I would like to thank the Disney empire. Not for offering another botched Star Wars movie, of course. As Kyle Smith notes in National Review, the latest film is a dreary, predictable rehash of plot lines from previous, better Star Wars movies. No, we should all be grateful to Disney for a much more significant reason: It has created the perfect icon for left-wing denial and civic sabotage.

In case you missed it, the animatronic version of President Trump in Disneyland’s Hall of Presidents looks … uncanny. In fact (as many observers pointed out on Twitter) it looks just like a Hillary robot that make-up artists spent maybe half a day recrafting to look vaguely male. Or like a drunken Hillary Clinton done up in very bad male drag.

Now, if it had been unveiled just a few weeks after the election, that might just be shoddy worksmanship. You know, like the writing on the latest Star Wars knockoff. Along with the rest of America’s great unwashed elite, Disney execs simply could not imagine that the voters would reject Mrs. Clinton. So they probably built her robot well in advance: the cybernetic equivalent to all those Newsweek magazines pre-printed to announce the first woman president!

But it has been more than a year. That was plenty of time to take the Borg Queen’s robot and put her in the crusher. (Think of the end of Terminator I.) To start from scratch and design a new machine that looked — well, like the president whom Americans elected. It seems that Disney just couldn’t stand to do that. Some depth of profound denial got in the way. And so what America got was a grimacing hermaphrodite, with a tie drooping down to its fly.

There’s another weird cyborg out there. Her name is Jennifer Rubin.

Now Disneyland is probably the last place I’d ever go on earth, right after Mecca during the Hajj. The Hall of Presidents is high-level kitsch. So this is not the worst insult that our president will endure. But it is telling. In fact, it puts into flesh — well, rubber fake flesh — the profound pretense that leftists embarked on after the election. They could not accept that the voters rejected Clinton, and voted for Trump. That outcome was intrinsically invalid. We don’t have the right to make choices like that, do you understand? No more than conservative speakers have the right to appear on campus. Or writers critical of Islam have any claim to be on Twitter. Or conservative/Christian videos may generate income on Youtube.

So America’s elites — from FBI agents in the Deep State to high-placed editors throughout the media — decided to annul the election. If screaming at the sky or blocking streets wouldn’t do any good, they’d try something else. They’d gin up a fake collusion story linking Trump to Russia. They’d try to tar the president in the new sex-abuse scandal. Whatever it takes, no matter how damaging to the country. The tactics employed have been shocking. Imagine if conservatives had reacted to Obama’s election with one tenth this level of sabotage. They would have been called “unpatriotic.” And not without reason.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

There’s another cyborg out there. Her name is Jennifer Rubin. She long positioned herself as a “moderate conservative.” But once Trump gained some traction, her programming went haywire. Rubin began shooting sparks out of her eyes. She joined in the same frenzied attempt to delegitimize the president that so consumes the left.

Don’t believe me? Read Charles Cooke of National Review, a long-time critic of President Trump. He documented in cringeworthy detail how Rubin has denounced Trump for policies she once supported, simply (it seems) because it is Trump who’s enacting them. She’s becoming unhinged, and soon will end up with as much credibility as Louise “Putin’s Dwarves-Infest-My-Underwear-Drawer” Mensch.

In response to Cooke, political chameleon and former Iraq warrior David Frum weighed in. (Frum made his name trying to excommunicate conservatives who criticized Bush’s Iraq plans.) Frum accused Cooke of making a “savagely personal” attack on Rubin.

How sexist. Would anyone claim that a critique of a male columnist who contradicted himself and shredded his principles was “personal”? Is that misguided chivalry? Does Frum think women can’t be held to the standards of rational thought? Perhaps his own bitterness that Trump got elected clouds his judgment. (See Cooke’s withering response to Frum.) One Twitter commentor summed that case up rather well:

“Savagely personal?” @charlescwcooke piece wasn’t “savagely personal.” Know what’s “savagely personal?” Telling someone their views are responsible for Sandy Hook, & that they crave “the blood of Newtown schoolchildren.”

Which you, David Frum, actually did…to Charles Cooke. https://t.co/XcNYK0KOhn

— Jeff B/DDHQ (@EsotericCD) December 19, 2017

We Shouldn’t Be Robots Either

I’m all for holding Trump to very high standards. I don’t resent National Review for criticizing him when he flails around or vents on Twitter. We’re not in North Korea, after all.

If Trump were to flip on any of the crucial promises he made to his core voters, I’d be the first person raking him over the coals. As I wrote in The New York Times on Monday, if Trump

follows bad advice, and gets us mired in some foreign intervention where thousands of U.S. troops are bogged down in pursuit of ideological fantasies. Or if he betrays us on the courts. Or if he fails to get control of our borders. In other words, if he welches on any of the fundamental promises he made conservatives to gain our support, then I’ll feel cheated.

In fact, I’ll go after him hammer and tongs. But Trump hasn’t done any such thing. He has governed rather well. So Mark Levin rightly observed:

Trump, so far the most conservative president since Reaganhttps://t.co/NqaVZsrfiN

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 19, 2017

We shouldn’t be mindless partisans. It’s bad for the country, and bad for our causes. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. We must insist that Trump keep his core promises. We shouldn’t make excuses when his behavior (or that of any politician) falls below our standards. If Trump doesn’t build a wall, appoint pro-life justices, or defend religious liberty, he should have to fear our wrath.

But nothing should make us melt down like misbegotten Disney robots. It’s not a good look. Just ask Ms. Rubin.