Left Wing Hyperbole: Context is Everything
Most Americans know better, but, if you’re among the relative handful who still trust corporate media, you probably believe that everything in American life today – or at least the stuff they and fellow liberal Democrats dislike – is worse than the American Civil War, 9/11, World War Two and/or other truly catastrophic events.
Left-liberal Democrats and media intentionally sensationalize issues to discredit and silence their opposition, inflame the gullible, and sow division.
Doubt it?
On July 13 in Philadelphia, President(ish) Joe Biden declared that election reform initiatives in Republican-governed states represent “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”
In other words, reforms that make voting easier, but cheating more difficult are somehow worse than…you know…genuine warfare.
But, then, Biden added the tell: “That’s not hyperbole.”
Translation: “It’s hyperbole” – and preposterous nonsense, as well.
Biden closed with, “I’m not saying this to alarm you. I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”
Brilliant!
Granted, Joe’s not terribly bright, so he probably just forgot he had already designated the January 6 Capitol incursion “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
For context, 750,000, or 2.5 percent of Americans died during four years of civil warfare. To reach 2.5 percent, more than eight million Americans would have had to perish during the three-hour Capitol disturbance following which Congress resumed business.
But only one person died violently on January 6 – an unarmed civilian shot by an unnamed federal officer. Four others, including three intruders, died from what authorities described as “medical emergencies.”
Liberal MSNBC talking heads called the Capitol incursion “worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”
More context: On September 11, 2001, 2,974 people were killed, 19 hijackers committed murder–suicide, and more than 6,000 others were injured.
The January 6 event also elicited a “clever” World War Two reference from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called Capitol trespassers the “same people we fought in WWII.”
Charming…
History records that “people we fought in WWII” were heavily armed. None of the Capitol intruders packed heat, none have been charged as “insurrectionists” – the word media commonly use to describe them – and there wasn’t a single goose-stepping Sturmabteilung trooper among them.
Milley’s hyperbolic slander brings to mind Godwin’s Law, or Godwin’s Rule of Hitler Analogies, an aphorism stating that, as political arguments get lengthier and more passionate, it becomes increasingly likely – approaching certainty – that somebody will gratuitously invoke Adolf Hitler.
In other words, as political arguments continue, sooner or later, somebody will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazis.
Ironically, Merriam-Webster’s second definition of “goose-step” is “to practice an unthinking conformity.” The term perfectly frames the left’s mindset and generally-ignorant habit of validating Godwin.
Milley’s loathsome hyperbole is a perfect example of the American left’s proclivity.
But the general isn’t the only asinine WWII-nostalgic left-liberal.
Insisting the world is going to end in “twelve years,” New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) describes global warming as “our World War Two.”
Context again: Estimates of WWII military and civilian casualties average about 75 million, or 3 percent of the pre-war world population.
AOC should relax, because cold kills twenty times more people annually than heat, and, if 3 percent of today’s world population were to die tomorrow, Mother Gaia would escape further destruction by 233 million fewer “climate-deniers” – an indecent term cynically misused by activists to equate skeptics with Holocaust-deniers.
Angry, unhinged left-liberals’ shrill hyperbole and name-calling has become so endemic that defusing and decompressing them may be impossible.
Civil War and 9/11 comparisons are bad enough, but groundless “Nazi” accusations are despicable, albeit common left-liberal political rituals that shamefully trivialize the genuine evil of the Holocaust and dishonor the six million Jews and other “undesirables” murdered by Hitler’s goons.
But, explaining their propensity for leveling such accusations is simple: Gratuitous “Hitler,” “Nazi,” “fascist” slanders are soulless, anger- and frustration-induced symptoms of the left’s moral, intellectual and political bankruptcy, hard evidence they have run out of even semi-rational arguments.
But the left never runs out of ambition.
Frankly, left-liberal hyperbole appears to have far less to do with genuine apprehension about a fascist takeover of America than with the left’s perceived opportunity to finalize their own centralized, totalitarian authority.
In that context, left-liberals’ Hitler/Nazi/fascist allegations are classic examples of psychological projection.
