The Outstater

July 29, 2021

LISTENING TO NANCY PELOSI urge her select committee to thoroughly investigate the Jan. 6 demonstrations, I realized I had heard one of her talking points before.

As you may know, a member of the Indiana congressional delegation was blackballed by Pelosi for “statements and actions” that she felt would “impact the integrity of the committee.”

You cannot be sure which statements offended the Speaker but I have in front of me an Aug. 4, 2019, tweet from the offender that may be germane:

“I deployed to Afghanistan as a response to radical Islamic terrorism,” the tweet says. “We now face a different enemy that has also emerged from the shadows but demands the same focus and determination to root out and destroy. #WhiteSupremacistTerrorism should be named, targeted and defeated.” 

Perhaps Pelosi is upset with Rep. Jim Banks because in more than two years (the time from D-Day to Germany’s surrender) he has been unable to name, target and defeat a threat to America so serious that it brings to mind the Taliban and its Al-Qaeda allies if not Hitler.

On first reading the tweet, I thought that the wording didn’t sound like Jim Banks. His office assured me, however, that it was written by the representative himself. The staffer added that he emphatically agreed with his boss’s view.

OK, so given the array of crises facing our nation, does Representative Banks believe that white supremacy is an organized menace demanding the same focus as Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan? And would Nancy Pelosi even recognize an armed insurrection if it camped on her husband’s stock portfolio?

No, they are both postures of moment. In the case of Banks, coming as he does from a white bread congressional district, there was a need to express a degree of wokeness. In the case of Pelosi, she was merely throwing raw meet to her troops. 

Both are detached from any factual basis — imaginary, in other words. 

In the one case, if white supremacists exist in large numbers they are incredibly ineffectual. Black-on-white murders dwarf white-on-black murders (2:1). And the video evidence from Jan. 6 shows only a demonstration getting badly out of hand.

This is what you get from Washington — a ghost debate. The goal is never to name, target and defeat anything, or to stop any sort of trouble. The goal is to keep the facts from interfering with whatever political advantage might fall one’s way.

It is the price the rest of us pay for abiding professional politicians and a complicit media.

Term limits would improve matters. — tcl



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