Reflexive Opposition

When you oppose everything, you can be for nothing.

The goal of the contemporary American left is to oppose.

That’s it.

That is all of it.

It doesn’t matter what it is, if someone on the right thinks it, says it, or does it, or even if the left had a hand in creating it or once championed it, they are now going to oppose it.

This knee-jerk partisan reflex or tribal opposition is maddening because when someone lives only to oppose, there is literally nothing they will not defend in their quest to be the opposite of someone else.

When you oppose everything, you can be for nothing.

Even though there is a legitimate mental illness called Opposition Defiance Disorder listed in the DSM manual, this political form of automatic, unthinking opposition to an idea or group solely based on their source, is typically driven by partisan loyalty or ideological rivalry rather than reasoned analysis.

A good example is how Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Elana Kagan once opposed the practice of district judges issuing national injunctions under a Democrat president before very recently siding with the court’s two other liberal justices in dissent to reining them in under a Republican president.

That’s not constitutional jurisprudence, that’s pure, unadulterated tribalism.

If you don’t believe me, name for me a policy or program enacted over the past quarter century that has met the initial metrics (if there were any) or promises and yet is not defended tooth and nail. They still defend Obamacare and insurance coverage is worse and more expensive than ever. Obamacare’s “successes” in increasing coverage numbers is part and parcel of an expansion of Medicare and increased federal funding for Medicaid - with the costs passed on to a shrinking population of taxpayers.

The part where they claim they “lowered” premiums -that actually came via taxpayer subsidies - is the most remarkable to me because it is a prime example of how the left protects themselves from any consequences of their irrational opposition.

I have to hand it to the Democrats, they are masters at transferring consequences to third parties so they never have to be subject to them.

Consider that we are witnessing how a Democrat president can decide not to enforce the duly enacted immigration laws without consequences but when a subsequent president from the Republican party does enforce them – including the removal of aliens that have avoided removal or deportation orders for years – lawful enforcement is suddenly resisted and prohibited. When you consider the resistance in the major cities and the courts, it is clear they memory holed the fact that Obama averaged deporting 36,000 aliens per month for his eight years, and many were immediately sent back when they were detained, denied the extensive “due process” Democrats now claim has always been mandated by the Constitution (spoiler alert – it isn’t).

Biden allowed illegal aliens to “apply” for amnesty through an app and “paroled” them into the country, so just the opposite from Obama, so within four years, the Democrats played both sides and there were absolutely no consequences from Congress, the judiciary, or the Democrat party.

Oh sure, there was some performative opposition - but that was part of the Democrat led DOJ’s “sue and settle” funding plan for the radical organizations that supported them.

The maddening thing about those who simply exist to oppose is that they have no sense of hypocrisy and will invent the most ridiculous negative characteristics to validate their positions. They are locked into a pattern of thinking or behavior where they habitually and immediately adopt a negative, defeatist, or gloomy outlook and their only pleasure comes from the misfortune of others.

The opposing sides have hardened to the point that I can’t see any give either way but don’t be fooled, there is a right and wrong side to these issues. Even the way Democrats attack indicate they know that – they won’t attack or change immigration law, for example, because they want it to be kept where a Democrat president can ignore it and open the borders, so they attack the “process” claiming profiling and discrimination in execution of the raids and arrests (you aren’t going to find illegal aliens from south of the border in an Irish pub in Manhattan), that the “due process” doesn’t take ten years to adjudicate, or that somehow, the Supremacy Clause doesn’t apply and state and city government can just ignore federal law.

I lost a friend over something like this. He told me that I “always thought I was right” and demanded to know why that was – I replied that history and reality confirmed my positions, and yes, I do think I am right.

How does it stop?

I don’t see how it does without one side crushing the other.