Hyperbole and Hypocrisy

After Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Governor’s race in Virginia last night, the far left were apoplectic. Cher tweeted, “GOP ARE NAZIS” and “ITS WHITES ONLY CLUB”. MSNBC’s Joy Reid said, Republicans are "Dangerous to our National Security," and tolerant of "soft white nationalism". Atlantic writer Jemele Hill tweeted, “This country simply loves white supremacy.” Democrat Politician Howard Dean tweeted, “Racism still works in Virginia.” Radio host Dean Obeidallah said, “Republican voters are excited by the issue of WHITE SUPREMACY.”

Portraying Youngkin as a white supremacist was all part of the Democrats’ strategy. During the campaign, members of the far-left Lincoln Project staged a hoax racist incident at a Youngkin event to paint him as a white supremacist. All these people fail to understand that, in the very same election that Youngkin just won, the GOP elected Winsome Sears, the first black woman as Lieutenant Governor in Virginia, and Jason Miyares as the first Latino Attorney General of Virginia. Regardless of what you think about Glenn Youngkin, and Republicans, calling them Nazis and White Supremacist is not consistent with the facts, their beliefs, and their behavior. But that does not stop certain people in the political class.

For the last 10 months, the Democrats in Washington have been calling the riot at the US Capital an “armed insurrection”, the worst attack on our country since 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or even the Civil War. Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer said that January 6th would be a day that will “live in infamy”, evoking Franklin Roosevelt’s words in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Democrat Representative Nancy Mace called the rioters “domestic terrorists.” No one was armed that day, and the only person who was killed was a rioter, Ashlii Babbitt, who was shot by a police officer. Ashlii Babbitt’s killing is proof that this was not an armed insurrection. If it were, she would not have been the only person shot, there would have been hundreds, if not thousands of insurrectionists killed by police that day. But according to the actions of the police, this 135-pound unarmed woman was the greatest threat at the Capital on January 6th.

As bad and wrong as that riot was, it pales in comparison to what we witnessed in America’s major cities for five months in 2020. Armed rioters with guns, knives, metal pipes, and Molotov cocktails, burned buildings to the ground, looted stores, set cars on fire, killed over 30 people, wounded thousands, seized and destroyed major sections of cities, caused billions of dollars of damage. And many of the same people who called January 6th an armed insurrection, and one of the worst attacks on our country, called these riots, “peaceful protests”, and supported them every step of the way. These people cannot see, nor do they care about their own hypocrisy.

Colin Kaepernick in his recently released Netflix special called the NFL Combine, modern day slave trade. Does Kaepernick really understand what slavery was all about? If he did, there is no way he could equate the two. Not only is the NFL combine not modern-day slave trade, it is the exact opposite. The NFL players voluntarily show up to the combine; slaves were brought to the slave trade in chains. The players will be playing a game; the slaves were to be working hard brutal labor in the fields for 12 hours a day. The players get paid millions of dollars; the slaves got paid nothing. The players can quit anytime; the slaves were forced to work for their entire life. You could probably make some valid criticism of the NFL and the combine, but calling it a slave trade is not even in the realm of possibility.

These examples are just scratching the surface of the type and level of hyperbole that is thrown around in our public discourse. At some point, we need to stop using these extreme and outlandish comparisons to make our points, and start using facts, and logic, and reason. There used to be a time when calling an opponent, a Nazi or Hitler was immediately disqualifying for the accuser. Does anybody believe that Glenn Youngkin is a Nazi? Does anybody really think that Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler? If they do, do they really understand what Hitler and the Nazis did to Germany, the Jews and the world? Do they understand the level of evil that Hitler was? Hitler and any American politician should never be equated in any way, shape or form, and doing so, should destroy the credibility of those making that comparison.

You can disagree with your opponent’s policies, and their politics, but that doesn’t qualify them as being a Nazi, or a white supremacist. Just because you are against Nazism, and against Republicans, does not mean that Nazis and Republicans are the same thing, or should ever be equated. Or do these people believe that they are so right, and righteous that anyone who disagrees with them is not only wrong, but evil?

If it requires that you misstate or misrepresent your opponents’ positions or words or who they are in order to discredit or vilify them, or if you need to employ hyperbole to show how bad your opponents’ politics are, then maybe you need to rethink your positions and your politics, as well as rethinking your opponents’ because through your own words and actions, they are not in reality who you are claiming them to be.

The level of hyperbole and hypocrisy in American politics tells us quite clearly that our politicians have too much power. When our lives are so dramatically changed either for the better or worse because of who won the election to the point that we must employ these types of fraudulent tactics then our politicians have too much control over our lives, and we do not have enough. After Joe Biden was inaugurated, he signed 50 executive orders in the first two weeks. He shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, he opened our borders, he’s been printing so much money that we are experiencing hyper-inflation.

When there are these level of tectonic shifts in the landscapes of our lives based on who is President, who is Governor, who has control of Congress, it means they have too much power. We, as a country, must stop looking to Washington for the answers in our lives. We need to strip Washington and our state houses of the vast power they have seized over the years, and return control over our lives to ourselves because as Ronald Reagan stated in his first inaugural address, “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem”.

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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.