Primitive tribalism epitomizes the Left. "Right tribe, wrong tribe" is my verbal shorthand for how liberals endlessly attribute the worst, wickedest, most evil motivations to Christians and conservatives and Republicans for everything, how they psychologically project their own hatreds and bigotries and vices upon us, not as an act of moral purging or absolution or even scapegoatery, but as an expression of the inherent moral superiority they have claimed for themselves. It's a function of the reality that leftwing ideology doesn't work in real world practice, an consequently a reflection of how Marxism has come to be a de facto religion for its stubbornly barren, woebegone adherents. It's a blind, godless creed that can only fortify itself by shunning and demonizing all those who reject its practical and, yes, moral bankruptcy.
We see endless examples of it in the panoply of Republican officeholders who have been scandalmongered and Alinskyized for the same exaggerated or imagined offenses that their Democrat counterparts indulge in on an ongoing basis without so much as a peep of media outrage. Richard Nixon committed one scandal - Watergate - and the Left used it to bring him down and (further) stigmatize the GOP for decades afterwards. Every Republican POTUS since has had some contrived "scandal" asterisked to his name - Ford for pardoning Nixon, Reagan and Bush41 for Iran-Contra, Bush43 for any number of attempts ranging from the 9/11 Commission to Abu Ghraib to "No WMDs in Iraq" to the firing of seven U.S. attorneys to the 2008 financial panic. It's never mattered that there was little or nothing to any of these purported episodes of wrongdoing; it's always been about perpetuating the stereotyped stigma of "right-wing extremism," "right-wing greed," "rightwing warmongering," "rightwing culture of corruption," etc. It's the moral equivalent of a caste system, in which the Left sits atop the societal pyramid and the Right is the enslaved detritus scattered forlornly at and around the bottom.
And that stigma isn't limited to the "wrong" politicians, but to every aspect of American life - even the national pastime:
Tuesday wasn’t Curt Schilling’s day to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame and the Boston Red Sox former great believes his politics are one reason he fell short of the necessary number of votes.
“I think [John Smoltz] he got them because of [Greg] Maddux and [Tom] Glavine,” Schilling said of Smoltz on WEEI’s “Dennis and Callahan” show Wednesday. “The fact that they won fourteen straight pennants I think… his Swiss Army knife versatility… I think he got a lot of accolades for that, I think he got a lot of recognition for that and he’s a Hall of Famer so — and I think the other big thing is, I think he’s a Democrat, and so… I know that as a Republican that there’s some people that really don’t like that.”...
Schilling was an ardent supporter of former President George W. Bush and believes his politics cost him about a hundred votes. He needs 75% of the votes from members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and he received 39.2%, a 10% increase from last year.
“When human beings do something, anything, there’s bias and prejudice,” Schilling said. “Listen, nine percent of the voters did not vote for Pedro. There’s something wrong with the process and some of the people in the process when that happens. I don’t think that it kept me out or anything like that, but I do know there are guys who probably will never vote for me because of the things I said or did. That’s the way it works.”
This is another of those things that, absent sportswriter indiscretion, can never be proven, which helps cover the WaPo's inevitable skepticism about Schilling's claim. Which is why I tend not to dwell on such matters. Why bitch and moan about unfair treatment - or, in other words, mewl like the Left does - when all it will earn us is additional heaps of their scorn and ridicule? But you have to admit, the sports media is every bit as leftwing as the news media, if not more so. And the bias may not even be conscious; most libs possibly don't even realize how egregiously bigoted against everybody outside their cultural "tribe" they really are. Cooperstown voters may be shooting down Curt Schilling year after year for all kinds of rationalized reasons that come down to a shiver of disgust over enshrining "one of THOSE people".
But that's the denying of a symbolic award, however deserved. Curt Schilling is revered as one of baseball's greatest pitchers, he's got a couple of World Series rings, he's got more money than he could ever spend. If sportswriters stiff him from the Baseball Hall of Fame because he's a conservative Republican, he'll live.
For other rightwingers, the stakes are higher, and the bigotry more obvious.
Remember Kelvin Cochran, the man who, purely in his spare time and away from his job as Atlanta Fire Chief, wrote a book, in his capacity as a Baptist deacon, entitled Who Told You You Were Naked?, a tome about legitimate and illegitimate sexuality from a biblical perspective, and was suspended from that job because of it, even though he was, and has never been, accused of abusing his vocational authority to discriminate against anybody on the basis of sexual orientation or anything else? The only thing of which Chief Cochran is guilty is believing that the First Amendment's free speech and religious liberty guarantees applied to him.
And because he was unwilling to convert to sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, beastiality, and vegesexualism (aka "ecumenicalism"), nor cease his biblical condemnation of same, he has now been summarily fired:
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed announced Tuesday that Cochran had been fired. The announcement came on the same day Cochran was supposed to return to work following a thirty-day suspension.
“The LGBT members of our community have a right to be able to express their views and convictions about sexuality and deserve to be respected for their position without hate or discrimination,” Cochran told me in an exclusive interview. “But Christians also have a right to express our belief regarding our faith and be respected for our position without hate and without discrimination. In the United States, no one should be vilified, hated or discriminated against for expressing their beliefs.”
…And the fire chief’s firing could spark public protests and demonstrations from the state’s Christian community.
“We’re past the point of taking a public stand,” White told me. “Christians must stand up for their rights.”
Cochran told me he is considering his legal options – but one thing is certain. He has no desire to get his old job back.
Indeed. It's very similar to my old job at Pacific Northwest Baking Company. Even if I could get it back, why would I want to return to a situation where I was persecuted, abused, vilified, and scapegoated on a daily basis? That well was poisoned months before I was ousted from it. And it's the same for Chief Cochrane. As he says, he thinks God has greater things for him, and I think God has greater things for me. Even if as nothing more than the spark that galvanizes evangelicals into the streets and making phone calls and getting organized and otherwise "petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances," as the First Amendment also guarantees us, and as one of its chroniclers in pixels and on the air.
In the movie A Christmas Story, little Ralphie Parker and his friends Flick and Schwartz are tormented by the neighborhood bullies, Scut Farkus and Grover Dill. The bullying - or one might say "persecution" - continues until Ralphie is finally pushed too far, snaps, and beats the holy hell out of Farkus. No, this is not a metaphorical advocation of the Brethren to emulate black insurrectionists and Islamic jihadists. But it is a fair representation of the wisdom behind the words, "If we don't fight for the Constitution and our God-given rights while we still can, they're not worth the parchment on which they are squiggled," and "United we stand, combined we kick butt".
In the words of Mel Gibson's William Wallace character from Braveheart:
"One chance, just one chance" may be all we have left, if that much. Will we take it? Maybe not for revenge, but even for the sake of self-respect, if nothing else? It's not as if "the Other" will give us any quarter that we don't take.
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