Two age-old adages say, “If you want to really know someone, watch what they do, not what they say,” and, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” With those adages in mind, we on the right have gotten to know the left very well, indeed, over the last several years.
Before the 2016 presidential election, the right thought we knew the left. We thought you were like us. We thought you too just wanted the best for our fellow citizens even though you went about it in ways different from ours. Surely, we thought, you love our country as much as we do. Since 2016, we’ve learned the left — especially the regressively progressive far left — isn’t much like us at all.
It happened gradually, but once it started, the shift was exponential. We began to notice the name-calling, ridicule, and personal attacks threatening us online and in person simply because we believe in freedom, personal responsibility and love of country. We voted for someone who said he’d fight for those things too and ever since then, we’ve watched the left lose your collective mind and show us who you really are.
We’ve watched the left’s leaders giddily grab power like never before by denying us fundamental American freedoms once held sacred. We’ve watched leftist leaders deliberately hold up COVID relief bills for purely partisan spite at election time. We watched as “do as I say, not as I do” became not only an adage, but the left’s motto of entitlement.
A maskless Speaker Nancy Pelosi got her hair colored while we grew out our 6-inch roots. Gov. Gavin Newsom sent his kids to an open private school, visited his open winery, and took trips to his Montana ranch the same week he declared a lockdown while our kids missed graduations and other normal once-in-a-lifetime events.
We wore our masks and missed school, weddings, paychecks, last moments with dying loved ones, time with elderly parents — many things we can never get back — while maskless Newsom wined and dined indoors with lobbyists at a fancy French restaurant.
We’ve watched the left tantrums disguised as “protests.” We watched the left permit and even encourage the lawless riots that destroyed innocent people’s homes, businesses, and personal safety during a pandemic and while falsely claiming to be “mostly peaceful.”
We watched as our president’s rallies were sneered at as “super spreader” events, while the premature Joe Biden election celebrations — that have no doubt caused the latest virus spike and subsequent restrictions — aren’t even mentioned by the media.
We’ve watched as the left claims the mantle of tolerance while you along with your praetorian guard media and Big Tech pals censor, ban, label and slander us. We’ve been fired from jobs, lied about, bullied, had property stolen, been shadowbanned, doxxed, targeted, and some have been beaten. A few of us have even been killed.
We’ve watched as the left changed election law after election law before the election. We’ve watched as the inevitable “voting irregularities” occurred and were told none existed and “proof” was haughtily demanded even though the changed laws helped to obscure the proof. We’ve watched as the left calls the president a dictator for demanding — within his rights — recounts and audits of legal ballots. We’ve watched as you petulantly demand he leave an office through an election that has yet to be lawfully certified.
We’ve watched as the left has divided us like nothing since the Civil War, all while you continually attack and cast childish blame on the one man, President Donald Trump, who has fought for all of us — even you, the hateful left.
Unite? How can we possibly do that when we’ve seen you?
Since the uncertified projected results of the 2020 presidential election were announced, the left’s call to unite has been oft repeated by politicians and the media alike, but no amount of magical wishy thinking can make us like Charlie Brown again forever trusting the football won’t be pulled away. We see you.
We see you for the self-serving, power-hungry, end-justifies-the-means, hypocritical, uncompassionate leftists that you are. The right are not leftists. We will never be leftists, so naturally we find your call for unity untenable and disingenuous.
Unite? Unification requires some semblance of agreement, some sort of mutual respect. It does not require surrender or acquiescence. No matter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, it’s still true that half the country did not vote for whomever wins. The left would do well to remember that fact.
Unite? Yes, the right is united.
We’ve been united, not with the left, but by the left and its behavior. The left has shown us who you are. We see you.
Gwendolyn Sims is a Santa Clarita resident. “Right Here, Right Now” appears Saturdays and rotates among local Republicans.
