Greetings, Dear Reader,
Welcome back to State of the Day, where I strip the euphemism and misdirection off national politics and give it to you straight, no ice, no mixer.
Let’s start off the week in fifth gear, shall we?
THERE ARE NOT ‘TWO SIDES’
The modern left cannot function without the Three E’s: euphemism, equivocation and false equivalence.
During a recent New York Times podcast, rising comedian and a member of the “Tires” cast on Netflix, Stavros Halkias said, “I don’t wanna do the both sides bullshit because it’s just not true. One side is worse than the other, objectively speaking. One side is disappearing people and one side wants children to have healthcare, I don’t think that’s equivalent. A lot of stand-up comics happened to have some of the dumbest opinions on Earth.”
That last part was probably referring to one of his bosses over at Tires, Shane Gillis, along with dozens of other popular comics, including Rogan, Chappelle, even Bill Maher.
Do you think Stav will suffer any consequences for that statement? Assassinated in the street? Fired? Shamed? Probably not.
His statement went viral in part because Kamala Harris’s team clipped it and posted it to their main account. Setting aside that Kamala Harris boosting you as a comic should get you immediately sent to comedy jail, there’s a reason Harris found the statement useful.
In the shortest possible way, Halkias had hit the Three E’s. “Healthcare” doesn’t actually mean healthcare. Stav is an on-the-record big time supporter of transing kids. He even blew a gasket once on X over Daily Caller producing a documentary about detransitioners. “Leave my trans friends alone,” he typed into the void. SEND.
Kids in America all get healthcare. Urgent care, the emergency room, or just on their parents insurance (until they’re way too old to even be called kids. Thanks, Obama!).
The way Stav says “healthcare,” he’s likely referring to the chemical and medical castration of confused minors. That’s what qualifies for “care” on the left nowadays. So refusing to castrate kids, in his worldview, somehow means refusing to give them care.
The term functions doubly as an equivocation. It means different things depending on who or what you’re discussing. If pressed on the trans thing, Stav could just retreat to something more palatable, like universal healthcare. (The ol Motte and Bailey, for those familiar.)
“Disappearing people” functions very much like euphemism, but in reverse. It’s a “dysphemism”, which is when you take something neutral and misleadingly cast it in the worst possible light. There have been eight murders in Fairfax County, Virginia. Eight people disappeared. Only two of the perpetrators are known to have been American (one of whom was formerly a Democrat lieutenant governor of the state who murdered his own wife). Four of them are known illegals who will probably finally be deported and should have been a long time ago. This is, in part, what Stav is referring to when he says “disappearing people.” He could also mean more routine deportations. But have they really been “disappeared”? Not in the Stalineque sense, no. Certainly not in the sense that some of their victims have.
Finally, there’s the false equivalence on steroids. One side is “objectively worse,” he says, meaning Republicans.
The main issue for modern Democrats is if they simply told you what they meant, all the time, in clear terms, you’d see how insane it is.
Cue DSA spokesperson Megan Romer, who yeah-yeah’d her way through an interview with New Yorker’s David Remnick. Her explicit endorsements included abolishing ICE, police, prisons, borders, the Senate, SCOTUS, and private ownership of the means of production. She extolled the virtues of the Cuban economic regime. She advocated for a Muslim takeover of Israel. And that’s not all, folks; she justified jihadist attacks on western civilization. How cute!
Would you have attended the pro-palestine rally the day after the terrorist attack on Oct. 7? He asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. Literally.
Democratic Party Spokesman At Large Hasan Piker recently celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk at a rally in California. He also celebrated the assassination of a healthcare executive. He frequently calls for violence. There are millions like him. There are regular people I know personally in my social feeds every day celebrating summary acts of violence on conservatives. It’s not particularly fringe. Karen Attiah was fired from her columnist position at The Washington Post for racializing and justifying the death of Kirk in not one but two posts. A day after Piker’s rally, a judge decided the Post was wrong for firing her and forced them to rehire her, with back pay!
Like Stavros, Perennial Fence Sitter and Pet Conservative Jonah Goldberg attempted to both sides the issue just this past weekend on CNN. Scott Jennings was having none of it.
“Abdul El-Sayed was a bad choice in the same way that Ken Paxton was a bad choice for Republicans,” he said. “ … both parties have real whack job problems.”
“Maria, the Democrat attorney general of Michigan can’t even go to your party’s nominating convention because she fears for her safety from Abdul El-Sayed supporters,” Jennings replied.
That’s no joke. State AG Dana Nessel said recently she plans to avoid the Democrat convention in Michigan because she’s afraid for her life because she’s Jewish.
They can’t even hang out with each other.
Ask yourself this: Has a liberal speaker ever needed a quarter million dollar security detail to speak on a conservative campus?
Stavros is right on one count at least. One side is definitely worse than the other … “objectively speaking.”
Trending SOTD’s
BAN WOMEN FROM USING THE INTERNET
Yeah, you read that right.
A sad state of affairs that everyone got all wrong.
THE LONG, EXCRUCIATING DEATH OF LIBERAL NETWORK NEWS
Deception. Lies. Elaborate fabrications. Heavy-handed editing. Sexual misconduct.
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