An orgy of self-righteousness

The last two days have demonstrated that no one in the chattering classes, from the White House down to the editorial board of the Gnarled Gulch Post-Sentinel, seems to be overly concerned with actually finding a solution to the threat of terror facing the West. A case in point is The Donald’s latest proposal to temporarily prohibit all Muslims (politically correct pronunciation: 'moo·Slims) from entering the United States to discourage further terror acts within our borders. While, admittedly this appears to be an extreme solution to the problem, at least Trump is willing to recognize there is a problem and not attempting to sugar coat the issue in politically correct banalities. Furthermore, the proposal deserves consideration, given the fact that the West has been under some sort of assault by Islamic radicals for over 3 decades. But then, I don’t think that our progressives realize that the definition of insanity entails constantly doing the same things in the same way and expecting different results.

Instead of addressing a problem that appears to be getting worse, they chose to shoot the messenger and cloak themselves in outrage. At best, this is disingenuous and at worst, cowardly. We don’t need to hear from Josh Earnest, the President’s hatchet man, that Trump’s campaign has “a dustbin of history-like quality.” And for Barack Obama to accuse Donald Trump of lying is rich with irony, given that the past seven years of the President’s tenure has been nothing but one huge lie. It’s the single most egregious example of the pot calling the kettle black (no pun intended). We don’t need Jeb Bush’s comments that Trump is “unhinged,” unless he has a better and more elegant solution. Ditto Marco Rubio, who accuses Trump of making “offensive and outlandish statements [that] will not bring Americans together.” Perhaps Mr. Rubio has a better proposal. If so, then I’m sure all Americans would be interested in hearing it. There is little doubt that The Donald’s “modest proposal” is outlandish, perhaps even bizarre. But given that our own President doesn’t even recognize there is a problem, much less propose a solution is equally outlandish and bizarre. The constant refrain that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is beginning to wear thin, as more and more acts of terror around the world belie this conceit. What does the President think the first letter in ISIL stands for? Independent? Israeli? Inconsistent?

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Progressives from both sides of the aisle are attempting to sell Americans a bill of goods about acts of Islamic terrorism. There’s almost a sense that Americans can absorb a certain number of these events without changing anything. And Trump is confounding this assumption by calling out the smug, affected inside the Beltway-types who would rather punt than charge. Liberals and progressives are behaving like alcoholics with Stockholm syndrome in that every time an act of terror is perpetrated against a soft Western target, the first thing they do is attempt to link it to some right-wing Christian fanatics or anti-abortion activists. If evidence is then uncovered that this was not the case and the perp had an Islamic-sounding name, they urge everyone to not jump to conclusions, even though THEY had just finished doing so. As more and more evidence builds proving that the act was indeed an act of Islamic terrorism, they tend to revert to blaming the victims, as in, “what have we done to make them hate us so?” Trump is putting blame where blame lies: not on guns, not on “disaffected” or “unassimilated” citizens, but on Islamic nutters. And that given that a Democrat President during WWII locked up Japanese, Germans and Italians there is a precedent, however unsavory it might have been. But Western elites would rather jockey for being the most politically correct, than solving a problem. Having a hissy fit when someone says something offensive is so much easier and so much more fun than actually, you know, fix things.