From DNC Irony to Parody

If nothing else, the architects of the 2020 Democratic Convention appeared to be ignorant of irony. Either that, or they know irony so well and cared so little that they wished to ram it down the throats of the few who watched the nightly taped speeches—as if to say, “We’re hypocrites and proud of it—and what are you going to do about it?”

It all reminded me of China’s now-defiant implicit response to its Wuhan lab virus, “Yeah it started here. And yeah we spread it. And yeah, we—the world’s premier racists and xenophobes—called you racists and xenophobes. And yeah, we let the coronavirus get loose, and blamed you for inventing it. So exactly what are you going to do about it?”

There is one rule that should guide all of Bill Clinton’s post-presidential speeches. He must never use the word “Oval Office” in reference to its ethical or professional requirements during his own tenure. The second he does, the natural response is to equate that hallowed location with the scene of his tawdry sexual escapades with a young intern—what the Left under other circumstances would call, at best, a “power imbalance” or “a hostile workplace climate,” and at worst sexual assault, full stop.

And so what does Clinton say during the convention? He lectures Trump on how the Oval Office must become the locus of positive presidential power, inspired decision-making, and resolute authority. Thereby reminding the listener of his Oval Office trysts with Monica Lewinsky–at the same time Nemesis lands on his hubristic shoulder with a picture of him getting a neck rub from an Epstein girl in an interlude from an Epstein flight.

There is one rule that should guide all of Barack Obama’s post-presidential speeches. He should never mention respect for the Constitution and the rule of law that begins in the Oval Office. And yet Obama did just that.

So the listener then asks himself: did Obama not plan the destruction of Donald Trump’s national security advisor designate, General Michael Flynn, from the Oval Office? Did he not, while in the Oval Office, oversee illegal Department of Justice and FBI surveillance of a U.S. citizen, despite being warned by his own hirelings in the FBI that the taped Flynn calls with Russia’s U.S. ambassador were “legitimate”?

In other words, Barack Obama, for the first time in U.S. presidential history, had his appointees in the Department of Justice, CIA, and FBI surveil and disrupt, through a false “dossier,” an opposition political campaign. He sought to tap, monitor, and deceive an incoming elected president and his staff. Finally, on exiting, he put in place people and procedures to ensure that the succeeding administration would be weakened and disrupted.

Thus, last week Obama emphasized his allegiance to the Constitution at the very time a federal prosecutor had just won a confession from an FBI lawyer (“Viva le (sic) Resistance!”) for deceiving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which in turn led to the unlawful surveillance of a U.S. citizen. And there will likely be more indictments of Obama appointees to come.

There is one rule that should guide Elizabeth Warren in all of her campaign-related activities. Under no circumstances, should she reference Native American issues, especially in the role as a tribal advocate. Again, what does she do? She serves on the Democratic Convention Native American Caucus Committee.

What could Warren possibly say to reassure such representatives—“I have so proved my commitment to our Native American communities that I was willing to create a false identity as an American Indian”? “My high cheekbones are proof of my solidarity”?

Or, “We must be careful not to let outsiders, eager to exploit false and constructed ethnic identities for careerist purposes, habitually expropriate Native American heritages to advance their own interests at the expense of the indigenous community”?

Covering the COVID Calamity

There is one rule that Governor Andrew Cuomo should follow in all discussions of COVID-19. Given his own disastrous record, he should never claim success in battling the virus by disparaging the successes of other states or nations in combating the contagion, especially on the basis of deaths per million residents.

Cuomo himself sensed that trap once. In his earlier paranoia and embarrassment over his February and early March assurances (along with those of his doppelganger Bill de Blasio) that New York remained wide open and still ready for business (remember Nancy Pelosi’s similar early COVID-19-era calls to come to San Francisco’s Chinatown to virtue signal one’s ecumenicalism and provide proof one was neither racist nor xenophobic), Cuomo demanded all sorts of instant federal relief. He screamed nightly about the need for thousands of ventilators. He wanted a federal hospital ship, a tent city hospital, and stocks of protective equipment.

So terrified of repercussions over his prior laxity and so clueless as to the proper course of action and so eager to get infected patients out of sight and out of mind, Cuomo both praised Trump’s cooperation to the skies as his wish list was granted and ordered rest homes and assisted living centers to admit active COVID-19 patients.

The result was predictable: somewhere between 10,000-15,000 previously uninfected residents died needlessly from the virus.

What did Cuomo do then?

In the best tradition of progressive projection—accuse others of what one is guilty of—Cuomo immediately quashed investigations into his role in the tragedy.

He then trashed Trump for his insufficient response and blamed him for U.S. deaths. He attacked other states that experienced spikes in cases, contrasting his own declining August case rates in a burned-out New York.

Cuomo’s logic holds that similar-sized states of roughly 20 million, like Texas and Florida, were doing everything wrong because their death rates from the virus (363 and 468 respectively on August 20) were about four times less per million residents than Cuomo’s own state rate of 1,693 per million.

One would imagine that Cuomo certainly would not claim that Trump’s policy caused the United States to fare poorly in comparison with other nations, given that the U.S. COVID-19 death rate per capita is lower than major European states like Belgium, Italy, Spain, Sweden, or the UK.

Cuomo, one would think, would be especially quiet on such matters because of the roughly 180,000 Coronavirus deaths, some 63,000 died in just four East Coast states (e.g., Cuomo’s New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut). In other words, just four states that comprise about 11 percent of the U.S. population, account for about 35 percent of all U.S. virus deaths.

And so what then does Cuomo do? He champions his own record of death, attacks those who took measures that were four times more effective in saving lives, and blames Trump for the world’s greatest COVID-19 toll—as if states like Russia, India, and China test as many people as we do, or would release accurate information either on their testing, or COVID-19 cases, or deaths from the virus.

Michelle Obama Takes the Cake

In her post-first lady career, one would imagine Michelle Obama would avoid two or three of her once-signature topics in the olden days of “never been proud” and “downright mean country”: one, disdain for the “rich,” and, two, race-baiting in the context of her own misfortunes.

And yet what does she say at the convention?

And here at home, as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.

While the death of George Floyd was tragic and shocking, in fact, fewer than 15 unarmed African Americans were killed last year by police—compared to 25 whites.

Yet it is a disputed statistic, given that while more unarmed whites were killed by police, blacks were killed in greater proportion, given their vastly smaller numbers in the population—and yet not so disproportionally, as well—when the incidence of their disproportional encounters with police, rather than population, is used as the base figure.

White officers are not statistically more prone to kill blacks in custody than are non-white officers. More police were fatally shot in 2019 (15) by African Americans than were unarmed blacks during police stops and arrests (9-14). More importantly, in 2019 more than 7,000 blacks were murdered, mostly by other African Americans.

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