Deplorables and Bigots

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Hillary Clinton made it clear what she thinks of Donald Trump supporters. In comments that were only slightly walked back the next day, she told an LGBT fundraiser in New York City featuring Barbra Streisand:

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.

She further explained:

That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change. Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.

In other words, Trump voters are either haters or pitiable dupes.

The fundraiser reportedly raised around $6 million, with ticket prices ranging from $1,200 to $250,000, with many paying $50,000, according to reports.

Are some of Trump’s supporters bigots? Sure. But nowhere near half of them, and to say so is to pander to Hillary’s supporters sense of smug moral superiority to the lower orders, particularly the white working and lower-middle classes excluded from the Democrats’ top-bottom coalition of wealthy liberals and minorities—plus, of course, the growing legions of government employees.

One could as easily claim that half of Hillary’s supporters are left-authoritarians (she was endorsed by the head of the Communist Party USA, after all), and be as close to the truth, which is to say, not very truthful at all.

Trump supporters, to a large extent, see failed Democratic policies on the economic and international fronts, and while many believe Trump to be flawed, they view him as a better choice than Hillary when it comes to reviving economic growth and defending American interests. But progressive Democrats can only see the world through a self-justifying lens of rote identity politics, so if you don’t believe in bigger, more intrusive government chipping away at economic prosperity and expressive freedom, you’re a bigot.

A case in point is Obama’s chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declaring that antidiscrimination laws override other constitutional liberties and those who disagree are (well, you know):

The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts just issued a regulation requiring public accommodations to recognize people on the basis of their gender identity and not biological sex, pointedly noting that regardless of doctrinal issues, “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

The decision of what church events are secular and which are religious is apparently to be determined by the state.

I’m no fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, the self-aggrandizing openly gay editor at the conservative Breitbart site, but he scores some points about the Democrats’ distorted view of Trump voters in this interview with CNBC. (For the record, I don’t equate most Trump supporters with the alt-right and would agree there are bigots within the alt-right movement who are backing Trump—just as there are left-authoritarians and PC inquisitors supporting Hillary.)

More. David Boaz writes that “it’s an indication that politicians like Clinton and Obama just can’t *imagine* any legitimate reason that people would vote Republican. … I think it’s a problem for politicians not to be able to imagine how anyone could think or vote differently from them.”

(I’ve moved the updates into a new post as they grew beyond a few additional closing thoughts.)

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If They’re Democrats, It’s Not Homophobic

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Log Cabin Republicans call out the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for running a sleazy ad saying of an out-gay House candidate in Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, “We can’t trust him with our kids.”

As reported by the Washington Times, the ad dredges up and sensationalizes accusations of harsh, bootcamp-style disciplinary practices at a private school for troubled teens in Massachusetts where Babeu served as headmaster and executive director from 1998 to 2001. A state investigation recommended that certain practices be stopped but Babeu was never accused of wrongdoing by the state.

The ad, however, uses language that recalls accusations that gay men who are teachers are pedophiles and sexual predators, and not so subtly suggests that Babeu is a threat to children.

“Attack ads don’t get more homophobic than this,” Log Cabin Republicans President Gregory T. Angelo said in a statement. “Not only is this commercial factually inaccurate, but it shows just how low the DCCC is willing to go to stop a gay Republican from being elected to Congress.”

Democrats always think they get a free pass to be homophobic against gay Republicans, just as they feel they can be racists toward black Republicans and sexist toward Republican women.

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A Symbiotic Relationship

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Jason Willick explains at “The American Interest” why The Campus Left and the Alt-Right Are Natural Allies:

On the one hand, excessive left-wing speech policing and cultural brinksmanship on issues of race and gender was bound to make Milo-style ideological transgression more appealing. On the other hand, the alt-right’s newfound cultural power seems to vindicate some of the assumptions of the PC leftt: that racism and misogyny are deeply embedded in America’s cultural fabric, just below the surface, ready to erupt unless controls on thought and language are continuously tightened. …

The PC left and the alt-right exist symbiotically with one another: Working together to exacerbate tribal loyalties, to undermine the legitimacy of the state as a political unit, to question the idea that Western institutions can really treat groups of people with equal respect—in other words, to draw out and hijack the inherent weaknesses and contradictions in the Enlightenment liberal tradition. It’s unlikely that either movement has the cultural power or breadth of appeal to succeed on its own. But taken together, they make a fearsome foe.

From where I sit, it seems that far more center-right conservatives and libertarians are sharply critical of Trumpism and the alt-right than center-left progressives are of illiberal PC extremism, which they often strain to defend when they aren’t denying that it exists at all.

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She Who Must Never Be Criticized

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The LGBT-left blog Towleroad posted on LGBT Advocates Steam Over One-Sided ‘Washington Post’ Article on Hillary Clinton’s Gay Rights Record. I read the Washington Post article and thought it was ultimately a celebration of Clinton’s evolution, despite the promising— and certainly accurate—headline that “Hillary Clinton had the chance to make gay rights history. She refused.”

The Post article made clear that Clinton has now adopted a position of strong advocacy for LGBT rights within the context of the progressive agenda. But any criticism of Hillary, even pointing out her prior opposition to same-sex marriage and public acquiescence to the Defense of Marriage Act and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy, is anathema to the political operatives who helm the biggest LGBT lobbies, which are firmly joined at the hip to the Democratic party.

Remember, “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

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Procedure Serves a Purpose

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Columnist Bart Hinkle writes that, rather than the Obama administration’s directive, with no review or public comment, that all public school restrooms and locker rooms must be open for use based on gender self-identification—resulting in several legal challenges—that “a normal rule-making procedure would have allowed for thoughtful consideration of such issues.”

As Hinkle notes, both left and right are quite willing to violate procedural rule-making norms meant to restrain the arbitrary use of federal power, if it serves their own agendas to do so. But each will strenuously condemn the other side for violating those same procedural norms on behalf of an agenda they oppose.

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Crime and Punishment

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A horrific crime against a gay couple, severely scalded with boiling water while they slept. But even though Georgia is one of five states that do not have hate crime statutes, as the Washington Post reports, the perpetrator received a 40-year-prison sentence.

Not sure what a hate crime statute would have added, but support for state hate crime laws is high on the LGBT political priority list. Others point out that it’s better to punish actions, especially heinous actions as in this case, and not prioritize some forms of hate (i.e., group-directed animus) above others in terms of the severity of the punishment imposed.

As I’ve previously noted, hate crime supporters often oppose the death penalty, so in some cases involving first-degree murder in which a life sentence has been handed out, they simultaneously support/oppose the next logical step-up in punishment.

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The LGBT Social Warrior Way

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No cultural development is beyond the ever-critical eye of our LGBT social justice warriors, who have taken aim at the animated Seth Rogan flick “Sausage Party.” The Wall Street Journal‘s book review editor Bari Weiss explains that:

…a queer website called Autostraddle…ran a lukewarm review from a freelancer who praised the movie for including a gay character—a libidinous lesbian Latina taco voiced by Salma Hayek. The next day the site took down her post and published a 2,600-word apology illustrating in supernova tones the Maoist mind-set of the hard left.

Editor Heather Hogan explained that she heard from readers “who were upset that we labeled the taco a lesbian when it seems more likely that she was bisexual.” Other readers “questioned the consent of the sexual encounter between the taco and the hot dog bun.”

Ms. Hogan saved her harshest self-criticism for having allowed the review to be written by a person whose epidermis was not a sufficient shade of brown: “First and most damning, we allowed a non-Latina writer to cover a story about a caricature of a Latina.”

It sounds as if she would gladly commit seppuku, if only that didn’t require the sin of cultural appropriation: “I am wholly sorry for the pain and anger I caused you,” she wrote. “I offer you no justification. I was blinded by my own whiteness existing inside a system of white supremacy. I must do better. I will do better.”

It’s the sort of apology one might hear from a prisoner in North Korea….

This is par the course on the LGBT progressive left.

More. LGBT activists: “That’s not funny.”

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Immigrants and Values

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Donald Trump proposed an ideological test that would limit immigrants seeking admission to the U.S. to “those who share our values and respect our people,” saying: “Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country.”

Trump noted that such a test has been used during the Cold War as a basis for allowing immigrants to come to our shores, further inciting those who believe we were on the wrong side of that struggle.

LGBT activists immediately responded with condemnation and mockery.

Russell Roybal, deputy executive director for National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, told The Advocate that Trump’s proposal is a form of “thought-policing.” And, of course, progressives are never in favor of limiting expression and discussion.

The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement claiming that “What’s craziest about this ignorant, incomprehensible plan is that Donald Trump and Mike Pence would fail their own test,” because they met with evangelical Christian leaders who oppose same-sex marriage and favor allowing small business owners with religious objections to abstain from providing expressive services for same-sex marriages.

Whatever the merits of the Trump suggestion, the response highlights what many choose not to see: that a great number of immigrants from Muslim countries are intensely anti-gay (and hostile to Jews, and to women’s equality).

In the U.K., an ICM poll revealed that more than half of Muslims disagree with homosexuality being legal in Britain.

If a political party proposed allowing hundreds of thousands of anti-gay conservative Christians to immigrate to the U.S. from abroad, I suspect the response from LGBT progressives would be far different.

Bruce Bawer observed:

Here in Oslo, a gay couple who were holding hands in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Grønland were physically assaulted by a man who told them: “This is a Muslim neighborhood.” In a follow-up story, Dagbladet interviewed a local man, born in Pakistan but resident in Norway for ten years, who argues that “Grønland is a multicultural environment where there are many people who don’t like homosexuals, so they shouldn’t hold hands.” He says such things are OK in west Oslo, where there are few Muslims, “but here in Grønland they shouldn’t do it. Ideally, it should be forbidden to practice homosexuality in this area.”

There are those who have been quick to dismiss this as an isolated incident. On the contrary, it’s simply an indication that Norway is headed the same way as the rest of Western Europe.

He added, elsewhere:

One familiar response is: “Well, non-Muslims beat up gays, too!” Yep – indeed they do. Yet for a while there, in much of Western Europe, homosexuality was on its way to being a non-issue. In Amsterdam in the late 1990s, I was delightfully surprised to discover that when groups of straight teenage boys passed gay couples in the streets, they just walked past without any reaction whatsoever. The sight of gay people didn’t upset, threaten, amuse, or confuse them; the familiar, insecure urge to respond to open homosexuality with some kind of distancing, disdainful word or gesture – and thereby affirm to one another, and to themselves, their own heterosexual credentials – was simply not part of those kids’ makeup. For me, it was a remarkable experience. Amsterdam then seemed to me the leading edge of a new wave in the progress of human civilization.

Alas, it is now very clearly the opposite. The number of reported gay-bashings in Amsterdam now climbs steadily year by year. Nearly half Muslim, the city is a front in the struggle between democracy and sharia, under which, lest it be forgotten, homosexuality can be a capital offense. Things have gotten so bad there that even on the part of the exceedingly politically correct, there has been a degree of acknowledgment that something has changed, and is still changing.

As Douglas Murray wrote before this latest controversy, The gay community is in denial about Islamism. Or LGBT activists leaders are, at least.

More. An observation from Mallard Fillmore.

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Trump and After Trump

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The Washington Blade reports Log Cabin continues to mull Trump endorsement, and David Boaz posts, “He’s wholly unfit for the presidency, he traffics in racial and religious scapegoating, but he’s not particularly antigay…. So what’s Log Cabin to do?”

And no, reports like this one, also in the Washington Blade, casting Trump as “anti-LGBT” for meeting with conservative evangelicals, at what must by definition be “an anti-LGBT event,” are engaging in falsification that’s, well, worthy of Donald Trump. LGBT progressives with bylines are just as scurrilous as the Hannity and Limbaugh gang on the other side.

On a more positive note, Rich Tafel and Ted Buerger look forward to how Creative Destruction Will Allow Republicans and Democrats to Rebuild After 2016, and conclude:

The irony is that, in the wake of Trump’s self-destruction, we Republicans may be more motivated to make that change, from which could rise a renewed, inclusive party of Lincoln. That is our opportunity.

If the party loyalists recognize that Ted Cruz opened the door for Donald Trump, than in the wake of Trump’s defeat there is indeed a possibility that the socially moderate message we heard from Jeb Bush and John Kasich could hold sway as the Republicans rebuild their party.

A good sign: Florida Gov. Scott: Same-sex marriage is ‘law of the land.’ “We need to figure out how to come together as a country,” he told Fox News. “[T]he Supreme Court has already made a decision. In my state, we’re focused on jobs.”

And the New York Times reports on Marco Rubio’s addressing Christian conservatives and telling them, “When it comes to our brothers and our sisters, our fellow Americans, our neighbors in the LGBT community, we should recognize,” he said, that American history “has been marred by discrimination against and rejection of gays and lesbians.”

More. Tafel and Buerger write of the two major parties and their presidential campaigns:

But Americans deserve better. Gallup polls now confirm that most Americans are “socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” As hopeful believers in the American dream, most Americans want a sustainable society based on innovation and opportunity, security and trust, private charity and public safety-net, inclusion and religious liberty, personal freedom and human dignity. That aspiration should be at the core of each political party. It is not.

Yes, inclusion and religious liberty are both core American values, although I can see LGBT progressives stamping their feet and shouting that “religious liberty” is nothing but code for discrimination (because, you know, God talk) that seeks to elevate individual conscience above compliance with the will of the state.

Furthermore. Progressives believe taxpayers should be forced to fund late-term abortions but that no taxpayer money should go toward grants allowing low-income students to attend religiously affiliated colleges that don’t support same-sex marriage.

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