Contrasts

Contrasts

©2016  Ross Williams

One of the best parts of being a libertarian is that I can observe democrats and republicans and criticize both without having anyone be able to level charges of partisanship upon me; they still do, but it's not supportable.  When I criticize republicans it's not because I am a reflexive democrat lashing out; it's because republicans are doing something worthy of criticism.  When I criticize democrats it's not because I'm a knee-jerk republican with a jerky knee; it's  because democrats deserve being kicked.

Around sixty million Americans voted for Donald Trump, whom I've been calling Donnie Combover since early in 2016, and who I may start calling Prez Cheeto due to a comical internet meme I ran across this week.  In this picture, our recent presidents were depicted as six saltine crackers, an oreo, and a cheeto.  It was a deliciously racist swipe that covered all bases, and it leaves me wondering what's next.  My money's on a gummi worm.

But now that we mention racism, of the sixty million Americans who voted for Trump, every single one of them has been called a racist.  This is because democrats by and large do not know how to engage in meaningful public discourse with anyone who disagrees with them, and they resort to silencing dissent before it occurs by branding critics as unworthy of holding valid viewpoints; no discussion is necessary.  …which is the essence of the prejudice and bigotry that they are railing against.

Even so, there are indeed racists who voted for Trump, just as there are racists who voted for Clinton.  Sexists as well.  How many women — Lena Dunham — declared that a woman must vote for Clinton because she's a woman?  That's sexism.  And there were millions more women voting for Clinton because she's a woman than men who refused to vote for her ditto.

It's now the first weekend after the election, right when the democrats feared an uprising of racist attacks against innocent, peace-loving, love-loving, love-trumps-hate vomiting democrats.  And there are indeed reports of this.  Hundreds from across the country.  Notwithstanding that all but a few dozen have been shown to be hoaxes or events from months or even years ago being regurgitated today as current events — as if the Trump Train travels effortlessly through time — there's still the matter of the nearly sixty million racist Trump voters [less the two dozen or so verified activists] who are not doing their part.  They're either not racist, or least no more racist than democrats, or they're lazy.

And frankly, lazy is not a viable criticism of those who vote republican.  Say what else you like, you might be correct.  But they tend to hold jobs.

Even so, of the dozens of actual, verifiable incidents with racist overtones perpetrated by assumed Trump supporters occurring since the election, only three [thus far, in my browse of news sites] involve violence of any form, all of it excessively minor and all individualized.  The rest are incidents where someone said or wrote something that is rude and impolite. …like "all Trump voters are racists."  …or "half of all Trump supporters are deplorable."  Things like that, but going the other way.

Once again, I feel I should remind people that I'm a libertarian.  Liberty means, in part, being able to say and write what you want, even if what you want to say or write is undiluted assholery.   …like "all Trump voters are racists."  A few dozen racist idiots driving around college campuses full of weepy, larval democrats shouting gloating taunts through bullhorns can, accurately, be described as assholery.  But in a free country, assholes are the price of freedom.

Yes, it's bigotry and prejudice, but it's no more bigoted and prejudicial than the actions of the few tens of thousands of anti-cheeto idiots doing, essentially, the same thing.  I say "essentially".  That means there are pertinent distinctions between the two groups of assholes.  Distinctions which I shall point out.

Assholes using free speech upon self-pitying democrats did so exclusively by taking the message to the target, putting themselves at risk in doing so.  One such asshole was dragged from his car and fairly severely beaten for his efforts. 

Assholes using free speech upon President Cheeto and his voters, on the other hand, usually did not talk to their target.  Yes, there were several hundred who formed a human centipede around various Trump Towers in major cities, but most of the meemies did their screaming in Portland Oregon and Oakland California, and other safe spaces where republicans are virtually nonexistent.  When a staple of your political philosophy is the procedural  obliteration of the Second Amendment, and the people you are shouting slanderous comments toward do not subscribe to compulsory disarmament, why take unnecessary chances?

And they did not limit themselves to screaming.  In Oakland they set fires by throwing gasoline bombs, toppling cars, breaking store windows and … hey, since the windows are broken, let's not waste the opportunity.  Nothing says we're against greedy corporate bastards elected president who we've labeled as automatically racist like fulfilling racial stereotypes and looting everything you can stuff in your pockets or otherwise carry away.

In Portland, they threw rocks and bottles, and at least one trash can, at cops [hitting none, sadly but not unexpectedly], smashed dozens of windshields in nearby parking lots and one vehicle being driven by a woman caught in the middle of it all who was trying to get to "an emergency" of unspecified significance.  But they did all this while shouting "peaceful protest!!", so that makes it all right.  Apparently.

Not content with inarticulate rioting and mayhem, the political philosophy given over to sensitivity, inclusion and an end to school bullying beat a California high school student for having posted pro-Trump comments online.  It was a girl who was beaten.  By another girl.  One was black, the other white.  I'll give you less-than-even odds at placing them.  The attack was recorded — for posterity, undoubtedly — by a friend of the attacker.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the standard disposition of in-school assault in this affluent California school district is expulsion.  But given the circumstances, "officials" are looking to make this a "teaching moment" by instructing the victim of the assault on the motivations her attacker had in committing assault and battery.  And if this sensitivity training is anything like the rest, the victim will be required to attend, and will be compelled to acknowledge fault and responsibility when it's over, and then promise to never do it again.  Failure to do these will result in punishment.

In a similar vein, my wife reported, on Wednesday evening, that a number of her friends from high school she keeps in touch with online have children that just couldn't bear going to school that day, out of fear.  I initially thought they were the children of tear-stained democrats taught by their schools and/or parents to be irrationally paranoid, but now I must conclude them to be Trump supporters presciently wary of the children of irrationally paranoid democrats.

These are exaggerated examples of the same infantile behavior seen nationwide, most notably, at Yale University.  The election coincided with their midterms, and one economics professor made the exam optional for those students so traumatized by learning they were in the electoral minority that they couldn't get out of bed and stop crying.  Because, as so eloquently stated in 2008 by the new president we acquired then, elections have participation trophies that convey equal power and privilege to the loser.  Or something along those lines.  Which is why we saw millions of bawling, blubbering sick-calls in to the office on the first Wednesday in November of both '08 and '12, made by republicans who couldn't bear to face the day when their guy lost the election.

Except we didn't.  The only million moron march visible today is populated by democrats.  In 2013, after Elizabeth 'Pocahontas' Warren successfully ran for US Senator in Massachusetts, she complained that the system was rigged against outsiders in favor of insiders and incumbents — a well-known and accurate pan-historical reality of all politics built on democracy.  She was right, for possibly the first and absolutely the last time in her life.  Earlier in 2016, Donald 'Cheeto' Trump made the same claim, and millions of democrats, led by Pocahontas Warren, circled around him and claimed he was an outlaw unwilling to accept the results of the election that was indisputably going to be decided in favor of Hillary 'Medusa' Clinton — the insider and [proving that once is not enough] incumbent-once-removed.

Fast forward to early this morning, and the online petition demanding that the Electoral College abandon its Constitutional presumptions and elect, instead, the Former First Lady Macbeth has exceeded two million signatures.  One-in-thirty of those who voted democrat are declaring that they are not content being assholes about the election, or even moved to violence by the election, or simply driven to puerile catatonia by the election.  One-in-thirty democrats are declaring they cannot accept the results of the election.

Democrats make a number of assertions about those who are not democrats.  Yet every sin they accuse others of perpetrating are committed, first and primarily, by democrats themselves.  Projection apparently serves democrats in the place of introspection and self-awareness.