American Thinker articles

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They’re doing what they’re accusing us of doing







By Kevin Finn

October 28, 2024


Earlier on, I argued why I think it's useful to debate Leftists online, knowing that it's unlikely they'' change their minds on anything.

It's good practice as it forces us to learn their arguments and how to counter them, and there are usually others silently following along who can be convinced.

But another Leftist tactic is psychological projection, which is ascribing to another person one's own feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.

Projection is used to relieve a sense of guilt or other unpleasant feeling. Blaming your own problems on someone else seems to be de rigueur in our society of late.

It's worth noting that there is a great deal of overlap between lying and projection.

In some cases the circles on the Venn diagram would exactly coincide.

Accusations of hypocrisy are also common and it’s worth pointing out the difference between it and projection.

In brief, hypocrisy reflects on one's own behavior while projection concerns oneself and one's behavior towards others.

It would be hypocritical for person (A) who frequently rolls past stop signs to say that person (B) should always observe stop signs. It would be projection for person (A) to silently assume person (B) rolls past stop signs. It would be both hypocritical and projection for person (A) to falsely accuse person (B) of rolling past stop signs.


In today’s heated socio-political climate I contend that we’re seeing both hypocrisy and projection being utilized on a daily basis. How many times have we heard a Leftist claim that Donald Trump is "a threat to our democracy"?

The better question to ask is, “Who on the Left has not made that claim?”

The people attesting to this have been noticeably silent on the case of the FBI lying to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in their quest for surveillance warrants on Carter Page.

How much of a threat to democracy was it to conduct what amounts to a coup to remove a sitting president in the final months of his campaign and replace him with someone who never earned a single primary vote? Has that ever happened before in America?

Practically every outlet in the Democrat Media Industrial Complex (DMIC) has accused Trump of being an authoritarian, a tyrant and a dictator. They cite examples such as President Trump is "tearing up trade deals and stepping back from global institutions." The Paris climate greement placed unfair restrictions on Americans, even while "U.S. emissions of criteria air pollutants that impact human health and the environment declined by 74% between 1970 and 2018."

President Trump cancelled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran which enriched the regime while doing little to nothing to curb their nuclear ambitions.

The people who decried these decisions either cheered or were silent when President Biden transferred student loan obligations to the taxpayers despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that it was unconstitutional to do so.


Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris supported the impeachment of President Trump for his telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with "no one is above the law."

When the transcript of that phone call was released, it was found that President Trump did not, in fact threaten to withhold military aid in exchange for an investigation into Burisma Holdings. At the time, Burisma was paying Hunter Biden $85k/month for … what, his expertise in the extraction, processing, sale and distribution of petroleum products? Joe Biden is on video bragging about withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma Holdings.


Response from the Left? Crickets.

The same Leftists who pilloried President Trump for an innocent phone call to President Zelensky gave a pass to then Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton when she illegally used private electronic devices to send and receive classified information, and then destroyed both the messages and the devices after they were subpoenaed by Congress.

The reason for the pass? They claimed she didn't intend to do anything wrong and "Because the government is awash in secrets, they are regularly mishandled unintentionally." In other words, "She didn't mean any harm and besides, everybody else is doing it!"

I wonder how often Secretary of State Clinton emailed President Obama on one of those illegal devices. All emails to the POTUS must be cleared through the White House Communications Agency (WHCA). Ms. Clinton was not using a .gov email address, which means that WHCA and President Obama knew that she was using unauthorized devices. I suspect that when James Comey said that: "No reasonable prosecutor would indict Secretary Clinton” that he was protecting Obama, and not Ms. Clinton.


Those are just a few of the more egregious examples of Leftists employing projection against their opponents in order to distract from their own nefarious actions. The fact that Leftists were engaging in the same, or worse actions that they were falsely accusing Donald Trump and others of committing reveals an entrée of Projection with a side order of Hypocrisy. There are many, many more examples.


For example, Democrats have claimed that:

- Republicans suppress voters while Democrats founded the KKK, enacted Jim Crow Laws and, more recently committed so many suspicious actions during the 2020 and 2022 elections that Americans have lost faith in our elections.

- Republicans carried out an insurrection while Leftists rioted nation-wide in 2020.

- Republicans are Nazis while Democrats imprison grandmothers who pray in front of abortion clinics.

- President Trump is Putin's stooge while the Biden family takes cash from Russia, China and Ukraine.

In all of these examples the accusations against Republicans are false (lies) while Democrats have engaged in those or similar behaviors themselves.


So where do we go from here? Speaking for myself, whenever I come across a claim against conservatives or Republicans from Leftists or Democrats I immediately assume that not only is the opposite true, but that their accusation is probably more accurately applied to the Left. This means that to determine the truth I need to investigate the story and find out what isn’t being told. I spend a great deal of time every day sifting through news stories on various news sites. I no longer get my news from the television or print media. This is what I think we all need to do in order to be properly informed.

"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." --author unknown


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Link: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog..._of_doing.html






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No Cheating... This Time


By J.R. Dunn
October 28, 2024

There is a tide in the affairs of men, as Shakespeare said, and now, two weeks before election day, that tide has swung decisively toward Donald Trump. Forget the establishment polls. The betting sites show him leading by nearly thirty points. He’s ahead in every last battleground state, according to RCP. Embattled Democrat senatorial candidates, including Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Tammy Baldwin have abandoned Harris and allied themselves with Trump. Both the LA Times and WaPo have refused to endorse Harris. There are more registered GOP voters today than at any previous point in history.

As for Mrs. Harris-Emhoff… well, “collapse” is the polite word. She has lost the Teamsters, diehard donks since the days they actually drove horses, along with the firefighters and the border patrolmen. She has lost the male Hispanic vote, and is losing the male black vote. The southeastern U.S. is in a collective white-hot rage over her flippant response to the hurricanes. Lil’ Timmy Walz’s debate performance, intended to pull her out of her tailspin, was a debacle of historical proportions. She can’t open her mouth without generating controversy and disgust. A week ago, she had four for four: four scandals in four days – missing the Al Smith dinner, producing a video insulting to Catholics (with the cardinal present, to boot), insulting religious believers at a rally, and her “I worked at Micky D’s” story being revealed as bogus. She’s even been blowing (can I say that?) the most supportive venues. As Joe Concha put it, she’s “the only Democrat on record who fumbled an interview on “The View.”

Trump’s chief challenge remains cheating. We’re not going to debate whether cheating in fact occurred in 2020 – the only ones who dispute that at this point are the bought, the braindead, and the comatose.

We see many claims that the big cheat will inevitably defeat Trump in the end. This is usually put as “They [otherwise unidentified] won’t allow him into the Oval Office ever again.” This is generally heard from doom and damnation types who can’t see a cloud in the sky without predicting the Deluge. But the question remains: if in 2020, why not in 2024?

There are a lot of factors arguing in favor of this thesis. We’re talking about the Democrats, who have been masters of the electoral cheat since the heyday of Boss Tweed. The apparatus is undoubtedly still in place, minus a few defections such as the newly “libertarian” Mark Zuckerberg. The Deep State also has not gone anywhere.

But overriding all that is the vast array of elements, social, political, psychological, what have you, that can only be termed “historical circumstances.” In hindsight, the overall conditions in 2020 seem primed for cheating. Today, not so much.

Politics -- particularly electoral politics – moves quickly. A week is a long time, and four years is an epoch. What was possible even last week is often unobtainable today -- a lesson that Madame Doritos is even now learning. It seems clear that the moment for massive electoral cheating on the 2020 model has passed … at least for now.

1/ First, there’s no COVID. The “pandemic” was the critical element in the Big Cheat of 2020, acting as a massive distraction and allowing blue states to illegally put in place elements such as absentee ballots with no oversight on the grounds that conditions required it. Looking back, it’s clear that while COVID was real enough, everything that accompanied it – including its origin, severity, death rates, and “treatments,” were fabricated, much of it by the Democrats and their allies in the bureaucracy and the media in order to manipulate the election. One of these days, we’ll get a Molly Ball who will reveal how this all went down – whose idea it was to inflate the epidemic, who came up with the idea of using it as a combined battering ram and shield, how it was all organized and financed. We may rest assured that no such circumstance exists at the moment.

2/ Eyes wide open. Mass naivety reigned in 2020. The theft of a presidential election was considered outside the realm of possibility, even though it has in fact been engineered several times, most notably in the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy faceoff. This state of mind governed the reaction to both the nearly open cheating on election night itself along with the post-election response. This is past history. A far more realistic attitude governs the GOP and MAGA movement this time around. Over 400 laws have been passed nationwide to curtail possible cheating. Numerous court cases have been filed to uncover and prevent such efforts, many of them successful. Attempts to set the stage for potential cheating have been publicly exposed. We can be certain of a much tougher stance when election day at last rolls around – no more shutting down the count and politely leaving when asked or allowing local law enforcement – which has no standing in these proceedings – to bully and menace election watchers. The Dems are not going to have free play this time around.





3/ The elites are truly frightened. It’s a characteristic of propaganda that those who produce it inevitably come to believe it. Any brief conversation with your average everyday lefty will reveal that they are one and all convinced that the MAGA movement is comprised of crazed Morlocks, each with his own private armory and an obsessive yearning to take a few blue-haired scalps. The mythology erected around the Jan. 6 protest, in which the only deaths were those of three innocent marchers, is commonly cited as “evidence” of such an outcome. And they may not be totally wrong. The three assassination attempts, each rife with unanswered questions, has drawn matters to a breaking point. There is a sense of tension surrounding this election absent from all previous ones, excepting that of 1860. Demonstrated or even suspected cheating could easily result in civil unrest, aimed not at third parties but directly at those suspected of chicanery. The elites are perfectly justified in being fearful. The best way to avoid being targeted by an outraged citizenry -- as they must know -- is not to trigger it in the first place.


4/ The final factor, and perhaps most vital, is the nature of Donald J. Trump. No longer a flamboyant billionaire, an everyday politician, or even a mere ex-president, he is now a world-historical figure, a man who braved assassins, the Deep State, the military, and this country’s political and social elites on behalf of principles declared by many to be obsolete. His comeback over the past two years has been extraordinary, unparalleled in American history and possibly the historical record overall. Certainly, past comeback kings such as Santa Anna, Dost Mohammed, or even the great Winston Churchill would stand in awe of Trump’s achievement.

Just look at him at the Al Smith dinner. Cheerful, confident, energetic, tossing around quips and jokes like confetti. And the opposition? Nervous and cowering – Chuck Schumer with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, a fixed blank smile on his face, Letitia James in the back row, squatting in the dimness like a malignant gnome. No shrieks of “I will destroy him …” Not that night.

Trump has earned this. It was said that when Democrats approached 21st-century Bond villain George Soros to beg for aid during the 2004 election, Soros told them, “You cannot stop a tsunami.” As was true then, so it is today.


And that’s where it stands as Nov. 5 approaches like a freight train. Will there be cheating? Certainly. As we pointed out, they’re Democrats. They can’t stop themselves any more than a scorpion can desist from striking. But not on the level of 2020, and not enough to change the results. Cheating will only take you so far. It has taken the Dems about as far as they will ever get.

We must be alert, we must keep a close watch, and be ready to howl if that’s what’s called for. After 9/11, the slogan was “if you see something, say something.” Nothing has changed today, and the odds are just as high.


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Link:https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...this_time.html






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Please Do Not Attempt Another 'Insurrection'







By Steven W. Mosher
October 28, 2024

On the evening of Nov. 3, 2020, America went to bed thinking that Donald Trump had been re-elected to a second term. They woke up to the news that Joe Biden had taken the lead in key swing states, a lead which widened as the ballot counting continued for weeks afterwards in places like Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Maricopa County, Arizona.

So how will election night 2024 unfold?

This time around, the swing states have already announced that it will take four or five days, at least, to count all the ballots. Maricopa county, where Phoenix is located, claims that its 1.2 million or so ballots will take between 10-13 days to count. (!)


Trump’s lead in early voting continues to widen, and he is looking more and more like the odds-on favorite to win the election. But what happens if — as in 2020 — Trump’s lead is gradually eaten away as the days go by and ballots continue to trickle in?

Given the problems in 2020, Trump voters are already on high alert for any signs of voter fraud or ballot manipulation. Even the appearance of irregularities will be enough to send some of them to the counting centers in protest. And given the predictable problems with illegal voters, questionable ballots, and voting machine malfunctions, irregularities there will be aplenty.


The right to peacefully protest is guaranteed by the Constitution, but any kind of public demonstration outside of the counting centers is fraught with risk, since it could easily be seized upon by the Biden-Harris administration for their own purposes. I think here of a possible reprise of Jan. 6, 2021, when President Trump advised his supporters thronging the Mall to go “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol to protest the election.

We do not yet know how many agents and operatives had infiltrated the crowd around the Capitol in what some are calling a fedsurrection, but some say that agents provocateurs were inciting them to violence and urging them to enter the building. When the largely peaceful assembly stood fast, the Capitol police incited them further by firing flash bangs and rubber bullets into the packed mass. It was only at this point, urged on by Ray Epps and others, that they surged forward.

We may expect that agents will be present in any crowds that gather outside of counting centers as well, whether these are in Maricopa County, Atlanta, Philadelphia, or Detroit. Will rumors will be spread about fraudulent ballots? Will the protesters be urged to go into the counting centers, just as the Ray Epps on Jan. 6 urged the demonstrators to go into the Capitol?

Will local police be instructed by Democrat mayors to respond aggressively to any demonstration, perhaps even launching flash bangs or firing rubber bullets into a crowd, unruly or not. Will protesters be injured, or even killed, as Ashli Babbitt was killed? If so, the crowd would be further angered.

Bear in mind that, if such a scenario unfolds, that the point would not to control the crowd, but to incite it. The goal would be — as it perhaps was on January 6 -- to create an incident or, better yet, several incidents in different cities.

We’ve seen this playbook unfold before. Any sign of aggression by those demonstrating, however mild, will immediately be exaggerated by the regime media into an “assault on Democracy.” Kamala Harris will denounce the demonstrations as “a day that will live in infamy” just like Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and Jan. 6.

And, once again, Donald Trump would be the fall guy. “Trump is Hitler,” Kamala would shriek, claiming that he was leading yet another “insurrection.” The Atlantic would publish yet another hit piece quoting disgruntled former employees claiming he is a wannabe dictator. The ladies of “The View” would be beside themselves with rage. Jack Smith would immediately file new charges against him.

Joe Biden might even blurt out “Lock him up!” once again.

Biden’s call this week to arrest Trump is being dismissed by Democrat insiders as a “senior moment.” And Joe himself back-tracked by saying — albeit nonsensically — that he meant to say “lock him up … politically.”


The only trouble with that explanation is that everyone knows by now that locking Trump up has been the plan all along.

As Mike Huckabee noted, “When you file multiple indictments on bogus felony charges in four heavily-Democratic districts where you’ve already sent grandmothers to prison for praying at abortion clinics, I think you just mean 'Lock him up'.”

Trump voters have to be aware of the dangers of another disturbance on or after election day. The Biden-Harris administration has kept prosecuting those who trespassed on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, for almost four years for a reason. They are doing this not so much because they want to remind voters of Trump’s earlier “insurrection,” but because they want to prepare them for a future in which Trump “masterminds” another.

A future that, in a little over a week, may be upon us.

At this point in American history, it should be clear to everyone that the Democrats have betrayed their very name, abandoning the rule of law and all but the pretense of democracy.

Everyone agrees that Trump not only has to win, but he has to win by more than the margin of cheating. But in my view even that may not enough to forestall another fedsurrection.

Trump has to win in such a landslide that the entire progressive machine -- from Kamala Harris to Barack Obama, from embedded activist bureaucrats to Antifa and BLM -- is forced to stand down and accept the inevitable. What will it take to cement the deal: A win in a state like Virginia where they do not control the state government, or one like New Mexico where they do not expect to be challenged.

In that case, any plans to massively cheat -- or to provoke another “insurrection” — would be quickly shelved, in the same way the pipe bomb hoax at the Democrat National Headquarters was shelved — and memory holed -- when it was no longer necessary to pretend that the current Democrat nominee had almost been assassinated.


On Nov. 5 and the days following, those who would Make America Great Again need to keep their wits about them.

Above all, gentle, kind, peaceful members of the greatest popular movement in American history, please do not attempt another “insurrection.”


Steven W. Mosher is the President of the Population Research Institute and the author of The Devil and Communist China (TAN Books)


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Link: https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...urrection.html








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