We watch Washington D.C. like we’d watch a ship steaming way too fast toward a crowd on the pier.  Our nation’s capital is so filled with corruption, ladder-climbing, and plain stupidity that it’s embarrassing to watch. This is America?!?

Yet the Democrats we know personally are not guilty of those sins. Many are smart, hard-working, kind, educated people and yet they voted for the wasted shell in the oval office -- a man who is not only suffering from dementia, but has never been very bright, or very good. A lot of these lovely people appear to be planning to vote for him again. How can that be? How can even a third of our compatriots think Biden is okay? I believe it to be one of the most startling paradoxes of our time. These proud, sophisticated, overeducated folks are, unlike the power brokers of the party, simply naive. They’re hopelessly gullible. How they can possibly be both -- naïve and sophisticated -- is beyond me. For these lefty-leanies, the Brooklyn Bridge is always for sale at half price and someone else will pick up the difference. Let us list the facets of the Democrat fairytale:

1. They assume that other people are just like them -- hardworking, clean, healthy, nice, fun-loving. It just doesn’t occur to them that the man dragging two kids across the border isn’t their father and is only interested in selling them. The fact that most of these illegals are young men of military age doesn’t ring any bells for the average Democrat. Somehow the only reaction to these intruders is to feel sorry for them -- not to be cautious about their motives, or to be concerned about what diseases they may carry or where their education stopped.
2. They think people are what they portray themselves to be. To them, there is no angry, sexually abused, misfit of a young man behind the exuberant makeup and the green sequined dress. From their point of view, college professors are wise, good, and superior and have no intention of disabusing your child of his upbringing. No priest or Boy Scout leader has any perverse designs on your kids. How cynical to suspect that they’re anything other than caring and compassionate. Ambrose Bierce, in his hilarious book The Devil’s Dictionary, defines cynic as a person “who sees things as they really are.” Then I guess I’m a cynic. Won’t you join me?
3. This attitude slithers out from the left’s assumption that there is basically no evil, no sin, that people are all basically good (except Republicans, of course). A middle-class leftist can look at a drag queen reading to three-year-olds and not see anything perverse and nasty. A thief is just someone overreacting to some 200-year-old atrocity done to someone else’s ancestor. A rapist just needs counseling. The 85,000 missing kids? Oh look! There’s a squirrel!
4. Speaking of naivete -- this one is a doozy. These fanciful folk think that a law passed is a law obeyed -- to the letter. Don’t like guns? Ban them and they will be no more. In fact, there will be no more violence. Look at what happened with bipartisan Prohibition -- did everyone just suck it up and quit drinking? No. The Mafia was born.
5. Which brings up the issue of rich verses poor. The loony leftist assumes that the poor are poor because of the rich. The wealthy have more than their fair share (as if wealth is limited -- it isn’t: it’s produced, but that’s another discussion.). So -- if we raise taxes on the rich, we’ll have enough money to give a lot to the poor and we’ll all be equal. Right? That just beats all. How do they think the rich got that way? Not by being stupid. No law has ever been written that didn’t have a loophole in it. The rich can afford to lobby Congress to get those loopholes created. And the rich can afford to hire people smart enough to find and appropriate those loopholes. What makes matters worse is that not only do the rich get richer, but those whose job it is to redistribute the wealth gain power and use that power to get even richer themselves. So, the poor will always be with us.
6. The naïve can cling to their suppositions because, in their world, truth and logic are no longer required, no longer absolute, no longer respected. Neither are facts. I haven’t just observed this, I’ve been told this by brilliant, well-educated people. One guy, who holds three hard-science doctorates, patiently explained to me that logic is now passé. I’ve also been told that facts don’t matter. Outright lies don’t even seem to faze leftists, no matter whether they’re on the receiving or the delivery side of the lie. It is hard to have a productive conversation with those who live according to these “rules.”
7. The by-default Left believes that feelings are where reality lives. What matters is how I feel. If I feel like a princess, or a giraffe, or Napoleon, by George, you need to deal with me as such. Never mind that mutilation -- either bodily or linguistically -- may be required.
8. The Democrats I know feel that loyalty to a party is more important than loyalty to our country. Most of the Democrats I know are Democrats only because they always have been. One doesn’t just abandon a ship because someone has drilled a hole in the hull. And if you don’t even notice the hole -- such a position doesn’t require a person to know anything about what’s going on. It doesn’t demand much in the way of common sense thinking or practicality. Just yell Go-team-go! And burn down a building now and then.
9. Being an automatic leftist is also easy in that one doesn’t need to know history or geography. How many of the pro-Palestinian activists even know where Israel is, let alone how she got there? Besides which, the gullible Left believes all cultures are the same in value. It’s just fine that a Muslim father thinks he should kill a disobedient daughter. It’s okay if the Netsilik Eskimos put their elderly out on ice floes to freeze to death on the barren ice. No problem if the Chinese enslave their people.
10. For these compliant leftists, tolerance is the most important virtue and wealth the most egregious sin. You just hate the rich, especially if they’re white, and especially if they’re male. No other judgment needed. No courage necessary. No kindness required.

Having listed these traits, what’s to be done? I’m afraid that the fanciful will always be with us, so it is doubly important that we keep our feet solidly planted in reality, in God’s truth, in common sense. Someone has to mind the store, watch the kids, and plow the north forty. And we have to win elections -- honestly and by huge margins, remembering that our opponents don’t mind cheating -- see #6. However, we need to see our deluded fellow Americans as just that. The bigwig Democrats are patently evil -- look what they allowed (or planned) to have happen to Joe Biden in that debacle they called a debate. They were clearly eating their own. But our friends, neighbors, and countrymen are not those people. Let’s remind ourselves of that now and then so that when the cannon smoke clears, we can all still be friends.

Deana Chadwell is an adjunct professor and department head at Pacific Bible College https://pacificbible.edu in southern Oregon. She teaches writing, logic, and literature. She can be contacted at 1window45@gmail.com

Image: Lorie Shaull