by Thaddeus G. McCotter
Often, yours truly has expounded (okay, ranted) upon the term “narrative,” which is just an artful euphemism for “lie.” A device drawn from fiction, as opposed to non-fiction, it facilitates lying by eliding the need for providing the facts and proving the truth of one’s assertions. Consequently, it is a boon to propagandists, who can harp on a “narrative” ad nauseum to provoke and persuade the public to do as the purveyor of the lie seeks.
For the Left, one oft used word signaling an impending narrative is the word “complexity.” Usage of this word allows the Leftist to cull and, importantly, dispense with whatever facts or allegations they choose to create a narrative. This is critical in instances where the facts at hand lead to an ineluctable conclusion – i.e., the truth – that is antithetical to the Left’s aim. Let us explore four instances of the Left’s “complexity” of idiocy driving a narrative harmful to America and the world.
In American domestic policy, the Left is not content with foisting cancel culture upon the country and coopting the corporate media to control the political debate. The Left wants to silence any dissent to its authoritarian aims. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution recognizes and protects the God-given rights to each citizen of “political rights,” such as free speech. One would think the constitution’s prohibition would be the last word on censorship; but one would be underestimating the Left’s power to pretend the clear prohibition of government censorship is, instead, “complex.”
Consequently, as they have on college campuses, the Left has been weaponizing federal and state governments both directly and through colluding with private entities to censor free speech. Creating the camouflage of “complexity” by pretending there exists a transcendent right not to be “offended” and purporting to be promoting “safety,” the censorious Left’s aim is to cloud the truth that the supreme law of the land prohibits the government from infringing upon Americans’ free speech and all political rights. And no amount of faux complexity can obscure the fact that there is nothing more dangerous than a censor.
In the realm of American foreign policy, a classic example is the Left’s obstinate determination to appease the terrorist regime in Iran. Citing imagined “moderate” mullahs, ignoring the Iranian people’s courageous efforts to be free, and abiding the delusion Iran’s nuclear program can be managed for solely energy purposes and separated from the regime’s exportation of terror, the Left has manufactured the complexity it hopes can convince someone other than themselves that this barbarous, tyrannical government does not really mean it when it screams, “Death to America! Death to Israel!”
Spoiler alert: they really mean it.
The Iran Deal, too, also affords the opportunity to examine how the Left uses their other “prog whistles” of “nuance” in conjunction with “complexity.” After ginning up sufficient “complexity” regarding an issue, the Left then breaks out “nuance” to both preen about their alleged intellectual and moral superiority and to justify an otherwise obviously imbecilic policy decision. Once that imbecilic policy decision results in the expected disaster, the Left regurgitates how the situation is “complex” to avoid the bitter fruits of their “nuanced” lunacy. In sum, this three-legged fool of policy making it is nothing but a formula to escape accountability for the consequences of their actions and ideology.
On the world stage, far from dissipating as it metastasizes from the domestic Left into the global Left, the complexity mounts to more egregious heights of hypocrisy and willful blindness. Consider rogue regimes’, the global elite’s, and the United Nations’ sympathy and/or outright support of the terrorist organization Hamas against democratic Israel. This is manifested in the “complexity of idiocy” in the mealy-mouthed objections to Hamas’ terrorist atrocities against Israelis and their tourists that never fail to include a tacit or implicit “but.” This is merely the hypocritical version of the vile declarations of Hamas supporters who claim “resistance” – i.e., the killing, raping, torturing, and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and tourists – is “justified” because Gaza is “occupied.” Gaza is not occupied by Israel. But the Left’s narrative requires its protagonists to be victims, so they can justify any action, however evil, against their imagined “oppressors.” And, because of their hubristic belief they are better than anyone else and, ergo, empowered to propagate the “noble lie” to attain their allegedly “altruistic” aims – voila! – the Left transmogrifies the terrorists into “liberators” and their victims into “oppressors.” While seemingly lost upon and/or callously dismissed by the global Left, the perversity of their global Left’s “complexity” and “nuance” is not lost upon nor capable of being dismissed by the Hamas terrorists’ victims.
Equally, it is also instructive what the Left deems not complex. Ponder their Manichean, paranoiac narratives of “us good, them bad” that (to them at least) justify their every indulgence and excesses. The Left has no compunction in pronouncing a former duly elected president as an abject threat to their fundamental transformation of “democracy” into anything but; brand nearly half the country who voted for him as potential domestic terrorists – especially if they “cling” to their religion and rights.
The Left’s “complexity of idiocy” is the bitter fruit of a disordered soul. As a result, the Left is less a political movement than a neurotic clown collective arrogantly spouting toxic imbecility under the threadbare cloak of intellectual “complexity” to foist its radical, extreme, and dangerous policies upon Americans. Then again, in fairness to the Left, amidst these chaotic times most things are “complex” for tiny, bigoted minds.
Oh, that fourth instance where the facts belie one of the Left’s “complex” narratives? “The Democrats are the smart party.”
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An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
