(This essay originally appeared in the American Thinker weekly enewsletter, one of the perks of subscribing to American Thinker. In addition to helping support our work, a subscription will also provide (a) an ad-free experience; (b) the ability to leave comments; and (c) our weekly e-newsletter, containing special content, such as this, from the editors.)

Irony is a term whose meaning is elusive and which escapes precise definition. A lot of people think they know what it means when they actually don’t. About the best that can be said is that irony is the quality of a situation in which not only are prospects ruined and even reversed, but done so resoundingly – irony not only wrecks your plans, but does so while turning you into an object lesson. 

Irony occurs when the postman rings twice for the drifter Frank Chambers, who is arrested, tried, and executed not for the murder he unquestionably committed, but for the accidental death over which he had no responsibility. Irony is what you’re left with when Jay Gatsby is shot, not by the outraged husband of his former girlfriend Daisy, but by a demented gas-station owner whom he scarcely knows exists.

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Randy Newman constructed an entire career on irony, writing songs in which the actual meaning was 180 – at least – to what the lyrics were saying. The public lost its collective mind over “Short People,” in which Newman suggested mass annihilation for everyone under a certain height. It’s a good thing they didn’t listen to “Sail Away” or “Rednecks.”

Irony can be tricky. A lot of people find it difficult to grasp and try to take it straightforwardly or view it as a joke, and in either case, end up confused and bewildered. (One particular case involves Saul Alinsky, whom, we are earnestly told by droves of people who should know better, dedicated his book to SATAN!!! Actually, he dedicated it to his wife Eileen, as a single flick of a page would reveal. What he did do was introduce Rules for Radicals with several epigrams—quotes intended to set the tone for the work. One of these, that I’m convinced is meant ironically, since it makes no sense otherwise, involves Lucifer, pointing out that, whatever else can be said, he did end up with his own kingdom. This, I believe, was intended as a backhand aimed at the Stalinists, whom Alinsky – a social democrat – loathed.) 

We now live in an age of irony, an epoch in which irony rules all. Jews accused of Nazism, mentally ill teenagers leading international environmental crusades, men posing as women on varsity athletic teams, a former KGB operative praised as a champion of peace and democracy. It’s everywhere you look, and you cannot escape it. 

Amid all this, the Democrats have become the party of irony. We have Adam Schiff, Inspector Javert with a neck three inches in diameter. Charles Schumer’s Senate seat is now under threat from “New Democrat” Sandy O. Almost all the Democrat lawyers involved in the persecution of Donald Trump are up to their necks in legal trouble, Letitia James facing jail for mortgage fraud, Fani Willis enmeshed in corruption scandals so convoluted as to be indescribable, and Jack Smith under investigation by the Office of the Special Counsel. Texas Democrats who fled the state in protest of GOP redistricting are largely hiding out in the most blatantly gerrymandered state in the country, if not in the entire historical record.

When irony enters politics, it almost always does so as a form of punishment. The Democrats—particularly the Deep State’s effective leaders, not the official DNC leadership; they’re just puppets, but Obama, Susan Rice, Pelosi, and Schumer are beginning to learn this. 

What is occurring now as regards the events of 2016 and 2020 is irony in its purest, most unalloyed form. 

When the Democrats went after Donald Trump, they thought they couldn’t lose. Ninety-odd indictments, fines amounting to hundreds of millions, a conviction for “rape” (or so they thought), not one, but two impeachments, and to top it off, a synthetic “insurrection” carried out with the help of a few turncoats and some of the dumbest individuals in the MAGA movement. There was no way Trump could survive this. Surely, they’d brought him down. Surely, they must have broken him. 

They had given fair warning not to try it again. Attempt to reform the system, and we will destroy you. The GOP had been returned to its customary lap-dog status – a collection of RINOs with the duty of formalizing the Democrat agenda as the right wing of the elite. The transformation of America could proceed unimpeded. 

But the Dems had overlooked a few things. Quite a few things, actually. Dominant above all was the fact that they’d demolished a precedent, broken one of the unwritten rules of American politics: that you don’t target your opposition. There is no revanchism in American representative democracy. No Gestapo taking away the opposition in the middle of the night. No matter how ferocious the politics, how wild-eyed the rhetoric, when your opponent leaves office, he gets to go home. He gets to go home in safety, unharassed, unattacked, to abide beneath his vine and fig tree. This has been the rule for the past two and a half centuries. Richard Nixon was pardoned after Watergate for exactly this reason. It’s one of the crucial elements that distinguishes us from banana republics, or, for that matter, the kind of parliamentary system the Europeans are so fond of. 

The Dems broke it. They broke it blatantly and openly, and without a single sign that they’d even thought about it. All that mattered was to get Trump, by whatever means necessary. And if the country, the entire system that we live by, was demolished in the process, well, comrades, that was just the way it goes. 

So they’ve made their move, and now they get to meet Mr. Consequences. The masks, all of them, the ones they’ve worn with so much success for so long, have all fallen – the mask of compassion, the mask of the party of the people, the mask of impeccable moral virtue. What’s left is the naked face itself. The face of the thug who does what he damn well pleases, and to hell with everything else. 

There’s a quote beloved of movement conservatives that you used to see all the time, though not much lately. It’s from a play by Robert F. Bolt titled “A Man for All Seasons,” (Later made into an excellent movie) which dealt with the heroic cleric Thomas More, who stood up against the demented Henry VIII. More’s son-in-law argues that it’s acceptable to ignore the law in order to destroy evil. More insists that he’s wrong: "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?" 

That’s where the Dems find themselves now. Not facing the Devil, of course. Just a billionaire with a volcanic temper and a habit of getting things done. The same machinery that they commandeered and primed to get Trump is being used against them. It’s doubtful that they’ll stand up to it as well he did. 

Or are they? Because in fact, the laws aren’t down at all. They have risen up once again to trap the people who misused them. This isn’t lawfare. Nobody is manipulating and abusing the written statutes the way that Willis, James, Pelosi, and Smith did against Trump. The justice system that they weaponized is now being turned against them, operating exactly the way it’s supposed to. Only on much better grounds and with clear evidence. 

Which brings us to the greatest irony of all: that this series of maneuvers, intended by Obama and the Dems to render their political reign permanent and unchallengeable, may well instead mark the destruction of their party as a political force. 

The last thing they’ll learn is that irony can hurt. 

And a side note:

I once read a brief piece – it couldn’t really be called a “story” based on the premise that a historian several hundred years from now was trying to work out the actual history of the 20th century, since what they had was obvious mythic nonsense: “Sure – the demonic universal enemy is named “Adolf” – Wolf Prince. And the allies who are fighting him? Stalin, Man of Steel. Churchill – speaks for itself. Roosevelt – Field of Roses, the man who brings peace. And who do they send to fight the Wolf Prince? Eisenhower – Iron Hewer, the great swordsman.” The same is true of Trump: Here is this guy, beset by hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies attacking from all sides, and he defeats them all. And what’s his name? “Trump.” Which happens, in this ancient language, to mean “Victory.” Righto.