I’m drawing a line in the sand on this one. I am sick of the flagrant attempts by shameless partisans, Axis of Unethical Conduct liars and desperate Trump-Deranged propagandists to deny the past and the present, their own misdeeds, and their cascading humiliating botches. I am also disgusted with the ongoing efforts of these same aspiring dictators to win arguments and election by strangling the language and issuing rhetorical taboos so it becomes difficult to reveal what they have done, or allows the public to be confused and misled permanently.
Readers here are aware of some of my unyielding pledges. I have vowed to blow a blast on a metaphorical Sousaphone every time someone quotes the phony “76 cents on the dollar” statistic “proving” that the workplace discriminates against women. (The last time I scored a politician for doing that? It was Kamala Harris. Of course it was.) I have sworn to embarrass any movie, TV program or ad that shows someone playing chess with the board set up incorrectly. I am determined never to let an ethics dunce argue that cheater Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame because “other players did it” or because “he was good enough that he would have had a HOF career if he hadn’t cheated.” (That one makes me furious just writing it.)
I am never going to countenance anyone calling the stupid January 6 riot an “insurrection,” saying that Trump’s allegations that the 2020 election was “rigged” is “baseless,” or who repeats any of the multiplying Big Lies about what Trump has said in the past, the most recent example being flagged in a post today. I will not let any demagogue get away with saying that baker Jack Phillips discriminated against gay people when he said he would not be compelled to express approval of a gay wedding on one of his cakes because he believed this infringed his First Amendment rights.
I have vowed not to stand by and allow any Democrat to boast piously about how it is the party that respects women and opposes sexual harassment when it still worships Jack Kennedy, allowed his brother to get away with murder and continued to praise him as a Senate icon to his dying day, made Bill Clinton, serial harasser and sexual predator, the star of its convention in “The Year of the Woman,” knew that Hillary Clinton was Bill’s prime enabler yet nominated her to run for President, was happy to let sexual predator Harvey Weinstein continue to rape starlets as long as nobody exposed him publicly and he was bringing millions in donations into the party coffers, and let Joe Biden fondle, feel-up and sniff young women and little girls, on camera, to his heart’s content. That one makes me angry writing it down too.
And I will never, never, call the pandemic virus China loosed on the world , causing us to wreck our economy (and my business, almost certainly contributing to my wife’s death this year) anything but the Wuhan virus, a correct and properly accusatory name that was declared “racist” by the news media in part to advance the narrative that President Trump is a racist.
Gee, there are more of them than I thought: that isn’t even the whole list! But it’s time to get to the point: Kamala Harris was selected as Vice President by Joe Biden purely because of her race and gender, to pander to DEI mania at the peak of the George Floyd Freakout. [ARRGH! That’s another one! I will correct anyone who says that George Floyd (or for that matter, Michael Brown) was the victim of a racist white cop. There has never been a shred of evidence, none, that the police officers in either incident acted out racial bias!]
That fact means that by definition she was a “DEI selection” and is a “DEI Vice-President.” The truth isn’t “racist. Facts aren’t racist. The dilemma the Democrats and the nation finds itself in because Biden didn’t choose a running mate on the basis of ability, experience, or merit perfectly illustrates how anti-American, discriminatory and stupid the DEI fad is. The Woke, the political Left, progressive zombies and Democrats must have their faces rubbed in it like puppies being house-trained by unethical owners. “YOU did this. Bad! BAD!!!”
What triggered this post was Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, 27, one of the less prominent among the many incompetent members of Congress, calling GOP Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee a racist on CNN because he said that she Harris not been selected on merit.
“They want to call her a DEI president, or a DEI candidate. She has more experience than Trump and J.D. Vance combined, times a million, right?” he told CNN’s Jim Acosta Tuesday.
Of course Acosta, Axis hack that he is, didn’t point out how Frost was making no sense, but I will: Uh, no, Congressman, that’s idiotic. To begin with, Trump has been President for four years, so to say that Harris has more relevant experience than Trump, never mind “a million times” more, is too silly for words.
“She worked at the state level, she was the attorney general, she was vice president, she was a senator representing one of the largest states in the entire country,” he went on. Wait, she was Vice-President because of a flagrant DEI decision by Biden. That’s what we are referring to when we correctly designate her “DEI.” Try to keep up.
“And so these are just racist dog whistles. Whenever you hear DEI, I want you to think about the N-word. I want you to think about racial slurs. That’s what they actually mean,” he concluded. Sure. That’s what they mean because Democrats would like us to forget that they and their discrimination-rationalizing allies have been primarily the ones who inflicted this divisive and destructive malady on society. Its foolishness is finally being recognized, so Democrats want to pretend the whole fiasco never happened. How can DEI simultaneously be wonderful but a clear instance of it being correctly designated as such is a “racist dog whistle”? It can’t.
[In related news, another one of Biden’s obvious DEI hires, the spectacularly incompetent and bone-headed White House paid liar Karine Jean-Pierre, told a stunned and disbelieving press corps that Biden was absolutely healthy and able to do his job, and that mental decline had nothing—nothing!—do with his decision to step down. “It isn’t what it is” has literally become the unofficial motto of this whole corrupt, untrustworthy party. Why do so many Americans continue to believe any Democrat about anything? But Trump lies all the time…]
Finally, let me close with this smoking gun of hypocrisy, from remarks made by President Biden just two months ago. (Good for Christoper Rufo for finding it.)
Ethics Alarms 
Biden’s Oval Office speech probably made your head explode.
Is it my imagination, or was Joe wearing orange makeup, like you know who, to cover up his pallid complexion?
Probably. He did not answer what changed his mind about running since last Wednesday when he claimed he was absolutely running. It seemed more like a campaign speech. CNN reported he took aim at extreme MAGA Republicans – so much for uniter in chief.
Seems like Donald Trump should demand equal time given that this speech appears to be a Hatch act violation.
Exactly. It was just an annoying compendium of talking points. “We are the United States of America?” Really? I didn’t know that, Joe. I must have just fallen out of a coconut tree!
One Big Lie that I’ve seen on ads recently is “Trump said he would be a dictator from day 1.” That lie has got to be powered by bias, because they actually played a clip of him saying it, in context, and he says (from my memory), “People say, ‘you’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ and I say, ‘Nope, nope, nope–other than day 1.'”
He’s pretty clearly joking. It’s a tongue-in-cheek remark. He starts cracking a grin at the end, although it’s true he might have done that even if he weren’t joking. Even if he were serious, though, what he is literally communicating is that he would be a dictator only on day 1, and not on any subsequent days.
If there’s any seriousness to the remark, I suspect he means that he’s going to clean house in the executive departments within his power as president, and the abrupt changes will seem dictatorial in that he’s not going to confer or deliberate with people before hiring and firing and changing policies. I’m going to reserve judgment on whether he’ll have any idea what he’s doing when he does that, mostly because we’ve been over the issues with the people who are currently in those positions.
Yup, I almost included that one that one in the post.
Of course she’s a DEI Vice President. We all know what dei stands for, didn’t earn it. I don’t understand why the press is acting like she is the second coming of Obama. She wasn’t that impressive as a senator, the only thing she did of note was yell at Brett kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing. As a presidential candidate she failed miserably in 2020. Since she’s been in office they have had to keep her out of sight lest she say something embarrassing. She has accomplished absolutely nothing in the assignments she has been given, most notably as border czar. Yet apparently the money has come flowing in and there’s a huge amount of enthusiasm.
You should see the political cartoons that have come out since she essentially locked up the nomination. One of the more benign shows two women walking and saying Trump is a 34 Time felon who supports a van on abortion and Harris is a woman prosecutor who supports a woman’s right to choose, so how is this even a question. Another shows Harris as a monster coming out of Trump’s closet and telling him she’s his worst nightmare, a powerful intelligent woman of color. The most outrageous shows Biden saying that only God can make him give up his campaign, then Harris floating in on a cloud looking like an angry God.
What drives me crazy with this entire DEI craze is the all-or-nothing approach Democrats take. Just like they take with abortion. Just like they take with immigration. Just like they take with taking care of the poor. Either you support government handouts, or you want the poor to starve to death. (There can’t be private efforts to assist the poor, God forbid.) Either you support unrestricted illegal immigration, or you’re against all immigration altogether. (You can’t support limited immigration that could even be more permissive than our current quotas.) Either you’re for unfettered access to abortion, or you want women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Either you support DEI, or you’re a racist/sexist/homophobe who hates everyone but white males. Motte-and-bailey is the tactic of the day.
Diversity can be a great thing, but diversity should not be a goal in and of itself. I think St. Paul said it best when he said, “Test everything; hold fast to what is good.” That is has been the great thing about the United States melting pot. Take what is good from the Africans, the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Germans, the Japanese, the Mexicans, the Jews, the Protestants, the Catholics, the Buddhists, the Hindus, and so on. (Of course, I’m an -ist and a -phobe against all those different groups I didn’t explicitly name, right?) Bring it all in, let all those good things they bring come together to make us stronger. Take different ideas and different ways of looking at things and let those break us out of ruts and inspire us to new things.
But don’t insist that we take everything just because it is diverse. Don’t be uncritical of things that other cultures do that are objectively harmful. Don’t be afraid to say someone’s way of thinking about things is destructive, at least to the fabric of American society. Certainly don’t give people jobs just because they check boxes on some diversity list. I can’t tell you how much it still leaves my wife wondering if she had been hired as an engineer because she checked the woman box.
Other things that are unhelpful are cries of cultural appropriation. If I want to make my own Chinese food, don’t tell me I’m appropriating their culture just because I’m a white boy. I like Chinese food, and my trying to cook it myself is a compliment to the Chinese cuisine. If I want my wife to sometimes wear a kimono, don’t tell me I’m appropriating Japanese culture. It is a compliment to the Japanese for a beautiful ensemble. Now, I can understand being concerned if someone wore a Rosary as a necklace, because the Rosary isn’t meant as jewelry, but isn’t it a compliment that someone would at least see the beauty of a Rosary (well, at least the ones that are beautiful; I’ve seem some UGLY Rosaries out there…) and desire to partake of that?
I think our country would be poorer for a lack of diverse cuisine, methods of dress, philosophies, and viewpoints. But I do think our country is poorer when we reduce people to a group identity and value that group identity over personal responsibility or ability. It was wrong when black people were seen only as group and unworthy of anything but slavery. It is equally wrong now to suggest that black people can do no wrong because they are black.
excellent post Ryan
Clearly, politicians are never supposed to crack a joke or have a sense of humor. I’m sure they’re told that by consultants. Trump’s tendency to be funny and ironic is just another norm he’s broken that drives the dogmatists nute.
That was supposed to be in response to EC’s discussion of “dictator.” Grr.
I don’t see that quote in the link provided.
-Jut
Here is what I see:
Look, the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are the core strength of America. That’s why I’m proud to have the most diverse administration in history to tap into the full talents of our country. I promised you, when I was president, I would have an administration that looked like America. We have more Afrin- A- — African Americans; we have more women; we have more minorities in our administration than any other administration in all of history. That’s why we’re doing so damn well. (Applause.)
Could the transcript have been changed?
-Jut
Wrong link. Here’s the right one. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/05/29/watch_live_president_biden_and_vp_harris_campaign_rally_in_philadelphia.html
Fixed. Thanks.
Shoot, there is not a transcript.
I want to have something on hand to respond to people regarding DEI and how racist it is to call her that.
I had someone on Facebook saying that every hire is a DEI hire because no two people are alike, so Diversity is inevitable. I countered that hiring 100 straight white males between 25 and 49 would be considered diverse then, but that is not what most would consider diverse.
And, he is a relatively smart person.
-Jut
“I had someone on Facebook saying that every hire is a DEI hire because no two people are alike, so Diversity is inevitable.”
Wait, what??? If that’s all diversity is, then why are there DEI policies, departments, deans and managers? All DEI is a movment against hiring clones?
Regarding Harris being a DEI selection. Back when Biden said his VP pick will be a black woman, his list of possible candidates were Cori Bush, Stacy Abrams, and of course, Kamala Harris.
Also:
“How can DEI simultaneously be wonderful but a clear instance of it being correctly designated as such is a “racist dog whistle”? It can’t.”
Actually it can, if you subscribe to Doublethink.