Weekend Reflections: Roger Stone, Bobby Orr, IMPEACHMENT HOAX!!
Roger Stone, the longtime Washington establishment operative and perennial liar-for-political-profit who by chance just happened to be one of those “best people” Mr. Swamp-Drainer, Donald Trump, engaged as his lead advisor at the outset of his presidential campaign, and who continued to serve in that role unofficially after cleverly distancing himself from the official campaign to cleanse Trump of his, Stone’s, dirtiness, has been found guilty on all seven counts in his trial for lying to Congress and witness tampering.
The cultists are out there decrying this horrible miscarriage of justice. (Check the reader comments on the article linked above, for example.) I wonder how the late-joining members of the cult feel about it, particularly Ted Cruz and his millions of fellow converts to the House of Trump. Or are they all just supposed to forget what Stone did to Cruz during the latter stages of the primaries? Anyone remember the National Enquirer’s “five mistresses” story? Anyone remember the name of the only “source” quoted in that story?
Trump himself is out on Twitter thanking his amoral hitman for his loyalty in taking one for the team, and playing his usual Stone-like game of misdirection and moral equivalency:
So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. Well, what about Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself? Didn’t they lie?….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019
Ah, yes, what-about-ism, the classic Trump cult defense. Well, here’s the difference, Mr. Swamp-Drainer: Stone was charged and tried and found guilty. Those others were not. And as for moral equivalent number one on your list, “Crooked Hillary,” you are the man who supported, funded, and praised her for years, until the exact year you decided to run for president for the opposing party. And you are also, more importantly, the man who encouraged your idiots to chant “Lock her up!” while claiming you would immediately act as president to pursue an investigation of her alleged crimes, and then, immediately after the election, broke that promise by saying, “She’s suffered enough.” You are the one who had the opportunity to initiate an investigation of Hillary, and didn’t do it.
A follow-up on the story of Canada’s use of famous hockey commentator Don Cherry as their “Goldstein,” the enemy-of-convenience at whom everyone in Orwell’s Oceania is encouraged to shout invective for two minutes, just to purge all negative feelings by spewing them at an outsider, rather than fomenting anger against the oppressive State.
I see that Bobby Orr, whom Cherry coached during the final years of his career as a Boston Bruin, when he was arguably the best player in the NHL, has stepped up to defend his old coach and friend in an American radio interview.
He’s not a bigot and he’s not a racist. This guy is the most generous, caring guy that I know. What they’ve done to him up there is disgraceful, it really is. It’s a new world I guess. Freedom of speech doesn’t matter.
Orr nails the point I have been focusing on in my own comments on the issue. It’s a new world. It is not the world in which people used to appreciate free thinkers, blunt talkers, iconoclastic opining. It is a world in which only pre-approved, progressive-friendly (aka “sensitive” and “inclusive”) speech is permitted in the public square. Cherry’s opinions on the subject of immigrants and patriotism, which would, a generation ago, have been considered standard fare in a discussion of that topic, are now a cause of mass outrage, major news stories, and “an important public debate” — not about whether immigrants are sufficiently appreciative of the bounties of their new home, mind you, but rather about whether a man ought to be allowed to engage in a “racist rant” and “hate speech” without paying a price.
For today, you see, in multicultural Canada, it is racist and hateful by definition to question whether recent immigrants are being encouraged to show the kind of pride in Canada’s heritage and fallen heroes that earlier generations were encouraged to feel as a matter of course. In fact, Cherry’s question, aside from the abrasive tone he may have used in delivering it, seems like a most basic one that all nations should and must ask about their immigration policies: How can we ensure that people seeking citizenship in this country are satisfactorily educated about the country’s history, and taught to show a proper level of allegiance to, and appreciation for, the principles and past generations that built the country, including making it the kind of country that welcomes those very immigrants as new citizens?
The carefully-stoked furor over Cherry’s remarks revealed that Canada is no longer willing to brook even such basic questions about the principles of immigration. The correct multicultural attitude is now, in effect, that immigrants themselves will define what Canada shall be henceforth, and if they happen to decide that it shall be the very opposite of the kind of country that Cherry grew up in, the one that welcomed those new immigrants — and that revered the principles of freedom of thought and expression — then so be it. And this is not hyperbole on my part. It is, after all, essential to the concept of multiculturalism, which Canada rightly claims as its own national creation, that there is no pre-existing “culture” (or nation) to which new immigrants are to be assimilated, but rather that all immigrants are to bring their own cultures (or national attitudes) to Canada in full force, without in any way accommodating or moderating themselves to any sort of “Canadian tradition,” which tradition would of course be racist and xenophobic for daring to suggest that anyone ought to bend to it in any way. Hence, a multicultural society inevitably becomes a war of attrition between the aging remnants of the “pre-multicultural” society — i.e., the one in which immigrants were expected to (and always did) assimilate themselves to a heritage and set of traditions for the sake of national unity — and the new “cultures” that seek (by non-assimilation) to overwhelm that pre-multicultural society by force of numbers.
In this war of attrition, there will naturally be a tipping point at which those who continue to speak from the perspective of the pre-multicultural reality will become irrelevant and dispensable to the dominant multicultural perspective. At that point, lack of national identity in effect becomes the new national identity, such that the country, in this case Canada, reaches the exact opposite pole: From a nation in which immigrants were expected to assimilate, it becomes a nation in which non-immigrants are forced to assimilate, i.e., to give up their heritage — the country’s own history and founding beliefs — for the sake of multicultural purity. Men like Don Cherry, who refuse to assimilate to the principle of non-assimilation, find themselves on the shortlist for extermination.
I have seen multiple news headlines — headlines accompanying alleged reportage, not opinion pieces — that expressly referred to Cherry’s words as “racist” and “anti-immigrant.” Those terms, which are evaluative and inflammatory by definition, not to mention being highly abstract and subject to interpretation, are now being used in the mainstream news media as simple descriptors, as though they were mere factual statements. “The thief was seen wearing a red hat.” “The hockey commentator was heard making anti-immigrant remarks.”
An analogy: I walk into a class one day and find that an annoying number of students have not completed their homework assignment. In frustration, I say, “You are a lazy bunch.” Does that mean I am “anti-student”?
Nonsense. So why is this absurd reasoning appropriate in Cherry’s case? Why is simply expressing a criticism of something one believes one has seen among immigrants in one’s community now inherently identifiable with such nebulously conceptual labels as “racist” or “anti-immigrant”? The reason, of course, indicating a natural click of the progressive ratchet, is that it allows totalitarian thought police to wedge everyone into the moral and rhetorical position of either condemning Cherry or defending racist and anti-immigrant views. Thus, Bobby Orr and other hockey players who have spoken out against this public shaming of their friend or boyhood hero may be dismissed by the progressive media as, at best, unenlightened people merely showing sentimental loyalty to an old man, or at worst, fellow travelers of a man guilty of thought crimes.
As Bobby Orr, apparently fifty times the man these lynch mob reporters will ever be, correctly describes it, “disgraceful.”
Impeachment Update
If the Democrats succeed in impeaching Trump, and then persuade enough Senate Republicans to join them in removing him from office, then boy oh boy, a lot of online commenters and conservative radio couch potatoes are going to be really, really mad, I tell you. And they will rebel like crazy. In fact, they will, they will, I mean in sheer fury over the whole witch hunt fake news no collusion coup! They will, I’ll betcha, just about blow a gasket, because they will feel their election was stolen, and the swamp was swampy, and Trump is God, and man, if that happens, I swear….What? The Giants are winning? Oh, man, I’ve got to see this! Martha, where’s the remote, the Giants are winning in the fourth quarter!
