In recent hours, Donald Trump has experienced some of the happiest moments of his political life. He seemed positively exultant at the peace agreement signing ceremony. Everything was full of reasons to celebrate. He reached a historic agreement. Hostages were returning home. Hamas accepted the ceasefire. His unique negotiation style — threatening terrorists with a hellish war if they refused the deal — had prevailed. He added yet another, more peaceful war to his record. And the left around the world wept inconsolably for reasons only the left itself could explain. Everything okay? Not quite: what the hell did they do to my hair on the cover of Time?
“His triumph” is probably one of the most complimentary reports a major left-wing outlet has ever devoted to Trump in his entire political career. The magazine was acknowledging something obvious: Trump has done more for peace than Biden and Obama combined — although that’s hardly a stretch. The so-called Republican ogre, supposedly destined to drag the world into World War III according to left-wing analysts across the West, had done it again: a historic peace agreement in a seemingly endless conflict that, in recent years, had produced some of the most depressing and terrifying images — most of them featuring Hamas terrorists, of course. (RELATED: Trump Is the Colossus That Bestrides the World)
But the left always has to put the cherry on top. There’s something — perhaps a genetic mutation yet to be studied by science — that prevents them from telling a conservative, “Well done, congratulations,” without adding a disclaimer.
For years, right-wing politicians across the West have been victims of attacks and persecution. Every time a left-wing politician had to condemn an attack on a right-wing counterpart, they had to tack on a tagline to feign neutrality. When someone tried to assassinate Trump, the preferred condemnation from left-wing leaders on Twitter was always something like, “Despite political differences, I condemn the attack.” That “despite political differences” line when they were literally about to kill him is the clearest symptom we have of leftists’ sickness.
I know that misery well. For far too many years in my own country, when Basque or Catalan nationalist politicians had to condemn an attack by the ETA terrorist group against a police officer, civilian, or democratic politician, their expressions of sympathy always came with a tagline — a perfect measure of the depravity of rotten souls: “I condemn violence, wherever it comes from.” Wherever it comes from? Last I checked, bullets only have one exit wound, and they always leave in the same direction.
With due differences, what happened with Time is exactly the same. They had no choice but to write about Trump’s major political achievement in the Middle East, and they couldn’t figure out how to do it in a derogatory way — because the White House strategy had produced unprecedented success. The solution they found is murky, but it perfectly illustrates the genetic mutation that always leaves a dark corner in the soul of every leftist: trying to humiliate him with the cover photograph.
[S]ome kind of ancestral genetic cataclysm prevents progressives from admitting that someone they consider an enemy has done anything right.
Any clueless, soft, centrist-right politician would have had their butt do a happy little dance seeing themselves on the cover of Time, without noticing a single other detail. Not Trump. Trump, very astutely, denounced the Time cover photo as “super bad.”
“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one,” he said. “Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”
The end of his statement is fascinating because it’s the key to everything. It’s a clever way of exposing the intentionality — which was clearly there — and of highlighting exactly what I’m arguing in this article: some kind of ancestral genetic cataclysm prevents progressives from admitting that someone they consider an enemy has done anything right.
The wonderful, exciting thing is that Time remains a fairly influential magazine — but this time, the images, the byline, the statements, the returning hostages, and the halted bombings were witnessed by people everywhere, across the globe. In part because left-leaning media had focused so intensely on Trump’s negotiations in Palestine, often mocking them and expecting them to fail, the spotlight was already fixed on him. Yet the negotiations succeeded, and once the world finally grasped the outcome, it was already too late to diminish the triumph.
We live in exciting times. Someone send Kleenex to the pro-Hamas rioters on college campuses in the United States and Europe. I know, these are difficult times. Damn peace! You’ll always be in my heart.
PS: I can’t resist sharing a little local secret. The far left and the Spanish unions had called a general strike “for peace and against Israel’s genocide in Gaza” for this Wednesday, October 15. They were already rallying their union members (and I suppose prepping firecrackers, red paint, and rocks to trash businesses) when the peace agreement took them completely by surprise. Do you know what they did? THEY WENT AHEAD WITH THE STRIKE CALL ANYWAY! These people would sell their own mothers just to avoid going to work.
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