President Trump Was Right to Describe Nancy Pelosi’s Impeachment Charade as a Lynching

One thing the left understands that we on the right can’t seem to get through our heads is that language has power and that words can mean just about whatever you want them to mean. Words, for the left, are not fixed in meaning, they are rather like enemy territory that you can capture and turn to whatever purpose you wish. It is a world foretold by Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” [italics mine]
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

How else did we arrive a place where virulent pro-aborts, people who would allow a baby to be executed in the birth canal, are called pro-choice…as if the baby was given one? How else could we come to a situation where virtually any phrase from “states rights” to “voter ID” to “illegal alien” be imbued with racist overtones?

Josh Hawley ran afoul of that earlier today when he was slammed for making an anti-Semitic comment for calling a bloated, flaccid, lackwit at the Washington Post a “smug, rich liberal elitist” because, you know, only Jews can be “smug, rich liberal elitists,” like, for instance, Andrew Cuomo and his brother Fredo.

READ: Facts First: CNN Journalist Jake Tapper Insinuated Josh Hawley Is an Anti-Semite and It Did Not Go Well

President Trump also ran afoul of the leftwing Word Police today when talking about impeachment.

So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2019

In the current environment where you can give offense by not using a standard pronoun and a set off a riot by pointing out that a person with whiskers and a dick is a man no matter what bicycle race they are competing in, the results were totally predictable

That morning post by the president tore open a fresh cycle of outrage on Capitol Hill — infuriating African-American legislators and further inflaming tensions in a Congress already deeply divided along party lines amid the Ukraine-focused investigation.

Story Continued Below
Trump has frequently parroted the phrase “witch hunt” and other politically explosive language to denigrate the work of former special counsel Robert Mueller and various oversight efforts scrutinizing his administration.

But the invocation of “lynching” to characterize a process explicitly sanctioned by the Constitution marked a new, racially insensitive show of malice by the president toward lawmakers’ drive to remove him from office.

…

“That is one word no president ought to imply on himself,” [House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.)]said. “I’ve studied presidential history quite a bit, and I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything quite like this. Andrew Johnson never would’ve described what was happening to him this way, and certainly Bill Clinton didn’t, nor did Nixon. This president is hopefully an anomaly.”

Clyburn added: “I’m a product of the South. I know the history of that word. That is a word that we ought to be very, very careful about using.”

You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?

Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you. Delete this tweet. https://t.co/oTMhWo4awR

— Bobby L. Rush (@RepBobbyRush) October 22, 2019

Stop right there, Scooter. While the left has culturally appropriated this word to apply to extajudicial violence directed against black Americans, the actual root of the word has zero to do with race. It comes from Virginia of the Revolutionary War. It is named for Charles Lynch and his method of suppressing Tories, that is, British sympathizers, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The name stuck and by 1850 “lynch” was a common term in both America and Britain (which had exceedingly few black residents and no slavery) for extrajudicial violence carried out under the aegis of the establish social order (differing from mob violence) as an adjunct to the normal legal system. Lynching was common in the Old West. In fact, one of the books high school students used to be forced to read, back before we started making the sex life of authors a primary concern in the inclusion of a book in the curriculum, was the Ox Bow Incident. It’s central focus is a lynching. Italians, Germans, Mexicans, Finns, Chinese and Japanese have all been lynched. Farmers have been lynched. Lynching is not something that is unique to American blacks, rather it is something that they have in common with virtually every other racial, political, or ethnic group in this country that has been out of favor. This is not to downplay racial lynchings that took place until what seems to be the last instance in 1964 (no, I don’t include James Byrd and other notorious white-on-black race-based killings as lynchings because the hallmark of a lynching is the perpetrators acting with the acquiescence and support of local authorities), but no one owns this word and no one gets to decide who uses it or what it means other than what it actually means.

The use of the word to describe a quasi legal process gone wrong is not uncommon:

Herman Cain used it:

And the analogy was used to defend Bill Clinton during the vote to impeach him:

Here is Politco’s gotcha squad in action, asking GOP senators about the use of the word.

Leader McConnell declined to address the lynching comment after @caphilltrish question

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 22, 2019

Republican Sen. Cornyn:

“Obviously that’s hyperbole and some people might find it offensive. That’s my reaction”

Are you offended?

“I’ve got a pretty high threshold when it comes to being offended around here. Otherwise it would be all day everyday”

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 22, 2019

Graham just angrily doubled down on agreeing this is a political “lynching”

“What’s happened to your profession?” he scolds reporters

“It’s not just racial my friends. No. I’m from South Carolina I understand it very well. Mob rule is what lynching is all about”

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 22, 2019

And you get this kind of rambling, incoherence from a guy trying desperately to miss the point

Impeachment in the House is an indictment, not a trial. The Senate conducts the trial. President Trump constantly demands special treatment that is not afforded other Americans. And to liken the constitutional impeachment process to a “lynching” is reprehensible and shameful. https://t.co/P2nmaXiSiZ

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) October 22, 2019

The outrage here, by the way, is contrived. This is the standard leftist tactic of finding some imaginary offense in anything said in order to try to silence the opposition.

Beto on his likening Trump to Hitler: “Find me a better analogy” pic.twitter.com/2b3bbwSU3s

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 21, 2019

You don’t get to constantly compare President Trump to Hitler and the Nazis and then pretend to be offended by his use of the word “lynching.” You just don’t.

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) October 22, 2019

The process that is being used to impeach President Trump is unlike anything the nation has experience in any of the other uses of the process against any official, elected or appointed. The target has no representation before the committee. Minority members are denied access to documents, transcripts, and depositions. The man leading the effort has made no secret that he will do whatever it takes to effect the impeachment of the president. To call this process grotesque is to be charitable. This proceeding would make a kangaroo court, a star chamber, or a judicial proceeding in front of Roland Freisler look just and unbiased by comparison.

President Trump had every right to use the word. It describes very accurately the process going on in the House. While impeachment is a political process, there has historically been an agreement that it should be conducted according to the basic rules of our legal system and that it should be fair. What Schiff and his fellatistos are doing is exactly what President Trump says, they are setting a precedent for the use of impeachment, without even a vaguest cause, by the majority party as a way of harassing if not outright removing a president of the opposing party. Lynching is a perfect metaphor. If you don’t like. Tough. That’s your problem and not anyone else’s.

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