Yesterday, former President Barack Obama sent out a tweet. I was reading the responses and couldn't help roll my eyes at the sycophantic slobbering from his social media supporters. To me, the over-the-top fawning was sad and troubling - packed with delusional assessments of a "scandal free" presidency that everyone supported.
The effusive adoration read a lot like the responses President Donald Trump gets from his supporters.
Naturally, supporters of each president will deny this assessment and say it's a false equivalence of some sort. However, it's pretty obvious to me - a person who didn't vote for either man - that the blind loyalty and worship are strikingly similar.
It always has been.
But I am trying to imagine what the coverage would have looked like if people began boycott lists of Obama supporters. Because I know what coverage looks like when the left blacklists Trump supporters:
I believe this kind of tactic - once widely employed - will destroy America. And maybe that's the point. It's hard to see it for anything else.
By the way, Antifa apologists... this is what fascism actually looks like.
Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com:
This effort wants to destroy the livelihood of Americans over their political differences, rather than just having a debate over politics. That’s dangerous in its own way without tripping over Godwin’s Law to explain why.
Let’s give Hollywood conservative John O’Hurley the last word in explaining this phenomenon. O’Hurley is focused on [Debra] Messing’s “lunacy” and its aim at purging Hollywood of conservative thought. “It underscores the fact that we aren’t receptive to a diversity of thought, which is the exact opposite of what you feel the liberal way would be,” O’Hurley says, “and I find that obscene.”
Damon Linker at The Week explains why this kind of schism is so dangerous to a free society:
Self-government requires the formation of a relatively stable majoritarian consensus in public opinion that can be gauged by way of a democratic vote and then translated into action by elected representatives. Those of us who believe strongly in the principle of self-government tend to fret about occasions when something disrupts the second stage in that process: translating public opinion into action. Outright corruption, lobbying by special-interest groups — those and other forms of influence-peddling certainly do cause problems in capitals throughout the democratic world.
But self-government can also break down when a stable majoritarian consensus fails to form in the first place.
I'd like to be an optimist, but it gets harder each day.
Pete's Prep: Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019
- The Federalist: "In Court Hearing, Planned Parenthood Employee Admits To Trafficking In Baby Body Parts - The nine-day hearing is the first time multiple Planned Parenthood leaders have testified in court since undercover videos surfaced of them harvesting aborted baby body parts."
- The Wall Street Journal: "Eric Holder's Redistricting Coup."
- The President of the Convention of States Project, Mark Meckler, will be in Winston-Salem and Gastonia next week for town halls. He'll join the program today at 5pm to discuss the events.