To watch the Los Angeles riots, one has to wonder if the Democratic Party has abandoned any pretense of trying to win Americans' hearts and minds at the ballot box and is simply committed to seeing America burn.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters condemns President Trump's use of military force to quell the mindless destruction in Los Angeles, as protesters endanger the lives of federal law enforcement agents doing their jobs.
What are these federal agents doing? Trying to effect the arrest and deportation of illegal aliens who have been convicted of murder, sexual assault, attempted rape, burglary, grand theft larceny, drug trafficking, DUI and numerous other felonies.
Who in their right mind would oppose this? As Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin succinctly put it, “Why do Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass care more about violent murderers and sex offenders than they do about protecting their own citizens? These rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets. Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers daily who wake up and make our communities safer.”
More to the point of this discussion, why would Democratic politicians like Waters rail against the administration's efforts, after calling in the National Guard to restore order, when a majority of American voters approve of Trump's efforts, according to the polls of CBS News, hardly a bastion of right-wing sentiment.
Hordes of violent protesters have done all they can to obstruct the ICE agents while lighting private property on fire. We have seen protesters circling burning vehicles on motorcycles, while waving Mexican flags, and Mexican flags interspersed among the crowds, whom the mainstream media, just as in the “Summer of Love” in 2020, laughably label “mostly peaceful”. According to Harold Hutchison of the Daily Caller, as of yesterday, CNN and MSNBC have collectively referred to the Los Angeles riots as “peaceful” 170 times.
And such leading Democrat lights as Senator Cory Booker joined in on the “mostly peaceful” canard.
And what message are these legacy media types and Democratic politicians trying to convey exactly? That they want violent felony-committing illegal aliens to roam American streets without consequence? Is the destruction of cars and buildings a legitimate form of “political protest”? That California should be ceded to Mexico so that drug cartels can control yet more geography than they already do in Mexico?
From a purely domestic realpolitik standpoint, how do such positions foster the prospects of Democrat politicians? Surely, most Californians do not want to see murderers, rapists, burglars, drug traffickers and gang members roaming the streets of their state.
Does California Governor Gavin Newsom really support this mayhem and destruction when he accuses Donald Trump of being a “dictator” and sues his administration for calling out the California National Guard to restore order? Why did Newsom not order his state's police agencies to assist the federal agents until, at minimum, two hours after violent demonstrators began obstructing federal agents in the Los Angeles operation? Suppose Newsom actually aspires to the presidency of the United States. In that case, he must realize that his actions will not play well in places like Des Moines, Peoria, and Charleston, even if they make liberal elitists in the Bay Area swoon in admiration.
If anyone believes that the Democratic Party is playing some kind of 4-dimensional chess, a leaked call between DNC Vice Chair David Hogg and DNC Chair Ken Martin last May seems to put the lie to that suggestion. The call reveals a DNC leadership that is completely floundering.
It seems that the Democratic Party, or at least those currently driving the party’s headlines, has abandoned traditional American politics, wherein one pursues policies that most Americans are aligned with. Instead, they have embraced a policy of political nihilism.
Although nihilism is an expansive term that has varying meanings and nuances in the realms of culture, philosophy and ethics, political nihilism, according to author Donald Crosby in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy “calls for the destruction of existing political institutions, along with their supporting outlooks and social structures, but has no positive message of what should be put in their place.”
That would define well what those driving the Democratic Party today appear to believe, much as did the Jacobins in the French Revolution. Certain old-line Democratic strategists like David Axelrod, James Carville, and Mark Penn still maintain some semblance of sanity regarding electoral politics. They know that the vast swath of the American polity rejects the mayhem happening in Los Angeles. But their voices are drowned out by America’s Jacobins.
For the sake of the future of the Republican Party, as represented by the MAGA movement, let us hope the Democrats continue in this vein. The prospects of the mid-term elections in 2026 and beyond are looking brighter and brighter.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 38 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has contributed to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News' 48 Hours and NBC News' Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)