Doublethink is to be expected for those in positions of power, but to the average person, who had been supporting President Biden this entire time and who’d believed what they’d been told, it should have been a shocking revelation that they had been mislead, especially as they watched it collapse in real time.
To me at least, one of the most shocking things about President Joe Biden’s abrupt and unprecedented withdrawal from the race on Sunday was how quickly many of my progressive friends abandoned their previous positions and almost immediately began parroting Democrat propaganda. They appear either unwilling to accept that they’ve been lied to by their own party and the media for years, unable to admit it, or more than willing to sacrifice their own personal principles at the altar of their political overlords. I believe you know the type. Between President Biden’s disastrous debate performance and his withdrawal last Sunday, they were actively supporting the President on Facebook and other social media channels, enraged that anyone would question him, posting memes like “The concentrated attacks on Biden are funded not out of concern he can’t do the job but rather fear he is doing it to well,” or “‘We need to see him energized at a rally!’ [he holds an energized rally], ‘We need to see him give an interview!’ [he gives an interview], ‘We need to hear him off a teleprompter!’ [He speaks at a church without one], ‘We need to see him off the cuff!’” [He calls in during Morning Joe] [five minutes later…’ ‘I’m sorry, we’re just not seeing what we need to see.’ Give me a fucking break, would you.’” These statements and others, however, instantly and permanently dissolved less than day after President Biden’s unceremonious withdrawal, flushed right down the figurative memory hole as if they were never made in the first place, suddenly replaced with an entirely new position provided by Democrat politicians and the mainstream media. Although they themselves had been actively supporting the oldest candidate in history for the past four years, denying that his age had anything to do with his performance and insisting he had the energy and acumen for the job, age was now the defining factor of the race and former President Trump was simply too old to be Chief Executive. Though they’d been insisting their democratic principles were sacrosanct and touting President Biden’s primary performance as proof voters still wanted to be “Ridin’ with Biden,” it didn’t matter in the least that whatever candidate would emerge hadn’t received a single vote. Though they believed President Biden had the best chance of beating former President Trump right up until he said he didn’t, they instantly changed their minds and discovered another candidate was preferable, “Happy with Harris” or “Cackling with Kamala.” Though they’d railed against the media for turning on President Biden, they were repeating with approval exactly what these same people said about a potential President Harris or another candidate, all without any irony or self-awareness, as though this was what they were saying all along.
We should, of course, be clear to differentiate this phenomenon from those who proudly proclaim they’d vote for anyone except Donald Trump, preferring even a Joe Biden without a pulse to the purportedly evil Orange Man, or even the proverbial ham sandwich. While the specific type of Democrat described above would clearly vote against the former President under any and all circumstances, there is a difference between taking a passionate, principled stand for your political beliefs, and doing whatever those who think they are your betters say without question. As I mentioned yesterday, President Biden isn’t the first candidate whose promise has been doubted by the party apparatus and elite, nor will he be the last. In fact, Donald Trump himself faced stiff resistance from entrenched party members in 2016 that ultimately erupted in a high-profile public dispute on the floor of the convention between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. At issue was whether to conduct a simple roll call vote to officially nominate Trump, as opposed to a more protracted method that would offer Never Trumpers the opportunity to voice their dismay at his candidacy. The Never Trump contingent even sought to unbind the delegates from their state’s primary, meaning they could select another candidate against the wishes of their own voters. As Politico described it at the time, “They almost got the vote. The Never Trump delegates joined forces with a small but aggrieved band of GOP delegates — led Virginia delegate Ken Cuccinelli and Utah Sen. Mike Lee — furious with party leaders and the Trump campaign for their role last week in blocking a slew of changes to party rules that conservative activists favored. Together, they shocked Trump campaign and GOP leaders on Monday afternoon by producing signatures from a majority of delegates from 11 states and territories, far more than the seven jurisdictions necessary to force an up-or-down vote on the convention’s rules package. That would’ve left approval up to 2,472 delegates on the convention floor — and embarrassed Trump regardless of the results.” Earlier in 2016, CNN reported on the “fierce resistance” the future President faced from the Republican establishment, noting “Donald Trump’s march to the White House encountered fierce resistance from his own party Thursday as senior lawmakers hesitated to endorse him, party luminaries said they’d skip his nominating convention and others pondered the potential of a third-party bid.” As history would have it, they failed and President Trump ultimately prevailed, but can you imagine the reaction of Trump’s voters should they have succeeded and installed Jeb Bush as the candidate? Do you think the majority of them would’ve acted like this is totally normal and immediately started trashing Trump and praising Jeb?
In comparison, the reaction from many progressive Democrats is doubly strange when you consider that their party and their media enablers have been lying to them about President Biden’s mental state for at least a year, if not far longer if The Wall Street Journal is any indication. On Monday, the venerable paper reported that the cover up, what some have called a conspiracy, of the President’s deteriorating mental state began in October 2021. “President Biden had just finished trying to persuade a group of congressional Democrats to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill when Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, took the microphone. In 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly and failed to make a concrete ask of lawmakers, according to Democrats in the room. After he left, a visibly frustrated Pelosi told the group she would articulate what Biden had been trying to say, one lawmaker said.” “It was the first time I remember people pretty jarred by what they had seen,” explained Representative Dean Phillips, who was one of the few Democrats who tried to challenge President Biden for the nomination during the regular primary process. According to the Journal, that was the last time President Biden met with Democratic Caucus to discuss legislation, almost three years ago and yet, not a single Democrat came forward, nor did any media outlet cover the glaring lapse. The lies, however, did not really reach a crescendo until February of this year, following the release of a report by President Biden’s own Justice Department that he was not fit to stand trial for his handling of classified documents because he lacked the mental acuity and the jury would be believe he was just an old man with a poor memory. Under normal circumstances, the report and the even stranger underlying transcript revealing that President Biden could not remember when he was in office as Vice President or when his son died, would have prompted the sort of freak out we saw following the debate. Instead, the Special Prosecutor who issued it, Robert Hur, was immediately branded a right wing plant. The progressive American Prospect called the report “A Partisan Hit Job on President Biden.” CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod said the report was the “shiv the special counsel stuck into the Biden reelection campaign.” Democrat Representative Jaime Raskin insisted the report took “ridiculous cheap shots at Biden’s age.” Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before Congress that “The president has no impairment. I have watched him expertly guide meetings of staff and of cabinet members on issues of foreign affairs and military strategy and policy,” adding that he’s been decisive in making decisions to protect the country. “I have complete confidence in the president,” he concluded. Between then and the debate on June 27, any and all questions about President Biden’s cognitive condition were dismissed as right wing propaganda, ageism, and “cheap fakes” because the President cracked like a whip in private, running rings around people half his age. In fact, some in the media began running stories about how President Biden’s age was actually his secret weapon. These are actual headlines from The New York Times of all places, “The Overlooked Truths About Biden’s Age,” “Biden’s Age is a Campaign Problem, Not a Governing One,” “Joe Biden Is More Than His Age,” and, perhaps my personal favorite, “For Joe Biden, What Seems Like Age Might Instead Be Style.”
Of course, these claims and others didn’t survive more than fifteen minutes into the debate, and up until President Biden officially withdrew from the race on Sunday, those who had been claiming he was the 14th best President in US history and any and all concerns he had the mental acuity for the job were unfair if not downright lies, began insisting the President had deteriorated and was no longer up to the task, as if they hadn’t been insisting the exact opposite less than ninety minutes earlier. Fortunately or unfortunately, this sort of doublethink is to be expected to a large extent for those actually in positions of power, human nature tending to protect that power at all costs, but to the average person, who had been supporting President Biden this entire time and who’d believed what they’d been told about his mental state, it should have been a shocking revelation to learn that most – if not all of it – had been complete lies, that they had been intentionally mislead into believing something that was manifestly untrue, especially as they watched it collapse in real time, right before their very eyes. At a minimum, one would think a number of questions would be in order, the usual what did you know and when did you know it and why did you tell me otherwise sorts of obvious ones for starters, perhaps several even more pointed when you consider many of those deceived continued to support President Biden even after the debate, criticizing the media frenzy as unfair and uncalled for. Instead, they asked no questions then and seem to have none now, immediately backing Vice President Kamala Harris as the new candidate though the endorsements she has for the role have been provided by the very same people that lied to everyone and created this mess in the first place – and almost everyone that promised an open process with multiple potential candidates up until they coronated the Vice President. As recently as Friday, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others were insisting the selection of any replacement would not be a coronation of any kind. Politico covered it this way, “In a meeting with fellow California Democrats last week, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi stressed the need for an open process to choose the party’s next nominee if President Joe Biden steps aside, in an effort to avoid the appearance of a Kamala Harris coronation.” Representative Pelosi, of course, immediately endorsed Vice President Harris and without another word, everyone fell in line, including people who have no actual stake in these power struggles, merely pawns in their game like you and me, complete with the media getting chills in the second coming of Barack Obama. The old expression, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me certainly comes to mind, but based on all outward appearances, it seems that many Democrats are more than happy to comply with whatever they are told, even by proven liars, nor are they willing to ask even the most basic questions.
The question is why and when? Once upon a time, progressives represented the counterculture, rejecting anything that the establishment tells them simply because it was the establishment telling them in the first place. Punk legend Johnny Rotten put it this way, “I never thought I’d live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone.” Today, they continually prostrate themselves before liars, frauds, and know-nothings for no apparent reason, repeating and doing exactly what they are told simply because they are told, expressing no outrage or even curiosity when the story suddenly changes, revealing that the previous narrative was concocted on falsehoods. The reasons are unclear, except I suspect it is yet another weird manifestation of Trump Derangement Syndrome, another way the former President has broken their brains and left them unable to think for themselves, desperate for someone, anyone to give them an answer to a question they simply cannot come to grips with even nine years later. After all, many of these same people readily complied with every ridiculous mandate during the pandemic including soul-crushing, dehumanizing lockdowns and masking for young children – only to make fun of Republicans at the convention for wearing a bandage over their ear in solidarity with a candidate who just got shot in the first assassination attempt in over forty years, as if wearing a bandana on your face for a year or more with no evidence it was effective is remotely the same as a political party favor worn for a few nights. Regardless of the root cause, this trend is not good by any means. A functioning country requires people to ask questions of their leaders, and push back when they aren’t happy with the answers. We can only hope they wake from their slumber at some point because – as they keep saying – democracy itself is at risk.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 