America as Animal Farm
December 14, 2016 10:01 am / Leave a Comment / Megan Ring
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
New commandments replace the old ones on the barn wall.
The socialist essayist and novelist George Orwell by 1944 grew depressed that as a cost for the defeat of the Axis Powers the Allies had empowered an equally nightmarish monster in the Soviet Union.
Since his days fighting for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing Orwell had become an increasingly outspoken enemy of Communism. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, when Stalin renounced all his wartime assurances and steamrolled Eastern Europe, Orwell came to see state socialism under authoritarian auspices as the greatest threat to human freedom. It was not as if right-wing dictators were not equally lethal, but the inclusion of the words “socialist” and “republic” in a left-wing tyrant’s official lexicon tended to fool millions.
Indeed, it was precisely the leftist totalitarians’ habit of embroidering their murderous pursuit of power with professions of “equality,” “fairness,” and “egalitarianism” that so often allowed them to employ any means necessary to achieve their supposedly exalted ends. In sum, in Orwell’s eyes, the radical Left’s erasure of historical memory and its distortion of reality through the manipulation of language were the chief threat of the 20th century.
His 1945 novella Animal Farm — initially difficult for Orwell to publish and deeply hated by Western leftists — was an allegorical warning to liberals of the dangers of left-wing propaganda. Words and phrases changed their meanings — again and again — to serve a tyrannical agenda. The assorted creatures of Orwell’s fictional barnyard frequently wake up to new commandments posted on the barn wall by their Stalinesque pig leaders, with yesterday’s edicts crossed out or modified — and soon to be forgotten.
Given the political sympathies and self-interest of the present mainstream media and cultural elite, when the Obama administration came into power in 2009, we crossed out prior, out-of-power edicts and wrote new establishment versions in their place — as if no one would ever quite know the difference, or would soon forget if he did. Many of us at the time wrote about the nearly Orwellian change in liberal mentality required to accommodate Obama’s many contradictions.
Rich people were suddenly not all bad blue-stocking Republicans, but also hip, valuable Silicon Valley progressives in flip-flops who, with some reluctance, outsourced and off-shored.
In our past eight years of historical revisionism, huge political contributions — like the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies given by multi-billionaire financial speculator George Soros — were now helpful for democracy if only they were given to left-wing causes.
Once-liberal public campaign-financing laws and limits on fund-raising applied to all candidates except Barack Obama, who became the largest recipient of campaign cash in election history.
Drone assassinations were suddenly, in 2009, no longer proof of Bush’s efforts to kill the innocent abroad, but sophisticated tools in the Obama’s sober anti-terrorism tool kit. Radical Islamic terrorism simply vanished from our collective minds.
Terrorist killing was reinvented as vague “man-caused disasters” and “workplace violence” that occasionally called for American “overseas contingency operations.” If we did not have the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” then there would be no radical Islamic terrorism — apparently on the theory that if we ban “gravity” from our vocabulary, we will all instantly float upwards.
More recently, “fake news” did not mean promulgating the lie “Hands up, don’t shoot,” doctoring George Zimmerman’s 911 call, or insisting on national TV that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous riots sparked by a right-wing American-based video maker, who, for his provocations, was perp-walked and jailed on trumped-up charges of parole violations.
Fake news certainly does not denote the decades-long myth that the hard-Communist and pro-Castro presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was emblematic of the right-wing haters of Texas, or the fantasy mythography of Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father passed off as an autobiographical memoir.
Instead, a supposed epidemic of “fake news” became a means to explain how Donald Trump, the supposedly incompetent buffoon, defeated the polished sure winner Hillary Clinton — who at one time in 2008 presented herself as a heroic stateswoman who had flown into Bosnia while under sniper fire. Executive orders are critical presidential prerogatives when Congress won’t act undermine the Constitution’s separation of powers.
In another classic Orwellian moment, the on-air fabulist and serial prevaricator, newsreader Brian Williams, jumped on the bandwagon to loudly editorialize about the dangers of not telling the truth and passing it off as news. Left unsaid was Williams’s subtext: Believe me about the dangers of fake news, because I was the biggest news faker in network anchor history. Or maybe he wasn’t, given Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” memos about Bush’s supposedly having gone AWOL during the Vietnam War, a fabricated scandal that Rather peddled to harm the reelection chances of George W. Bush in 2004.
No sooner did the progressive media and bureaucracy establish new barn-wall rules than Obama got set to leave office, soon to be replaced by a President Trump. Now the leftist project must scramble to hit reverse and start all over from the beginning.
On the lighter side, after 2016, expect that the sight of a president golfing in sports attire and shades will be proof of his indolence and privilege, not necessary downtime as it was for an overworked and harried Obama.
If First Lady Melania Trump takes two jumbo jets full of aides and government junketeers to vacation on Spain’s Costa del Sol next year — as did Michelle Obama for her 2010 getaway — expect media outrage over her supposedly callous selfishness and indulgence.
Here are the more serious and latest samples of the corrected Animal Farm Commandments on the American Farm barn wall for the age of the Trump presidency.
1. The Senate filibuster is an archaic and disruptive obstacle to government an essential tool of legislative democracy.
2. The Senate’s “nuclear option” of approving nominees by majority votes is a legitimate tool to restore legislative balance crackpot idea to erode Senate traditions.
3. Pen-and-phone executive orders are critical presidential prerogatives when Congress won’t act undermine the Constitution’s separation of powers.
4. Past Supreme Court decisions are always fluid rulings and hold no real sway over present court prerogatives established judicial precedents that should not be tampered with by current politicized justices.
5. Pressuring private companies like Boeing or Chrysler for political purposes like Carrier to keep jobs in the U.S. is unwise presidential intrusion into the marketplace.
6. Edgy, out-of-the-box foreign-policy outreach to democracies like Taiwan dictatorships like Cuba and Iran is proof of presidential leadership and imagination.
7. Presidential informality like inviting rappers with rap sheets to the White House or doing interviews with GloZell like tweeting and videos are ominous signs of presidential frivolity and immaturity.
8. States-rights nullification of federal law has been traditionally racist, and subversive to the idea of the United States, leading to crisis or war is a legitimate expression of progressive cultural exceptionalism.
9. Running up huge deficits in Keynesian fashion primes the economy is a dangerous sign of presidential laxity.
10. Regular press conferences with vigorous cross-examinations of the president are noisy anachronisms from the bygone age of print journalism a must for a functioning democracy.
11. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio voting twice for Barack Obama over John McCain and Mitt Romney was at last proof that the white working class was tolerant and enlightened for Trump shows that these deplorable voters are still irredeemable white clingers and supremacists.
12. Worries that registration and voting can be rigged Rioting, demanding superfluous recounts, damning the legitimacy of the Electoral College, and threatening Electors are efforts to subvert American democracy.
13. Criticizing a former president allots proper blame where it belongs for current messes is bad sportsmanship, cheap, and unbecoming.
14. Former presidents making business deals and earning exorbitant speaking and consulting fees as they cash in and globe-trot demeans the office is an acceptable right and welcome duty of an ex-president.
15. Weighing in on contemporary news stories such as the Skip Gates psychodrama or the Trayvon Martin murder case a flag-burning incident is symptomatic of presidential puerility.
16. Vladimir Putin was unfairly alienated by George W. Bush, sophomorically hyped into an existential threat by Mitt Romney, and deserving of reset is dangerous, a Trump fan, and an inveterate enemy of the U.S.
All the above have a shelf-life of about four years and may be recalibrated according to the results of the 2020 election.
Justplainbill's Weblog 
analysis of NYS Trump “fraud” trial, by Robert Charles
$355 Million Penalty – Pure Politics
Posted on Monday, February 19, 2024
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by AMAC, Robert B. Charles
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10 Comments
Scary. Respect for rule of law is in freefall. Democrats have disparaged Supreme Court rulings. State officials try hijacking a presidential election by misinterpreting the 14th Amendment. Biden tries to imprison his opponent. Now, New York State Judge Arthur Engoron inflicts a $355 million penalty on the leading candidate for president – not a good look.
In his 92-page opinion, following a highly personalized trial, the judge makes a victimless non-crime called “business puffing” – no damages – into a crime. He declines the defendant a jury trial, holds kangaroo court, then inflicts a huge penalty.
To get this result, Americans must swallow never-before-asserted legal fictions, interpretations of law, and a politically hostile state prosecutor and judge overseeing the proceeding, despite their rank prejudice.
Almost certainly, this decision will be revised, perhaps thrown out entirely. It simply cannot stand. Why?
First, the facts are hardly damning. Loans were secured from banks with guarantees based on legal documents, clear representations, comparative values, assessing Trump’s credit, and due diligence.
The judge ignores expert witnesses who said no fraud occurred, the banks were content to lend to Trump, no entity lost money on any transaction, nor did any citizen suffer provable damage.
Despite this, the anti-defendant judge who repeatedly tried to gag Trump (reversed) and consistently insulted him – offers a conclusory view. He says Trump’s statements were “blatantly false… resulting in fraudulent financial statements.” Boom, one and done, over, next.
The whole concept that a biased state judge, abetted by a vengeful state prosecutor, is allowed to target, harass, convict, try to bankrupt, and end the campaign of a political opponent – is revolting, utterly anti-democratic. It violates a dozen principles of ethics.
Still, not a single leading Democrat has said this is wrong, political persecution, like the cases being brought by Jack Smith, a prosecutor sanctioned for a political case in 2014 (9-0, Supreme Court), and the embarrassingly unethical, unrepentant Georgia prosecutor.
What else is wrong with this fantastical $355 million dollar penalty, inflicted with apparent joy by two partisans on candidate Trump mid-campaign?
A lot. Throughout this opinion, the judge miscasts his own behavior, visible to the world, shamefully hostile to the defendant, telegraphing with his words, tone and temperament an intent to demean.
Moreover, the prosecutor and judge target the former president’s sons for punishment, making a crime of something never previously viewed as a crime, also not taught as a “crime” in law schools – including New York law schools, just “business puffing” in the subjective realm of value assessment.
The judge then pretends common law fraud is not under discussion, that his punishment is not a penalty, just a civil act of “disgorgement” – giving back money when it is plainly a debilitating punishment.
Listing elements of common law fraud – including false statement, knowledge that it is false, reliance and damages, he sidesteps the entire thing, saying this is not common law fraud.
Why? Because he cannot prove those elements “beyond a reasonable doubt,” cannot prove the statements were false, anyone relied on them, or any damages.
Instead, the judge and prosecutor create their own non-crime crime, saying the “marketplace,” which has shown no harm, is the victim – of statements never proven knowingly false, or exclusively relied upon, or for which there were any damages or complaints.
This pretzel-like approach to trapping a defendant, making up standards and victims, pretending damages exist, that they were somehow horrendous, that anyone has ever been prosecuted like this – is audacious. It is also profoundly anti-democratic, further eroding respect for prosecutors and the courts.
But, we are not done. This judge cites Executive Law 63 (12), from 1956, to shoehorn defendant’s “puffing” into a heinous criminal act, prosecuted in civil form to avoid proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” (criminal standard, versus “more probable than not” the civil standard), just another cheat.
Insufficient room exists to properly unpack this ugly, disingenuous opinion. It rambles, miscasting much of the trial, demeaning the defendant. It oozes prejudice, undisguised hostility. The words “fair administration of justice” do not pop to mind.
Last, one must look at the whole multi-act play. These two actors have knowingly interfered with an election, which is a federal crime. They take no responsibility for that, just plan to skip away scot-free.
Creating something from nothing – making “business puffing” a crime, trying it on a civil standard, imposing a monster penalty on a political candidate they hate speaks to no integrity.
Net-net, this is a judicial system gone wild. The disarray needs to stop with the next election. What a disgrace, what a sad day for America … a $355 million dollar penalty inflicted for politics. Scary.