Are progressives largely \”useful idiots,\” or are they truly so dangerously self-destructive that they \”know not what they do\” when it comes to their ruinous policies? I\’m reminded of the social media spat that occurred when media outlets tried to debunk the contention that the cities most overrun with crime and violence are all Democrat-run hellholes. Some progressive actually thought he\’d scored a \”gotcha\” by creating a chart showing that a single city on the list actually had a Republican mayor. Scandal!

In that way, progressives are the \”bad singers\” in the early audition rounds of \”American Idol\” (a cultural touchstone now becoming increasingly out of date). If you\’ve been living in a snow cave in Alaska for 30 years, I will explain: There exist in this world people who can\’t sing well, but who are indefatigable in their belief that they can.  When judged harshly on televised singing competitions, these poor, deluded souls invariably lash out angrily at people who have successfully picked multiple pop-singing sensations from among fields of thousands of potential applicants.  \”Am I out of touch? No, it is everyone else who is wrong,\” they think to themselves.

This attitude pervades progressive policies. Every single program that progressives advocate invariably destroys what it touches. Progressive education polices give us illiterate children who cannot do math. Progressive policing policies give us dangerous streets full of drugs, crime, and human feces. Progressive economic policies cripple industry and destroy innovation. Progressive social policies foster dependence and destroy the social fabric of the community. Progressive attempts at \”diversity and inclusion\” exacerbate division and inflame social tensions. And on and on it goes, until one wonders if progressives are so stupid they actually want to destroy themselves and society.

In New York City, progressives — read, Marxist race-rioters in the form of Black Lives Matter — persuaded useful idiot Bill De Blasio to destroy the city\’s police department (including cutting a billion dollars from the police budget). Bill De Blasio is as stupid a Communist as ever has helmed New York City, and the Big Apple has boasted more than its fair share of moron socialists. Under De Blasio\’s stewardship, the great gains made under Guliani (and begrudgingly maintained by Bloomberg) have been quite literally pissed away.

De Blasio\’s New York has become a cesspool of crime, violence, open sewers, random attacks on the elderly, and (to top it all off) the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The city is racing to match levels of pure hell it saw in the 1970s, a time so bleak that Hollywood actually produced Charles Bronson\’s Death Wish. The film is a violent fantasy, a hymn to payback against the thugs, creeps, and monsters running the city. De Blasio has recreated that landscape through his mismanagement of New York.

Now, even some black leaders are calling for the restoration of the city\’s anti-crime unit, which De Blasio obligingly dissolved in indulging the Black Lives Matter activists. These \”leaders\” have changed their tune because the city\’s streets now run red with blood. Strangely, when you \”defund police,\” you get more crime. It\’s odd how that works.

To Black Lives Matter, it is not the rampant crime and violence in black communities that is the single greatest existential threat to their population. No, it must be the cops, who occasionally attempt to hold violent criminals to account regardless of the color of their skin. Never does it seem to occur to most of these activists that if their community would stop murdering people like it\’s free, the overall tenor of policing on the streets might relax. But then, these are the same people who think that COVID-19 doesn\’t spread in crowds of thousands of screaming rioters burning the city… but does spread, and virulently, at Trump rallies and lockdown protests.

Conservatives and libertarians do not understand the progressive mind because we look at the world in terms of reality. We examine the world, not with emotions, but with regard to facts. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole, the conservative and libertarian outlooks are much more rooted in reality than is progressive ideology. You need look no farther than the Fox television program featuring Juan Williams, lone liberal lunatic among a group of conservative pundits. It\’s clear in any segment broadcast on that show that Williams lives in a fantasy world — a unicorn forest of ice cream fountains and rainbow sidewalks in which up is down, black is white, right is wrong, and progressives make sense.

It\’s very hard to look at all the ways progressives and Democrats terrorize the American people and not wonder if they\’re all mentally ill. Hundreds of violent protesters break down a gate while trespassing on private property… and while none of those \”protesters\” face charges, the couple who faced them down with firearms is under investigation. Thousand of people burn and loot and rampage through the country, tearing down statues and erasing the nation\’s history while helping themselves to the spoils of crippled businesses and ruined families… and charges are dropped against these criminals. Trump is accused of spreading COVID-19 at political gatherings, while thousands of rioters enjoy the cover of a compromised medical establishment claiming violent protests somehow retard the spread of coronavirus.

It\’s tempting to think that our progressive friends are simply misguided, and on the whole that\’s true. But remember, too, that progressives are driven first and foremost, not just by their disconnection from reality, but by their ravenous hunger. They are starved for control. They get up every morning furious that there exist in the world people who are acting of their own free will. They lie awake at night seething at the thought that there are people in the world who obstinately refuse to be persuaded by progressives\’ brilliance. They want, more than anything, to silence and punish these dissenters. They hate free speech, yes, but it\’s more than that. They live in a world so distant from reality that the only way to maintain that distance is to eradicate all expression of thought to the contrary.

This is the activating spirit of progressives: Hatred of reality so intense that they\’ll gladly cut their own throats. They\’ll do it because what they think ought to be always takes precedence over what is. Just remember that they\’ll just as gladly cut your throat, too, if you dare speak against the ruin they hope to bring on the United States and to the world.