In our ‘Bizarro World’ of 2020 politics, the left takes a wrong turn

In the early 1960s, DC Comics came up with a story set in a place called “Bizarro World,” a place where everything went opposite to rational expectations. In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds, which he proudly proclaims are “Guaranteed to lose money for you.” 

I get the impression that we’re living in our own Bizarro World these days.

Let’s start with liberals and progressives who say Donald Trump is an authoritarian, a threat to American democracy. But who’s promoting the “cancel culture,” which is a real threat to democracy? Hint: It’s not Donald Trump. It’s the ones yelling about threats to democracy.

If you offend liberal sensibilities, you literally can lose your job and your livelihood. Just ask the sports announcer in Sacramento who tweeted, “ALL LIVES MATTER” — and promptly got fired. 

It’s authoritarians who censor information, right? Who’s doing that these days? How about those open-minded sophisticates at Twitter and Facebook, the ones who decry censorship — the liberals who have become illiberal.  

Which side is demanding conformity of thought? Liberals and progressives tell us that that’s what despots do. Yet, even beyond Silicon Valley’s apparent disdain for ideas that don’t conform to theirs, just go to a college campus when the left-wing brats are shouting down a conservative speaker whose opinions they don’t approve of — and you’ll see who the censors are.

The left is telling us that a Trump victory would be disastrous because he then would have no constraints and would use his considerable power against them.

But which side used its considerable power against the president almost from the day he was elected by saying there was incontestable proof that Trump was working with the Russians to destabilize America? Last time I checked, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) were charter members of the same left-wing club that has been lecturing the rest of us about the abuse of power.

What we’re witnessing in Bizarro World USA is tyranny, all right — but not a tyranny at the hands of Trump. This is a tyranny of the progressive woke elite who think they have a civic duty to help elect Joe Biden and rid the nation of Trump. 

That’s why Twitter and Facebook censored news that might hurt their favored candidate. That’s why the news in general has gone far beyond bias to something much more dangerous.

Roger Ailes, when he was running Fox News, told me that while we can’t have a free country without a free press, we can’t have a free country without a fair press, either. He was right — and now journalists, far more than Donald Trump with all his “issues,” are the real threat to democracy.

The left worries about Trump’s supposed authoritarian tendencies. I worry about theirs, because they control the information we receive, they control the entertainment and news industries, they control the arts, they control the ideas that come out of our colleges and even out of our high schools. In other words, they control American culture.

And now we have a liberal running for president who offers us more evidence that we’re living in Bizarro World. Joe Biden wants us to vote for him so we can “return to normalcy.”

Help me out: What’s normal about packing the Supreme Court, which he just might do? What’s normal about adding two liberal states to the 50 we already have? What’s normal about the other things the left wing of his party salivates over — such as lowering the voting age so 16-year-olds can vote for Democrats, allowing felons still in prison to vote, taking the first steps to abolishing the Electoral College? What’s normal about fundamentally changing America?

Only in Bizarro World is abnormal … well, normal.

In the comic book story, the Bizarro Code states: “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”

It all makes sense … if you live in Bizarro World — or in the United States, circa 2020.

Bernard Goldberg, an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist, is a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” He previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Patreon page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.