Well, another one.
Democrats and the mainstream media decided to go nuclear with the false accusation that the new Florida history guidelines, championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, want schools to teach that slavery was beneficial to enslaved African Americans. It’s an outright lie, as anyone who reviewed the guidelines could see, and as Ethics Alarms explained. The Vice President of the United States made the accusation in multiple venues before African American audiences. (Yes, she’s an idiot, but she’s still Vice-President, and her statements are publicized widely). The usual race-baiters and liars among the partisan punditry, like MSNBC’s vile Joy Reid, repeated the lie, and even a GOP Presidential hopeful, weak, cowardly Sen. Tim Scott, gave it credence.
Far from being evidence of racism, white supremacy or prejudice, the guidelines are really evidence of how extremism succeeds by producing “compromises” that are irresponsibly radical anyway. The slavery history teaching guidelines require an absurdly disproportionate emphasis on slavery in grade school, and will result in inadequate instruction on many other more essential topics and skills. Never mind though: as Hitler and Goebbels explained, the purpose of Big Lies is to get a damaging narrative widely distributed, so much so that the target has to respond to it, giving the lie legitimacy and keeping it in the public consciousness.
The lie about DeSantis and the guidelines worked beautifully. After it was revealed that the Orlando Magic donated $50,000 to a super PAC supporting Republican Florida governor, which the organization had every right to do, and, unlike Fox News, had no conflict in so doing since its business is entertainment and basketball, the National Basketball Association Players Union felt compelled to release the statement above. ESPN reported that the players’ union statement “comes after DeSantis made comments supporting Florida’s new African American history standard that says some Black people benefited from slavery.” Describing the standards as saying that “Florida’s new African American history standard that says some “Black people benefited from slavery.” is misleading and deceitful, but such coverage was the goal of the Big Lie.
Then DeSantis, rather than using the opportunity to explain why the Big Lie is a big lie, reacted like the toxic jerk he is trying to defeat, answering with,
That’s not an explanation or a rebuttal; it’s just attacking the messenger while resorting to the rationalization, #22 on the list, “There are worse things.” By doing this, DeSantis appears to concede that the guidelines are as the Big Lie represented them. That’s another benefit of Big Lies: they often make the target do and say stupid things in response.
Good job, race-baiters and DeSantis smearers. Your Big Lie is a success. Perfectly executed.
Ethics Alarms 
Minor point: the statement appears to be from the players’ union, not the league. Although I wouldn’t be surprised the league piles on shortly and fines the Magic and makes them contribute a large sum to someone or something acceptable.
In the NBA, the union is the League.
But I fixed it anyway….
Big Lie tactics are hard to refute for the same reason that they are initially believed: The mass of people, especially if they are uninformed and cynical, find it hard to believe that, as Hitler said in “Mein Kampf,” “anyone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Once the Big Lie is in play, any defense is easily countered by, “Of course X would deny doing something as bad as (whatever), who wouldn’t deny it? But X is a big fat liar doing what lying liars always do.” About half the population of the U.S. is apparently ready to believe any lie that is told about any conservative candidate, and the Left obliges by rolling them out with regularity and consistency. The Left wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on the ass and paid for the privilege.
To date I am singularly unimpressed by the DeSantis campaign, although I had high hopes for his candidacy. There is still time to turn things around, but surely some improvement must be seen soon. As for the rest of the current Republican presidential field, they are really running for VP or a cabinet appointment.
As a conservative and a Republican, I want to win. I don’t want to cast a symbolic losing vote “on principle” or “give the finger” to the opposition; I want to win. We cannot begin to halt -much less reverse- this country’s slide toward totalitarianism until we begin winning elections. We won’t get a do-over of the 2020 or 2022 elections and we can’t let our anger at the Left lead us down destructive paths that distract us from the objective of winning back the Presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress. The GOP should be able to defeat the likes of Joe Biden and his party in a cakewalk. If it cannot do so, it has failed in its primary purpose: to elect candidates to office. Opportunity after opportunity has been squandered. I am sick of losing gracefully. We need to get as creative as the Dems in exploiting the nuances of election laws to get our votes cast and counted through any legal means.
There are aspects of Trump’s performance during his Presidency that I would like to see publicly acknowledged and vindicated (and certainly the true “rigging” of the 2020 election should be revealed for all to see) but the fact remains that the cultists on the Left would not recognize or admit the truth even (or perhaps especially) if it were revealed by God himself and etched onto their retinas.
I would have liked to see Trump accept the proverbial gold watch from the GOP and then use his considerable energy to help elect the party’s 2024 nominee. But of course, that’s not Trump’s way. Obviously, his very presence in the race discouraged others -perhaps some viable candidates- from entering.
I used to laugh at the Left’s repeated ten-cent diagnosis of Trump as suffering from clinical narcissistic personality disorder, especially after their diagnosis was publicly refuted by the very doctor who chaired the task force that wrote the DSM. Dr. Allen Frances said in a 2017 letter to the New York Times editor, “Most amateur diagnosticians have mislabeled President Trump with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. I wrote the criteria that define this disorder, and Mr. Trump doesn’t meet them.”
Trumps own narcissistic tendencies seem to have once again set him on course for the predictable eventual fate of politicians with an excess of such tendencies: self-inflicted ruin. Certainly, my own experience in dealing with (non-clinically diagnosed) narcissists (both candidates and officeholders) would suggest that no strict list of clinical criteria need to be fully met for the individual in question to exhibit problematic narcissistic behaviors that often sank their political aspirations and/or tarnished any good that they had done while in office.
The last candidate for national office that I supported financially was Senator Fred Thompson. Since then, any financial support I have given has been to local and state candidates only. A congressional candidate asked me why I pointedly declined to make a donation to his campaign, and I told him, “Because you people go to DC and immediately forget who you work for. You become a fund-raising machine for the party and don’t have time to listen to us anymore.” This left him homina homina-ing as I walked away. I still support and campaign locally for my preferred candidates. I just don’t give them my money.
I am still unsure whom I will support in the Republican presidential primary race. but it will be the candidate who in my estimation has the best chance of winning the general election. I will support the party’s nominee in the general election, because I will never vote for any candidate affiliated with the neo-Marxist Democrat party.