and cotton candy machines, fake sparklers, and goodie bags in anticipation of the coronation of “Madame President.” On November 6, the popcorn machine stood unceremoniously in a corner behind yellow police tape and an orange rubber traffic cone.