Jon Stewart’s faux rage reveals Dems lost the plot on patriotism

Jon Stewart has been too rich, too privileged and too coddled with undue praise to have much of a grip on the world outside of his bubble.

It’s an unfortunate affliction for the host of a news-adjacent program called “The Daily Show.”

Stewart’s shtick has been the same for years: Present yourself as a down-the-middle everyman disgusted by America’s political landscape — and then spend 90% of your time mocking only 50% of the culprits.

Last week, a years-old Stewart monologue resurfaced on social media and racked up millions of views, including from an account that’s agitating to draft him as a 2028 presidential candidate.

In it, a typically exasperated Stewart railed against Donald Trump’s supporters.

“This country isn’t yours! You don’t own it!” he shouted.

“You don’t own patriotism! You don’t own Christianity!

“You sure as hell don’t own respect for the bravery and sacrifice of military, police and firefighters!” he continued, his enraged tone betraying no small amount of unrighteous indignation.

He was this close to getting it.

Stewart’s anger was unrighteous because Republicans have never claimed to “own” any of these things.

It’s just that, by and large, they’re now the only ones who champion them.

And while there surely remain many patriotic, faithful, America-loving Democrats to be found across the country, their party has, institutionally, left them behind.

This was true when Stewart first delivered his silly lecture in 2016, and it’s even more obvious now — which is why his old clip hit such a nerve.

Back in 2008, amid her husband’s rise in the polls, Michelle Obama declared, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”

A month and change later, the future president himself mused that the inhabitants of “small towns” in the heartland with a dearth of job opportunities “get bitter” and cling to, among other supposed crutches, “religion.”

Upon taking the oath of office, Obama doubled down on these insults.

He quickly embarked upon his infamous Middle Eastern apology tour, decrying the United States’ “arrogance.”

Obamacare, his signature legislative achievement, compelled Catholics and others of faith to violate their conscience by providing contraceptives to employees.

And of course, he repeatedly stoked racial tension and anti-police animus, such as after the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Trayvon Martin in Florida.

The post-Obama era has been even more unkind to Stewart’s thesis.

In recent years, the left has launched wars on America’s Founding Fathers and greatest heroes.

George Floyd’s tragic death in 2020 inspired a hatred for all things red, white, and blue that elected Democrats dutifully supported with iconoclastic fervor.

Recall, for example, how the city of Boston tore down a 140-year old monument celebrating Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation — because it supposedly represented “white saviorism.”

“Residents and visitors to Boston have been uncomfortable with this statue, and its reductive representation of the black man’s role in the abolitionist movement,” declared then-Mayor Marty Walsh.

Not even the hero who paid for liberty with his life could escape Team Blue’s embrace of overt anti-Americanism.

The Floyd riots also launched an outbreak of vile smears and physical attacks against law enforcement officers, who paid a heavy price when Democrats endorsed the lies leveled against them.

The Defund the Police movement deprived departments across the country of both resources and morale, pushing working cops off the force and persuading prospective ones to pursue less demonized vocations.

Ultimately, that hurt not just the police, but the citizens they were sworn to protect.

Moreover, while President Joe Biden touted his Catholic faith when politically convenient, his administration went all-out to push radical gender theory and other un-Christian practices — so much so that his Justice Department made a point of harassing pro-life activists and monitoring rank-and-file Catholics who attended the traditional Latin Mass.

In the face of this recent history, now is the time for Democratic soul-searching.

After conceding two of the last three presidential elections to Donald Trump, they’re seeing their activist wing lash out with violence, rioting against ICE agents and assassinating conservative speaker Charlie Kirk.

And when their candidate for attorney general in Virginia was caught gleefully fantasizing about the deaths of his political opponents’ children, their party leaders shrugged it off.

At the root of all this is contempt for this country as it exists, for the Judeo-Christian values on which it was built, and for the flawed but honorable institutions conservatives still cherish.

The Stewart clip, and his performative outrage, held up a mirror to that ugliness.

If Democrats want to reverse their political fortunes and moral decline, they’ll need a leader with more self-awareness than the oblivious, self-pitying Stewart to rise to the occasion.

Isaac Schorr is a senior editor at Mediaite.