It is easier for the world to accept
a simple lie than a complex truth
— Alexis de Tocqueville
UPDATED VERSION: this is an updated and lengthened version of an article which appeared on American Thinker four days before January 6, 2024
After more than three years — and as Democrats in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois (vainly) attempted to ban Donald Trump from their states' ballot — it is beyond time for the media to stop "reporting" that "Trump tried to overturn a presidential election" and to quit referring matter-of-factly: to "the election that Trump lost"; to "Trump's defeat" and his "baseless" "false claims"; and to "Trump is challenging the results" of Joe "Biden's victory (in, say, Georgia)" and to "swing the election in his favor".
It is equally time for news organizations to stop "reporting" that the four (who's counting?) indictments are nothing more than valid or understandable (if ill-timed) reactions to punish Trump for his ("criminal") attempts to "disenfranchise voters" and thus "subvert democracy."
This is not a neutral, objective, and non-partisan view of of the facts of the 2020 election. Far from it. No. It is the (self-serving) DNC version. It is akin to asking "When did you stop beating your wife?"
Phrases like “no evidence”, “unproven
claims”, “sham election investigations”, and “false claims of election
fraud” come straight from the Democratic Party. At a minimum, readers and viewers are used to circumspect "allegedlys," to prudent "reportedlys," and to cautious "accused ofs". What happened to them?
At this point, a crucial question arises: What is Donald Trump's version of the 2020 election?
Remember that his whole message — as was that of the protestors on January 6, 2021 (not a single one of them, to my recollection, brandishing weapons other than cel phone cameras for selfies) — is exactly, or almost exactly, the same — i.e., that it was the Democrats who tried to overturn (and, indeed, who succeeded in overturning) the 2020 election and thus democracy (hence his, and the protesters', far from unreasonable anger).
We could even use similar wordings: "the election that Biden lost", "Joe's defeat" and "false claims", and "the Democrats tried to change/challenge (and succeeded in changing/challenging) the results". Indeed, the 45th President called it "stealing the election" and thus… if anyone disenfranchised voters and undermined democracy, it was the party of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
Why — why on Earth — should leftists be shielded against "inflammatory rhetoric" and even against, yes, (the threat of) violence if and when they commit(ted) election fraud? The Left's mobs are constantly using inflammatory rhetoric ("racist" being their fallback slur and, indeed, the drama queens' main talking point) as well as violence, from 2020's George Floyd riots to the current pro-Gaza demonstrations — while avoiding jail or even trials and opprobrium itself.
Given that the charges are basically the same, shouldn't a media that was neutral, objective, and independent — instead of acting like the purveyors of (to use Trump's expression) fake news — give equal space to both charges?
The way that even conservative outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, not to mention RINOs like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, buy into and repeat the Left's "talking points" and double standards is disconcerting. (A WSJ editorial defended Donald Trump against "lawfare" — to wield war on people through the legal system, by imprisoning them or "merely" ruining them, a tactic the Democrats have already used on such Trump allies as General Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani — while calling his "post-election behavior" in 2020 "deceitful and destructive" and referring to his "disgraceful" "malfeasance". While National Review also pushed back against the Trump indictments, all the while feeling the need to point out that it "condemned Trump’s appalling actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election" as well as "Trump’s deceptions": "Mendacious rhetoric in seeking to retain political office is damnable.")
After proving, conclusively — quoting Justice Antonin Scalia, comparing Jan. 6 with the 1960s race riots, and using Webster's 1828 Dictionary — that January 6, 2021 Was Not an Insurrection, one of Reason's prominent constitutional law professors nevertheless feels it necessary to end with "Like Ilya [Somin], I am appalled by Trump's behavior on January 6, 2021, and I will not vote for him under any circumstances because of it." Why, ?! You have just proven that
Far from it being a rebellion, the January 6th riot was a two and one-half hour event in the Capitol City of the third most populous country in the world. No one came to the riot with guns even though guns are widely available in this country. When former President Trump asked them to leave, they left.Why then, speak of the "wrong that Trump committed on January 6, 2021"?
An otherwise outstanding post at the Powerline Blog by the usually outstanding , gives us, paragraph after paragraph, evidence of cheating and lying by Democrats. And still, that can't prevent himself from being polite and handing some rope to the opposition, ending said post with the words, Trump's "obviously indefensible claims", and with these immortal lines:
In sum, the indictment does not make out a case that Trump is a criminal who should go to prison. But it does make out a strong case that Trump is a dishonest egomaniac with terrible judgment who should never again be entrusted with a responsible government position.
You have just written 15 paragraphs detailing the Democrats' lying, cheating, and criminal interference in the 2020 election, — not least in the very indictments that have been served up by Bolshevist prosecutors. Where do those two final sentences fit in except to prove that with enough pressure and broadsides, the Drama Queens' left-leaning propaganda will overwhelm even the most open-minded and the most honest brain?
Why is being a(n allegedly) "dishonest egomaniac with terrible judgment" worse than being a lying cheat with Bolshevist tendencies or than being a fellow Republican who cannot see that the other side are lying cheats with Bolshevist tendencies?
Even Communist Dissidents Fall for the Democrats'
Soviet-Style Demonization of Their Opponents
Even
refuges from (formerly or currently) communist countries — who are
usually not shy about informing Western audiences just how totalitarian,
say, the Woke movement or the statue takedown is —are not immune from
what we the might call the DNC's propaganda. When everybody agrees on
what an awful "narcissist" Trump allegedly is, don't they recognize that
this is one of the ways that the Kremlin maligned (or that Beijing's
CCP maligns) their fellow dissidents and going as far as sending them to
insane asylums for the "benign" purpose of curing them?
Across the Atlantic, the usually outstanding (an author born in communist Romania whose IREF — Institut de Recherches Economiques et Fiscales — and IFRAP — Institut Français de Recherche sur les Administrations Publiques — try to take on the Deep State in France the way FEE or the Mises Institute do in the US) pulls no punches with the Biden family but feels the necessity to come down on Donald Trump with une tonne de briques:
[l']ancien président, que ses frasques et son détestable caractère rendent aussi imprévisible qu’ infréquentable (the former president, whose escapades and loathsome character make him as unpredictable as unfit to be associated with).
Why can't a refuge from Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist nightmare (just as is one from Brezhnev's nightmare) see that OrangeManBad's "loathsome" attitude is explainable by his disgust with America's left-leaning politicians, the corruption that they engender, and their desire to turn (or "fundamentally transform") America into a banana republic like Cuba or… Romania?
But the most astonishing Eastern European refuge is 's "comrade" at Reason. I have followed and admired — whose résumé takes a page or more to fill — ever since Glenn Reynolds started quoting him on Instapundit a dozen years ago. Just this February, penned Remembering Lenin—the First Great Communist Mass Murderer.
You would think that a refuge from a communist nightmare would, again,
see through the dubious claims of government operatives.
But again and again,
ignores the numerous anomalies of the 2020 election (see below) while
taking for granted the Democrat Party's claims of Trump's defeat (is it
out of gratefulness to the West that otherwise rational Eastern European
refuges set aside their brains and take Western governments, even when
left-leaning — all or most of whom were supporters of the USSR's
communists — at their word?), and claims that Donald Trump is guilty of treason and that the January 6 "insurrection" could have hurt or killed Capitol police officers.
When you have bad policies and cannot sustain your authority based on quantifiable results, you do what Democrats have done these last few years: you weaponize the government against your enemies.
It is not a novel construct. In 1918 the oppressive Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin (the 100th anniversary of whose death was on Jan. 21) laid out his plan to keep the communists in power with his infamous “Hanging Order.”
Number 1. “Hang in full view of the people,” resembles the multiple, frivolous impeachment attempts against Trump by Democrats. You would have to surrender your reason to Woke-DNC dogma not to conclude that the Deep Blue “Deep Staters” are not targeting Trump. A 76-year-old man, never arrested, rings up 90 felonies these past 12 months as he runs against a sitting president. Really? Maybe he’s just a late bloomer?
… Number 2. “Publish their names.” Clearly the “doxing and swatting” of GOP leaders, from Lois Lerner to the IRS agent who turned over the tax returns of Donald Trump and Elon Musk to The New York Times, fit this category.
Number 3. “Seize their grain.” It is what NY Attorney General Letitia James is doing to Trump by using some novel legal theory which has neither victim nor crime to take Trump’s properties away from him.
Number 4. “Designate Hostages — in a fashion people see and tremble.” If this is not the essence of the vast prosecutorial overreaction to Jan. 6, then just arrest me. A few hundred men who looked like the cast of Duck Dynasty on a confusing day walked through our Capitol (“The People’s House”) and monkeyed with Nancy Pelosi’s podium. Now many of them sit in solitary confinement, perhaps for up to 20 years. For trespassing.
Republicans Play the Rules of Golf
While the Democrats are Playing Ice Hockey
I don't like the idea of being protected by these shepherds
who are no better animals than us,
and who very often are worse.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
Speaking of which: Meanwhile, Joe
Biden's — far worse — instances of corruption, both as senator and as
occupant of the White House (over $20 million in bribes from China's
communists?!), are duly opposed but never with such
vitriolic wording. The opposition is quite restrained and, even if
principled, almost of the "Ho-hum" variety (rarely, if ever, loaded
words like "disgrace(ful)", "appalling", or "malfeasance"). I don't
remember Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, or Liz Cheney — not to mention the
Department of Justice — getting worked up about any of the Biden family's shenanigans.
You might as well say, Well, of course, the Soviet tribunals went too far. That goes without saying. But still, with regards to individual cases such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov (or, say, a Romanian opponent to Ceaușescu or the Hong Kong dissidents), surely those losers in some way did deserve their fate.
When will Republicans and conservatives (as well as the general American population, for that matter) finally get familiar with The Two Rules of Modern Journalism? Why do conservatives so often suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and feel the need to be "fair" and to give in to the self-serving views of Democrats, who have never harbored an iota of goodwill for them and who are in no way willing to reciprocate?
(See the GOP video of 12 minutes of one Democrat after another, from Al Gore to Stacy Abrams, contesting one election result after another since 2000; just as important, notice that while a troubling number of naive conservatives have expressed a degree of sympathy towards the Democrats' contention that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election — even in spite of the fraud — not a single member of the donkey party ever does so with regards to their own party; in addition, none of the mainstream media outlets can point to many an MSM report telling Jimmy Carter or Karine Jean-Pierre that it is time to "move on", much less informing them that they might simply be wrong.)
As Bernie Marcus, Home Depot co-founder, mentioned 11-12 years ago, explaining "the rules of the game":
… the Republicans play the rules of … golf. In golf, if you miss a putt or you touch the ball, you call a shot on yourself. We're playing the game of golf. The Democrats are playing ice hockey. It's a killer game. And that's the difference in politics.
The genius of Donald Trump was, and is, to have the GOP play the game of ice hockey as well. (This — in turn — is the precise explanation why Trump is hated to such an extent.)
"Unproven Claims"? The Principle of Fairness:
Dispassionate Examinations of the Rival Contentions
There is nothing more prone to error than common opinion.
A good isolated observer actually has more weight on my
mind
than a thousand superficial or self-interested accounts
which repeat one another.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
But let us take a moment to examine the principle of fairness: as far as fairness is concerned, if a reporter, or a common citizen, were to examine the rival charges dispassionately, wouldn't an intellectually honest person (journalist or other) feel the need to conclude that there is more evidence in Trump's favor?
Isn't it "evidence" of a stolen election that election offices in a handful of states in which Trump was leading after voting ended closed at or after midnight — a move that is absolutely unprecedented — and when they re-opened the next morning, several hours later, Joe Biden was suddenly ahead?
I could go on about the efforts to change state election laws, the House retaining all GOP seats while adding another dozen, and mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, the mules controversy, as well as the Twitter Files, with institutions (Death of the American Voter), social media, and the MSM all ganging up to malign stories such as the New York Post's report on Hunter Biden's laptop, etc…
DINESH AND Mollie Hemingway OTHER MOVIE SUGGESTED Rigged (Death of the American Voter)
As Del May writes on American Thinker,
For me, the biggest give-away that the election was rigged is how the Dems stopped every attempt at an audit. If they had nothing to hide, then let the Repubs audit. If there was no rigging, then the audits would make the Repubs look like fools. So, why didn't they let the Repubs audit??
But I would refer you to Matt Kane's outstanding must-read article at American Thinker, where he discusses "unconstitutional changes to state election laws,
unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically
improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud" as well as the fact that "Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder
than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a
conspiracy theory."
I would also refer to the Time Magazine article of February 4, 2021 — less than a month after the so-called January 6 "riots" by "thugs" that represented "threats to democracy" — in which Molly Ball approvingly reports on a “cabal” (Time’s own choice of words) of “left-wing activists and business titans” working to "save" the election from Trump. In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds — who points out that although "Jan. 6, 2021 … has been called an “insurrection,” it was
closer to a campus mob occupying the dean’s office than a coup d’etat" — reports that the "'cabal' that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us" and on the world
pushed mail-in voting. It moved to block election fraud suits brought by Trump and supporters. It employed social media censorship to mute pro-Trump arguments and amplify anti-Trump arguments. It sponsored protests.
Isn't it evidence that recently, in one of the (Soviet-style?) court cases against Donald Trump, the Special Counsel, Jack Smith, has asked the judge (Tanya Chutkan) to block the former president from presenting January 6 evidence, 1) effectively not allowing an American citizen his First Amendment rights, 2) effectively not allowing the former president to defend himself, and 3) effectively not assuming that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty?
To quote on a post on the 14th Amendment:
Apart from those — numerous — pieces of evidence, for myself, there is one simple instance that stands out above the rest.
How conceivable is it that a doddering professional politician with nary a history of a gift for gab or one of national popularity (unlike, say, deservedly or not, Ted Kennedy) would not only beat the Republican Party's rock star (Donald Trump) in votes, but also the Democrat Party's rock star (Barack Obama) — especially since Joe Biden's (rare) campaign speeches and (rare) campaign appearances hardly attracted any significant number of individuals, let alone crowds, and since, indeed (upon the strange advice of VIPs like Nancy Pelosi), Sleepy Joe hardly left his basement to campaign?
By contrast, let us be fair and examine the left's talking points: one of the main reasons many of us are skeptical pertains to the very fact that the mainstream media has been trying to stifle all debate on the subject, and that from the earliest hours of November 4, 2020. Trump "continues to argue, falsely, that the 2020 election was stolen from him" (New York Times, Aug. 8, 2023).
All the left does is repeat incessantly — they don't even bother using
their usual weasel tactic of referring to (unnamed) experts, although
that is implicit — that Trump's claim are "baseless" or "unfounded", if
not an outright lie (or "the big lie"), all the while calling us
skeptics "conspiracy theorists", without ever giving, at least once in a
while, some evidence thereof.
Just presenting one in-depth single article or news story in which every one of Trump's claims is meticulously picked apart and debunked might be enough, and the New York Times and the Washington Post could refer to it by linking the word "baseless" or "lie" in every every other subsequent news story to it. But that "ur-article" does not seem to exist in any editorial office.
As Dennis Prager puts it, in today's America (and world),
all you have to say to people who went to college is "Experts say" … As I've said for years, for the secular college graduate, "Experts say" is what "Thus sayeth the Lord" has been to religious people for thousands of years. They have just exchanged authority from the Lord to "the experts"…
In this case, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN don't even use "experts say", knowing that that would sound ridiculous (who on Earth — what individual — can be called an unassailable expert on the matter of election results if there have been shenanigans which by definition are stealthy and which the so-called expert cannot possibly know anything about) while betting — incredibly, with no lack of success — on nobody challenging their basic gaslighting about Trump's "baseless" claims and his desire to "overturn" an election and, indeed, democracy itself.
More data backing this up: most Americans are *not* leftwing, and yet leftwing ideology dominates all our big institutions. There needs to be a thorough effort to depoliticize these institutions. https://t.co/bqZidYFmbn pic.twitter.com/tUkLkG6mJ9
— Jacob Helberg (@jacobhelberg) September 23, 2024
I'm not very religious myself, but if you read the books in Dennis Prager's Rational Bible series ("The title of [these five commentaries] is “The Rational Bible” because its
approach is entirely reason-based … The reader is never asked to accept
anything on faith alone"), you will get an idea of the real
reason why religion has such a bad reputation. What does it mean to be
religious? Does it mean believing in (alleged) fairy tales or going to
Church/Synagogue with foolish believers with silly smiles on their
faces?
It means nothing but this, says Dennis Prager: live and work (and… govern) while trying to integrate the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments
into your life. Now, before you protest that you don't want, or need, a
religious lesson: think of "do not steal" and "do not kill" (do not murder
in the original Hebrew); isn't that pretty good governance for a
society that even an atheist can, without renouncing his atheism or
agnosticism and without joining any religion, subscribe to?!
Ah, but there's the rub: to the leftist, actually, the 10 Commandments turn out to be one heck of a major problem.
Leftists at the head of a nanny government obviously don't think you are their equals, socialists do not believe in "do not covet" (taxes), communists do not believe in "do not kill", nanny governments do not believe in "honoring your father and mother" (your family) — certainly not above Big Brother — and above all, all of the above do not believe in "Do not bear false witness."
(If you protest, "Let's not get carried away, Erik, surely you
cannot deny that some amount of taxes are necessary in life?!" provides the answer: "Those who live under the law have an equal right in the making of
the law, [while] those who make the law have a corresponding duty to live
under the law." Incidentally, this also pertains to the January 6 kerfuffle…)
Bearing false witness: leftists allow themselves to lie to others, and
they allow themselves to lie to themselves — all to bask in their own
valor and glory, as these knights in shining armor turn everything
upside down.
Because they are Drama Queens, leftists allow themselves to wield double standards and
to lie about global warming, about the rise of the oceans, about Republicans being Hitler, about leftist riots versus right-wing protests, about illegal immigrants and how they have no papers, about racism, about COVID, about 1776 replaced with 1619,
about American culture (structural racism), about sexism, about rape culture DANSK LINK, about men identifying as girls participating in women's sports, about suicide being a benevolent
thing ("Do not kill" applies also to yourself), about the horrendous (Bible-based) Western civilization,
about the ghastly sins of despicable Republicans like Donald Trump,
George W Bush, and Ronald Reagan vs the "ho-hum" at-best-insignificant
lapses of valorous Democrats like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and the
Clintons, about how the MAGA movement is traitorous, about how the January 6 protesters deserve
up to two dozen years in prison while releasing true criminals onto the
streets, about how the communists were honorable ("sure they killed
millions of people, but, hey, they had good
intentions"), and about wokeness uncovering a true picture of society.
In short, they can lie about how despicable their neighbors are and
how valorous they themselves are to attack said neighbors, aka their
(non-threatening) adversaries.
Speaking of the Bible,
incidentally, does it not mention false pride as the cardinal sin?
Wouldn't that cover yourself self-describing as valorous for "saving the
planet" and "saving
democracy"?
No wonder leftists praise l'état laïc and want the Judeo-Christian religion to have nothing to do with politics…
It also explains the antisemitism and anti-Americanism through the centuries and the millennia, Israel and the United States being the two nations that have most followed the precepts of the Judeo-Christian Bible, not least the Golden Rule (and have prospered as a consequence) — and thus at least tried to prevent politicians and citizens alike from lying to others as well as to themselves. This brings us, full circle, back to Dennis Prager, writing (in Whites Aren't Hated for Slavery but for Making America and the West),
the left … hates America, which it regards as the paragon of capitalism. By becoming the most successful country in history, America, the quintessential capitalist country, remains a living rebuke to everything the left stands for. If America can be brought down, every left-wing egalitarian dream can be realized. … What the left does very much seek is to destroy America as we have known it -- the capitalist and Judeo-Christian enclave of personal freedom.
Mark Levin's latest book is called The Democrat Party Hates America. The truth, as we have seen with the Woke movement, is that leftist scholars and activists hate American institutions, the Left hates American values, leftists hate American history, leftists hate American liberty, leftists abhor the Judeo-Christian religion (because of its Golden Rule and its Ten Commandments), and Democrats have hated Republicans since the movement was born in 1854.
Lincoln in 1860: "when you [Democrats] speak of us Republicans,
you do so only to denounce us as reptiles or [as] outlaws"
Democratic peoples have a natural taste for freedom…
But they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion
for equality; they want equality in freedom, and,
if they cannot attain equality in freedom,
they will want equality in slavery.
— Alexis de Tocqueville
And they have been quite willing to lie about all of the above. It has been common to debate to what degree the Civil War was caused by slavery or states' rights. I have a third explanation: the conflict was caused by the election, in 1860, of a "ghastly" Republican to the White House. (Shades of 2016…) And there was so much outrage among Democrats in 1860 that they proceeded to try to tear the nation apart over the next four years (in a far bloodier way, of course, than in the 21st century). //// While slavery and states' rights have traditionally rivaled in the debate as the two main causes of the outbreak of Civil War, perhaps a third reason should be entertained: the election of a ghastly Republican.
Only a dozen years ago, James Carville referred to (modern-day) Republicans as "reptiles". And over 160 years ago, when an Illinois lawyer felt the necessity to
address himself to Southerners and Democrats (during his Cooper Union
speech in February 1860), guess which term Abraham Lincoln reached for:
…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles [!], or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [Republicanism] as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.
"Reptiles, outlaws, pirates, murderers"… How often have Republicans been called (domestic) terrorists in the past dozen years? (And in the years, in the decades, before that?) Don't we hear every four years that the latest Republican candidate is showing signs of fascism and, indeed, that he probably is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler, one who can be expected to start World War III?
When you hear that your opponent is a Nazi or a racist,
it from illogical to do everything in one's poser to prevent Adolf
Hitler from becoming leader of your country. But the demonizing Drama Queens (especially those in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois)
ought to remember that during the 1860 election, the name of Abe
Lincoln was also removed from the ballots of ten states, to wit, 10 of
the Southern slave states all of which were all under the firm hand of
the Democrat Party.
We keep hearing that we — and that 2024's Republican candidate (be it Trump or one of his opponents) — should not re-litigate the 2020 election. That would be tedious and divisive and "it is time to move on and put it behind us." Doesn't that "rational" piece of advice come from the DNC as well?
Isn't the issue of stealing an election (along with… the attendant subversion of democracy) important? Isn't it paramount?
Isn't
the main issue of our times issue that a major political party tried,
successfully, to undermine America's democracy? And no, the culprits
were not Donald Trump and the GOP.
In that perspective, never forget that it is not January 6 (2021) — repeated, deliberately, ad nauseam by the Democrats and the mainstream media alike — that is the critical date; no, the significant date is November 3 (2020).
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