First, we find character assassination. Near the beginning of Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to the top of the heap, we find a sneaky trick played in 2004 against his Republican senatorial opponent, Jack Ryan. He got a crooked judge to unlawfully unseal the records of Ryan’s divorce. Well, after all, it was in Illinois. Much the same was tried against Pete Hegseth, but this time with disappointing results, as with the phony outrage over Elon Musk’s “Nazi” salute. My, how the world has changed.
Another shopworn tool is pandering to identity. In a socially fluid society such as America’s, identities ultimately tend to become blurred. It is often said that the identity that is growing fastest is “mixed.” When I come to “race” while filling out the Census form, I write in “human.” Haven’t gotten the knock on the door…yet.
Fear has traditionally been one of the most useful tools in the box. Fear of the unknown is particularly effective, since the unknowing audience can be easily tricked into taking the speaker’s word for describing the problem. Take “climate change” for example. Weather is typically chaotic, with various forces such as jet streams, ocean currents, high-pressure domes, and low-pressure cyclones constantly interacting to produce daily conditions, whatever they may be. Climate history, however, is forbidden knowledge. Ice ages and giant reptiles wandering all over the planet can only confuse the masses.
The mother of recent fear campaigns has to be the COVID “crisis.” A virus that escaped from a test tube promptly unleashed a plethora of formerly closeted dictators. Edicts were spewed left and right. Twenty-second hand-washing, “social” distancing, and masking, just to name a few, somehow had the force of law. Children, who were the least at risk, had their education and social development perhaps permanently retarded. Why? Because fear really works when it comes to controlling the behavior of even otherwise unruly individuals.
Herein lies the rub. Being deceived over and over again — into higher taxes, devalued money, and increasingly dangerous local conditions — has begun to seriously influence the voting population. Last year’s debacle has finally caused some within the Democrat universe to start making apt criticism. None other than Rahm Emanuel, in nowhere else but the Washington Post, has laid out some serious issues. Following is Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. This phenomenon can be described as being mugged by reality.
Hellbound and Down 