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Saturday, September 17, 2016

Theater Or Just Total Nonsense

I know that during election campaigns many things that happen are in the nature of political theater; they are items which are more reenactments of past moments than actual events.  Sometimes, though, even the theater gets old.  Yesterday, we had such an event.  I am speaking about the gathering of members of the House Black Caucus to express their "outrage" over Donald Trump's comments about president Obama's place of birth.  They got together and told the press that they were irate that Trump would question Obama's American birthplace.  They added the usual charges of racism and such.

Think about that for a moment.  Trump hasn't questioned if Obama was born outside the USA for a long, long time.  Yesterday, what Trump said was that the entire birther story was started by Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008 and finally ended by Trump himself.  He added that Obama was born in the USA.  So why would that outrage the Congressional Black Caucus?  The answer is simple:  it did not matter at all what Trump said.  The CBC wanted to make headlines and to call Trump racist.  Therefore, they expressed outrage yesterday at something Trump did not say.  The compliant mainstream media dutifully covered it and did not bother to point out the nonsensical aspect of their staged event.

That was followed by another similar moment later in the day.  For years, the supporters of the Second Amendment have pointed out that many of the biggest names calling for gun control measures that would take weapons out of the hands of ordinary Americans have armed security guards that protect them.  The hypocrisy of these people is self evident; they never want their own guards to go without weapons, but they call for taking weapons away from the "common" man and woman.  Trump spoke last night and said the same thing about Hillary Clinton and her anti-gun rhetoric.  Specifically, Trump said that they should take the weapons away from Hillary's guards and see what happens.  It was nothing unusual.  It was nothing extraordinary.  It was just the ten thousandth time that the point had been made during gun control debates.  But the media and the Clinton campaign pounced as if something important had happened.  America is being told that Trump called for an attack on Hillary Clinton.  It's another of those lies that Hillary likes so much.  Trump didn't say anything of the sort.  We still get this political theater.  The usual people come forward to lament Trump's latest "outrage".  These people still think that the American people don't understand what they are doing.  The days of phony stories like these mattering are ending. 

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