[PowerLine] Liberals Are Crazy. Will Voters Notice? (Kevin McHale controversy)

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/06/liberals-are-crazy-will-voters-notice.php

on the Kevin McHale appearance at the Trump rally

Posted on June 21, 2018 by John Hinderaker in Liberals
Liberals Are Crazy. Will Voters Notice?

Over the last few days we have reached peak insanity, especially on Twitter. I can’t begin to recount all of the outrages. Apart from the whole nonsense at the Southern border that dominated the news, we had Peter Fonda, a former actor who was washed up decades ago, threatening Barron Trump to the extent that Melania Trump referred him to the Secret Service. We had a gang of socialists accosting Homeland Security Security Kirstjen Nielsen while she was eating dinner in a restaurant, and much more.

But maybe the craziest leftist outburst of recent days is the attack on NBA Hall of Famer Kevin McHale. Scott and Howard Root wrote here about President Trump’s triumphant appearance in Duluth, Minnesota last night. Trump almost carried Minnesota in 2016, and in all likelihood, if he runs again in 2020, he will win the state’s electoral votes. A photograph taken at last night’s rally that appeared on Twitter, if studied closely, revealed that one of the thousands in attendance was Kevin McHale, who grew up in northern Minnesota and spends summers there. This is the photo:



It’s pretty much a “Where’s Waldo” exercise, but if you study the photo closely enough, you can discern that McHale was one of the thousands in attendance. He didn’t speak, his presence went unmentioned, but he was there. And left-wing Twitter went nuts.

Countless liberals have demanded that McHale be fired from his job as an announcer of NBA games. Outkick the Coverage has a good summary of the “controversy.” This is one of countless examples:



I don’t know who the first person to spot McHale in the photo — who zooms in to photos from political rallies to look at the people there unless it’s you looking for yourself? — but left wing sports Twitter immediately ran roughshod over the McHale connection, which was shared so much that McHale began to trend on Twitter.

The left wingers then tracked down Kevin McHale’s wife’s Twitter, decided some of her political opinions were unacceptable, and so deluged her with hate that she shut down her account.

At the same time many prominent sports media voices were arguing that McHale’s attending a Trump rally was unacceptable.

This is a phenomenon we have seen repeatedly over the last year and a half. Liberals try to rule any support for President Trump out of bounds. Anyone who expresses even the mildest support for Trump is read out of polite society. He is shunned; he should be fired from his job; if he writes anything, it shouldn’t be printed; he is publicly denounced and inundated with hate; his home, in some instances, is besieged and his children terrorized. If he ventures out into public, he is harassed by bullies. This is the essence of 21st century liberalism.

And it is evil. It is incompatible with democracy or any kind of civil society. And, above all, it is completely crazy. After all, Donald Trump won the election. Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Liberals are trying to dictate, through mob rule and control over the press, that any support for the President of the United States is unacceptable and, if at all possible, career ending.

How many Americans understand how crazy and evil liberals are? I’m not sure. Hardly anyone, in the scheme of things, is on Twitter. And the liberal press does its best to cover up its allies’ insanity. Still, I think word is leaking out. I can’t believe that Americans will vote a party this nuts back into power.

The unanswered question is whether conservatives–who far outnumber liberals in every survey–should adopt liberals’ methods. How about if we decree that anyone who supported Hillary Clinton must be fired from his job? How about if we harass identifiable Democrats when they go out in public? How about if we publish liberals’ addresses and home phone numbers and organize hate campaigns against them? How about if we demand that no news outlet publish any piece by a liberal, and follow up with boycotts and media campaigns?

Conservatives instinctively recoil from such tactics. But who knows? Maybe one of these days, liberals will no longer be able to count on the assumption that we are more civilized than they are.​