Left-wing Black Lives Matter protesters in Seattle have attempted to secede from the rest of the country, occupying a six-block enclave that they are calling the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).
It is an echo of the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, when anarchists and socialists seized portions of major cities and camped out until the winter. But it also reflects the current state of mind of left-wing, blue state America: they seem to be living in their own reality.
The United States has a racist past, but it is not a “racist” system. As the year 2020 dawned, black unemployment and poverty were at their lowest ever, and inequality between black and white Americans was shrinking. The majority of black Americans were satisfied with police in their communities. But now, after the tragic death of George Floyd, and two weeks of left-wing protests and riots, major corporations are issuing press releases denouncing “systemic racism.”
None of this matches the truth of who we are as a society. If there is any “systemic racism” at all, it is the system of racial preferences known as affirmative action, which is designed to benefit black Americans — and hurts white and Asian Americans. It is sanctioned by law, and is beyond criticism in polite company. But even those who bear the costs of that system have largely tolerated it. The evil America described by “Black Lives Matter” is a nightmarish delusion.
It is useful to think of the current state of the country as one in which blue state America has actually seceded from the Union. It is not possible, geographically, to carve out the cities, or the Democrat-run states, from the rest of the country, but their residents are already living in a separate nation. And the 2020 presidential election is not an attempt to decide the leadership of the U.S., but part of a proxy civil war, in which the left’s strategy is to make America ungovernable.
Democrats never accepted the results of the 2016 election, and resorted to various methods of attempting to oust the government. First there was the “deep state” attempted coup, the coordination of law enforcement and intelligence with the mainstream media and key Democratic leaders to create the “Russia collusion” conspiracy theory. They failed, but succeeded in convincing 53% of Americans, and 77% of Democrats, that the false “Steele dossier” was really true.
Meanwhile, Democratic governors in states like California vowed to push back against everything the administration did. Ironically, given the Democrats’ sudden enthusiasm for renaming Confederate military bases, they reinvigorated the nullification doctrine of the antebellum South, declaring themselves to be “sanctuaries” from federal immigration law enforcement, which the Obama administration had earlier argued was an exclusively federal power.
Next came impeachment, an attempted legislative coup by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) coordinated with a rogue intelligence official in the White House to claim that President Donald Trump had committed impeachable offenses. He conducted secret hearings and even spied on the White House, the opposition, and a journalist. His effort fell short, but divided the country further.
Then there was the coronavirus. Though the danger to public health was real, Trump’s opponents refused to allow the president to lead the country through it. Instead, the media and the Democrats repeatedly told the public not to listen to the president. They hyped alternative leaders like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, even though he was sending infectious people to nursing homes. And they demanded the government shut down the nation’s economy indefinitely.
Notably, when the Trump administration proposed passing emergency relief through Congress, Democrats dragged their feet. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi delayed the passage of the CARES Act, then delayed the extension of PPP for small businesses. She seemed determined to deny the president any credit whatsoever for helping Americans through the economic crisis. And the media, eager to pounce on Republicans during budget “shutdowns,” let her do it.
Once the worst of the pandemic had passed, and the Trump administration successfully produced enough emergency medical equipment to ensure that hospitals would not be overwhelmed, Republican-run states began to reopen their economies. But Democrat-run cities and states delayed, ostensibly for public health reasons. Keeping the big cities on lockdown also made the economic damage worse. And soon evidence to suspect Democrats’ motives would emerge.
When George Floyd was killed in police custody in Minneapolis, Democrats not only allowed mass protests, but also joined them. Democrat-run cities and police forces also failed to prevent rioting and looting, creating a new shutdown as businesses boarded up and residents stayed home under curfew. Meanwhile, as violent anarchists surrounded the White House, retired military leaders emerged to blast the president in the media for efforts to restore law and order.
Joe Biden, feeble though he is, has done his part to destabilize the country. He launched his campaign in April 2019 with the claim that he had been inspired to run because President Trump had referred to neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people.” It was a lie: Trump had condemned the neo-Nazis “totally.” But it reinforced the fears of Democratic voters. In recent weeks, Biden has stoked those fears by claiming that Trump will steal the election.
The blue-state media has inflamed divisions at every turn. On Thursday, after President Trump announced that he would hold an election rally in the conservative heartland, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19 — celebrated in many African American communities as Juneteenth, the day freed slaves in Texas were read the Emancipation Proclamation — the media declared the speech “racist” in advance because a race riot had happened … in 1921, on a different date entirely.
The real question is not whether Trump will leave office in the event that he loses, but whether Democrats will accept the result if he wins. In spirit, they are no longer living in the U.S. They are citizens of a CHAZ-like enclave, an illusion whose purpose is to disrupt the world outside. Biden calls the 2020 election a “battle for the soul of the nation.” It should end the way the last secessionist battle ended. Only defeat will force blue state America to face reality.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.