It seems to me the left is now using absurdity as a strategy. I don’t know if they are doing this on purpose or by instinct or if they have simply become absurd and it sometimes helps their cause, but there is no question that the very stupidity of the things the left says and does makes it difficult to argue with them.
If someone makes claims about gun violence, say, or male-female differences, there’s a discussion to be had. Facts can be introduced, interpretations can be compared, reality can be examined, and opinions can reasonably take shape. But if you say a man can have a period or mathematics is a plot by white supremacists, there is no useful response beyond gobsmacked silence. To argue at all is to elevate gobbledegook to a level of discussion it simply doesn’t deserve.
This is how I feel about the impeachment hearings — about the entire impeachment process now underway. Even to discuss the business is to dignify it beyond its worth. Men have periods, mathematics is bigotry and Trump should be impeached for his Ukraine dealings are all, as far as I can see, claims on the same level of seriousness. The only reasonable answer is something on the order of: “R U OK?”
As investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson recently demonstrated, a timeline can easily be produced strongly suggesting these hearings are the result of efforts begun before Trump was even elected. It was in August of 2016, that FBI Trump hater Peter Strzok told his FBI paramour Lisa Paige that they needed an “insurance policy” against a possible Trump victory. It was a few months after that when the Bureau began bugging and spying on the Trump campaign, pushed by CIA Chief John Brennan. Only days after Trump’s election, attorney Mark Zaid — who now represents the so-called whistleblower in the Ukraine kerfuffle — announced on Twitter that a “coup has started.” He later predicted CNN would play a “key role,” which, of course, with the help of untrustworthy deep staters like Brennan and James Clapper, it has.
While the Democrats peddled disinformation from Russia in the Steele Dossier, and sought anti-Trump dirt from Ukraine — including that time Adam Schiff tried to secure non-existent nude pictures of the president from a faux-Ukrainian troll — they projected their own behavior on Trump with charges of Russian collusion.
When that whole tale blew up in the Democrats’ faces, they seamlessly moved on to ridiculous claims of obstruction of justice or tax evasion or, basically, whatever they could think of. And when none of those charges stuck, they came up with this: a charge that Trump would not give aid to Ukraine unless they investigated political rival Joe Biden.
Only it never happened. Trump delayed the aid a bit — as he is wont; he doesn’t like foreign aid on principle — but then he sent it on without any investigation taking place. There was no quid for the quo. There’s nothing to testify to. The hearings consist of a bunch of disgruntled career bureaucrats who don’t like Trump or his foreign policy and who make grumpy surmises about the president’s motives on the basis of conversations they heard third-hand.
And as if all this weren’t nonsensical enough, we have Democrat press hacks like Norah O’Donnell at CBS and Chuck Todd at NBC throwing off their already shredded masks of objectivity to tell us that the latest tidbit of useless hearsay is a bombshell, devastating, explosive, the last nail in the coffin, a tipping point, the walls closing in, the beginning of the end. They could save themselves the trouble and just replay their irresponsible coverage of the Russia hoax.
But the very fact that all this is so absurd is, in some ways, it’s greatest strength. Even as we debunk it, we suggest it’s worth talking about, we dignify it by giving it attention it in no way deserves.
And yet we must. That’s the Democrats’ one advantage. It’s the news. We have to talk about it.
Even so, even as I write, it’s like talking about an adolescent who claims he’s an adult or, indeed, about a man who claims he’s a woman. After a brief snort of disbelief, what is there, really, to say?