RUTHFULLY YOURS

People ask how Democrats can look at what’s going on in Portland and other urban combat zones and call it “peaceful protest” when on the nightly news they can see fires raging, hear mobs howling, and watch police being assaulted. Are they nuts?

In a way, they are.

It’s not just the anarchy in the streets. The entire progressive worldview is based on a far-reaching denial of reality.

Since at least the Enlightenment, those who embraced objective truth believed it was their responsibility to use empirical evidence and reason to understand the world, so that they didn’t end up getting eaten by tigers they mistook for tangerines.

Leftists work overtime to reshape the public perception of the world around them to conform with their ideology – even when it means denying the obvious. The novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called it “whim-worship.” In other words, this is the way it is because this is the way I want it to be. Because I hate America, I want it to be an inherently racist country, based on oppression and exploitation – and thus it is.

Here are a few examples of reality-avoidance ripped from the headlines:

Guns cause crime. My city is a shooting gallery because of guns brought here from places with loose controls.

On CNN, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightweight insisted her fair metropolis was being “inundated with guns from states that have virtually no gun control.”

It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the incompetence of big city machines. Chicago hasn’t had a Republican mayor in 90 years. It’s not states, but the federal government that regulates gun sales. Buying a gun in Missouri entails the same federal background check as buying one in Illinois.

Most of the slaughter on Michigan Avenue is gang-related. Will the gangs that massacre each other in turf wars, and kill innocent bystanders in the process, be stopped by any conceivable type of gun control? Going Beto O’Rourke is a diversionary tactic, to keep people from thinking about what Democrats have done to inner-city families, schools and streets.

Defunding the police, or slashing police budgets, will make cities safer.

On August 2, New York City officially had more shootings this year than in all of 2019 (777 versus 776), and there are still five months left in 2020. De Blasio’s answer: reduce the NYPD budget by $1 billion. Why isn’t there a social worker around when you really need one?

In the face of soaring crime rates, urban politicians are telling constituents that less policing will make you safer – that you’re more likely to have a rogue cop kneel on your neck for eight minutes than to be robbed, raped or murdered by residents of your community.

Trump is sending federal officers to cities like Portland as an election gimmick.

As president, Trump has a duty to protect federal property (like a courthouse). After creating the conditions for chaos – by pandering to Antifa and ordering the police to stand down (Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan allowed the mob to control part of her city for almost a month) — Democrats then blame the president for acting to put out fires they set. Instead of sending in Homeland Security, perhaps Trump should have asked ex-President Bill Clinton to organize Midnight Basketball.

Measures taken to prevent Muslim-majority countries from exporting terrorism are Islamophobia — or “Islamicphobia,” as Joe Biden would say.

Speaking to the Million Muslim Votes Summit, Vice President Biden railed against what he called “Trump’s Muslim travel ban,” which included such non-Muslim countries as North Korea and Venezuela and excluded about 85% of the world’s Muslim-majority countries.

We’re asked to believe that an immigrant from Norway (where holy war is not preached in Lutheran churches) is as much of a threat as someone coming here from Iran, where the mullahs damn infidels on a regular basis.

The Boston Marathon bombers weren’t Canadian. The 9/11 terrorists weren’t from Tierra del Fuego, and the Orlando night club shooter wasn’t a person of Eskimo extraction.

Preventing election-fraud is racist and an attack on democracy.

Speaking at the funeral of John Lewis, ex-President Barack Obama called a Supreme Court decision which allowed certain southern states to enact ballot-security laws part of a conspiracy to suppress the black vote. The filibuster is a vestige of Jim Crow, the most embarrassing president in history insisted.

Democrats want to get rid of the filibuster so they can circumvent the Supreme Court and override state election laws that require photo IDs to vote. You need a photo ID to board a plane, drive a car or cash a check. But requiring one to vote is the equivalent of Simon Legree using a whip to drive Uncle Tom from the polling place.

The crisis at our southern border is a myth.

Like the pictures of rioters rampaging through the streets of Portland, what appears to be footage of illegal immigrants from Central America streaming across the U.S./Mexican border is actually CGI. There aren’t at least 13.4 million illegals living in the United States and they don’t cost taxpayers roughly $132 billion annually. Which are you going to believe, CNN’s Jim Acosta or your lying eyes?

Communism is cute.

California Congresswoman and potential Biden running mate Karen Bass was doing damage control after her gushing praise of Fidel Castro on his death in 2016 came to light. Bass got a firsthand look at Castro’s island paradise in 1973, as one of the fellow travelers in the Venceremos Brigade. She said the departure of El Comandante was a “great loss for the Cuban people” – especially the masochists among them.

After a century of genocide, gulags and mass starvation, the left still insists that communism is basically well-meaning but misunderstood. Turning rioters into peaceful protestors is one thing, but claiming 100 million murders is just a misunderstanding is something else entirely.

Progressives are the heirs to The Party (Ingsoc) in George Orwell’s 1984.

Like that fictional totalitarian state, Democrats believe reality is infinitely malleable. In Orwell’s novel, the regime had the power to force its perception on the masses. Democrats aren’t quite there yet, but they do have CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post, celebrity nitwits, Big Tech, and Nancy Pelosi’s mouth.

The left insists that we see the world through its eyes. Schizophrenia loves company.