How many times, my friends, have you been in a conversation where one of the notions put forth, or an opinion that might take a more-creative mind to pose, is put down with a sneering "You're nuts!", or "You're crazy!" or some variant of the proposition that the speaker is psychotic. I would certainly like to have a buck for every time I've been responded to that way, or responded myself that way.
Yes, I'd like a buck for every such time. Or maybe ... a ruble.
It is a sad attribute of dictatorships that their number-one goal is to sustain their power. Lenin, Stalin, Khaddafi, Saddam, Assad, U.S. congressmen, to some degree their first priority was and is to negate any challenges to their power.
The Soviets, right up until the time of Mikhail Gorbachev, held rock-solid power over the Soviet Union and its satellites. Uprising in Hungary? Tanks. Uprising in Whocareswhereistan? Tanks. But there have always been opponents, and the good old Soviet Union has always had a go-to tactic for its internal opposition, particularly political ones. A very familiar one.
"You're crazy! Off to the psych ward."
Familiar? Of course. The Soviets were famous for their characterization of their dissidents as nuts, and putting them in psychiatric wards and mental hospitals ("psikhushkas"). It was the easiest way to get them out of the public eye without actually killing them -- not that plenty weren't murdered. I knew they were doing that when I was a kid, we all did. The Russians were not particularly creative in how they got rid of their opposition.
It is so familiar to me, that when my brother (credit where credit is due) pointed out to me this week that the Democrats were doing the same thing, and that I needed to address it in a column, it rang a loud bell.
Yes, the left is taking a page from their leftist predecessors in the old Soviet Union. I give you Exhibit A, their treatment of President Trump.
Now, the president is many things. He is a very different national leader from what we are used to the previous 228 years or so. He does not suffer fools gladly, and he does not accept as inevitable the intransigence of the Senate in passing actual legislation. He does not accept the as-is in Washington, the Deep State, the leadership-by-tenure rather than leadership-by-competence mentality.
In other words, he does not accept how power is apportioned in the Government, and particularly the inertia that goes along with that. That makes him a challenge to the entrenched status quo. And particularly the Democrats, to whom he is the biggest threat (principally because his victory in 2016 tapped into voter unrest), cannot tolerate his presidency.
So they have taken a page from the Soviets' book, of all people.
Let us look at the Democrats' approach, as exemplified by the whole 25th Amendment nonsense that has roiled the Fake Media this week. Sure enough, they are calling the president crazy and mentally ill, and are trying to establish that "diagnosis" as the reality by shoving it through their willing accomplices in the media.
Donald Trump is perfectly sane and they know it. What he is, and they know this too, is a threat to their power. Now the left has no governmental power except for the Deep State (and that is a big "except"). But they do have the media, and they are willing to do anything, even Soviet-style tactics, to try to weaken their biggest opponent. So they will continue the mental-illness narrative as long as they can, no matter how silly it may be.
We need to continue to call out the left for their lack of principles and their lack of workable ideas. But we also need to call them out when they have to resort to mimicking the tactics of the Kremlin.
That is as pathetic as their idea.
Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton