If progressives didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any at all. It has been said many times and many ways, but it always rings true. This week saw Liberty Nation on the hunt for some intellectual integrity or logic applied consistently across the board. The results were not promising. But we did manage to flush out yet another pair of articles from the bastion of liberal wisdom known as Salon, which showcases just how hopeless a hunt it was to begin with.
We Didn’t Deserve Her?
“Let’s face it, America: We didn’t deserve Elizabeth Warren.” This might just be the truest line ever published by this particular outlet – now if only author Amanda Marcotte had stopped at the headline.
But this is Salon.
“If Warren was a man, this would be over by now,” Marcotte wrote, calling it a “statement so painfully true that it became a cliché the moment it was first uttered.” What seems painfully true is that this writer is Elizabeth Warren’s biggest fan. She describes the former presidential candidate and Native American as a slight woman with an outsized presence whose “towering intellect” and “quick wit” empowered her to meet impossible standards and “crush small men like Mike Bloomberg with just her words.”
The entire article is one long gush about Elizabeth Warren – presumably the senator from Massachusetts, though it’s nigh incomprehensible that we could be thinking of the same woman after reading this story. From falsely claiming Native American heritage – enough to be listed as a woman of color by a former employer and to enrage a few actual tribes – to making up childhood stories her own family won’t back up and once falsely claiming to have been fired for being pregnant, Sen. Warren inspired fairly low expectations upon announcing her candidacy. And she failed even to meet those – hence the campaign’s end.
Most folks didn’t take Elizabeth Warren seriously simply because her entire career has been one identity politics joke after another. But Marcotte thinks there’s more to it: “After giving it some thought, I think I know why. Because this time there is no other explanation than raw, unvarnished sexism. It just can’t be anything else.”
It can’t be anything else, anything at all? Are we sure the disastrous DNA debacle didn’t contribute even a little? How about that “I’m gonna grab a beer” moment when she tried to fake relatability while livestreaming? Yeah, grab us all one, Liz. We need a drink after that awkward moment.
But what can we expect from someone who believes that “Men are out to get us”? Radical feminism devoid of actual logical thought is the real theme of this article, and the author makes no attempt to hide that. “But at the end of the day,” she writes, “all this – the sexual violence, the sexist insults, the stripping of reproductive rights, the tearing down of even the brightest of stars, if they happen to [sic] female – comes down to a blunt, grotesque desire to keep women subservient to men.”
Rape culture, #Metoo, abortion, the patriarchy – Amanda Marcotte hits every angry feminist note without missing a beat.
If You Can’t Take It, Don’t Dish It Out!
What could possibly be worse than actually believing you’re a victim because of your race, gender, or sexual orientation? Watching those deplorable devils you imagine as your persecutors playing the part of your victim, apparently.
Matthew Rozsa, writing for Salon, took great umbrage at the plot of the controversial movie, The Hunt. The film has been described by those who created it as a sort of satirical jab at both the far left and the far right that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Rozsa, however, clearly took it too seriously.
“President Donald Trump’s supporters aren’t victims, they’re victimizers,” the author began. “Shame on ‘The Hunt’ for pandering to one of their most cherished fantasies – that they are persecuted.” He then went onto explain that he felt those two sentences should open the article because the movie is about a group of “deplorables” who are kidnapped and hunted for sport by liberals. It has a MAGA agenda, he says, because Trump supporters “desperately wish they were actually persecuted.”
This flick drew the ire of many on both the left and the right. Perhaps the most important lesson to learn from this is – hint hint, Mr. Rozsa – if you can’t take it, don’t dish it out. Conservatives have bemoaned the clear liberal bias of Hollywood for years – and been called both paranoid and delusional for it.
The author claims the film’s entire story could fit on the back of a postcard, and that it only occasionally has the illusion of cleverness. “Even if ‘The Hunt’ were completely apolitical, it would still be mediocre and forgettable,” Rozsa wrote. However, the political rant that makes up the majority of the review makes that statement, at the very least, suspect.
He points out three “problems” with the director’s claim that it’s a satire intended to poke fun at both sides of the aisle. First, the working-class conservatives are depicted as the heroes, which clearly means it has a pro-conservative agenda.
Second, the so-called attempt at balance is to reveal that the hunt didn’t actually exist until far-right conspiracy theorists gave some liberal elites the idea by falsely accusing them of hunting conservatives. This, Rozsa explains, still makes the liberals monsters – they do decide to actually hunt and kill people, after all – and that painting the right-wingers as, at worst, “fear-mongering fools” is the only significant shade thrown at the pro-Trump side of the story. In other words, the film didn’t vilify conservatives nearly enough.
Finally, the director’s claim reduces politics to a game. This, the author posits, belittles the issues that impact people’s lives. Let’s have a look at those issues, shall we? The film cites gun control, global warming, anti-racism, immigration, and gay rights as justification for actually conducting the hunt. Rozsa argues that these aren’t issues on which both sides are morally equal. He writes:
“Wanting to save lives from gun violence is not equal to perverting the Second Amendment to satisfy right-wing delusions. Striving to stop climate change from destroying civilization is not equal to denying it because conservative dogma demands you to do so (and note how Trump's anti-science agenda has exacerbated the COVID-19 outbreak in this country). Being horrified by how Trump has stoked the flames of bigotry in this country is not equal to being okay with or outright supporting it. Empathizing with undocumented immigrants is not equal to persecuting them. Supporting gay rights is not equal to the bogus claims of ‘religious freedom’ cited by those who hate the LGBTQ community.”
Note that it’s not the use of these issues to justify hunting people for sport that cheapens them – it’s the fact that the movie makers call it satire. More than anything, this diatribe sounds like an outraged leftist’s justification for actually having the hunt!
One of the more dazzling displays of irony in this rant is that he includes the explanation for his own bias. “Most people don’t want to view themselves as bullies and aggressors,” the author explains. “So when their beliefs lead to malevolent results, they have to come up with rationalizations that justify them.”
Political violence in America has long been the demesne of the left. For them, the ends always justify the means – so whatever it takes to achieve their political goals is acceptable, even if it means people have to get hurt. On the other hand, it requires this double standard we so often see. A conservative might say, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” but a progressive simply can’t accept that. Demanding that all groups play by the same rule acknowledges that we’re all equals as people – and that destroys the leftist narrative.
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Read more from James Fite.
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