Reds: This administration is increasingly eager to brand all members of the Democratic Party as socialists, communists, or leftist subversives and, as such, an imminent threat to American democracy. The principal reason for this is that Democrats, in addition to seeking more balanced trade agreements, insist on promoting diversity and inclusiveness of the kind that saw a youthful Muslim elected as mayor of New York City in a landslide. These sorts of events are an abomination to the sitting president and his allies. Their only solution is to create an enemy on a mass scale and hope the alarm bells sound loudly enough to worry voters ahead of November midterm elections. In the period immediately after 9/11, Republican strategist Carl Rove used similar political maneuvers to tar and taint Islam, though the strategy was ultimately ineffective — a Black American who had spent part of his youth in Indonesia was elected to the first of two presidential terms in 2008. The scenario is slightly different today, with a robust group of tech oligarchs determined to protect their interests from bogeymen outsiders spearheaded not by the Chinese, mind you, but by the communist Chinese, a conjunction out of use since the early 1970s. This new wave of fear-mongering suggests all Democrats are in cahoots with Beijing, allowing China to “steal” American technological and military innovations. In effect, electing Democrats means electing Reds whose sole mission is to diminish the country’s revived exceptionalism.
Is China an American rival? It most certainly is, but by seeking to humiliate Democrats, Republicans are behaving in the same way as their Red rivals, who openly smear and jail their enemies. Not exactly pretty stuff from a republic that on July 4 repeatedly cast itself as the greatest nation in human history. To which I say, subversively, bring on the Reds. They may — in an equitable world — turn out to be more eager to cooperate with the red, white, and blue than ever before imagined.