“Fake but accurate” lives on…

Ace has a link of a link and a great verbal evisceration about some lib harpy’s “damn the facts, I know how I FEEL” rant in relation to the not just freed, but utterly exonerated Duke players accused of rape.

The kind of mindset displayed in the quoted comments reflects that ephemeral sense of institutionalized victimhood (with the associated feelings of entitlement) which, to my mind, typifies so completely the hard-left’s view on life.

Again and again this self-martyred shill rants on about how the players weren’t really found innocent, it’s just that there was enough evidence to convict them.

Uh…yeah.  Isn’t that usually what it means when there isn’t sufficient evidence?  That the accused probably didn’t do it?  Not if you’re part of the Victimhood Mafia.

Under our system of justice, most convictions actually require what we like to call a “preponderance of evidence” and that whole “beyond a reasonable doubt” thingy.

However, that’s not enough for the Righteously Indignant of the Much Aggrieved, much like the pirahnas who kept trying to feed off the supposedly “damning” fax related to Bush’s National Guard service – long after the bones had been picked clean – with a cry of, “sure, okay, maybe it was fake, but it was still accurate.”

In other words, don’t bother me with facts, I know how I FEEL.

Therein lies the single greatest struggle “we” (the conservatish lot) so often face in challenging the positions and arguments of the shrill and radical Left.  You can beat them down and beat them down with the hoary bludgeon of “Facts,” and yet they will continue to raise a metaphorically bloodied head time and again muttering, “Yeah, but STILL…“ 

Which leads to the greatest danger we as a nation face from those so willfully self-deluded.  So often with this myopic and seemingly unassailable worldview comes a specious sense of entitlemement, an ill-defined yet still very potent sense that no matter what, “They” MUST have been guilty, even if “WE” didn’t catch them this time. Therefore no matter what, “I” need to take care of myself lest I become of victim of “Their” overarching power over me.

Under such a banner, all manner of legally and morally dubious actions can be justified.  Activist judges can write judicial precedent from the bench based not on the Constitution, or the vast body of historical legal documents, but rather on their own whimsical interpretation of law after a careful filtering through the lens of the latest politically-correct cause de jeur.  See “9th Circuit Court of Appeals.”

I’m sure most would consider it bad parenting to, when faced the realization that you have wrongfully punished a child, launch a scathing retort to the effect, “Well…that’s for all the times I DIDN’T catch you!“  Yet the same thought process seems to be at work in the linked article.  “Okay, sure, maybe the weren’t actually guilty, BUT, they were priviledged white males, and these days, you just KNOW they were probably guilty of something!”

Yeah, like being, white, and male, and in the wrong (upper) income bracket.  No worse crime to those who have been raised steeped in the culture that it’s always somebody else’s fault…and somebody is usually a rich, white guy.  Doesn’t really matter which one…there’s usually enough lying around that you can snatch one up pretty quick if the need arises.

You see it in the push for slavery “reparations,” and apologies for actions our ancestors committed centuries ago.  You see it in the shrill cry for apologies every time someone makes an off-color or disparaging remark about a sacrosanct victimhood identity group.  This sense of entitlement, of a moralizing sense of outrage seemingly far out of balance with the actual offense in question.

No one apologized to me for “The Da’vinci Code”, “Saved“, “Dogma” or any of the other dreck out there which gets ladled over the Christian faith on a regular basis.

And I’m not holding my breath.  But I digress.

This mindset, this vague yet persuasive sense of continual “disenfranchisement” becomes dangerous when it develops into a perception that “The System” can no longer be trusted.  Our system works in large part because people BELIEVE that it will.  They have faith that, despite its flaws and shortcomings, it will ultimately do the most good for the most people.  When a large block of the voting public decides that the election results can’t be trusted because “their” candidate didn’t win, or that the judicial system is inherently “out to get them” or only serve the interests of its rich, white masters, then we have a real problem.

When you no longer believe in the system, you begin to feel comfortable operating outside the system.  You begin to justify your legally questionable actions, your extreme rhetoric, and your scathing disdain.  You begin to advocate for causes which would see to defy simple logical reason and good sense (9/11 Truthers, any one?).  Moreover, you not only feel FREE to circumvent the system, you feel obligated.  It becomes your civic duty to “stick it to the man,” to Robin Hood it and fight for whatever downtrodden minority victim group is currently en vogue.

And that friends, is the start of a slippery slope into the Weather Underground, and Environmental Terrorism, and hateful rhetoric which openly advocates violence against our President and our system of government.  When you see no recourse for redress within the system, you feel like you have take it to the streets to “defend” yourself against what you’ve convinced yourself is an oppressive dictatorship.

What it really is, however, is simply a fully functioning system that won’t let you have your way all the time.  But then, the parents among us understand that there are few things more destructive than an angry child who can’t have his way.

I firmly believe that the phrase in the military’s oath of enlistment and military commision which reads, “defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” is there for a very real and compelling reason.

I’ll let you figure out why.

UPDATE: More of the same:
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/taxpayer-supported-america-hating-501c3-charities

Need I say more?