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The Open Mental Warfare of the Left

For the past few years, members of the media have called Donald Trump a threat to democracy and a treasonous traitor, all while repeatedly intimating that he is mentally unfit to serve as president. And that was just what was printed in the New York Times.

CNN and MSNBC, as a matter of routine coverage, say that the president is stupid, evil, and dangerous. And those are supposedly mainstream news sources.

Huffington Post suggested that Trump is a proponent of eugenics. The New Republic ran the headline, “Yes, Trump is a Fascist.” And Salon is more than happy to compare Trump to Hitler.

Outside of the news-media, actors and celebrities frequently have gone much further.

Johnny Depp joked that it had been a while since an actor had killed a president. Madonna said that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” Robert De Niro said that he’d “like to punch Trump in the face.” Calvin Broadus, Jr. (otherwise known as Snoop Dogg) made a video depicting a mock assassination of a “clown” Trump. And, of course, Kathy Griffin posed for a picture with a facsimile of the president’s bloody severed head.

Politicians, of course, must be slightly more tempered and have a patina of plausible deniability.

Eric Holder said that Democrats should “kick” their opponents. Joe Biden said he would like to “beat the hell” out of Trump. Maxine Waters called for the public harassment of Trump’s cabinet members. Hillary Clinton said that Democrats could not be civil until they regained power. And Barack Obama called Trump a “threat to our democracy.”

So, how exactly are Democrats and leftists supposed to react to what they have been told is a treasonous, insane, dangerous president who is a threat to our democracy? If people truly believed that they were witnessing the rise of the next Hitler and the destruction of American democracy, is it unreasonable to think that some would act violently?

After all, commentators at MSNBC repeatedly have suggested that Trump’s refrain that the fake news media is the “enemy of the American People” constitutes a threat and could incite violence. The New York Times calls the phrase “the pet locution of autocrats.” If the media is happy to condemn that rhetoric as potentially inciting violence, do they really believe that their own constant suggestion that Trump is treasonous and dangerous has no effect?

So, let’s get this straight. The media can compare Trump to Hitler all day, question his sanity, and intimate that he is evil and incompetent. All without bearing any responsibility for any anti-Trump violence. But the moment that Trump calls himself a nationalist, he is suddenly responsible for the actions of an anti-Trump anti-Semite?

Perhaps MSNBC and the New York Times should take a look at the rhetoric that they are using to cover Trump.

Even now, the news-media is intimating that Trump’s rhetoric caused, and will cause, violence. Once again, suggesting that Trump is dangerous, all while virtually ignoring violence against Republicans and conservatives and completely ignoring the role their language may play in amping up tensions.

The blatant double standard is revolting.

When members of Antifa are violent, Don Lemon is happy to say “no organization is perfect.” When police officers in Baton Rouge were shot in 2016 by a black separatist in the midst of heightened tensions and Black Lives Matter protests, he was happy to play dumb and say that he didn’t know that the two events were connected. But when CNN has a pipe bomb scare, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo are happy to make all sorts of connections before all the facts are in.

We can have a reasonable debate over whether we should hold people responsible for violence that their rhetoric may inspire—there are decent arguments to be made on both sides. But this is not a debate that the media wants to have. It would require them being consistent. If they were to hold themselves responsible for their hyperbolic rhetoric and the violence that then transpires against conservatives they would lose one of their cudgels against Trump.

The Left is engaging in an epic gas-lighting campaign. Truth has been thrown out the window—but not by Trump. When pseudo-intellectual “experts” and anonymous sources somehow comprise truth, while our common-sense is left in the cold to atrophy; when the absence of evidence is used to deny obvious but inconvenient connections, but conjecture is used to bolster flimsy and uncorroborated narratives; and when polls have more validity in the minds of the triggered than the actual results on election day . . . we know that we have descended into open mental warfare.

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Photo Credit: Neustock

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About Karl Notturno

Karl Notturno is a Mount Vernon Fellow of the Center for American Greatness in addition to being an entrepreneur, musician, and writer. He recently graduated from Yale University with degrees in philosophy and history. He can be found on Twitter @karlnotturno.