Most of the people I watch on YouTube spend a lot of time calling out moral hypocrisy in those they are criticizing. Let's first try to define moral hypocrisy and then talk about how it relates to the current, urgent political crisis in the United States (here and here).
Moral Hypocrisy — saying or doing something in one context and then saying or doing something else in another context which contradicts what was said or done in the first; in both contexts the thing said or done expresses a moral preference, but the two preferences expressed are incompatible.
I trust that definition is clear to you. In the definition above, clearly the contexts matter. In the cases I'm interested in, the contexts are political (i.e., they are tribal) and the hypocrite in question is a member of one tribe and not another. This hypocrite expresses a moral preference undermining the opposing tribe in one context and subsequently expresses a moral preference supporting his own tribe in the other context. This is an extremely common behavior, as countless YouTube videos on the subject attest.
Moral hypocrisy of this type is therefore always a window in unconscious motivations, for how else are we supposed to explain the obvious contradiction in moral preferences? The motivations are clearly tribal and therefore self-interested in that way. I say "unconscious" because the hypocrite in question always seems completely unaware of this otherwise inexplicable shift in moral preferences, and readily filters any attempt to explain himself when confronted with these contradictory behaviors.
And now I will stop beating around the bush and use New York governor Andrew Cuomo as an exemplar of the kind of hypocrisy we're examining here. In the political crisis in America right now, it matters a great deal that Cuomo is a democrat in a "blue" state, and is merely expressing the motivations of that tribe in favoring their own group over another. And importantly, who does Cuomo seem to place in these opposed groups?
What Cuomo has been doing is applying one standard to those who wish to open small businesses, churches and other public places people might gather, and applying another standard to those protesting (or looting) in the streets. The pretext for the hypocrisy is the threat of COVID-19. According to Cuomo, activities of those in the first group constitute a risk to public health, whereas protesters massing the in streets by the thousands do not.
Cuomo is by no means unique in this regard among blue state democrats. We find exactly the same hypocrisy in the actions or speech of the governor of Washington state, the governor of Michigan, the governor of Illinois, the governor of New Jersey, the governor of Pennsylvania, the mayor of Seattle, the mayor of Chicago, the mayor of New York City, the mayor of Minneapolis, and so on. Blue states and cities all.
As Tim Pool and others have been pointing out (video below), this hypocrisy is alarming because it violates the bedrock principle that the United State is one nation where the Constitution and Bill of Rights apply equally everywhere to everyone. Apparently, in the blue states and cities, the Constitution and Bill of Rights do not apply equally to everyone.
You bet that's alarming. Such hypocrisy and selective enforcement strongly indicates we are no longer one nation. There are now two nations, one where the Constitution and Bill of Rights apply, and another where they do not depending on who you are. Where they do not apply, political leaders are rulers, not elected representatives. One might go so far as to say these democrats have become tinpot dictators.
Even worse, let us ask a simple question about the speech and actions of these autocratic democrats — as far as they're concerned, who are the "good" guys and who are the "bad" guys? It is clear enough that Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other similarly confused humans are the "good" guys and ordinary America folks running or using small businesses, or those who want to attend church, are the "bad" guys. It is astonishing to have to come to this conclusion, but there it is. Those in the MSM carrying water for the democrats (CNN, the New York Times, etc.) make no bones about who they deem good and who they deem bad.
In the video below, Tim clearly recognizes the tribal divisions, but gets confused about Cuomo's motives (and those of others like him). Tim seems to think that Cuomo fears the protesters and has therefore bent the knee. That doesn't begin to explain the overall observable pattern described above, whereas obvious moral hypocrisy motivated by political (tribal) bias clearly does. And this bias works against ordinary working Americans. Tim has also observed that the rule of law and civil liberties in blue states and cities are no longer in effect in some cases. This is yet another pattern consistent with the hypothesis that democrats have deemed working men and women in this country to be "deplorables" who must be put down, incorrigible "racists" whose rights do not matter, as opposed to protesters who wear their self-ascribed moral virtue on their sleeves.
Concerning motives, the protesters and the democrats share at least one—a ruthless desire for power and control over others.
It seems the democrats have conflated ordinary working Americans with Trump voters generally. It appears that democrats hate working people. It appears that the democratic establishment represent only this country's neoliberal, globalist elites and those in our relatively small well-off professional class. In short, the establishment democrats are autocratic, authoritarian elitists who don't give a fuck about working people. You know, fascists.
Whether you like it or not, you are immersed in a class war. It is very likely you are staring at the business end of a gun and don't even know it.
You should bear this in mind on election day. More about that in the next post.
Comments