Hypocrisy

I am not a conservative.

Nor am I a liberal.

I’m a little bit of both, sagging somewhere in the middle.

What I don’t like is hypocrisy. From anyone. To see Congressional Republicans shutting down an independent Congressional ethics group in favor of a Congressionally-controlled panel, for example, makes me cringe.

Update: Those of us who don't like this news have a powerful ally -- in the form of President-Elect Donald Trump.

So, too, does the liberal butthurt over the “Russian hacking,” which I’ve already written about at length.

Posit: If Wikileaks and Julian Assange, using information provided by Russia, Russian intelligence agencies, or Russian-friendly groups, had brought down the candidacy of Donald J. Trump rather than Hillary R. Clinton, would I be hearing anything from the left on Russian hacking, meddling, Assange-right-wing-shilling and the like?

If you said anything other than “token hand-wringing about a foreign power trying to influence our election” I will laugh out loud. In your face. And then take a deep breath and laugh out loud in your face. Again. Because it would be the right whining about shilling meddling, and whatnot, and not the left. The left would not be whining because their person would be the President-elect. That’s the SAME REASON rank and file Republicans aren’t whining. Because it’s their guy on the way to the White House.

Same goes for trusting our so-called intelligence agencies. The left was in an uproar when CIA claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction turned out to be bilge oil. NOBODY TRUSTS THE CIA, they hollered. And hollered for years. Now that the CIA made a “discovery” in their favor, the CIA is suddenly trustworthy again. 

Posit: If there were a government program already established to track legitimate visa-holders based on their country of origin because that country supported or tolerated or winked at terrorism, what would the left do with it?

If you said something other than “use the program itself” I’d like you to read this.

Yes, President Obama dismantled the program after it fell into disuse. In 2011. Three years after he took office. And after it was used by the first Clinton administration and augmented after 9/11. But it was there and there wasn’t anyone in power or with influence who was unduly upset enough about it to do anything about it until just now.

Now am I being unfair picking on the left for their hypocrisy? Yes. Because there’s plenty the right has done as well that stinks just as bad or worse. But here’s the thing: I could go on at length about all sides of the political spectrum stinking it up and NEVER COME TO AN END OF THE EXAMPLES. We get the government we deserve, even when we’re righteously indignant about the government that might yet come to pass.

So what to do? Preserve that righteous indignation. But use it constantly. Don’t damp it down when your guy (or gal) is in power. Because chances are your guy or gal is going to do something that stinks, and if you don’t smell it, you dealt it, bro.