Media Pushes Narrative That Violence is Only Happening on the Right — And Because of Trump
Rand Paul got beaten up in his yard by his Democrat neighbor. He was blindsided while sitting on his riding lawnmower and sustained six broken ribs and a pleural effusion in the attack.
This was President Trump’s fault. Franz Kafka said so.
New Yorker columnist Jeffrey Frank said the story starts in 1980 when Thomas Berger wrote “Neighbors,” a book later made into a movie starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd.
“At the time of the novel’s publication, Berger told critic Richard Schickel what he’d learned from Kafka: ‘That at any moment banality might turn sinister, for existence was not meant to be unfailingly genial.’ The sinister banality of American life periodically moves into view, with a lot of it these days emanating from Donald J. Trump, the person who was elected president, a year ago.
“Since that time, there have been many reminders that there are indeed things worth fighting for: that, in this most fortunate of nations, re-learning and believing in, the virtues of cooperation across borders, and ideologies, is among them.
“The attack on Rand Paul, whether over lawn trimmings, compost, the noise of a riding mower or something still concealed, is a reminder of how easy it is to get worked up, even crazily so, over all sorts of questions – such as Keurig’s reluctance to sponsor Sean Hannity – that, in the end, mostly manage to break a lot of coffee makers while dividing Americans.”
According to Frank, “sinister banality” has moved “into view, and it’s all because of “Donald Trump, the person who was elected President, a year ago.” One assumes Frank can’t bring himself to admit that being elected president, once the inauguration is over, makes one president.
Frank is getting “worked up” over Trump’s tripping of the sinister banality cord, but it’s “crazily” for Sean Hannity’s fans to get upset when a prominent advertiser is bullied by the left into abandoning his show.
The left – and its handmaidens in the mainstream media – have become like the people who kill their parents and beg for mercy because they are orphans. If they are angry at Trump, they blame Trump for creating anger. And everything is his fault.
The failure of Obamacare? All Trump’s fault, even though he didn’t create it, no member of his party voted for it and his attempts to overhaul it have not been approved by Congress.
Republican congressman Steve Scalise getting shot by a Democrat supporter of Bernie Sanders … all Trump’s fault as well.
“What’s more harmful? Putting millions already on the margins more at-risk via draconian policies, or shooting a racist lawmaker in the hip?” asked Huffington Post writer Jesse Benn. “For violent resistance to work, it’d need to be organized. Individual acts can be understandable, but likely counterproductive/ineffective.”
So it was understandable for a man to shoot a congressman over his politics, but it wasn’t effective or productive.
Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican who assaulted a reporter at the end of his campaign, did it because of Trump’s ‘anti-media rhetoric,’ according to Dylan Byers of CNN and because “the fish rots from the head,” said Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post.
When attendees were attacked at a Trump rally in San Jose, Calif., Mayor Sam Liccardo’s response was, “At some point, Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign.”
Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, would not entertain the thought the left was at all responsible for the violence it has perpetrated nonstop since Trump was elected.
“I do think that both sides are not equally at fault and that there’s been a bit of a false equivalency at work, especially in the discussion of the past couple of days,” Abramson said on CNN. “I think that, in terms of political leadership right now, that both President Trump and the congressional leadership on the Republican side are extremely divisive and that they are really benefiting from this kind of rage machine that operates in this country.”
There’s a rage machine, all right. And a lot of it emanates from Abramson’s former newsroom.
