Gaining power hasn't made the left any less insane

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://nypost.com/2021/01/19/gaining-power-hasnt-made-the-left-any-less-
insane/

Many years ago, the columnist Megan McArdle postulated a law of politics:
“The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of
the party out of power are insane.”

This was a pretty good summary of the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump
years. But no more. The Democrats have taken control of the presidency and
both houses of Congress. But based on the evidence of the past week, that
hasn’t made them any less crazy.

First, there was the unleashing of the Big Tech titans against the Twitter
alternative Parler. For years, people who complained about ideological
bias at Facebook and Twitter were told to just build their own platforms.
But when an alternative emerged in the form of Parler, the giants
conspired to suffocate it. Amazon kicked Parler off its hosting platform,
while Apple and Google banned the app from their stores. Parler may not
survive the one-two blow.

Parler’s crime? Some people who organized the Capitol Hill riot used its
services.

It might seem crazy to set a precedent that social-media companies — who
have long claimed no responsibility for what people do on their platforms
— are responsible for things said by a small number of their users. But
that’s Big Tech’s position, made all the more galling by the fact that the
latest reporting suggests Facebook users played an enormous role in
organizing the event.

In the event, Parler went from the No. 1 app to life support in a matter
of days.

Facebook also took down all sorts of pages, including one for the
“WalkAway” campaign, designed to encourage minority voters to switch to
the Republican Party, with more than 500,000 followers. And Twitter, of
course, banned President Trump, a move that drew criticism even from
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has never been a Trump fan. And
former Rep. Ron Paul’s page was locked after he published a column
critical of Facebook. (Facebook later called that move a “mistake.”)

Even five years ago, this sort of thing would have seemed insane. But here
we are.

Then Democrats voted to impeach President Trump. Again. When they last
impeached him almost exactly a year ago — just in time to distract the
White House, Congress and the nation from the looming coronavirus pandemic
— the grounds were, to say the least, thin. It was notable that Democrats
didn’t even bring up impeachment at their convention, and it stayed below
the radar during the presidential campaign. After allegedly being a matter
of earthshattering importance, it was like it never happened.

But now they have impeached Trump — a week before he was scheduled to
leave office anyway. And this time, the claim was even thinner: that a
speech in which Trump called for peaceful protests was somehow
“incitement” of events on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, some of which
apparently took place before the speech was delivered.

When Democrats spent a year promoting and excusing violent riots against
the police, we were told that it was “mostly peaceful” protest, even when
police stations and state capitols were seized, and when rioters tried to
burn down federal courthouses. When Trump called for peaceful protest,
we’re told he was advocating violence. Byron York calls this “the crazy
impeachment,” and he’s right.

It seems that the public agrees that both of these big Democratic
initiatives are, well, crazy. In a McLaughlin poll of battleground state
voters, 60 percent said impeachment was a waste of time. Seventy-seven
percent said Congress should work on the coronavirus response instead.
Seventy-four percent said impeachment is “politically motivated to prevent
the president from running again.” And 65 percent said that President-
elect Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are “keeping the country
divided.”

Meanwhile, 70 percent thought that the Big Tech companies have gotten too
powerful and need to be cut down to size, and 74 percent thought that if
Silicon Valley billionaires could take away Trump’s free speech, “they can
take away the right to free speech for any American.”

At least the voters haven’t gone as crazy as the people they elected.

One promise of the Biden campaign was that after the craziness of the
Trump years, electing the ex-veep would return the country to normal.
Instead, Democrats are doubling down on crazy. It’s enough to make you
wish for “smug and arrogant” — but sane.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee
and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.



--
"LOCKDOWN", left-wing COVID fearmongering. 95% of COVID infections
recover with no after effects.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.

Donald J. Trump, cheated out of a second term by fraudulent "mail-in"
ballots. Report voter fraud: sf.n...@mail.house.gov

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.