As Inauguration Day approaches, the leftist media, the Democrats, and the moonbats that make up the nation's academic class are well and truly melting, as surely as the wicked witch of the Wizard of Oz melted when Dorothy tossed some water on her.  So thoroughly, deeply convinced of their own superiority in all things political, legal, cultural, gender, and all branches of learning that they have created their own parallel universe in which Trump could not possibly have won, everyone loves Obama and Obamacare, the economy is booming, unemployment is low, humans are destroying the planet with global warming, global cooling, climate change, and/or bad weather, and Hillary was a shoo-in to win the 2016 election.  They actually believed, without a shred of actual evidence, that Hillary Clinton was qualified to be President even though her record is one of incompetence, poor judgment, corruption and failure.  They have been bamboozled for so long that they have lost the ability to see reality.  They want no part of it because in their parallel universe these things cannot possibly be true.

As Carl Sagan wrote in 1995, in The Demon-haunted World:  Science as a Candle in the Dark:

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” 

So completely captured by the bamboozle, once-reputable news outlets eagerly publish fake news if they think it will hurt Trump.  The same news organizations have, for ten years, refused to publish anything, even the obvious truth,  that might reflect poorly on Obama.  That is how the bamboozle works.

Take the climate change devotees.  There is no "97% scientific consensus" that humans are causing catastrophic climate change.  That is a lie.  Science is not decided by consensus. It is based on provable scientific method, not computer models.  But confront a believer with some facts and they immediately launch into ad hominem attacks having nothing whatever to do with the topic.  So committed to their false belief in this global hoax, they will attack the simplest valid scientific fact if it is contrary to their beloved faith in man-caused destruction of the planet.  They will not cite science but will accuse the "denier" of some crude variation of stupidity.   Anthropogenic Global Warming is the charlatan that has captured them.  So felled by this belief is new Senator Kamala Harris that  she cluelessly grilled CIA cabinet pick Mike Pompeo about his grasp and commitment to that particular bamboozle!  He politely replied that he respected all laws passed to protect the environment but that his job was in a different realm.  California Republicans hoped Harris would be a tad less dim than Barbara Boxer; she is not.

Elizabeth Warren, the not-native-American senator from MA, relentlessly badgered Dr. Ben Carson, HUD cabinet nominee and one of the finest men on the planet, about using HUD money that might benefit Trump even one dollar since his business is "housing development."  She would not stop. She embarrassed herself.   She has not a clue how a businessman like Trump makes money.  And Obama appointed her to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!

Most of these people in Congress have degrees from prestigious universities.  We mortals have for too long been seduced by their supposed brilliance. Those degrees are meaningless for the most part.  Among the younger Democrat members they are just proof of their wiling indoctrination by the Left.   These folks are in shock at the election results because not only do they believe they are smarter than the rest of us, they had ultimate faith in their powers of persuasion, especially those lefty journalists.  They are stunned that the public did not vote the way they instructed them to vote. 

Some members of Congress, however, are very, very smart.  When you hear Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, Mike Lee or Tom Cotton speak about the law and the Constitution, no one can deny that those other people, the Al Frankens and Elizabeth Warrens of Congress, have no business being there, deciding what the rest of us can and cannot do, drive, eat, drink, own, say or think, etc.

Trump's cabinet picks are smart indeed, much smarter, for the most part, than their Democrat  interrogators.  Sessions, Pompeo, Tillerson, Mattis, Carson!  Class acts, each one of them.   But the Democrats in the House and the Senate, the ones who sit on those committees and cast aspersions on the fine people Trump has chosen simply because Trump chose them, should be ashamed of themselves.   The number of Democrats who have vowed not to work with Trump or acknowledge his legitimacy is growing:  Maxine Waters, John Lewis, Schumer (unless Trump moves left), Barbara Lee, Luis Guiterrez, Katherine Clark, Earl Blumenauer, Raul Grijalva, Jared Huffman.  Childish, intolerant, un-democratic sore losers all. Republicans, no matter how distressed by Obama's re-election, never came close to this form of gross rejectionism.

Progressivism took root in the early years of the last century and was thoroughly embraced by Woodrow Wilson, an actual racist.   After the disaster that was WWI, wiser heads prevailed but the seed of Wilson's intolerance has never been eradicated.  The current American Left has been similarly bamboozled for several generations now.  The radicals of the 1960s became tenured professors and from that moment on dictated who could and would teach universitystudents for the next fifty years. Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States, has done more to harm this nation and its young people than Putin could ever do.  Zinn's and his acolyites' conviction that the United States was and is a force for evil is de rigueur on every high school and college campus in the country.  Its tenets have become a matter of faith since it was published in 1980.  The book was and is the ultimate bamboozle.

May the Trump administration bring about enough quick and drastic change for the better that the fury of the left will be mollified.  Those of us on the right are simply relieved that the eight-year nightmare of the purposeful crippling of our country is over.