Schadenfreude September continues! (posted 9/9/20)

The tendency of Leftists to project their own flaws onto conservatives – the psychologists call this “projection” – never ceases to amuse, even as it aggravates.  A few past examples:

In 2016, the DNC and the Hillary campaign paid Brit Christopher Steele, who paid a bunch of Russian ex-spies (among others) to come up with a fabricated dossier which falsely accused Trump of colluding with the Russians, which means that CAW CAW and the Dems did their best to collude with the Russians to defeat Trump. 

And then they spent 3 years screaming that Trump colluded with the Russians.

The left elected Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy and dozens of other lecherous leftist men who spent decades leaving no female staffers’ derrieres un-groped, and covered up for them all. 

Then leftist sugar daddies Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein — and leftist “journalists” Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose and Garrison Keillor, and leftist pols like Anthony Weiner, etc. etc. — got caught.  So leftists naturally accused conservatives of sexually mistreating women.

Last week’s fun new example happened over at the Atlantic – where “Truth Dies in Flatulence”™ — when a partisan hack “journalist” and a handful of anonymous sources tried smear #3,672 since 2016: Trump hates the military. 

Before you ask, “How stupid do they think we are?” (spoiler alert: the answer is, “As stupid as they themselves actually are.”), you have to admit that they chose their false quotes well.  Trump is awfully quick with the “losers” sobriquet, and his stupid, old comment about McCain (“I like my heroes to be people who weren’t captured.”) almost makes it momentarily believable. 

Until you remember his well-known personal animus against everyone who says mean things about him, and his particular grudge against McCain.  (Which I think most conservatives share: McCain was a brave man and a hero when young, but he became a shallow, petty, trifling politician by the end of his life.  In fact, his biography is a cautionary tale about the ever-present dangers of vanity and duplicity when someone becomes a politician.)  Whatever else you can say about Trump, you cannot say that he’s been disrespectful toward the military. 

The schadenfreude in this story for me comes because it is such a textbook example of leftist projection.  They falsely accuse Trump of the terrible sin of doing what they have reflexively done for my entire lifetime: denigrate the military.

Off the top of my head:  Vietnam-era leftist creeps slandered returning soldiers as “baby killers;” traitorous shrew Jane Fonda sided with Communist murderers against Americans trying to stop them from enslaving their own people; and Lurch Kerry denounced our troops during Vietnam as a bunch of proto-Genghis Khans, happily torturing innocent Vietnamese women and children. 

Every leftist celebrity with a camera and a studio expense account for hookers and blow spent the 1970s making anti-military movies depicting all vets as either immoral monsters or psychotics, and their mentees 30 years later did the same with anti-military movies smearing the vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Dem senator Dick “nobody ever calls him Richard” Durbin compared our troops to Nazis.  And every Dem president since Carter has repeatedly tried to cut our military budget.

So spare us your hand-wringing about Donald Trump allegedly being anti-soldier.  You cornered that market a long time ago, you hypocritical jerks.

Another journalistic malfeasance/malpractice-fest happened in the coverage of Biden’s doddering performance at a “Q&A” session last week. 

First, an African American woman – supposedly an “average citizen” with an “honest question” for the posthumous candidate — blew the cover story that Biden was there answering random questions.  She said, “I’m going to be honest, Mr. Biden.  I was told to go off this paper, but I can’t.” 

Her question was nothing especially unusual, but if the “journalists” in the room were worthy of the title, they should have followed up.  Can you imagine the firestorm that would erupt if it were discovered that Trump had supporters planted in the audience, to ask him pre-scripted questions? 

But it got worse from there.  Biden bumbled and mumbled through several planted questions, and he eventually dropped a cringe-making, pandering reference intended to prove to black folks that he holds them in the highest regard.  “The light bulb was invented by a black guy, not by Thomas Edison.  Okay?”

Forget the hyper annoying tone, and the tiny detail that Biden is 100% wrong, and the offensive nature of reducing everything to race.  Even if a black guy did invent the lightbulb – good for him – but so what? 

Are we really supposed to get into the racial grievance business over every invention from the past?  Should we gloat when we see a black family driving in a car or using an I-phone?  “That’s ours!  White guys invented those!  Stop using them, you cultural appropriators!  Get out of that car right now, and give me your cell phone.  And in exchange, I’ll give you this lightbulb.” 

Does it really help improve the plight of any black people if we attribute the invention of the lightbulb to a black man?  Does anyone on death row ever think, “Well, my dad abandoned me and mom was a junkie, and the Democrats who run my deteriorating city stuck me in terrible schools and a crime-infested neighborhood.  And killing that busload of nuns as part of my gang initiation means that I’m going to spend the rest of my horrific life in this hell-on-earth jail cell.”

“But now that I know that a century ago, a guy with roughly my same coloring invented the lightbulb, I’m feeling pret-tee good about life!  I mean sure, it would be nice not to have to spend the rest of the month fashioning a spork into a shiv to defend myself with, but – all things considered — that lightbulb thing is really something to hang my hat on.”

Besides which, even when this kind of thing is well-intentioned, it tends to backfire, because the racial cheerleading rarely lives up to its billing.  The Greeks have drama and democracy and philosophy and ouzo; the Chinese have paper and fireworks and a Great Wall and a cool form of checkers; the Jews have relativity and curing diseases and comedy and Nobel prizes and Sandy Koufax; the Italians have Trajan’s column and the colosseum  and the aqueducts and Rocky Marciano and pizza; the Germans have Beethoven and the BMW and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Nena. 

The Brits have Shakespeare – which should be enough – but also Milton and the Spitfire and the Magna Carta and C.S. Lewis and the Sutton Hoo burial hoard.   Scots have scotch – which should be enough – but also Robert Burns and golf and some music that my Appalachian ancestors turned into gold. 

I could go on and on. 

But any time you have a condescending lefty cheerleading for any supposedly under-appreciated group, the verbal pats on the head always fall short:  “The proud Albanian people have given us… several Belushis.  And let us never forget that the Rock is half-Samoan.  And women have greatly contributed to science, as I can prove by pointing to Marie Curie, and… I guess… that lady who came up with Spanx.  Also, George Washington Carver gave us peanut butter.” 

Thanks, condescending liberal dope.  And by the way, you don’t have to convince us that all people have inherent worth.  We already love and value women – some of us are married to one, and have fathered a few, and were even given birth to by one.  And we don’t often think about Albanians and Samoans, truth be told, but we’re still cool with them.  And none of us have ever said that black lives don’t matter.  So hold the lecture, you arrogant goofs.

Also, does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the guy who wants to demonstrate his racial wokeness bona fides by citing the example of the light bulb… hasn’t had a light bulb go on over his head since he got the idea to plagiarize a speech from a Welsh politician in 1987?

Avenatti/ Spanx-inventing-lady 2020!