It wasn’t a good week for Leftists, especially one Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York. In spite of an…well, unintentionally hilarious rally with the Socialist Socialite prior to Bowman’s primary, he lost by 17 points to his opponent, George Latimer. Who knew being actively anti-Semitic in a city with a sizable Jewish population would work against him?
I mean aside from anyone with a functioning brain.
That brings us to Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who is trailing her primary opponent by a slim margin. In an attempt to hold her role in the Squad and explain why her fellow Squad member went down harder than a fishing lure throat lozenge, she went all Cynthia McKinney and blamed the Jews, and more specifically the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC as the hip kids call it. Surely, such a group must secretly be working with the GOP to unseat the Squad because Rep. Bush said so!
Well, Rep. Bush, the truth is a lot more complicated than you think, but as a favor to you, I’ll try to dumb it down so you can keep up.
AIPAC
What the Left thinks it means – a corrupt Far Right lobbying group that has turned Democrats and Republicans into Jewish sympathizers
What it really means – a bipartisan group that may want to reconsider its donations going forward
To hear the Squad and many of their fellow dumbasses talk, AIPAC is pure dag nasty evil. After all, AIPAC supports that pure dag nasty evil apartheid state, Israel! How can anyone with a shred of decency support such a country, especially within the boundaries of the US of A?
Yeah, that’s where things get complicated. AIPAC isn’t some right wing dark money group that targets anti-Israeli politicians. Their support list is quite bipartisan, including former Speaker of the House and current drunk around the House Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Ted Lieu. In fact, AIPAC has given more money to Democrat candidates and causes since 2018.
Oops.
Of course, we’re dealing with Rep. Bush here, who claimed to have healed people by touch alone through faith without any evidence. But Party of Science, kids!
Meanwhile back in the real world, it’s not hard to understand why the Squad has a hate-boner for AIPAC. Contrary to what they say (which is usually so dumb it makes Joe Biden’s last debate performance look positively fucking brilliant), they hate Israel and Jews at their cores. While previous politicians have done a good job at balancing their public beliefs and their private beliefs, the Squad are honey badgers: they just don’t care. When the Good Lord gave out fucks about Israel, the Squad asked for and got none.
Turns out they also passed on brains, but that’s another story.
The truly scary part of this movement against AIPAC is how rapidly it’s being picked up by fellow Leftists who share the same opinions as the Squad. As support for Palestine grew on college campuses, so did the hatred towards anything and anyone Jewish. That manifested itself in many ways, not the least of which being rhetoric that would make The Protocols of Zion look tame and rational.
And remember, folks, these are the assholes who will be running the country at some point.
This puts Democrats in a bit of a bind that no amount of kosher food and yarmulkes can fix. The embedded leadership is pro-Israel or at least smart enough not to let their true feelings slip in public. The up-and-coming politicians may or may not share those sentiments, but as long as they keep getting elected and reelected, at some point the balance will shift and AIPAC will become yet another part of the Vast Right Wing Dark Money Koch Brothers Fox News Donald Trump Conglomerate.
Of course, this further justifies AIPAC’s existence because they like to keep the relationship between America and Israel as good as it can be. So, when the Squad says and does the shit they do, AIPAC has a vested interest in defeating the Squad at the ballot box. With Bowman’s crushing defeat, that’s one down, too many more to go.
On the surface, this might give Rep. Bush’s comments about AIPAC some credibility. Yes, they did spend money to unseat Bowman, but did it have an impact? Not so much. Before AIPAC spent one cent on the Bowman race, internal polling data showed he was already down by 10 points. That grew to 17 points by April of this year. Although AIPAC could have had a hand in it, the more likely reason is…Bowman was (and still is) an unlikable asshole.
You would think the Left would have learned its lesson after their previous unlikable asshole Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump. I mean, they are smarter than us. Just ask them!
To their credit, The Nation summed up the shitstorm Bowman created and why AIPAC isn’t to blame. And although I’m sure they wouldn’t like to be associated with me, I can’t find fault in some of their conclusions. In true Leftist style, they couched their factual observations with more predictable anti-AIPAC/anti-Israel squawking points that could have come straight from the Squad themselves.
Given this, AIPAC might need to reconsider who gets donations from them going forward. I mean, it’s bad enough to have Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu in Congress, let alone getting your campaign donation checks. But as bad as they are, they are going to be far better than who may replace them when the time comes. Aside from a few hard right cranks, most on the Right agree with the notion Israel has a right to exist and, thus, appreciate what AIPAC is trying to do. And considering the Right are the ones with easy access to weaponry, AIPAC could do a lot worse in the support department.
But the best part of the Squad’s anti-AIPAC rhetoric? It proves the political version of the Horseshoe Theory since the Socialist Socialite got some fan mail in the form of a message on the Social Media Platform Formerly Known as Twitter from…noted but not that noteworthy right wing nutjob Nick Fuentes. Of course, the Socialist Socialite rejected his message, but if AIPAC can bring together two opposites like this, we should celebrate it! Hell, let’s make it a national holiday!
Call it When Stupid People Hate the Same Things Day!
Tag: aoc
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?