The United States of Orwell

We’re less than a month into the Biden Administration and we’re already seeing changes in the way things are getting done. Unfortunately, those changes aren’t good ones.

In the past week alone, the following events occurred:

– Leftists and non-Leftists called out the Biden Administration for promising $2000 COVID-19 relief checks, only to watch the President and the DNC lower that amount to $1400, citing the $600 previously approved was a “down payment.”

– White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki scoffed at the use of anonymous sources for news leads potentially critical of the Biden Administration.

– Biden supporters have expressed a desire/need to limit conservative voices in mainstream media, social media, and in general, suggesting they should be “named and shamed” so people don’t ever do business with them or take them seriously.

– Members of the media are arguing any seemingly dishonest statements from President Joe Biden lack nuance or, more frequently, advise the dishonesty was far worse under President Donald Trump.

New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose wrote the Biden Administration needs to appoint a “reality czar” to address what he called a “reality crisis.”

– Leftists have eagerly supported “reeducation camps” for Trump supporters as a means to “deprogram” them.

– The Biden Administration requires people to wear masks on federal property as a means to stop the spread of COVID-19 while he has been photographed without one, leading Leftists to try to explain it away.

– Joe Biden announced a program to roll out COVID-19 vaccinations that matched what the Trump Administration was already doing at the same rate.

– Leftists are calling the incoming Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg the first openly gay person to serve in a Cabinet, thereby erasing Richard Grennell’s existence as the first openly gay person to serve in a Cabinet.

We’re not in the Upside Down, kids. This is what is actually happening.

Right now, we’re being told to believe what the government and its agents are telling us, even if it doesn’t live in the same neighborhood as reality. If you though the “gender is fluid” debate was insane, we’re entering a whole new suburb of Crazy Town.

And this is by design. The Left’s playbook has always relied on affecting change through manipulation of language. If they can get people to think a certain way through framing a topic in a certain way, Leftists can reshape perception, which reshapes the audience’s reality even if it creates self-delusion. Although there are many real life examples of this happening, there’s a literary one that seems to fit what the Left is trying, and in some cases succeeding, to do: 1984.

And before you Leftists call me out on it, I have read the book and understand it quite clearly. Unlike you, I also understand it’s not an instruction manual.

Whether it’s Big Brother (the fictional entity, not the TV show) or Big Biden, the principle of controlling the narrative is vital to the outcome. The more they can get you to believe 2 + 2 = 5, the better able they are able to convince you of other absurdities, like there are more than 2 genders, white people can believe they’re black, and it’s okay to enact fascism under the guise of preventing it.

George Orwell would be proud. Or frightened. Or confused.

But you needn’t be any of those because non-Leftists have a secret weapon that undercuts the Left’s most Orwellian of policies: free will. When you really think about it, the Left requires subservience to be successful, but only if you choose to be subservient. We can’t all be as outwardly rebellious as Number 6 from “The Prisoner,” but we can camouflage what we believe through the kind of intellectual subterfuge the Left employs. Outwardly comply, but inwardly resist. At some point, the Left will over-reach and their house of cards falls down.

And that’s the other secret weapon we have: the Left is just that stupid.

No matter what, the Left always manages to find a way to ensure defeat after securing victory, usually within a short time. Their main flaw is and always has been they don’t typically think strategically in advance of the next election. They think in terms of what wins now versus what will win years from now. The whole $1400 check debacle is proof of that. They keep doubling and tripling down on the “it’s basic math” argument when they need to be thinking of how to deliver what was promised without trying to weasel out of it. That doesn’t help anyone, let alone the people who actually need the money. Plus, once more people realize why they didn’t get $2000 in the first place and what party caused it (Spoiler Alert: It’s the Democrats), it’s not going to end well.

So keep your chins up, dear readers. No matter how many times the Left tells you 2+2=5, just remember these same rotten eggheads came up with Common Core.

Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

This week has been a great one for our favorite Socialist Socialite, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. After accusing Senator Ted Cruz of attempted murder in a tweet where the two agreed on the recent Robinhood controversy, she came out this week and told her story about what happened on January 6th.

To put it mildly, I’ve seen less melodrama in a telenovela than in her story. And, as expected, Leftists ran with it, even if the facts didn’t exactly match up with her version of events. After people attempted to correct the record, fact-checking website Snopes got involved and came out looking like one of AOC’s social media team by ruling the fact checks that undermined her story “misleading.”

I know we’ve covered fact checking before on the Lexicon, but this week I want to delve deeper into Snopes to try to figure out how they operate.

Snopes

What the Left thinks it means – a valuable fact-checking website that does its homework to expose lies

What it really means – a website that went from debunking urban legends to creating political ones

Snopes built its reputation for telling the truth by focusing on those stories we took as gospel, but may or may not have the ring of truth. You know, like the government actually spending within its means? For a while, this was good enough for the owners/creators of the site, but eventually it branched out into politics. Not surprising, given the creators happened to be prominent Democrat donors. Now, that wouldn’t matter to me if they stuck with urban legends, but once you cross the line into politics, those little details matter because they can taint the results of your fact checking.

Let’s just say Snopes has no concerns with it because they don’t care about whether their fact checks resemble factual information.

Take the AOC story, for example. Regardless of how you feel about the events of January 6th, it’s not far-fetched to say she could have felt she was in danger. Yet, the way she initially described it made it sound like she was at the Capitol when everything went sideways. That wasn’t the case, though. She was in a different building within a short walk of the Capitol and was evacuated before the protestors breached the building itself. Additionally, she said her fear was compound by a man yelling “Where is she?” That man happened to be a member of the Capitol Police trying to keep her safe and get her away from the potential danger.

Nowhere in that series of events was AOC in any actual danger, though. She can feel she was in fear for her life (which makes me wonder just how New York she really is), but the facts don’t back it up. And as Ben Shapiro has pointed out on a few occasions, facts don’t care about your feelings.

When presented with tweets explaining the logical inconsistencies, Snopes found the fact checks on AOC misleading because…she never said she was at the Capitol when things happened, which is true, but contradicted by her own story as she told it. It’s a question of literal versus figurative speech, which can also be subject to political biases. Case in point: President Donald Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” comment after Charlottesville. Even though the President clearly and unequivocally denounced the racists, the Left ran with the narrative he thought the racists were “very fine people.” The President literally explained himself, but it wasn’t convenient, so the Left went with what they said he meant to say. (Cue the dog whistles the Left keeps hearing, but few others outside of their circles can…which is an odd thing to consider if you really think about it.)

And how did Snopes rate Trump’s statement? A “mixture” because they felt he didn’t condemn white supremacists. Funny how a clear articulation gets treated as a mixture of truth and lies, but a clear implication AOC was at the Capitol Building gets treated differently. 

That’s why fact checking, especially from Snopes, needs to be scrutinized and mocked mercilessly. I can count on the one hand of the world’s worst shop teacher the number of times Snopes has given Republicans the benefit of the doubt, but they will bend over like Cirque du Soleil when it’s a Democrat. No logic is too pretzel-like for Snopes if the ideology is right.

Even when the Democrat and Republican says the same thing using the same terminology. And, yes, this actually happened.

I have a rule of thumb when it comes to checking facts: if you have to equivocate to make something true, it ain’t true. The fact the preeminent fact checker can’t call balls and strikes should tell you everything you need to know about Snopes and its standards. Yet, Snopes keeps finding a way to limbo under their already low standards, as they have here.

Take their overwhelming focus on Republicans. The Left loves to point at the fact Snopes calls out more Republican lies than Democrat lies as proof the Left is more truthful. Now, consider the Snopes fact checking model. Naturally they’re going to find Republicans lie more because the site actively targets Republicans and giving half-butted explanations as to why while simultaneously giving Democrats a pass on even their most egregious lies. Under those parameters, it’s more likely that David Duke will win an NAACP Image Award than a Republican will get a fair shake, or an NAACP Image Award for that matter.

Even though Snopes has been in the fact checking game for a while, it’s clear they haven’t learned facts have no party affiliation. If a Democrat or a Republican tells a lie, it’s a lie. If somebody from “flyover country” gets it, why can’t Snopes?