<p>"There&#8217;s something happening here." &#8212; Buffalo Springfield, 1967</p> 
<p>Every major leftist movement the world has seen has been totalitarian by nature. Occasionally this brand of extremism arises elsewhere along the ideological spectrum, such as Islamo-fascism, but Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany remain the archetypes of the socialist genre of dictatorship among many incarnations which clearly include today&#8217;s &#8220;liberal Democrats&#8221; in the United States.</p> 
<p>Contemporary liberal Democrats reveal their totalitarian proclivities in many subtle ways, such as support for single-payer healthcare and all other forms of big government, and some that are not so subtle. Recent years have seen a surge in the latter variety. Shouting down conservative speakers on college campuses to silence their views has been ongoing, but now the practice has graduated to violent attacks on speakers and audiences. There is no record of comparable suppression of speech by conservatives. And why is it only the left that abides no dissent from its preferred orthodoxy? The adherents expose through their own behavior that they fear a fair debate of ideas, so they attempt to quell intellectual challenge through brute force&#8212;just as all autocrats do.</p> 
<p>America&#8217;s so-called liberal Democrats resort to the most aggressive tactics out of the Saul Alinsky manual, i.e., destroy any threat to the radical agenda. Truth is beside the point to them. To substantiate via illustration of such Stalinist &#8220;politics of personal destruction,&#8221; here are a few examples:</p> 
<p>(1) Mitt Romney, as 2012 presidential candidate, was Mr. Nice Guy until Democrats got ahold of him. Then the public found out that he had abused his dog, caused an employee to die of cancer, and sadistically imprisoned women in a torture device known as a binder! All this derived from the Obama campaign&#8217;s suitably-named &#8220; <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2011/08/kill-romney-060929" type="external">kill Romney</a>&#8221; strategy. Of course, candidate Obama&#8217;s own personal history was deemed off-limits. Hypocrisy is a familiar trait of leftist totalitarians.</p> 
<p>(2) Poor George W. Bush. Investigations by three different governmental commissions concluded that he did not lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. If anything, he received the same information worldwide intelligence agencies did about Saddam&#8217;s WMD arsenal. Yet &#8220;Bush lied&#8221; was burned into the national consciousness through liberal Democrat propaganda, paving the way for election of a true leftist president.</p> 
<p>(3) Barack Obama advanced the practice of despotic repression by weaponizing every office of his government for domestic political use. The IRS campaign of terror against conservative groups was only one of the most obnoxious. Richard Nixon received an article of impeachment for much less.</p> 
<p>(4) The grand master of personal destruction politics was Bill Clinton, who slimed anyone seen as a threat whether James McDougal, Ken Starr, or Juanita Broaddrick. This m.o. was the whole point of the &#8220;war room&#8221; of Clinton&#8217;s permanent campaign, not to mention Hillary&#8217;s <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/yes-hillary-was-an-enabler-213919" type="external">&#8220;bimbo eruption" squad</a>. A colorful couple, those Clintons. Hillary, in particular, was a disciple of leftist Saul Alinsky.</p> 
<p>(5) Currently we have liberal Democrat rioters, following the Occupy Wall Street slow-motion riot. Black Lives Matter extremists demand the murder of police, and the misnamed Antifa ironically lives the fascist ideal of causing mayhem whenever someone utters a thought contrary to liberal Democrat political correctness. After the first violent act by a right-wing fringe fanatic in many years, in Charlottesville, the fake news narrative is that conservatives are the violent ones. In reality, almost all political violence in this country is committed by the far left (for example, a Bernie Sanders-supporting maniac actually attempting to assassinate Republican members of Congress).</p> 
<p>(6) A telling symptom of the left&#8217;s nascent despotism is the public shaming of any entity that disagrees with them, e.g., organizing against businesses that violate leftist dogma by supporting a traditional position. For instance, dare to agree with the view on homosexual marriage held until a few years ago by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and you become a target. (Recall Alinsky&#8217;s &#8220;isolate it, freeze it, personalize it.&#8221;) Likewise, the revelations about leftist groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center demonizing those they disagree with. The left decided long ago to downplay debate over ideas&#8212;their ideology having failed empirically all over the world&#8212;and to simply use neo-McCarthyist tactics instead.</p> 
<p>(7) In Animal Farm, some pigs really are more equal than others. Hillary Clinton was found to have committed numerous email felonies, and then the gutless James Comey said &#8220;never mind.&#8221; Clinton&#8217;s Benghazi malfeasance with Barack Obama also has gone unpunished. The political elite elevating itself above the law is a hallmark of leftist dictatorship.</p> 
<p>(8) One of the liberal Democrats&#8217; favorite slander devices is the accusation of racism, which has become the supreme insult in our society. White-on-black racism, in particular, has become socially unacceptable, which actually is a measure of how anti-racist America has become in overcoming vestiges of its more primitive state. Recognize, however, that for the past 45 years, the only legally permissible, sometimes legally mandated, racial discrimination in the U.S. is that which is committed in favor of minorities against Caucasians. This is the extreme state of our social law, for better or worse, yet many on the left trot out &#8220;white supremacist&#8221; allegations more often than we can count.</p> 
<p>There is a more substantive reason for the liberal Democrat amalgam&#8217;s resort to this odious tactic, beyond findings of its marketing effectiveness: Liberal Democrats cannot permit the mass healing of race relations in our country. They need to aggravate those relations so their side is better able to exploit the issue. Is there no limit to their neo-McCarthyist cynicism? Politics is everything to liberal Democrats, because government power is everything to them.</p> 
<p>(9) Perhaps the worst of the Big Lies was &#8220;if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,&#8221; designed to give liberal Democrat government absolute life-and-death power over all citizens through the enactment of Obamacare. What better way to achieve totalitarian rule than mortal power over all the ruled people? See why socialized medicine is the liberal Democrats' Holy Grail?</p> 
<p>A broader explanation for the liberal Democrats&#8217; current hysteria: Their camp had some very sinister plans for the country, and was oh-so-close to ultimate success. With the election of President Hillary Clinton, a prospective second straight subversive in the office, Democrats could have finally amnestied 11 million illegal aliens, i.e., new Democrat voters, thereby ensuring that no Republican could ever again be elected president. This outcome would establish their goal of a one-party dictatorship, in effect&#8213;if only it had happened. The dream scenario having been snatched away is what has driven the liberal Democrats over the edge.</p> 
<p>So, in their delirium, they lash out. It is all understandable for a group of closet totalitarians in the throes of catastrophic disappointment. And if they tear the nation apart as they act out, so much the better, in their warped view. They always despised the country anyway.</p> 
<p>Now the plan is for arch-socialist Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (who misrepresented her own race for financial gain), to win the presidency in 2020 for a slightly postponed takeover.</p> 
<p>Pleasant dreams, America. There is something happening here.</p> 
<p>John Gaski is an associate professor at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. He is a long-time registered Democrat and long-time registered Republican&#8212;intermittently, not simultaneously.</p> 
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How liberal Democrats use lies to get what they want