"Resistance (At All Costs)" by Kimberley Strassel

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“Resistance (At All Costs)” by Kimberley Strassel

December 10, 2019

“Her fact-filled reporting exposes a simple but hidden truth:

The Resistance is violating the norms it claims to care so much about,

leaving a lasting and damaging mark on the country.”

                                                                                                Mollie Hemingway

                                                                                                Senior Editor, The Federalist

                                                                                                Advance Praise for Resistance

Kimberley Strassel is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and writes a weekly political column, “Potomac Watch.” This book, her second, should be read by all, especially by those who feel Mr. Trump’s behavior justifies any and all resistance: to the man, his Presidency and even to those who speak or write positively about him or his policies. Sadly, it won’t be. But, if it were, there would be a better understanding of the harm done to our democracy by “haters” and how politicized the federal bureaucracy has become. There would be a greater recognition that the real threats to the freedoms we take for granted come not from the flawed Mr. Trump but from those whose hatred knows no bounds.

Ms. Strassel defines the Resistance as “…the legions of Americans who were resolutely opposed to the election of Trump, and who remain angrily determined to remove him from office.” The full title of her book is Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters are Breaking America. She deliberately avoided using the word “critics,” as the “haters” do not believe in nuance. In their view, one cannot disapprove of the man yet approve of his policies. As Ms. Strassel wrote, haters view everything to do with Trump in “black-and-white morality. You either hate the man, or you are as bad as the man.” – Witness what is happening to Attorney General William Barr.  (From personal experience, I am sensitive to this issue. While I have been critical of Mr. Trump’s behavior, language and character, I support many of his policies – tax reform; deregulation; exposing sanctimonious, prejudiced bureaucrats; support for Israel; demanding that Europeans pay more for NATO; levying heavier sanctions on Russian oligarchs; taking the U.S. out of the toothless Paris Accord; appointing conservative judges who practice Constitutional restraint and advocate for justice, not social justice; confronting China on the stealing of our technology, etc. I believe the disruption he has brought to Washington has been good for the cleansing of the City’s soul. Nevertheless, for stating my opinions, I have been called an insensitive racist.)

The infestation of hatred reaches deep into government’s bureaucracy and affects us all. “…it should worry every American that prosecutors and law enforcement officials are willing to smear elected officials – just to hide their secrets.”. These same non-elected bureaucrats have come to understand that “there are few immediate consequences to balking congressional subpoenas…that they have the ability to keep their actions hidden in the longer term.” This attitude extends to the judiciary, with the insertion of “political animus into our judicial system [that] is undermining American belief in a blind Lady Justice.” Prejudicial

Lower courts have forced the Supreme Court to intervene more than usual. The media, too, has become part of the resistance. Ms. Strassel concludes her observations on the press with a question: “What defined the media breakdown that started in 2016 was their destruction of standards in aid of peddling a fiction – the Trump-Russia collusion narrative…The country needs a fair and balanced press; post-Trump, how does the industry ever gain that trust back?”

Mr. Trump is called a demagogue and a despot by the “haters,” a man who will destroy democracy. Yet, he has not governed by Executive Order to the extent his immediate predecessor did. He has reduced, not increased, the size of government. With his real estate holdings in Europe, Asia and South America, he has been accused of violating the Emoluments Clause, yet Forbes estimates his net worth declined by 30% during the first two years of his Presidency. In contrast, the Clinton’s net worth went from zero in 2000 to an estimated $240 million today, much of it from foreign governments’ donations to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was a New York Senator, Secretary of State and while she was running for President as the Democrat nominee in 2015-2016. Forbes estimates that the Obama’s net worth has increased thirty-fold in the three years since he left the Presidency. What would Harry Truman say?

There are those who will claim that Ms. Strassel is too prejudiced, too wrapped up in her opinions that the intelligence community of James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper used their offices to hamper the candidacy of Mr. Trump and to further their own political interests – that she is too consumed with this narrative to be an unbiased, dispassionate observer. However, the facts she offers and the perspective she provides tell a compellingly different tale.

Finally, this is a story about the risks of big government and the dangers from its octopus-like arms, which encroach on the rights of the people. In an article in last month’s National Review, Victor Davis Hanson wrote: “…by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it. So, naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives.” Ms. Strassel quotes Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) during the final days of the Kavanaugh hearings, perhaps the nadir for Trump haters (or, at least, until the impeachment hearings), as vindictiveness and hyperbole spread like wildfire through Congress: “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.”

Since this book is unlikely to be read by those targeted, it is unlikely to heal what divides us. We will go on, two halves of a bivalve, separated by a hatred that precludes reconciliation. “Haters” must learn to tolerate political differences, recognize that one can like a politician’s policies without loving the individual, and we all must acknowledge that, as Americans, we are citizens of an exceptional and special nation. Instead of letting hatred define our times, we should thank God we can call America our home.