Victimhood has become their highest virtue.
October 17, 2019
One of the more noxious features of today’s political left is the way it has elevated victimhood to the highest of “virtues.” And the beauty is that one doesn’t even have to be an actual victim at all to get in on this game.
The Jussie Smollett case is of course among the most infamous examples, but today’s presidential candidates refuse to be left out of the fun. The latest comes from Elizabeth Warren, who, having tried and failed to pass herself off as a racial minority, is now playing another high card from the victim-status deck. The Federalist reports:
“New records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon contradict Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s claim that she was fired after her first year of teaching because she was ‘visibly pregnant.’
Minutes from a 1970 meeting [of] New Jersey’s Riverdale Board of Education show Warren was unanimously approved for a second-year contract in 1970. Minutes from a meeting the next year, 1971, show Warren’s resignation was ‘accepted with regret.’
In Warren’s version of the story, which she used on the Democratic primary debate stage and often tells during stump speeches, she describes losing her ‘dream job’ and her ‘calling.’ She uses the story to explain her move from teaching to law school, and to lament difficulties that women face in the workplace.”
Which victim category will Warren claim membership in next? We smell an idea for an office pool.
ITEM #2: Say what you want about Bernie Sanders, but the self-described socialist from Vermont is true to who he is. And who he is is a presidential aspirant selling something the nation can’t come close to affording.
City Journal informs us that, “All told, Sanders’s current plans would cost as much as $97.5 trillion over the next decade, and total government spending at all levels would surge to as high as 70 percent of gross domestic product. Approximately half of the American workforce would be employed by the government. The ten-year budget deficit would approach $90 trillion, with average annual deficits exceeding 30 percent of GDP.”
That’s trillion with a “T,” folks.
Speaking of socialism, the Democrats’ increasingly warm embrace of it is no doubt sincere. But it rests on an entirely false premise — namely, that socialism offers a fresh, new, bold way forward that will finally rescue society from the ills of capitalism. In reality, as National Review reminds us, there’s nothing fresh or new about socialism at all. It’s the most tried-and-failed economic system in human history. And it takes an incredible amount of hubris in any politician to believe that he or she will somehow, magically, make this utterly unworkable system work.
ITEM #3: For those of you keeping score at home, in the world of NBA star and progressive icon LeBron James, the United States is an authoritarian, oppressive, unjust and racist country, governed by a president who is a threat to our future and a menace to the world.
Whereas the People’s Republic of China — whose government actually systematically commits human-rights abuses, crushes political dissent, and is of course currently working to undermine the freedom and autonomy of democratic Hong Kong — is, well … not something to talk about.
Recent history is littered with instances of woke, left-wing celebrities trying to buy social-activism points on the cheap, only to cower in the face of genuine injustice. (See Kaepernick, Colin.)
But LeBron may well be in a league of his own.
ITEM #4: “Hunter Biden is stepping down from the board of a Chinese-backed private equity company and committing to not work for a foreign-owned company if his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, is elected president in 2020,” reports CNBC.
While the news media are all consumed by the phony Ukraine “scandal” and the Democrats’ laughable calls for impeaching President Trump, it’s nice to see that someone remembered to check in on what Hunter Biden is up to.
But will anyone bother to actually scrutinize his role in the company, or what he was doing there to begin with?
ITEM #5: The falsehoods in Rep. Susie Lee’s (D-NV) limp reasons for suddenly coming out in favor of an impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump started with the first seven words of her very first sentence in an op-ed published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on October 8 …
“I write this with a heavy heart.”
Please.
Lee represents a “swing” district that Trump carried in the 2016 presidential race. And she’s been ducking the impeachment issue since before she was even sworn in.
But under pressure from her far-left colleagues — especially AOC and “The Squad” — she’s been desperately looking for an excuse to hop on the bandwagon.
She didn’t greet the Ukrainian hoax with a heavy heart, but a sigh of relief. It was just the excuse she’d been looking for — regardless of how thin.
ITEM #6: To defend her decision to kowtow to AOC+3, Ms. Lee claims President Trump “called on the president of a foreign country to interfere with our elections.”
No, he didn’t. He asked the president of a foreign country to investigate allegations of corruption by a former U.S. vice president.
Ms. Lee went on to claim that President Trump “interfered in the lawful release of a whistle-blower complaint.”
No, he didn’t. In fact, the President is the one who RELEASED both the transcript of his call AND the actual complaint filed by the “deep state” leaker.
That Ms. Lee has to rely on outright falsehoods to excuse her actions tells you she’s on thin ice.
ITEM #7: At the heart of the Democrats’ argument for impeachment is the notion that President Trump asked the Ukrainian president to “dig up dirt” on a “political rival.”
First, he didn’t ask him to “dig up dirt.” He asked for an investigation of well-publicized reports of alleged corruption and influence-peddling by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The dirt was already dug.
Second, as Rudy Giuliani has noted, the fact that Biden is now running for president against Trump is irrelevant.
“I can’t help that,” Giuliani said. “Suppose a political opponent committed murder. What are we gonna do? He’s a political opponent, so you’re not gonna investigate him?”
Adds letter-writer Steve Ray in the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Is Joe Biden exempt from a corruption investigation merely by running for office?”
Exactly.
ITEM #8: Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo says her sources tell her the FISA report that’s due to be released tomorrow is “thick as a telephone book.” Should make for some great reading in next week’s MORNING SOURCE — so make sure you don’t miss it!
NOTABLE QUOTE
“Democrats have been foaming at the mouth for any opportunity — any — to impeach President Trump, simply because they can't get over the fact that they lost in 2016 and Republicans won. … The next few months are going to be a circus in the House — every Democrat will want their 15 seconds of fame and they'll trash President Trump every waking minute of the day.” — Rep. Jim Jordan