Confident of their ability to defeat Trump with their radical, pro–illegal alien, pro-criminal, pro-socialist agenda, the left is badly overreaching.  House speaker Nancy Pelosi's proposed $3-trillion monstrosity stimulus is a joke.  The trillions they pledged under the rubric of the COVID-19 disaster is trillions more added to our national debt.  The stimulus will be money printed, distributed, and spent as if it were grown on trees.  Irresponsible states such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois hope to use the virus to cheat the American taxpayers into rescuing them from their own profligacy.

The more they can successfully blame the virus for their own gross mishandling of their states' funds, the more they think they can cash in on their own catastrophic governmental errors in judgment.  For governors such as Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo, Gretchen Whitmer, Tom Wolf, et al., the COVID-19 pandemic is a godsend, an opportunity, as so many Democrats have observed, to push for their radical socialist agenda.  The longer their blue states can keep up the lockdown that is impoverishing their citizens, the more they think those same citizens will blame President Trump and vote for a Joe Biden ticket in November.  Common sense is not one of the left's intellectual strengths.  Sure, there is an army of virtue-signaling bullies who scornfully chastise anyone not sufficiently social-distancing or going outside maskless, but it is precisely those "Karens," the people who think it is the government's job to take care of them, who are appropriately the subjects of mockery by citizens sick to death of this outrageous lockdown and the blue states' ridiculous edicts meant to control our behavior. 

California's governor, Gavin Newsom, hit a new low on Monday by threatening to lay off first responders if the federal government does not bless him with the billions of dollars he needs to cover his profligate spending while he is handing out millions of California taxpayer dollars to illegal aliens.  He won't stop that money flow, but he will lay off paramedics and firemen if he doesn't get the billions he's demanding.  What a guy.  It is California's shame that its people elected this thug.  If California's Democrats have any sense at all, they will recall Newsom; he is a reprobate.  But then they have repeatedly re-elected Pelosi, as well as Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff, three of the worst human beings on the planet.  No wonder Californians are fleeing the state.  California may just be done and over.  Perhaps it should become the sole province of the idiocracy. 

Then there are those other blue-state governors who have become tyrants — Cuomo, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Kate Brown of Oregon, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, et al.  Do they actually think they will be re-elected by sentient persons in their states?  They rail against those who protest the wholly unconstitutional orders that prevent them from making a living.  Hillary called them terrorists.  She refused to call those who breached the CIA compound in Benghazi terrorists; they were religious dissidents!  Whitmer calls them racists, of course; that is the all-purpose go-to epithet of the left.  Anyone with whom leftists disagree is a racist.  These willing authoritarians apparently believe that this lurch toward totalitarianism is going to win them friends and voters. It will not. Americans, even Democrat-Americans, have long taken their freedom for granted and are not going to give it up without a fight.  The left's globalist tendencies, their plan for a "New World Order," are about to fall on deaf ears.  Trump's commitment to America first, especially with regard to China's push for global dominance, is beginning to resonate with more and more Americans.  Not the media, of course — they are and will remain anti-American to their own bitter end along with institutional Democrats like Schumer and Pelosi and others of their ilk.

Texas's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, a bright light in contrast to these denizens of the dank blue states, managed to trigger the left when he tweeted this chart of the data from four of the most populous states:

Hmmm... pic.twitter.com/k4S9xlGvdF

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) May 18, 2020

If Illinois, Michigan, Oregon, New Jersey, and Washington were added, the story would be even clearer: Texas and Florida are well run states; California and New York are very poorly run states, and the virus has exposed the vast differences between them.  The citizens of these states are well aware of their own governors' failures and successes.  Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis's remarkable success at saving the lives of nursing home residents unmasks Cuomo's cold, heartless treatment of the vulnerable elderly people in his state exposed to the virus through state mandate. 

If there is a silver lining to this pandemic, it is the revelation that all things deemed "progressive" are dangerous to our health.  Mass transit, urban density, small-space confined living, the banning of plastic bags, etc. – all these leftist dreams contribute to mass disease. As Adam Guilette observed: "The notion that central planning experts know how to run cities is a symptom of the most dangerous disease spread by urban liberals — narcissism. Their so-called 'progressive' proposals actually embrace century-old technology — densely-packed cities, trains, burlap sacks, and trolleys. This is a large part of what got New York City into this mess." The wisdom of this statement has to be dawning on the millions of Millennials who have, until now, been indoctrinated with the anti-American, pro-socialist dreams of the left. How will our ivy league institutions of higher learning defend their decades of ahistorical miseducation? They will find a way, but perhaps more and more of their captive student body will take a more skeptical view of their proselytization. America is, first and foremost about freedom. Freedom is what we rightfully take for granted. There are too many on the left who want to see the Bill of Rights abrogated in the name of social justice or identity politics or whatever. They eschew the freedom to which we are all entitled and they cannot prevail. They've made inroads, but now is the time to fight back against the revealed despots who have attained high offices. The oft-quoted sentence of Ben Franklin is vital to remember at this moment in time:

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Humankind will never be free of viruses; they are a natural part of all life. The left cannot be allowed to oppress us, to restrict our freedoms, because of COVID-19. Vote them all out, every last one of them. They do not mean well.

Image credit: Twitter screen shot.