Meet "Chantrill's Law of Incoming Rounds." The idea is simple. We humans are really sensitive when someone is attacking us. But when we are attacking someone else, hey, what's the fuss!
The way to understand this is by way of a military metaphor. Imagine you and your buddies are defending a fire-base on a hill-top in Vietnam. Nearby there's an enemy fire-base. You can imagine that when your mortar detachment fires off a mortar round at the other fire-base it is interesting to see where the round lands: the puff of smoke, the crump. Did it hit the target or not?
But things are very different when incoming rounds are hitting your own fire-base. Why, it's a matter of life and death! Incoming! Hit the deck! Then it's all about counterattack, killing every last one of them.
The same is true in politics. Political activists are warriors in the political wars; their job is to fire off squibs to hit the opposing campaign right in the solar-plexus, whether it is a negative ad or an October Surprise that digs up some embarrassing scandal from the past. Hey, they had it coming! But when the opposition starts firing on your side, why, that's an outrage! How dare they traffic in rumors and innuendo! Let's stick to the issues!
You can see this playing out in the current war between the Trumpists and the Resistance. For instance, whaddya think of this list of mortar rounds from the left, compiled at American Greatness?
The way to understand this is by way of a military metaphor. Imagine you and your buddies are defending a fire-base on a hill-top in Vietnam. Nearby there's an enemy fire-base. You can imagine that when your mortar detachment fires off a mortar round at the other fire-base it is interesting to see where the round lands: the puff of smoke, the crump. Did it hit the target or not?
But things are very different when incoming rounds are hitting your own fire-base. Why, it's a matter of life and death! Incoming! Hit the deck! Then it's all about counterattack, killing every last one of them.
The same is true in politics. Political activists are warriors in the political wars; their job is to fire off squibs to hit the opposing campaign right in the solar-plexus, whether it is a negative ad or an October Surprise that digs up some embarrassing scandal from the past. Hey, they had it coming! But when the opposition starts firing on your side, why, that's an outrage! How dare they traffic in rumors and innuendo! Let's stick to the issues!
You can see this playing out in the current war between the Trumpists and the Resistance. For instance, whaddya think of this list of mortar rounds from the left, compiled at American Greatness?
- Public performances of plays that depict the execution of Trump-like figures.
- Publishing a Trump assassination fantasy in the New York Times.
- The constant, deliberate misrepresentation and denigration of mainstream conservative policy positions {by the MSM e.g., immigration].
- Barack Obama advises supporters to oppose opponents by saying if “they bring a knife, we bring a gun.”
- [V]irtue-signaling celebrities who make threats against the president’s family...
- Antifa’s (and associated groups’) violent responses to peaceful exercises of conservative speech in public spaces.
- Leftists running high-profile conservatives out of restaurants.
- Maxine Waters’ encouragements of those who would use violent methods to signify their opposition to the Trump Administration.
- Hillary Clinton’s call for a hiatus on civility until Democrats regain control of the government.
- The widespread, false, and cynical equivocation between conservative speech and hate speech.
- The would-be assassin who almost killed Rep. Scalise.
- Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder saying, “when [conservatives] go low, we kick them.”
Against this, American Greatness's list of conservative originated outrages.
But of course. If you are a conservative, you are sick to death of liberals accusing you of being racists sexists, homophobes, and sick to death of the hypocrisy of calling riotous behavior "peaceful protest." Because it hits you where you live and you know that it is meant to hit you where you live and cow you into submission.
But, with the Trump era, suddenly our liberal friends are experiencing incoming rounds, and, in the words of Corporal Jones of the British sit-com Dad's Army, they "don't like it up 'em."
The fact is that people don't care about other people. We only care about ourselves and our kind, and we really care when someone is attacking us, rhetorically on social media, or with fake bombs, or real bullets. Of course we do. We are humans.
- The use of disparaging metaphors in reference to the media or political opponents on the Left—because the words the Right uses really do matter.
- The Deplorables—especially the ones who vote.
- The (comparatively small number of) conservative media outlets.
- The purportedly inherent association between right-wing politics and domestic terrorism.
- President Trump.
And, of course, whenever there is an act of violence, by anyone right or left, liberals blame it on eliminationist rhetoric, white-supremacists, far-right conspiracy theories, and Trump's rhetoric.
But, with the Trump era, suddenly our liberal friends are experiencing incoming rounds, and, in the words of Corporal Jones of the British sit-com Dad's Army, they "don't like it up 'em."
The fact is that people don't care about other people. We only care about ourselves and our kind, and we really care when someone is attacking us, rhetorically on social media, or with fake bombs, or real bullets. Of course we do. We are humans.
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