I know that the start of a new year is actually just a date on the calendar, without any magical significance of its own. And I know that we can always, at any time of year, pause and take stock of what has gone well or poorly in the past, and resolve to make changes in behavior and direction accordingly. But it feels more natural to do all of that at the beginning of January.
And this year more than most, I’m savoring a real feeling of renewal. I’m looking forward to the new year in ways that I haven’t since the darkness of the Biden term descended upon us like a plague of morose fatalism mixed with the constant, dull ache of societal dissolution, accompanied by gastric distress and existential angst.
It seemed like every time I turned around, there was a demented old man shaking his fist and screaming at me as he repeatedly tripped over things that are normally un-trip-over-able. And homely men pretending to be homelier women at that time of the month. And a dyspeptic old white lady pretending to be a Cherokee princess (#evenin2025wemustneverstopmockingher), and Nancy Pelosi (#Aiiee!themummywalksamongstus).
And always, ALWAYS – from KJP and the legacy media and every national Dem (except sometimes Fetterman) – the lying about everything, which insulted our intelligence and challenged our gag reflexes.
And now, all of that is set to go into remission for a while, and I couldn’t be happier.
In fact, I’ve probably watched 30 hours of online videos of various lefty talking heads gloating before the election about how Que Mala was going to stomp Trump and all of his evil minions, and then whining and crying in the glorious aftermath. And not just because it is great fun.
Okay, mostly because it is great fun. To watch the arrogant get humbled, the certain get confounded, and the hateful get Hillary-slapped by reality? That feels so good that it just might cure cancer.
And because I love Shakespeare and all edifying drama, I often watch those videos thinking of one of our great thespian’s greatest filmed moments (Arnold as Conan, of course), when asked what is best in life: “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their men who identify as women.”
But beyond offering hours of schadenfreude-tastic good times, those videos have reminded me of a more serious point, too. Because those videos demonstrate the baffling inability of so many reasonably intelligent people to answer the two questions that they seem desperate to answer:
Why did Kamala lose, and why were we so wrong about that outcome?
The many partial answers are as painful as they are obvious: Que Mala was a terrible candidate. Biden/Harris’ policies were far-left, and therefore produced terrible results. (Unexpectedly!) Most Americans don’t want open borders, and the crime, costs and chaos that come with them. Most Americans know that chromosomes exist, and that putting on some ruby slippers and clicking your heels three times while making a wish doesn’t change that.
I could go on. So I will.
Most Americans saw through the leftist gaslighting on virtually every subject for four years. They also remember that Trump was president already, and that he wasn’t a Hitlerian fascist who destroyed the world.
Almost Biden’s entire cabinet and administration – and this goes double for his celebrity endorsers – had SFPI (Simpson Face Punchability Index™) numbers that would tempt the most Quaker-adjacent pacifists among us to wade in and start handing out naps like Mike Tyson at the height of his powers.
Also, like Jacob Marley at the beginning of A Christmas Carol, Joe Biden was dead to begin with.
And yet, even with that gigantic Bingo card full of winning answers staring them right in the face, most of the leftists who are trying to figure out why Que Mala lost – with the partial exceptions of Van Jones and Bill Maher, and maybe a handful of others – are failing completely.
Because they cannot resist the most powerful force in human psychology: the comforting balm of self-flattering answers that demonize your opponents, while holding yourself blameless.
Rather than acknowledging what a black hole of spineless vapidity Kamala was, they blamed the sexism and racism of American voters for rejecting her. (How do they explain why Trump was on track to beat Biden even more lopsidedly, despite Brandon’s corpse-y pallor and maleness? They don’t.)
Rather than admitting that the open-border disaster was ongoing and obvious, they insisted that the border was secure, and anyone objecting was racist.
Rather than admitting that the “Inflation Reduction Act” produced skyrocketing inflation, they said that Trump had left Biden an economic mess (with his 1.5% inflation).
They cheered, “You go, girl!” when ranny-tay “f*male” Olympians were winning pole vault competitions without using a pole.
Their mental blinders are so restrictive that they can’t see who Trump really is, or who conservatives are, or who they themselves are.
I’ll cite one specific example: a NYT op-ed this week from eccentric bloviating oddball James Carville. (I remember Rush calling him “Snake Head” 30 years ago, and at age 80, Carville has only gotten Snake-Headier. The man is difficult to look at. Although I’ve got to admit that that thick gumbo accent of his is kind of fun.)
Carville says that in his pre-election certainty that Trump would lose, he forgot his own message from the Clinton days, that “it’s the economy, stupid.” That over-simplification already overlooks so much else that was obviously at play this year (the border, weakness abroad, lefty disdain for traditional America, wokeness, etc.), but he doesn’t even see his pet issue clearly.
He brags that inflation is “subsiding,” gliding right past the fact that things cost almost 25% more now than they did four years ago, and that even though inflation has dropped from 9 to 3%, that’s still twice as high as when Trump left office.
Instead, he focuses on a common self-flattering explanation: “perception [of the economy] is everything,” and the Dems “have flat-out lost the economic narrative.” No, Sneaky Snake, you guys didn’t lose the economic “narrative” – you damaged the economy!
It’s an argument that crops up over and over again: “our policies are great, but people just don’t understand how great they are.” Which means that either the people are too stupid to recognize your superior ideas (simultaneously flattering to you, and insulting to the people), or the evil conservatives have fooled them (through misinformation, disinformation, or possibly hypnosis).
Either way, the voters and the GOP are deeply flawed, but the Dems are just fine the way they are.
Carville is equally wrong about the Dems’ negative focus on Trump – which Carville himself was hissing and frothing about until around 9:00 on election night. But now he says that the voters didn’t care about Trump’s “indictments…[or his] anti-democratic impulses.”
Again, the only interpretation of that issue that will make Serpent-Boy and his political co-religionists feel good about themselves is to assume that the indictments, convictions and Trump’s “fascism” have all been substantiated, and the voters are morally deficient enough to be unbothered by them.
After eight decades on the planet, Carville apparently still cannot conceive of something that most average people instinctively know: the lawfare, indictments and convictions against Trump were transparently illegitimate, and the Dems are the ones who have been “anti-democratic.”
Trump is no more a fascist than AOC is a Mensa member, or Jussie Smollett is a victim, or James Carville is a warm-blooded mammal.
Here’s the rub, though, as Shakespeare said. (Or was it Arnold?) It’s easy for me to mock the lefties for having this preening, self-justifying arrogance, especially after the blessed electoral butt-kicking that they just received.
But the truth is that this tendency is a part of the human condition, and we fall into it too. If we don’t always do it all of the time, we all do it some of the time, and we are all susceptible to it most of the time.
If I don’t get the promotion, the boss is an idiot. If I try day-trading stocks and lose my shirt, the market is corrupt. If a few students give me bad teaching evaluations, it must be because they are dullards who don’t appreciate hilarious genius professors. If a woman turns me down for a date (this never happened, but I’m saying hypothetically), she must be a lesbian.
Sometimes those assumptions are true. After all, there are bad bosses, crooked businesses, dimwitted students and lesbians in the world.
But it’s also possible that we’re wrong. And when we are, we need to recognize it, and avoid the self-flattering – and self-defeating – posture the lefties have adopted since 11/5. The red flag to look for? If every single thing that happens – in our personal life, career, or politics – 100% confirms our priors, we’ve taken a wrong turn.
As the Dems stagger into 2025, they are providing us with an invaluable example. They’re learning all the wrong lessons, and studiously avoiding looking at what they’ve done wrong, and how it has led them to their sorry current state.
Let’s resolve that in this new year, we will learn from the mistakes they’re repeating. Because doing that is a lot less painful than learning from our own mistakes.
And, sure, a lot more entertaining, too.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 