By Tom Klocek

Democrats have long claimed to be supporters of the people, especially the poor and underprivileged. Yet, when their actions are examined even a little bit more closely, you find that they are only interested in using these people as pawns to increase and solidify their power. Rarely do their policies actually help the working classes, and even those they purport to be helping are beginning to see the light.

While there are numerous examples of Democrat failures to support their target voting blocs, I’ll just mention a few.

According to their website, “The Democratic Party and women share common values and priorities, including supporting our families, protecting our country, and advancing the issues that matter most to women of all ages and ethnicities.” However, they refuse to protect women’s sports, pushing policies that allow men to compete as women. Large percentages of college-educated women (educated does not necessarily mean smart) continue to support Democrats, and now the Democrats are working hard to erase women by recognizing biological males as “Woman of the Year” in various venues. Similarly, much of the Democrat agenda is destructive to families (e.g., support for transgender “affirmation” even without parental knowledge). But, despite their stated position above, you can always count on them to support abortion and extreme positions against life, common sense, and the family.

Most Catholics identify as Democrats. Cardinal Timothy Dolan discussed the start of this shift in 2018. While lamenting the extreme Democrat position on unrestricted abortion, Dolan also noted that “the needs of poor and middle-class children in Catholic schools, and the right to life of the baby in the womb have largely been rejected by the party of our youth.”

And now the FBI has been found to be targeting traditional Catholics as “radical extremists,” and self-proclaimed Catholic politicians like Tim Kaine even back them up.

As noted by Cardinal Dolan, Democrats fight against school choice routinely, claiming public education controlled by the teachers unions is the way to ensure education for all. However, school choice actually benefits those in poorer school districts with failing schools. Thus, by not supporting school choice, they prevent those who need it most, black and underprivileged Americans, whom they claim to champion, from getting the help they need.

They have further harmed all students with their unmitigated support of the teachers unions. These unions failed the children of America. While bewailing the loss of learning, especially during the COVID “pandemic,” they worked against reopening the schools and then placed large restrictions on students when reopening occurred. At the same time, it was well known that young people were at the least risk of contracting COVID and were least likely to transmit the disease.

Biden claimed that he would be a “unifier,” but his policies continually pit one part of the population against another. His idea of diversity is diversion and division.

Identity politics usually ends up hurting those they purport to help. While claiming to be advocates of Native Americans, African Americans, and other minority groups (but not Asian Americans), to the point of speaking against “cultural appropriation,” they are masters of invoking it when it suits their purposes. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains it this way: “Cultural appropriation takes place when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way.” In this way, many on the Left tried to suppress kids enjoying dress-up on Halloween. Yet no one on the Left seems to get upset when Elizabeth Warren or Elizabeth Hoover do it to further their own personal standing.

The emphasis on identity politics and other woke ideals is adversely affecting our security as well. Democrat-run cities have steadily declined for decades. One of the solutions many of them have touted has been a “defund the police” attitude and budgetary policies. These cities claim the police are inherently racist against African Americans, but this same portion of the population would actually prefer more police presence. The elites are undeterred, and crime continues to increase in those cities, so much so that many businesses, not just small ones, are closing stores. Walmart closed four stores in Chicago as well as other locations (ostensibly for underperformance), and Whole Foods and Nordstrom are closing stores in San Francisco. On top of that, Democrat-run cities and states are seeing a significant exodus of people moving to other states.

But the security concerns go beyond the cities to the national and international realm. A significant contributor to our influence in the world is our military prowess. While Democrats purport to support the military, their actions have resulted in a lessening of confidence in the military and has affected recruitment.

We regularly see the Jewish population overwhelmingly support Democrats at election time, yet the Democrats repeatedly show their antisemitic colors through their actions and their working to diminish or deny support to Israel, all while favoring Palestinians who continually launch rocket attacks into Israel.

Many Democrat cities that made a big deal of virtue signaling their support for illegal immigrants are now recognizing the negative impact that is now reaching their own backyard. It was okay and even an opportunity to denounce Republicans when it only affected mostly Republican states hundreds of miles away, but now that it is reaching their territory, the sky is falling. Even blue “sanctuary cities” have taken to busing immigrants to smaller cities and towns, many of which are not “sanctuary cities.”

Space prohibits going into other key areas like the green agenda and its damage to the planet, unions, economy, and middle class. I could go on. But the bottom line is this: In the eyes of the Democrats, diversity equals division. They are into the politics of pitting people against each other. Their actions and their shifting and their often contradictory favoring one group over another, as long as it keeps them from remembering they are all Americans, serve only to keep the populace divided. This is why it is so important to them to ensure people can be offended at the slightest trigger, as long as by it they can claim to be for everybody even though they are actually for nobody but themselves.

Rather than be “woke,” the nation needs to wake up and smell the excrement resulting from these leftist policies (and not just that on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco).

CDR Klocek has written extensively on the damage being done to our military by corrosive identity politics. He represents Calvert Task Group 69 (CTG69), a nonprofit organization dedicated to reversing the negative impacts that Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) programs are having on military readiness, recruiting, morale, and retention.