Frenzy

     The “Jussie Smollett hate crime” story is much in the “news” just now, owing to its original, lurid character, and to the discovery, after patient investigation, that it was a fraud from first to last. Commentators innumerable have discoursed on its “significance” both before and after its debunking. The shitstorm appears to have peaked, though the impassioned rhetoric continues.

     Almost at once, major figures on the Left loosed public statements and fusillades of “tweets” condemning – who else? – conservative Americans generally for our “racism.” Commentators on the Right demanded substantiation, for which the aforementioned Leftists condemned them. As Smollett’s allegations unraveled under scrutiny, the shrieking from the Left crescendoed as the Right figuratively crossed its arms, sat back, and smirked at yet another case of racialist fakery “disposed of.”

     If it’s been disposed of, then why is it still the hottest button in American commentary? Why has this self-serving racialist con job, written, produced, and directed by its “victim” for entirely self-serving purposes, continued to command so much media attention?

     In large part it’s because the media, especially the giants of social media, have decreed that only opinions from the Left shall be aired in their networks. Merely to report, as Rod Dreher and others have done, that the Chicago police have debunked Smollett’s allegations is deemed unspeakable on Facebook.

     Yes, it’s about the Left’s desire to defend its “narrative,” but that should elicit further questions: What narrative? What reason has any private person in this country, aware of the realities of contemporary social tensions, to believe such an obvious con job? Isn’t the fakery just more evidence that the Left’s shrieking about the Right’s awfulness is a lot of crap?

     Surely we’ve had enough of this. Yet it keeps coming. The media partake in the fakery by giving the Left’s claims of Right-wing bigotry and violence wildly disproportionate attention. As the facts emerge, the media, including social media, collaborate with the Left’s efforts to suppress mention of them. When that’s no longer possible, the media disallow further discussion of the affair: it’s “yesterday’s news.”

     The pattern has had several high points. Tawana Brawley. The Duke Lacrosse case. Covington Catholic / Nathan Phillips. Matthew Shepard. And now this exceedingly minor figure in the world of entertainment – both black and homosexual, a twofer! — who was upset that he’d been “excessed.” Unless you’re a left-wing true-believer who discards any facts that contradict the Left’s dicta, you simply can’t be fooled any longer. So why does it continue?

     My thesis is that the Left has nothing else. No other weapons remain to it.

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     The word of the day is frenzy.

     frenzy, n:

1. extreme mental agitation; wild excitement or derangement.
2. a fit or spell of violent mental excitement; a paroxysm characteristic of or resulting from a mania.

     Paroxysm is the applicable descriptor for what the Left has been doing. As the effect of its “bigoted oppressors” tactic has attenuated near to zero, it’s multiplied and intensified its efforts. Its mania is born of the recognition that it has lost the intellectual, social, and moral battles for the respect and allegiance of the American electorate. The only weapon it retains is the ability to stir a furor out of accusations of bigotry, with the assistance of its media handmaidens. Owing to its repeated failures, married to Americans’ perceptions of the reality around them, that ability has faded almost entirely away. But that’s its only weapon in the struggle for “mindshare.” Like a duelist with a blunted sword, it must keep flailing away.

     The Left can’t change tools because it has no others. Yet it cannot yield, for to the Left, power is the only thing that matters. The mania for power plus the lack of alternative tactics induces the paroxysm of frenzied action.

     Decent Americans are tired of it. We want it to cease. As it hasn’t, we’ve begun to turn away from the media organs that press it upon us. We’ve begun to exclude the shrieking true believers from our circles. Ever more of us are putting our attention where it’s always belonged: on our communities, our families, and our personal pursuits.

     But the Left’s frenzy won’t cease. Indeed, it will strive to pursue us. It will harass the vendors we patronize. It will infiltrate our churches and civic associations. It will browbeat us through what remains of our public life until we wrest the bludgeon from its hand.

     The Left has nothing else.

     UPDATE: This list of hate crime hoaxes deserves to be among your bookmarks. Don't let it get away!