Protesters Stop Trump Rally; Washington Post Blames Trump
Well, this isn't good.
Neither is the Post's headline, IMO: "After Months Of Playing Protesters To His Advantage, Donald Trump Is Overwhelmed In Chicago." This seems unduly slanted in favor of protesters / against Trump. I exaggerate in the title...but...isn't that the suggestion? Or am I wrong on that?
What really matters here, IMO, is that protesters prevented Trump from speaking because they disagreed with what he was going to say. And that should have been the headline.
Trump is a buffoon, as should go without saying. But buffoons have Constitutional rights, too. A few protesters at a rally might be excused, I suppose. Shutting the whole thing down, however, can't be.
This, I think, is a fairly good case study in our current political predicament. On the right, we have our all-too-familiar deranged conservative faction. They seem to have come largely unmoored from reality. This is a large, powerful group that has been whipped into a fury of irrationality by conservative media and the GOP. And now they're on a trajectory to nominate a buffoonish, entirely unqualified bullshit artist for President. On the left, we have a re-emergence of the lunatic left: political correctness, "social justice" nonsense, identity politics, and the rest of the incoherent, illiberal swamp. At the core of that disaster are views that simply deny that freedom of speech is important. These groups don't have the raw power of the deranged right, but, at a theoretical level, they are much worse. Conservatives, say about them what you will, at least believe in freedom of speech. On that score--and make no mistake about this--conservatives are far, far closer to liberals than is the illiberal left. Furthermore, conservatives are largely shut out of cultural salients like universities, whereas the lunatic left is extremely powerful there. And, though the mainstream media may not be the tool of the liberal elite that conservatives like to pretend it is, it's certainly more sympathetic to the further reaches of the American left than it is to the further reaches of the right.
My guess is that a lot of liberal-ish folk will see this rally as a victory. I see it as basically the worst kind of defeat: the re-emergent crazy left has become powerful enough to give force to its theoretical contempt for free speech. Trump being a seriously Presidential candidate is a national embarrassment. But this won't change that. All it does is show that now we have two problems not one: now we have to deal with a crazy right and a crazy left.
And, though I normally don't let myself reference such arguments because they are so often misused: the practical consequences are going to be worse. Does anyone think this will diminish Trump's power? Can anyone seriously deny that that the main effect of this will be to strengthen his allure? It's largely the lunatic left, with its de facto support for open borders, its habit of branding all who disagree with it racist, its open contempt for lower-middle America and Western culture, etc. etc. that has done so much to make Trump powerful. And now the loony left has just energized Trump's supporters and taken us one step closer to a Trump presidency.
Neither is the Post's headline, IMO: "After Months Of Playing Protesters To His Advantage, Donald Trump Is Overwhelmed In Chicago." This seems unduly slanted in favor of protesters / against Trump. I exaggerate in the title...but...isn't that the suggestion? Or am I wrong on that?
What really matters here, IMO, is that protesters prevented Trump from speaking because they disagreed with what he was going to say. And that should have been the headline.
Trump is a buffoon, as should go without saying. But buffoons have Constitutional rights, too. A few protesters at a rally might be excused, I suppose. Shutting the whole thing down, however, can't be.
This, I think, is a fairly good case study in our current political predicament. On the right, we have our all-too-familiar deranged conservative faction. They seem to have come largely unmoored from reality. This is a large, powerful group that has been whipped into a fury of irrationality by conservative media and the GOP. And now they're on a trajectory to nominate a buffoonish, entirely unqualified bullshit artist for President. On the left, we have a re-emergence of the lunatic left: political correctness, "social justice" nonsense, identity politics, and the rest of the incoherent, illiberal swamp. At the core of that disaster are views that simply deny that freedom of speech is important. These groups don't have the raw power of the deranged right, but, at a theoretical level, they are much worse. Conservatives, say about them what you will, at least believe in freedom of speech. On that score--and make no mistake about this--conservatives are far, far closer to liberals than is the illiberal left. Furthermore, conservatives are largely shut out of cultural salients like universities, whereas the lunatic left is extremely powerful there. And, though the mainstream media may not be the tool of the liberal elite that conservatives like to pretend it is, it's certainly more sympathetic to the further reaches of the American left than it is to the further reaches of the right.
My guess is that a lot of liberal-ish folk will see this rally as a victory. I see it as basically the worst kind of defeat: the re-emergent crazy left has become powerful enough to give force to its theoretical contempt for free speech. Trump being a seriously Presidential candidate is a national embarrassment. But this won't change that. All it does is show that now we have two problems not one: now we have to deal with a crazy right and a crazy left.
And, though I normally don't let myself reference such arguments because they are so often misused: the practical consequences are going to be worse. Does anyone think this will diminish Trump's power? Can anyone seriously deny that that the main effect of this will be to strengthen his allure? It's largely the lunatic left, with its de facto support for open borders, its habit of branding all who disagree with it racist, its open contempt for lower-middle America and Western culture, etc. etc. that has done so much to make Trump powerful. And now the loony left has just energized Trump's supporters and taken us one step closer to a Trump presidency.
posted by Winston Smith at
12:02 PM
2 Comments:
"Conservatives, say about them what you will, at least believe in freedom of speech." They do? A muslim woman with a shirt that reads "I come in peace" is escorted from a rally and people scream at her as she is escorted away (she said nothing on any video that I saw). A protestor on his way out gets sucker punched. Students hold up signs and yell logans, are surrounded and shouted down, and then led away. And on and on and on...
Well, not every single conservative, of course.
My point is: conservat*ism* is at least committed to free speech in principle. The PC left (though not monolithic) does not clearly accept its importance even in principle.
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