Double Standards Wrecking America

Once again, Democrats have done what they used to hyperventilate about Republicans potentially doing.

Yesterday, the NY Post published the accusation (from a whistleblower) that Governor Cuomo and his team hid data for political purposes. Ask yourself, how serious is this. 

Now compare this to the announcement over the summer that the HHS would take over data reporting from the CDC. If you don't remember, there was a ten-alarm outrage fire from the media about politicizing data collection and hiding data. All of which was worried speculation based on the belief that Trump is the most evil and cynical human being that has ever lived.

Anyone who was outraged by the possibility that Trump would hide data should be even more outraged by Cuomo actually doing it! But they're not. Are there calls from Democrats or the media for an investigation or just Republicans? Do you know any Democrats? Is their reaction proportional to the events?

Also, consider the reaction to and follow-up investigations of Chris Christie when someone on his staff closed a bridge.

This is just a single example from the past fortnight. Over and over again, we were warned that Trump doesn't believe experts and puts politics ahead of science. Yet, Biden does the exact same thing, dismisses the well-documented position of the director of the CDC as just a personal opinion and minimizing it because he didn't want to run afoul of the teachers' unions. That is absolutely his right, but the media should call him out on it. It should apply at least 50% of the scrutiny it applied to Trump.

Gina Carano was fired because "her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable." This was the post she shared:

“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views”

Do you think this statement is "abhorrent" or that it denigrates anyone, let alone denigrates them based on their cultural and religious identities? Some make the argument that any comparison of today to what happened to the Jews is itself abhorrent. Firstly, to be totally clear, this post does not say that what is happening today is the same as the violence against the Jews, the concentration camps, or the genocide itself. Read literally, it is comparing only the existence of neighbor on neighbor hate. But secondly, if any comparison is off-limits, then Pedro Pascal should also be fired.

There is a great chasm in the reactions from the media and left-leaning people. They may agree with everything in this post, but because of their political affiliations, their level of outrage is highly correlated with not the events themselves but the affiliations of the people involved. Their blood boils when it's the other side and when it's on their side, they nod and move on.

This leads to a huge disparity in consequences. Republicans get fired and ridiculed, and oftentimes Democrats skate on without punishment. For this country to continue to work, the consequences have to depend on the offense and not the offender. There cannot be different punishments depending on the political affiliation of the criminal. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is rampant, both in the media and in the public, and the only step towards solving it I can imagine is to continue to push people to look at themselves, consider whether they are part of this problem, and try to overcome it.

Update:

Yet another example: White House Press Secretary TJ Ducklo threatened a reporter writing a story about him. His threats included "I will destroy you" and that he would "ruin her reputation." Pre-Biden, any threats made by a White House official against a reporter would have been met with a day of stories and opinions about the end of democracy. In this case, there's no coverage on the main page of Google News; I had to search for Psaki to find the details. This gap in the level of caring by Democrats and the media will lead to disaster in the long-run.

How the Left Wins - Marjorie Taylor Greene Edition

The Marjorie Taylor Greene situation perfectly exemplifies how Democrats (and the media) do business to break all the rules and not look back.

For those who don't know, Marjorie Taylor Greene (or MGT for the twitterati) is a US Congresswoman from Georgia who has said some pretty outrageous things. I will not defend her sanity, her qualifications, her suitability for Congress, or her suitability to serve on committees other than to say that typically the media serially exaggerate, so she's probably not as crazy as they are projecting.

What I wish to debate is the narrower issue of whether or not the Democrats should strip her of her committee assignments. Every elected Congressperson is assigned committees to serve on in their respective legislative body by their party. The committee seats are allocated depending on the overall breakdown of the parties within their house. For example, if there were 50% Republicans and 50% Democrats, then the committees would each be 50/50, too. 

The Democrats, though, want to remove Congresswoman Greene from her assignments. This is unprecedented, and Republicans argue that the Republicans should be the ones making this decision, not the Democrats. More broadly, considering the larger implications, should the Democrats do this, they are breaking a precedent and setting a new one, one in which the majority party can decide who serves on committees for the minority party. This is the argument. Looking forward, it's very likely that even if Democrats have a good argument that Ms. Greene shouldn't be on committees, what's to prevent that standard to erode over time?

This is exactly why Republicans have lost and will always lose. They are much less willing to break precedents and erode these standards. In addition to that, the media are much less protective of standards and precedents when Democrats are breaking them. A legitimate and informative media would have focused on the bigger picture arguments instead of hyping up all of Ms. Greene's statements. But this way, what does the American public think about the situation - only that Ms. Greene has said some crazy things and should probably be punished somehow. Since the only punishment being floated is removal from committees, they assume that's the proper punishment and agree it's reasonable. 

In a nutshell, this is how Democrats and the media ceaselessly and successfully push the culture in their direction. First, they misinform the public by telling them one side of the story, the easy side, the provocative side. Not only that, but they build up the argument against by pointing to the most extreme elements that support their side. They completely ignore the legitimate arguments on the other side, and they break precedent. Finally, years from now, one of two things happens: 1) They do it all over again and move the ball farther forward towards their own goal or 2) When Republicans try it, they use all their tactics against the Republicans, and if Republicans say, 'yeah, but you didn't say anything before' then they dismiss that as 'whataboutism'.