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One False Move and You’re Dead
The admonitions of a parent rearing a child are many: “stop sucking your thumb,” “sit still,” “sit up straight,” “don’t talk with your mouth full,” “chew your food,” “cover your cough,” “wipe that smirk off your face,” “don’t talk back,” “use your indoor voice,” “children are to be seen and not heard.” Note that all of these parental directions address physical behaviors – a child must be taught how to behave acceptably in public. This is a proper and expected role of a parent in regard to their own children. Sometimes however, that training and discipline are turned toward those outside the parents’ concern. It is then that training becomes self-righteous scolding. And sometimes, training and discipline are turned vindictive. It is then that discipline becomes abuse. And when scolding and abuse are consistently meted out to adults by a class of self-assumed parental betters, then this is called tyranny.
On Wednesday night, radio talk show host Laura Ingraham addressed the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. In her speech, she called out the establishment media to finally drop their bias, step up, and “do your job.” And that media responded. They took a still photo of Ingraham waving good-bye to the convention crowd and rhetorically asked if Ingraham was making a NAZI salute.
When her closing is viewed in full, one can see that, once Ingraham begins to wave, her facial expression quickly changes to one of dread – dread that her wave will be used to malign her. Indeed, yesterday, Rush Limbaugh related a story on how the exact same trick was once pulled to malign him. In the grip of that dread, Ingraham froze, bent her elbow, and began to wave like Queen Elizabeth. Our self-assumed parental betters, you see, have a strict code on how we red headed stepchildren are supposed to behave. Now, not only must every utterance be cross-referenced with the daily updates to the PC/SJW NewSpeak Lexicon, but every movement and physical bearing must be scrutinized as well – and if we don’t do it ourselves, rest assured that our self-assumed parental betters will.
And did they ever. Twitter was alight with pictures and memes, implications and slanders. News stories from self-assumed reliable sources, with a wink and a nod, repeated each others’ rhetorical questions. And all with the intent of convincing the low information voters, to the extent that they haven’t been convinced already – the same low information voters who believe as fact that Sarah Palin and not Tina Fey said, “I can see Russia from my house” – that Ingraham is a crypto-nazi exposed. And so, by extension, are all of the GOP. This is the poison which low information voters are presented in the media. This is the poison which they are taught in the very schools which we are forced, under threat of incarceration, to fund.
As a result, we can no longer write, speak, think, or now even move without their constant criticism and abuse. As I have previously said, this is tyranny.
Well, I have a salute of my own for them all: It requires only one finger. And I would not at all be surprised if my mother, who taught me how to behave acceptably in public, happily joined me in flipping it to them.
Published in Politics
Amen.
Thank you, Bryan. And thanks for reading.
Amen from me too! Well said.
Main Feed, please.
Thank you, RA. And thanks for reading.
Now, that reminds me of my mother-in-law. She was well into her eighties when she started having a physical problem with her one good arm. So, we introduced her to our doctor, a man certainly young enough to be her son. He said something to her, I don’t now remember what, but this sweet, little old lady flipped him the bird. He was laughing so hard that he had to sit down. They became the best of friends. He’ll still sometimes mention her, even though she’s been gone for close to a lustrum.
Thanks for that, Arahant. I guess it bears mentioning that my mother is the sweet Italian grandmotherly type, not the type who flips people off. But she’s also had it with the ruling class elites. So, I’m guessing she might make an exception.
Trigger warning.
I saw the Laura-Ingraham-Nazi-wave stance on my FB feed and wondered what it was all about. Why am I not surprised it was something made up?
Thanks for the post. ‘News’ and Social media is ablaze with references to 30’s Germany and the leadership thereof without regard to actual statements, intent, or context.
I’m a lip-reader (no, not really) and I can tell she’s not only saluting, she’s saying “Heil Hitlery!”
Of course they do this nonsense. Heck, there are pictures from the 2004 campaign where GW Bush had his arm in a position that asked the crowd to take seats or quiet down. Yep, his detractors called it a “NAZI SALUTE!!!!!”
I spent a summer when I was 9 with my cousins in Queens. Italians have much, much more expressive hand gestures than the finger. I’d go down the list.
Gag me with a swastika.
This is great. Thanks, pal.
I’d go with the penultimate gesture shown above, which is very rude, indeed.
[Note to the Eds.: Apologies if this is not CoC compliant; Italian parolacce and gesti don’t count though, do they?]
Lamenting the media never seems to rise to the point of going after them individually and publicly. I think this is what Trump does so well. It has to be ad hominem to get it to register.
You know, a friend and I were looking at what Trump did to Jeb — he seemed to find the one most negative feature and that is his laid back style and call him low energy. That seemed to fit him so well.
With Fiorina (who I love, BTW), is it possible that he saw a woman’s sensitivity to her looks in a latent state? Is he that good?
Cruz was definitely personally hurt by the Lyin’ Ted attack.
And Rubio was referred to as one would a child. Interesting.
I got into a big argument with a woman who worked for years for Scott Walker and also Dick Cheney in the WH. The position that I took was that the GOP and conservatives think they’re too holy to use the tactics of the Dems and the media. Here’s what I said, “If the enemy have tanks then we need to go and get some for our side. This is war and the GOP thinks it’s a debate with the left.” She hit the roof saying that we simply can’t be dragged into the gutter with our political enemies.
I said well that’s what Trump decided to do. He brought the tanks. He went ad hominem and it worked very well. I hope he continues in this vein for the next phase. IF it works and to the extent that it works. We have to stand up for ourselves.
The Dems have the scummy media to do the mud slinging and their people just have to pretend to be decent and above it all. Trump has to do both jobs himself. He’s been very effective. He went after our candidates just like the Dems and the media do and they collapsed in the same way that they always do to this type of abuse. I think that Trump will crush Hillary for just one reason: he will go after his attackers immediately and harshly. He will use tanks and missiles to continue the analogy.
Here’s Hemingway: “Wars are caused by undefended wealth.”
And: “Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”
Thanks, Rick. You have expressed perfectly the feelings of many of our countrymen. Consider the Stars-and-Bars flag waving from a front porch in our little village up North here. As we drove past, my daughter said Gulp. I responded that, while a nonzero percentage of persons flying the Confederate Battle Flag may be white supremacists, it is at the same time highly likely that lotsa (a statistical term, lotsa) them flew it to express their being fed up with being told what to do and not do, what to say and not say, what to think and not think, and that they were bad, bad, bad and needed to reform and obey. For lotsa them, that flag only expresses assertion of a right to fly an orange car over a creek, without a special license.
A little while later I drove past the same house with the same flag with someone else: an Ivy League professor, matterofact. We had a very similar conversational exchange. He said Yep.
So, I think that more people are annoyed with dirigisme, Thought Police, Conformity Enforcers, and gratuitous insult, in the way you have here expressed so eloquently, than is generally apparent.
Always wondered about that Laura Ingraham. Now I know why.
She was AWESOME!
Damn good thing you prefaced that horrifying image with the warning, or I’d a had ta flag ya!
I don’t know why anyone would fly the First National Flag at this point. I prefer the Third National, “The Blood-Stained Banner.”
Thanks, Arahant. You are the history man. Probably there at events.
No, just obnoxious. ;)
Front page of yesterday’s Buffalo News:
Every time they show Trump or Pence doing this, we need to saturate Twitter and every other social media outlet with this photo. We also need to harass whatever media shows the Trump photo salute until they’re so sick of the hassle that ensues that they don’t want to even risk doing it again.
And that’s just a start. This isn’t gentleman’s cricket–these people want to destroy us and everything we hold dear. Let’s start acting like there’s something important at stake.
Boy, You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie.
Radio people should tread carefully on television. It’s a whole different world; a whole different mindset.
Thanks for posting Rick. First smile I’ve had while visiting Ricochet in a day or two. I needed this.
Thanks for reading, Bigfoot.
Thanks for reading, jzdro.