OPINION:
They used to say that politics is the art of the possible. Today, politics is the art of believing the impossible.
Think about the Gaza peace plan, rioting against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cashless bail and transgenderism. On each, some would rather embrace comforting illusions than face unpleasant realities.
Confidence in the Gaza peace plan shows an unwillingness to take savages at their word, even when their word is written in blood. We are expected to believe that Hamas is now willing to lay down its arms and leave the Gaza Strip when its entire existence has been dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Its charter calls for genocide. It has never negotiated with Israel directly but always through intermediaries. It’s never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist within any borders. On Oct. 7, 2023, it perpetrated the greatest one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Whatever happens, Hamas will never give up and the misnamed peace process will leave Israel much more vulnerable.
The same air of unreality dominates the discussion of the terrorist war on ICE. In Portland, Oregon, the chaos has been going on for more than 100 days. Every night, protesters who look like demons summoned from the depths of hell attack ICE facilities.
In Chicago earlier this month, an ICE vehicle was rammed by up to 10 cars. Agents barely escaped with their lives, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose grasp of reality is tenuous at best, ordered police to stand down.
Attacks on immigration officers have increased 1,000% since Jan. 21. Drug cartels have placed $10,000 bounties on the heads of immigration enforcement officials.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker calls the president’s efforts to enforce federal immigration law and get violent illegal aliens off the streets an “invasion.” In a recent statement, he urged “every American [to] speak up and help stop this madness.”
Enforcing the law and deporting the worst of the worst have become the Trump invasion.
The same politicians who were telling us the border was secure two years ago (as millions of people crossed illegally into the United States) today insist that violent upheaval is lawful protest and there is no cause for alarm.
Elsewhere, crime continues to surge.
Cashless bail has helped paint city streets blood red, but the liberal Brennan Center for Justice insists, “There is no evidence connecting bail reform with crime rates.” Really?
A first-of-its-kind study by the Yolo County, California, district attorney’s office found a 169% increase in recidivism under no-cash bail. In early September, a ghastly murder, caught on camera, brought the issue into sharp focus. A 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee riding on public transportation in Charlotte, North Carolina, was stabbed to death.
Decarlos Brown Jr., who was charged with the crime, had 14 prior arrests over the course of two decades. The last time he was in court before Iryna Zarutska’s murder, a magistrate released him on his promise to show up for trial.
Nowhere is political schizophrenia more evident than in transgenderism.
Early this month, a Biden-appointed judge sentenced Nicholas Roske, who tried to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, to a surprisingly lenient eight years in prison. The Department of Justice had asked for 30 years. Among other mitigating circumstances that Judge Deborah Boardman considered was Roske’s so-called transgender identity. (He says he is someone called Sophie.)
The idea that someone can change their gender by changing their name or getting hormone treatment or surgery is self-evidently absurd. Nothing can alter DNA.
Yet men are allowed to play in women’s sports and boys are allowed into girls’ locker rooms on as little as a declaration that they “identify” as female.
The movement behind the fantasy is responsible for possibly irreversible operations performed on minors.
No wonder there’s so much rage here. Transgenderism provided the motivation for at least two school shootings and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Illusions can be deadly.
As the left’s grip on our culture tightens, we march ever deeper into the happy land of make believe: Oz, Narnia and Neverland combined.
Don’t forget: In office, President Biden was at the top of his game, Hunter Biden’s laptop wasn’t real but the Steele dossier was and the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack was the worst act of insurrection since the firing on Fort Sumter.
It used to be that seeing is believing. Now it’s: Who are you going to believe, your lying eyes, your deceitful brain or our good old reliable elites?
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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