Standards for criticizing the president have changed

The Clinton Herald ^ | July 1, 2018 | Taylor Armerding, CNHI News Service

[2ndDivisionVet]

Recall not long ago or far away, when President Barak Obama was in office and the prevailing view on the left was not only that any substantive criticism of his policies was racist, but that it was tantamount to sedition.

Recall in 2010, when the conservative Tea Party held a big rally in Washington and made a lot of noise, including allegedly yelling some racial slurs at some congressmen (an allegation that was never documented, even with smartphones everywhere) but didn’t attack or harass anyone physically and even cleaned up after themselves.

That was labeled overt sedition, incitement to violence and just one small step from lynching.

Now we have a different president from a different party. Now we have an impending vacancy on the Supreme Court, with the imminent retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

And now, yes, all those rules have changed and the best, most patriotic – even divinely endorsed – thing you can do is hurl personal insults, harass, threaten and endorse violence against anyone who doesn’t think and see the world the way “progressives” do.

Now we have actor Robert De Niro shouting an expletive targeting President Donald Trump at the Tony Awards and getting a loud ovation.

Now we have actor Peter Fonda calling for the president’s 12-year-old son to be taken from his mother and “put into a cage with pedophiles.” He later issued an apology saying he was upset about children brought into the country illegally by their parents being separated from them — as if that’s what U.S. authorities were doing, putting those children into cages with pedophiles.

Now we have comedian Bill Maher openly wishing for a recession, no matter who gets hurt by it — of course, he won’t — if that’s what it takes to put Democrats back in power.

Now we have restaurants kicking out people who work for the current administration because of their political, never mind religious, beliefs.

This isn’t because people like White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (told to leave the Red Hen restaurant) or Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (shouted out of having dinner at a restaurant and then harassed and jeered at her home) were demanding special service that would reflect their identity or politics. They were just asking for what was on the menu for everybody – no parallel with the recent Supreme Court decision regarding a baker who declined to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Now we have U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, of California, not some fringe member of Congress but a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, who has applauded violence against her political opponents in the past. Now she praises the treatment of Sanders and Nielsen – which echoes the kind of treatment that blacks suffered during this country’s shameful era of racial discrimination that continued for decades even after slavery was abolished.

“If you see anybody from that (administration) in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd! … Tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere!“

In other words, “Anybody who doesn’t see the world the way I do shouldn’t be allowed to stay in the country.”

And she’s accusing Trump and his backers of hate?

Is that really the sort of precedent for political disagreement that Waters and others want to set? Is this what they think former First Lady Michelle Obama meant when she said, “When they go low, we go high”?

Is this what they think the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend?”

And these aren’t even enemies. Outside of a loathsome, far-out fringe of white supremacists on the right and groups like Antifa on the left, the overwhelming majority of those in both parties are simply political opponents who have a different view of what is best for the country.

Fortunately there are still a few adults among Democrats, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Obama chief strategist David Axelrod.

"No one should call for the harassment of political opponents,” Schumer said. “That's not right. That's not American."

Axelrod said he was "amazed and appalled by the number of folks on the left who applauded the expulsion of (Sanders) and her family from a restaurant."

That took considerable courage from both, since they will be portrayed by the far left as enabling “fascism” and being too weak to stand up to a president they say is bent on being the next Mussolini or Hitler.

Which would be funny if those declarations weren’t so serious and weren’t being used to foment violence.

Fascist? Really? Those who lived under real fascism risked their lives trying to escape it. Why would tens of thousands of illegal immigrants be flooding across U.S. borders if they thought they were going to be living under Hitler?

I understand the anger and frustration at Trump having the chance to appoint a second Supreme Court justice. I would be similarly frustrated if Hillary Clinton were making those appointments.

But to claim that Trump’s “transforming” the court will be the end of America is truly deranged. Recall President Obama shortly before he took office proclaiming, “We are just days away from the fundamental transformation of America.”

Millions of citizens don’t think he transformed the country for the better. But they did what Obama mockingly told them to do: “Go out and win an election.”

That is the way a civilized society settles disagreements. Not by following the prescription of a Maxine Waters.

[SunkenCiv]

Recall not long ago or far away, when President Barak Obama was in office and the prevailing view on the left was not only that any substantive criticism of his policies was racist, but that it was tantamount to sedition. Recall in 2010, when the conservative Tea Party held a big rally in Washington and made a lot of noise, including allegedly yelling some racial slurs at some congressmen (an allegation that was never documented, even with smartphones everywhere) but didn’t attack or harass anyone physically and even cleaned up after themselves. That was labeled overt sedition, incitement to violence and just one small step from lynching.

Thanks 2ndDivisionVet.

[Windflier]

I am black. My brother is black. When I criticized Barack Obama in 2008, he called that “racist”.

I laughed out loud, but I never forgot it.

[Republican1795.]

The Left has flipped the narrative. They used to assert that the private life of the President was of no concern. Now it’s front page news. I think they are just grasping at straws to try to stop Trump but all they are doing is looking like hypocrites with no principles & destroying themselves in the process as well. Also - they tend to project.

[Sa-teef]

The Left has never been civil or honest. They don't keep folks down on the plantation by giving them the means to better themselves because just like all Democrats in the past, they have no deep seated respect for anyone.

They lie, they cheat, they steal. It's what they do.

------------

The part I see that is different than in the past is that all their little minions have united: 90% of the MSM, all of HollyWeird and most of the Obongo appointed career bureaucrats are all singing from the same song book. Our President Trump has a big job in front of him but he is doing a splendid job of it, inspite of the contiuing albatross of the Mule Team in the background.

Get out and vote! Encourage every like minded person to do the same! Give an elderly person a ride to the polls. It gives all of America a better life.

[wbarmy]

My apologies, but has your brother ever really thought about that statement?

[a little elbow grease]

"Outside of a loathsome, far-out fringe of white supremacists on the right and groups like Antifa on the left, the overwhelming majority of those in both parties are simply political opponents who have a different view of what is best for the country."

_______

THAT is something that should be remembered by everyone.

[EasySt]

You know,

Maxine is becoming a notable liability to the Left’s chances this coming election.

Some of her fellow evildoers much higher up the food chain could become tempted to involve her in their next op.

It is not us she should be afraid of.

In fact, we should hope she is being very well protected at all times.

[CGVet58]

bttt

[V K Lee]

Civility in politics changed. Few remember exactly when it changed; only that it did. It was felt, at the time, this was the exact moment that the change was monumental. The gloves were off and the wrath of Hillary became full force in her fight. Hillary screeches; changing the landscape in 2003
Rules tossed out the window
Years ago it was common practice to avoid criticizing a President so harshly unless on our Home Soil. She ignored passe rules such as this, writing her own as she went along.

Rewriting rules? She continues to do so years later.

[euram]

Everyone seems to give Schumer credit for some courageous act. I listened to his entire rant, and in it he never mentioned Waters by name, and 99 percent of the rant was just the standard anti-Trump rant we’ve come to expect.

[Pravious]

“Outside of a loathsome, far-out fringe of white supremacists on the right and groups like Antifa on the left, the overwhelming majority of those in both parties are simply political opponents who have a different view of what is best for the country.”

—

Yeah... maybe 20 years ago. Not now.

Now, your rank-and-file RAT (VERY rank, by the way) is entirely in favor of whatever insanity is spewed out by the radical left. Kick Sarah Sanders out of a restaurant? Good! She deserves it because she works for the evil orange Hitler who wants to put homosexuals in cages (or something). Eat at Chick-fil-A? NO! They’re not politically pure! Hobby Lobby? You’ve got to be kidding... they’re (shudder) Christians! Child sex on Netflix? What’s your problem? Are you some kind of weird religious prude or something?

That doesn’t describe some small group of fringe leftists - I believe it describes the vast majority of them. And, on the other side, considering the utterly unacceptable, infantile, destructive behavior they’ve exhibited since the MOMENT Trump was elected, I’d hope the general feeling on the right towards the left is NOT “oh, you’re just a fine person with a different political viewpoint” but “You’re a flaming idiot who’s out to destroy out society and our country and we should be doing EVERYTHING we can to stop you any way we can.”

[Pravious]

“Few remember exactly when it changed; only that it did. It was felt, at the time, this was the exact moment that the change was monumental.”

For me, it was the moment during the Bush / Gore recount when the leftists locked the Republicans out of a room where recounts were being done.

I think, at that point, in their frantic desire to see the Goron win, they suddenly stopped hiding what vermin they truly are and didn’t care what they did or what they were seen as doing as long as they beat US.

That seems to be their overall philosophy these days, as well.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Also - they tend to project.

Tend? It’s so pervasive, it appears to be required policy.

[FreedomPoster]

An argument could be made that the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, and the whole Anita Hill nonsense, were an important inflection point on this trajectory. Nearly a full decade before your event.

[CIB-173RDABN]

The left do not have a moral compass only goals. The justifies the means is their only rule.

It is pointless to expect consistencies from the left.

For example it did not bother them one bit that President Clinton is fighting for “woman’s rights” while getting serviced by intern in the Oval Office. Lewinsky is punished and Bill Clinton is praised by the Feminist.

Calling someone on the left a hypocrite is not shaming them, it is a badge of honor. They secretly enjoy knowing they can get away with almost anything while while conservative have a one strike and you are out policy.

While this inability to see what they are doing is wrong morally (and sometimes legally) is both a strength and a weakness.

It is a strength in that it allows them to go after their opposition viciously until they surrender and leave the field

It is also a weakness in that they do not know when to stop.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The more their tactics succeed the more they cross over the line beyond what even the mushy middle will accept.

Then it becomes a question of what happens to these morally bankrupt individuals when they find their tactics no longer work?

The election of Donald Trump did something to these individuals. Something in their mind snapped. The unthinkable happen, their side lost. Their heroine who was going to show the world the path to Utopia was cast aside by their sworn enemies. They could not comprehend just how this could happen.

What we are witnessing with the left is mass insanity. They have to pretend that Hillary won or that Obama is still the President. Yet when they come face to face with evidence that is not true they react with anger and “kick that evidence out of their safe zone.”

In the five stages of grief some are still in the denial stage others are in the anger stage and it is safe to say none have reached the acceptance stage.

This is not good for them, their party or our nation. Many of these people are actually powerful and influence individuals in our nation, prominent in the news industry, government, entertainment, and business. The owner of the Red Hen can act out on her anger with little damage to the world, but the people who control the news media and can do much harm in the way the present the US to the world.

Their anger is destroying them and allowing the rise of a real Socialist movement to take over the Democrat Party. Not the cocktail socialist but the Venezuela form of socialism.

I wish I had the answers but I don’t.

[V K Lee]

Fact is, when they lose the truth is unacceptable. Not only do they poison the outcome of the election; they poison the election campaign itself. Unable to accept failure: back to Florida and the recounts. Algore on his way to congratulate George W. Riding in his big black limo to concede, he abruptly gets a desire to turn around and high tail it home. Meanwhile GW is hanging around like a goofball looking like a deer in the headlights. The left has made a decision to reject all decorum. Any and everything is acceptable in order to win. Elections of old have little chance to be seen again.

[DoodleBob]

I am black. My brother is black. When I criticized Barack Obama in 2008, he called that “racist”.

I laughed out loud, but I never forgot it.

You're in good company. EVERY group has that kind of thinking.

I know many conservatives of Hellenic descent who were shamed and vilified by family and community when they said they wouldn't vote for Dukakis in 1988. Forget that he was a joke (remember this picture?)

...forget that he said he'd not want the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife, if you were a "Greek-American" it was your DUTY to vote for this loser or else you were a malaka.

[Twotone]

“Few remember exactly when it changed; only that it did. It was felt, at the time, this was the exact moment that the change was monumental.”

I think it goes a LONG, LONG way back. For me it started with Gore Vidal on William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line.” The inclination to just be horrible & see what the other side does about it. It’s funny that Buckley’s response was to threaten to punch his lights out. If we’d kept up that response, with a follow-up punch when it didn’t stop, we might not be seeing the country in this shape today.

[Chances Are]

Even before that!

For me, it was the moment Ted Kennedy announced he was going to oppose the nomination of Robert Bork on ideological grounds, rather than anything substantive.

At that time, that was without precedent.

We’ve come a long way since then, and it’s not been nice.

Reviewing the landscape since then, you can see, without too much difficulty, the morphing of America’s left into just another adjunct piece of the Communist International.

CA....