The country is at present enduring the dire consequences of the depth and breadth of the Obama administration's many illegal activities.  Former CIA chief John Brennan surveilled American citizens, some of them senators, as Obama was pushing the horrific Iran deal, and he's never been charged with that crime.  In collusion with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, these Obama operatives used a fictional dossier to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials.  They seriously meant to prevent him from getting close to a victory.  They conspired to clear Hillary Clinton of her many crimes so she could continue her bid for the presidency.

Who are the culprits?  All upper-echelon bureaucrats who considered themselves above the law: Comey, Holder, Lynch, Clapper, Brennan, McCabe, Rice, and Power are well known names, the public faces of Obama's administration.  Now we know there was a host of lesser known operatives working behind the scenes, as Lois Lerner did, to manipulate facts and events in order to ensure Clinton's win.

Without question, this bunch of white-collar criminals has orchestrated the biggest, most serious campaign of political corruption in American history.  One would think every member of both parties in Congress would be outraged, that every American would be equally angry.  But no.  The Democrats have all lined up to defend these felons, and the Democrats are absolutely without shame in doing so.

Many smart people have pointed out for years that what was once liberalism of the JFK variety became leftism, then progressivism, which has steadily moved farther to the left and is no longer a political persuasion, but a religion.  Its adherents in Congress and the media will go the mattresses to defend their own, no matter how egregious their crimes against the country.  Today's progressives operate like Putin's FSB!  Any crimes committed in the furtherance of their agenda are, in their minds, legal.  It may even come to pass in months to come that someone among this crowd ordered Seth Rich to be killed for giving WikiLeaks the DNC emails.

How did this happen?  When did the American left begin its descent into sanctioning all manner of law-breaking to advance its political goals?  Probably long before any of us know.

Consider the Democrats' venality after they lost the Civil War.  Black Americans had to fight for their freedom in the South for decades after they won it.  The 1920s were fraught with leftist anarchy.  Sacco and Vanzetti were celebrated by the usual suspects – artists, writers, and academics.  Some things really never do change.

The left will always be with us, but its members must be denied power.  The least informed, least mature people think they should be running the show.  And the people who think they should run the show love fascism, communism, and totalitarianism.  They always assume that in such regimes, they will be the ones doing the ruling.  It never occurs to them that they might come under someone else's authoritarian thumb.

It is impossible to state with any accuracy the degree of damage the Obama-era policies did to America, but the damage was and remains profound.  He set in motion the genocidal fallout of bringing all troops home from Iraq in 2011 against the advice of every military expert.  This catastrophic decision fomented the rise of ISIS and the subsequent dissolution of the Middle East, including the mass murder of Christians.  And Syria?  There are no words.  That is on Obama, too. 

The aftermath of the Obama years will haunt this country for decades to come; economically (Trump has already gone a long way toward fixing this), cultural (the primacy of LGBT over everyone else), social (he set the racial divide back at least sixty years), and health care (Obamacare destroyed what was once the best system in the world).  Obama hammered the final nail of leftist indoctrination into higher education and all the nonsense that entails: multiple gender identities, microaggressions, safe spaces, the end of free speech.  He virtually negated national security by eviscerating the military and promoting Islam to the degree that he enabled terrorism.  The Obama Cabinet was staffed with academics steeped in progressivism and political correctness who lacked any real-world experience.  The result of their uninformed, immature leadership was an eight-year disaster.

Let us hope that President Trump survives the all-out , all-agency long knives attack on his personal life, his family, and his presidency.  Washington, D.C. is a swamp that must be drained, no matter how disagreeable the process.  Trump won for a reason.  He must prevail, or the idea of America, the most successful miracle of democracy ever to exist on the planet, will be lost.