OPINION:
CHICAGO — Choose the “president of joy,” Bill Clinton said, from the Democrats’ convention stage, telling voters to pick Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump. Talk show giant Oprah Winfrey took the stage, too, and said similarly — to “choose joy” and “vote for Kamala Harris.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, spoke the same — about “bringing the joy” to the race for the White House. And all the Democrats in media quickly picked up the narrative and ran with it. USA Today, for instance, wrote “DNC attendees seemed downright joyful.” ABC News, for example, wrote of “Joy, freedom and dumping Trump: 5 takeaways from DNC Night 3.”
Word on the convention street? Harris, the vice president, is spreading “strength through joy.”
What a rebrand. File it under the famous Joseph Goebbels quote about repeating a lie often enough so that it becomes accepted as truth. This is classic Democrat propaganda. Everybody knows there’s no joy in Dem-ville — same as there was no joy in Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” story, when the Babe Ruth-like batter struck out and left his Mudville fans in utter despondency.
If you’re going to lie, at least try for a lie that works.
Everybody who’s watched the Democrat Party’s shift over the last 20 years has seen first-hand how angry, ugly, violent and vile its members and supporters have become. This is the party of Black Lives Matter; Antifa; Occupy Wall Street; Hands Up, Don’t Shoot; the party that allowed CHAZ protesters to take over city streets in Seattle and deface police properties and keep out citizens from entering their homes and businesses; the party that spoke of First Amendment rights as goons with bricks and Molotov cocktails set street ablaze to protest made-up police racism; the party that stood idly by as angrily chanting women with red paint signifying blood on their clothing petitioned outside Supreme Court justices homes — illegally — to intimidate looming votes on Roe v. Wade.
How joyful.
These are the voters who sleep well at night after attacking a MAGA hat wearer on a subway because they feel their violence is morally righteous.
These are the people who scream about rights, rights, rights as they’re demanding little children have the authority to undergo sex surgeries absent parental consent.
These are the wackos who will gladly demand police arrest and incarcerate and isolate Americans who refuse to wear face masks at government command, or take experimental shots billed as vaccines at bureaucratic demand — but simultaneously storm troop through the streets and set cop cruisers on fire and cry, “Defund police!”
This is the political party that will seize individual liberties at a second’s notice, if it bolsters the party’s power — but say it’s for your own good; for your neighbor’s good; for society’s good, and therefore dissenters are selfish; and therefore dissenters should be punished; and therefore violence against dissenters is entirely justified.
These are the nut jobs who hate God and want to be your god, and their politics are their religious wars — which means their fights are moral, no matter their means.
Joy?
It’s a strange word to apply to a group of people who are oh so openly hate-filled and divisive.
It’s a lie, of course. It’s a lie the Democrats get by with, though, because a) they have the media on their side to sell it and b) they wheel and deal in emotions and hollow promises, not principles, platforms and pragmatism.
The Democrats’ convention was all about the feel-good; zero about the steps to achieve the feel-goods. That’s because with Democrats, the standard for success isn’t so much a measure of the ends as it is the promise — the stated intent — the soft-and-fuzzy selling of the dream.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas doesn’t have to protect America’s borders — he only has to pretend he protects them. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg doesn’t have to deal with bridges that are falling or roads that are crumbling — he only has to pretend he’s fixing them. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin doesn’t have to fix the fallout of the utterly botched Afghanistan withdrawal, or face any consequences from the botched job — he only has to talk a good game about it.
Harris, the border czar, doesn’t have to address America’s national security crisis due to illegals allowed to cross into this country — she only has to pretend to care and express a love for this country.
She only has to smile and cackle and serve up a good show of joy. And like good obedient sheep, the Democrat fawners in media and blind followers of the leftist faith in the voting pools will smile and nod and feel the joy. They’ll express the joy. They’ll cry the tears of joy.
’Til they don’t.
The price of bread doesn’t fall on a campaign of propaganda. Neither does a gallon of gas or a winter’s worth of heating.
The Democrat convention is a good indicator of how the party plans to float a dream based on little more than happy words. But calling Democrats joyful and painting Republicans as the opposite is yet another example of the left repurposing and redefining words for their own propaganda reasons. They did it with patriot, calling those during COVID who wouldn’t blindly obey government commands as unpatriotic. They did it with Christian nationalist, calling those who set God and country first as radical and racist. They did it with male and female and the pronouns he and she, demanding the erasure of references to two sexes, and two sexes only, from public discourse.
Now they’re doing it with joy — and trying to gaslight America into forgetting about the inherent hate and violence of their own Democrat Party.
One only has to look to the streets to see Democrat joy on display. It’s there, amid the fires and broken windows and beatdowns of MAGA T-shirt wearers. It’s over there, by the destroyed businesses and gangland shootings. It’s over there, between the screaming pro-abortion protesters and communist flag-waving illegals and piles of human feces in the streets.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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