When arguing with Leftists, conservatives must keep their eyes on the ball

Leftists have a habit of distracting conservatives with irrelevant arguments that obscure the fact that, on the important issues, conservatives should win.

Leftists conservatives keep your eyes on the ballIt’s happened to all of us. We approach someone with a legitimate grievance — say, for example, reminding someone that he promised not to drink directly from the milk cartoon anymore — and suddenly we find ourselves arguing about whether human mouths or dogs mouths have more bacteria. The latter debate becomes all-encompassing and effectively distracts from the fact that the other person broke a promise not to do something that spreads bacteria, whether from a human or a dog mouth. Too often, we conservatives find ourselves suckered into the same type of meaningless, vaguely related arguments, without realizing that we hold the high ground on the main issue.

Take for example the endless debate about whether illegal aliens are more likely to commit crimes than legal aliens or actual citizens. It’s a very hot debate now, with data from various states pouring in to prove things one way or another. John Lott is at the center of a battle over which numbers to use. (I side with Lott, who follows the numbers where they lead, whether then doing the Leftist thing of leading the numbers where he wants them to go.)

But whether I side with John Lott is irrelevant, because we’re all missing the fundamental point: Illegal aliens are not supposed to be here. Every single crime they commit is one crime too many.

We all know that there is going to be a criminal element within any society, but we accept it because it comes from within the society. But illegal aliens were never meant to be here. If life were a Star Trek episode, their presence is messing with the time-space continuum. So the only acceptable number for crimes committed by illegal aliens is zero. Kick ’em out and keep ’em out and the time-space-crime continuum returns to normal.

Another example of this argument about things that don’t matter is the whole push, whether from Bob “the Gossip” Woodward or the whiny, cowardly Anonymous, to claim that Trump runs a chaotic White House and is rude to his employees, making him unfit to be president. Therefore we have a battle about what constitutes good management style or whether Trump is a nice boss.

Again, I say “so what?” I don’t care if Trump thrives in chaos, yells at people, or even spends his days watching the Gorilla Channel. (Joke, people. Joke.) The only thing that matters — and the only thing we should be paying attention to as we go into November and decide whether to give him a Congress that will work with him versus one trying to destroy him — is the results flowing from that White House.

According to the media, No-Drama Obama ran a White House that was a sea of tranquility and graciousness. Okay. Fine. I’ll accept that narrative. But what came out of that White House?

  • The slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression.
  • The largest number of people dropping out of the work force since the Great Depression.
  • The economic salvation of Iran, our arch-enemy and the funder of terrorism around the world, even as it was on its last economic legs.
  • A greater racial divide in the country than at any time since the Civil Rights Movement.
  • A systematic effort to demean, disarm, and destroy Israel, our consistent friend in the Middle East.
  • More money for the Palestinians, who have genocidal goals against Israel.
  • The rise of that famous JayVee team, ISIS, coupled with the slaughter and enslavement of thousands of people across large swaths of the Middle East.
  • The decision to hand Syria over to Russia.
  • The reset with Russia.
  • More flexibility for Putin.
  • A saggy, draggy economy that saw a rising stock market only because investors, rather than putting their money into businesses and people, parked it in the stock market to avoid regulations and consistent government attacks on business.
  • High taxes.
  • A doubled national debt.
  • The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after Obama abandoned Mubarak, who was a right bastard, but who was our right bastard, and, indeed, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East.
  • The assassination of our ambassador in Benghazi and the deaths of three others after Hillary gleefully presided over the slaughter of Qadhafi, who was a right bastard but who, ever since Bush scared the pants off of him, was our right bastard.
  • The collapse of Libya into a terrorist hell hole once Qadhafi’s iron hand was cut off.
  • The opening of America’s border to illegal aliens, bringing with them MS-13, contagious diseases, a vast cohort of marginally educated people, and a lot of demands on the welfare system.
  • Federal gun running across the Southern border, resulting in the brutal murders of innumerable Mexican citizens and a border patrol officer.
  • A “Dear Colleague” letter from the Department of Education that turned American colleges and universities into Kafka-esque kangaroo courts presiding over the destruction of uncounted young men guilty of nothing more than doing what college guys have done for decades (with Leftist approval): getting roaring drunk and having hook-ups with equally drunk and irresponsible young women.
  • Ukases turning the military into an underfunded social justice experiment that viewed Bradley Manning as a warm-up act.
  • A law that took our healthcare system from one that provided insurance for most working people and turned it into one in which working people can’t get insurance, but layabouts can, as well as driving doctors out of the profession, thereby exacerbating healthcare access problems.
  • An explosive opiate addiction problem in all the regions Obama left behind economically.
  • The weaponization of the IRS, the FBI, the DOJ, the EPA, the DOE, the DOD, and all the other alphabet soup agencies that are supposed to be neutral branches of the civil service but that, instead, turned into well-armed, highly aggressive branches of the Democrat party.

I know I’ve forgotten things, but the above is a start — and all of that came out of the No Drama Obama White House.

And what’s been coming out of the chaotic, Gorilla Channel Trump White House?

  • A booming economy.
  • The lowest black unemployment since records have been kept.
  • A burgeoning number of black-owned businesses.
  • The lowest Hispanic unemployment since records have been kept.
  • Energy independence.
  • Increased apprehension of sex predators (yes, Trump’s been doing that behind the scenes since day 1).
  • New, more favorable trade deals for America all over the world.
  • The tamping down of Chinese economic and geographic expansionism.
  • The reversal of the appalling Iran Agreement, bringing with it new economic sanctions on a murderous regime that is increasingly beleaguered from within.
  • The real possibility that North Korea will commit to nuclear disarmament (and it’s already having serious talks with South Korea).
  • Economic damage to Erdogan’s increasingly radical Islamist regime in Turkey.
  • A realistic approach to the Palestinian world view — no, you don’t get Jerusalem; no, we’re not going to continue to fund terrorism; no, you don’t get the right of return to the Nth generation.
  • A realignment in the Middle East that brings Israel into the fold with those nations fighting against Iran.
  • The end of the Paris Climate Accords, which put huge economic demands on America, despite its minimal contributions to CO2 (which is a necessary ingredient for greening life on earth), while making no demands on China and India, the world’s two biggest CO2 polluters (if one considers CO2 a pollutant).
  • The revelations showing the Deep State, for what it is: A cadre of un-elected, often hidden bureaucrats who believe that their views trump the will of the American voter.
  • Fewer regulations (which surely drives part of the economic boom).
  • Job cuts and no new hires in the unconstitutional federal bureaucracy (another economic aid).
  • The tax cuts (again, a driver of the economic boom).
  • A push to renew manufacturing jobs across areas of America that Obama intentionally destroyed economically (both because they didn’t vote for him and because of his climate change mania).
  • A decline in opiate addiction (although pot use is up, especially in those states in which it’s now legal).
  • Enormous economic pressure on Putin.
  • The trashing and thrashing of ISIS.
  • The end of the Obamacare mandate, which was precisely the kind of government coercion that drove the American Revolution in the first place.
  • A new way of viewing Americans, as both independent individuals and as one American people, rather than as a multitude of teeny-weeny victim classes.
  • A move to restore some sanity to the Kafka-esque kangaroo courts running riot in America’s colleges and universities.

Again, I know I’m forgetting things, but that’s a huge laundry list of accomplishments from the Chaos Gorilla White House. If that’s what chaos looks like, give me more!

The argument over management style is a stupid, dead-end argument. The only thing that matters is results — and I like Trump’s results a lot more than I liked Obama’s.

With that in mind, if someone tries to engage you about Trump’s style, shrug, and then tell them you don’t care and they’re being ridiculous. Keep your eye on the ball. If you like what Trump is doing, forget everything else, and vote him a Congress that will work with him, not against him.

(In the same vein, while I think it’s manifestly clear that Obama’s economy sucked and that Trump reversed his policies and supercharged it, that’s also a pointless argument to have with Leftists. It’s enough for me to know that the economy is rocketing now, so that only a fool would mess with it — and Democrats have declared themselves to be fools by promising to mess with it.)

Another argument that hides real problems is the claim that cops kill black people in disproportionate numbers because all cops are racist. As it happens, the data shows that this argument is false. Again, though, the whole “cops are racist” argument is a blind alley that will lead people in and leave them lost forever.

The real problem isn’t racism, it’s incompetent police and a siege mentality (or an entitled mentality) that sees individual police and entire departments cover for bad officers and bad behavior. So often, when a story hits the headlines about a cop killing a black person (or any person), investigation reveals one of two things (1) it was a righteous act, because the person shot was trying to kill the cop or (2) the police officer was someone with a long history of personality and work-related issues. In the first case, God bless the police officer who saved his or her own life, as well as the lives of anyone else involved.

In the second case, well, a good recent example is the Justine Damond shooting. She was white; he was black. Race wasn’t relevant to the shooting, although it was to the hiring. What really mattered was that Mohammed Noor was unqualified from the get-go. He ought never to have been hired and it was almost inevitable that he would kill someone regardless of their color.

Shameful departmental behavior is also cropping up with the horrible shooting of Botham Jean. Amber Guyger, who shot Jean, is white and Jean was black. But what’s coming out isn’t that she was a racist. What’s coming out is that she was an incompetent, stupid drunk who stormed into a neighbor’s apartment and shot him in cold blood. Moreover, you won’t be surprised to learn that Guyger had shot someone before, even though most cops go their entire careers without shooting anybody. (I realize that once the evidence is fully developed, it may tell a different story, but that’s the information available now.)

Moreover, what’s even worse is that Guyger’s police department is trying to salvage her by saying that Jean had pot in his apartment, as if that had anything to do with the shooting. When cops play that “blame the victim” game, they bring themselves into disrepute, keeping alive the claim that they’re racist. The issue, though, is that cops like this aren’t racist people; they’re bad people. (I should add here that I understand that placing cops, even bad cops, in prison can be a death sentence for them. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be imprisoned for wrongful acts that would send any other citizen to prison. It simply means that we need to make sure they’re safe in prison while serving out a term they deserve. I don’t know how to do that, but I have faith that it can be done.)

If you want a deep, detailed insight into what bad cops look like — not racist cops, but bad, stupid, mean cops who kill people without thought and who will do anything to protect themselves and each other — I cannot recommend highly enough a book by Mike McDaniel and SENTINEL. The book, License to Kill: The Murder of Erik Scott, tells the horrible story of evil, incompetent police in Las Vegas, one of whom essentially murdered in cold blood Erik Scott, a West Point Grad and decorated Army veteran, and was then saved by a department cover-up.

I am a huge supporter of our men and women in blue. It’s a hard job and a dangerous one. But it’s also a job that carries with it a great deal of power. When power corrupts, as it does sometimes, race isn’t the issue. Corrupt power is the issue. That’s what we need to be stomping out. When we keep crying “racism,” we tar good men and women with an entirely irrelevant brush, while ignoring the real problem. Keep your eyes on the ball, folks. Stay with what matters.

I don’t care if you don’t like Trump personally, whether because of his morals or his management style. And I don’t care if illegal aliens commit a few more or a few less crimes statistically than other people. And I don’t care whether cops are racist. What I care about are Trump’s results, the fact that any crime an illegal alien commits is one crime too many, and the fact that our focus on a minute number of racist cops keeps us from dealing with the infinitely more dangerous toxin of corrupt cops.