Stereotypes vs. Real People

As reported by The Blaze, David Atkins, California member of the Democratic National Committee, recently suggested that the 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump need to be “deprogrammed,” characterizing them as a “death cult against reality and basic decency.” Seeking to emphasize just how hopelessly deluded they were, he added: “We have to start thinking in terms of post WW ll Germany or Japan.”

Speaking through The Epoch Times on Nov. 18, Black “conservative” Larry Elder presents a radically different vision of both Trump and his millions of supporters. [I mention Elder’s color not because it matters to me but because it matters to “liberals” who, if he were White, would denounce him without hesitation.] Noting the irony of the fact that Democrats are hypocritically accusing Trump of concocting a baseless conspiracy theory in his legal challenges to the legitimacy of the election, while they pursued their now discredited “conspiracy theory” of Russian collusion for two years into his presidency, Elder confronts the notion that Trump and his followers are all racists, fascists, bigots, White Supremacists, blah, blah blah.

Suggesting that there was in fact interference of an unconscionable nature designed to manipulate public opinion as the recent election approached and that it was perpetrated not by foreign intruders but by the mainstream media, he cites the testimony of several individuals who are clearly not hard-core “conservatives.”

Sharyl Atkinson, formerly of CBS, reported that Trump had denounced the KKK and White Supremacists of various sorts umpteen times since the year 2000. But, she noted, the mainstream media had not only failed to report his denunciations, it continued to badger him as if they had never been made. When the N.Y. Times actually decided to credit Trump for having repudiated racism in one of its headlines, it was savaged by what Atkinson calls the Leftist “mob” which basically said “You know he’s a racist, so why publish anything suggesting he’s not.” The Times backed down and adjusted its story.

Elder cites Van Gordon Sauter, former head of CBS news, who stated that the media hates Trump so savagely that it has literally lost its mind. Not only does it no longer revere the values of journalistic objectivity and fairness, he says, it actually revels in its sanctimonious bias.

Perhaps the most compelling of the testimonials offered by Elder was that of Ken Stern, former CEO of NPR [National Public Radio], who stated that as “conservatives” were clearly outnumbered 5 to 1 throughout the media, he had decided to go underground and investigate the stereotypes it so gleefully cultivates.

Attending meetings of the Tea Party and a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, both reviled by the media as purveyors of Alt-Right Fascism, he was surprised to find himself surrounded almost exclusively by decent middle-class people concerned with racial justice and the plight of the poor. It was an experience replicated as he sidled into several Christian Evangelical groups also typically stereotyped as intolerant simpletons.

Continuing on his Odyssey, Kern consorted with the working classes of Kentucky and Ohio, many of whom were out of work due to a variety of factors, some of them directly related to government policy. What concerned them, he reported with obvious sympathy, was that the mainstream media seemed obsessed with the welfare of habitual criminals such as George Floyd while apparently not giving a damn about people such as themselves!

Most delicious among Kern’s escapades was his participation in a hunting trip with a group of Texas good ole boys. Far from convincing him that guns should be rendered generally if not completely unavailable to the American public, his experience impressed upon him the extent to which his law abiding companions saw their weapons as the only means of defense for both themselves and their families in an ever more violent world.

While certainly not whitewashing all those who may have voted for Trump, Elder would seem to be indicting the gross stereotypes directed their way day after day by idiots such as Atkins. Even more interesting was his Oct. 5 article challenging the narrative fostered by the N.Y. Times that Trump is a tax-evading criminal who ought to be behind bars.

I am certainly not suggesting that Trump is anything approaching a saint. But what Elder points out is the way The Times hand-picked their facts so as to validate their loathing for the man. What the paper failed to mention was that he paid over 70 million dollars in federal income taxes between 2005-2007. What it also failed to point out was that the losses suffered by his holdings, which one year amounted to approximately 900 million dollars, could be legally used by his lawyers to shelter him in subsequent years. Pointing out that Amazon, which had enjoyed huge profits in the past, paid no taxes in 2017-18, Elder states the obvious fact that all such enterprises employ armies of lawyers whose main function is to save them money whenever they can within the rule of law. At the same time Donald Jr. derided The Times’ failure to mention the various other forms of taxes [i.e., property taxes, real estate taxes, etc.] which his father had paid in the years in which he purportedly paid next to nothing.

When I point out the brazen, criminal abuse of his position by Biden over his years as Vice President, my Trump-hating acquaintances shake their heads as if I am an idiot. I wonder if any of them know that Ilhan Omar gave 3 of the 6 million dollars raised to fund her last campaign to her husband’s firm for its “consulting” services. She virtually, a la Biden, put the money in her own pocket. According to American law such a maneuver, while indictable after one’s election, is perfectly legal during a campaign. Have CNN or NBC or The Times or Post made much of an issue of her corruption? Of course not. It does not fit their Truth. It does not fit their narrative.

And so we live in a world where those susceptible to group think go on day after day unchallenged in their certainty that Trump is a monster, that anyone who voted for him is a simpleton, that all “conservatives” are racists, etc., etc., etc.

Clearly Life is more complicated than that and there are good people on both sides of the political divide. But as I have tried to make clear, my main focus is Ideas and the pernicious effect bad ideas can have on well-meaning people. When Kamala Harris sanctimoniously inveighs against Hierarchy, when she says an “equitable” society is one where everyone ends up in the same place, she is preaching poison, she is preaching death squads, she is literally preaching the systematic oppression of those radical differences, intellectual, temperamental and physical, which are the very essence of human diversity. This is a fact of Life that is both biologically and historically verifiable. Yet simpletons such as Atkins says it is “conservatives” who hate Life and are in fundamental denial of Reality!!!!!