Kevin D. Williamson:
Donald J. Trump today is sworn in as president of these United States.
Break out the adult coloring books.
Funny word, “adult.” We use the word communicating “maturity” to describe the most immature forms of expression. “Adult entertainment” should mean Moby-Dick. But this is a time of childishness, which, in some ways, should give us hope: If the Democrats really thought President Trump were going to be some sort of Hitler figure, they’d be acting differently. They’d be stockpiling firearms and that freeze-dried apocalypse lasagna they’re always peddling on talk radio, or looking very closely at the real-estate listings in Zurich or Montreal. They would be acting like adults.
In reality, they are doing the opposite.
Gender-studies departments across the fruited plain are reminding Americans of how silly and meretricious gender-studies departments are, organizing anti-Trump rallies along notably juvenile lines, heavy on the stuffed animals, puppies to snuggle, Wubbies, and that hideously dispiriting sign of our times, the adult coloring book. Some of these events are being put on by publicly funded institutions, which is improper and undemocratic and in bad taste. The stewards of our institutions, including those such as cultural organizations that are formally private but sustained by public grants, ought to hold themselves to a higher standard than they do. They abuse the support that is given them and then wonder why it is that so many Americans seem to resent funding for arts and education.
The fact that the election of Donald Trump has sent a generation of Americans seeking their security blankets tells us a number of things. One, that these people are intellectually defective, but set that aside for now. It also tells us that progressives do not understand they are the Doctor Frankensteins in this monster story, demanding endless expansions of the state, pressing for the concentration of power in the executive agencies and nondemocratic institutions, and inventing new pretexts for political intrusions into private life — only to be horrified that the instrument they have created has been entrusted to the leadership of a man they despise.
If the outcome of an election sends you into a condition necessitating the use of diapers, then your government is too big and your president too powerful. It is pleasant to imagine a galaxy of little lightbulbs going off over millions of heads in Berkeley and on the Upper West Side as the basic good sense of the libertarian disposition becomes clear to progressives so expensively educated that they’ve never had to think very much about it. Congratulations, comrades! Your Koch Brothers secret-agent decoder ring is in the mail, along with your complimentary Bastiat books.
No, they aren’t for coloring in.
While the knuckleheads on campus are acting more sophomorically than usual, Democratic officeholders are outdoing themselves, “boycotting” various inauguration events. As a wise man once put it, you either die a hero or live long enough to become John Lewis. Representative Lewis, who came to public life as an important civil-rights leader, is one of the most embarrassing men in American public life, a publicity-hungry partisan hack stuck in the 1960s who has declared Trump to be illegitimate. Other Democrats have joined in this characterization. Remember the day before yesterday, when Democrats insisted that questioning the outcome of an election was treason, or something like it?
There is simply nothing to support their complaint. Trump was elected through ordinary means in free and fair elections. Yes, there were foreign powers, nefarious Russkies, trying to influence our candidates and our policies — as there always are. The people who nominated Hillary Rodham Clinton hardly need to be reminded of this: Remember Charlie Trie and Johnny Chung? Or the Clinton Global Initiative, which managed to collapse spectacularly as soon as it was clear that there would not be another President Clinton?
Grown people acting like spoiled little brats these filthy anarcists scumbags should just leave the country and never return we can do without their stupid little tantrums