My friend Tom left for home today after keeping me sane and helping me cope in the week since Grace died. Now I’ve awakened to an quiet and empty house, more ugly tasks and thoughts to face during the day, and a big confused and needy dog. But I also woke up to Snopes, bless ’em, showing all the shameless depths its fake “fact checking” services will go to try to cover up for Democrats as the election approaches, and it genuinely made me laugh.
You never know where support will come from in such difficult times.
In this post yesterday, Ethics Alarms made the easy call that a high VA official sending out a memo telling its hospitals to remove the iconic Times Square V-J-Day kissing photo demonstrated the warped values and priorities of Joe Biden’s Woke is Everything administration. The uproar over her dumb and dumber memo was such that VA Secretary Denis McDonough immediately stepped in and rescinded it (and you just know he didn’t want to). This was legitimate news and illustrative of a serious problem as well as the cultural stakes at issue in November, but the memo went out to the Axis of Unethical Conduct —“the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media, now allied to defeat the Republicans and Trump by any means necessary—that this is just another “Republicans pounce” story if it is anything at all. MSNBC ignored it. CNN pretended it didn’t happen. (Fox News did cover the story, which proves it is just a shill for the GOP, of course: if you know about what the VA did, see, you’re just a Fox News zombie…). The New York Times: “Memo? What memo?” Of the Usual Suspects when the news media is ordered to do a clean-up on Aisle Woke, only The Hill broke the embargo.
Aside: Doesn’t this phenomenon bother you? Shouldn’t it bother everybody? The way the MSM had handled the story is as ominous as the story itself. This is election interference by disinformation, and it is going on right now.)
But that wasn’t enough; the dishonest fact-checkers had to get into the act. Snopes, which Facebook used(maybe it still does) to decide what information to censor, got itself declared an Unethical Website and banned as a source here in 2016 when it spun absurdly for Hillary during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Its effort to do the same for the Biden Administration Ethics Train Wreck is, if anything, even worse:
Everything about this hackery is Snopes at its most blatantly biased, and yet the progressive shills running the site apparently think nobody will notice.
1. The story was that the memo banning the photo was sent to the VA’s hospitals. The attempted ban was reversed before it could take effect. Snopes’ entire approach is based on deceit and muddying the issues. Gee, is an official memo ordering something a completed act if a superior authority reverses it almost immediately? What a fascinating question, and who the hell cares? The point is that the memo went out. The point is that it was cretinous and signature significance indicating a near fatal level of Great Stupid pollution. The point is that someone capable of sending out such garbage has a high position in the Biden administration, and that the cabal is probably crawling with others.
2. Then we get “Officials say it was sent in error.” Oh! That makes it all better then! And of course, if the administration exposed and embarrassed by an official memo says it was sent “by mistake,” this must be true. Reality is that the “Oopsie!”/”Never Mind!”/ “Now how could THAT happen?” response every time Joe or his minions screws up beyond all comprehension has become SOP. For example, Secretary of State Blinken sent out an immediate call for a cease fire after Israel responded to the October 7 Hamas terror attack, and the uproar over its flaming wrongheadedness was so great that his own Department disavowed his statement as “unauthorized.”
3. But that is nothing compared to Snopes’ most ridiculous distortion: the memo was just requesting a policy, not executing it. Oh I see now: the memorandum begins by saying it “requests” the removal, so it was just a pretty please with sugar on it suggestion that the current policy ought to change.
Every other feature of the detailed memo makes it clear that this is a directive. Using equivocal language is a female thing, and if the military and the government were serious about their jobs, training should wipe that proclivity from the ranks: it causes confusion. The memo says that a decision has been made. The photos should be removed. Alternative photos should be sought. “Your cooperation in this matter is vital.” “Ensure that these photos are promptly removed.” No “request” is stated or implied.
Snopes is spinning, distorting, and lying. This fiasco happened. It is real. It is also real that Snopes and its allies in the media are telling the public that they will say black is white, up is down, and “Elephant? What elephant?” until the Democrat Party’s crypto-totalitarians are in power for another four years.
I’ve stopped laughing now.
Ethics Alarms 
Hey, it’s all about “do overs”. Biden gives back secret documents he had for years despite not having authorization to keep them in the first place when it looks as if the shit is going to hit the fan , and all is good. I am waiting for the FBI to start dropping charges against bank robbers and kidnappers if they give the money back.
If you don’t do as they say demand immediately I suggest you avoid airports and other public places where the FBI can nab you with maximum exposure.
Jack,
I wish you could have friends and family physically present for a while yet, but I know even that would run out eventually. I hope interactions through Ethics Alarms and ProEthics provide a great deal of comfort.
Of course this phenomenon bothers me. It bothers quite a few commenters here. What bothers me most, though, is the precedent it sets for the political opposition. While we’ve always struggled with the temptation to “pounce” hard when the other side of the spectrum makes a mistake and give “our” side more leniency, as long as everyone gave lip service to impartial evaluation, the bias could be kept to a tolerable level. Now that impartiality has been jettisoned by the Left, nothing prevents the Right from doing the same. And we see that happening more and more often on the Right. The temptation is always there: if they are not going to play by the rules, why should we? (Cue quote from St. Thomas Moore…)
We’re still praying for you and Grace. I don’t know how much comfort that is, but there it is.
Yes, and Biden has shown that he is just the man to cut down the forest of laws crisscrossing the United States. Only the Supreme Court has been a reliable check so far, and if he gets another four years even that could easily change.
Yes, it bothers me too. The best hope is probably to elect Trump this November, perilous as that route would also be.
Diego,
I have heard many others mention the peril we may face from another Trump presidency yet no one has yet accurately defined what those perils are.
The left/progressives hammer on the claim he is a despot who will ignore the Constitution and abuse his office to maintain power. I have seen no evidence that he would do so. From a policy perspective I would like to know which policies he might execute that would impinge on our Constitutional rights. From a geopolitical perspective, which of his stated policies lessen our standing in the world?
So far his biggest failure, by some, is that he fails to behave like a politician. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly and he makes no bones about that. How many of us wish we could be so bold as to challenge the oppressive behavior of others ? If we have a duty to confront do we have an obligation to do so in an unoffensive manner when other attempts to be civil fail?
Behavioral modification experts would suggest calling out bad behavior so as not to reinforce it but when Trump calls it out he is vilified for his approach. He makes his opposition work to if they want him to meet somewhere along the continuum of compromise.
I may be naive but based on his tenure as President I don’t really see any real peril.
If he governed as he did during his first term, I would have no real problems. The biggest issue he had then was more or less abdicating a lot of his responsibilities to people like Fauci and his ilk — unelected bureaucrats who were single issue demagogues.
What I fear is that he would spend his second term pursuing revenge against his persecutors. I couldn’t blame him overmuch for doing so, but that is the sort of thing a president ought not devote his life to — see, for example, the presidency of Joe Biden.
If Trump did that, my fear is that he would be poisoning the well for future Republican candidates and legislators and paving the way for the Democrats to retake power in 2026 and 2028.
I have little fear that he would be a despot or really any of the wild, fanciful projections of the progressive media. That’s what they’d like to do, and they think therefore Trump must want to do so as well. I don’t think he does. He’s been there before, he knows what it’s like.
So that’s my fear. Not that we’ll be electing a dictator, but rather someone who would self-destruct. I hope he will do better, and I hope he has the chance to do better.
People like Trump don’t get satisfaction from revenge they get satisfaction from outperforming the opposition and then rubbing their noses in it.
Most of those considering lawfare revenge are constituents because they feel powerless to do much else.