Thursday, February 01, 2024

Taylor Swift. Travis Kelce. Politics and the lost perspective.

When it comes to politics, leftists excel at 2 things: labeling... and blaming.

Whenever something is going on, or something happens they don’t like, the leftist auto-response is immediate regardless of the issue. If they, themselves, cannot dominate the issue, then they have to find someone responsible for it that gives them an advantage in whatever the outcome may be.

Historically, examples abound. Mass shootings? Blame the NRA and/or “white supremacists.” Biden’s open border policies? Blame Trump and/or the GOP House for failing to bend over to their formalized open-border bills. Foreign policy debacles? Blame Trump. Out of control inflation? Trump.

I bring this up because as fast as a leftist will get involved in tearing down a Founding Father’s statue, they’re beginning to detect massive push-back against the unutterably overhyped and over exposed Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce duo,

Swift, leftists claim, is God’s Gift not only to entertainment, but to the world generally.

Therefore we, rhetorically speaking, have no choice but to bow down to the feet of this woman… sort of an extension of America’s inexplicable love affair with the billion dollar plus celebrity industry.

The unending media efforts to force us all into acceptance and support of the latest flavor of the week never cease. It’s a form of peer pressure that’s likened to being caught in a vice.

If you’re not a rabid fan of Swift, something, obviously, is wrong with you and you need to be castigated and then culled from the “cool kids” herd, left to drift alone as an outcast who doesn’t get it.

There is no doubt that leftists would, rhetorically, sell their own children to protect one of their icons. And because of America’s inexplicable desire to be told what to do by celebrities who are no more qualified, experienced or capable of ordering us about than my next door neighbor’s dog, the left’s calculous is that Swift is some sort of modern day super hero.

Therefore, she must be protected at all costs and those who don’t agree?

Well, they must be “punished.”

Here’s the reality: Swift is the highest profile leftist alive today. I believe that people around the world are far more concerned about her, her love life, what she’s wearing, what she’s eating, what brand of toilet paper she uses, and naturally, the millions of dollars’ worth of earned media she gets with every Kansas City Chief football game, than they are about our economy, our horrific public school system, our out of control borders and the impending blow up of a world war in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, I don't buy into the TS/TK hype. I wonder if she’s as remotely powerful in ordering her followers to support/vote for a clueless leftist numbskull bent on America’s destruction or not: after all, Swift got totally involved in the 2018 elections, throwing her weight behind Democrat former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen over then Rep. Marsha Blackburn.

And how'd that work out? I ask that question to remind people of the result of her effort last time: the outcomes of the Senate race she was so public about?  Blackburn won by 10 points.

Leftist media is positively giddy about what they believe she can do to keep the clueless one in office in this year’s election, and maintain control of the Senate while getting the House back. (Of course, in the first two years of the Biden nightmare, democrats controlled all three Houses as well, and we’re still suffering as a result.)

I, on the other hand, suggest a more sober view: leftist reliance on Swift as their savoir should be sobered by her experience in the field. Her support of Bredesen resulted in a US Senator by the name of Blackburn.

Even now, we’re greeted with headlines that are essentially meaningless as the left attempts to portray Swift as a political demi-god.

USA Today, for example, bleated “more than 35000 register to vote after Taylor Swifts Instagram post.” That abysmal response notwithstanding, which means millions ignored her.

Swift, for her part, has, depending on what source you read, 272, or 274 or 275 million followers on Instagram, where told her followers to get out there and register to vote.

Leftist media literally peed their pants because, to hear them tell it, 35,000 did just that.

That’s right. 35,000. Out of 27Xmillion.

Well, presuming the 275 million follower figure is correct, that’s a compliance rate of 0.000127272727273, or 12 10000ths of 1% of her followers.

But like everything Swift does, the press releases were totally orchestrated to give the leftist media the incentive to provided her with additional millions of dollars’ worth of “earned media,” for free, claiming that their Second Coming of a political god was some sort of shaker and/or mover.

This is, of course, a mere sampling of what’s going to happen in the run-up to November. They’re going to pee on our legs and tell us it’s raining, a not unusual political ply but this time?

It’s gonna be on steroids.

As a result, leftist media will brook no nonsense when it comes to their political flavor of the week.

And the attacks have started already.

A female reporter for the LA Times asks: Ali - What's behind the right's attack on Swift-Kelce romance? Fear of a powerful woman.

Well, as aware as I and others politically to the right of Mao actually are, I find myself in contradiction to this leftist labeling crap.

To date, nothing Swift has done politically shows her capable of moving the needle politically in any significant way. If she couldn’t do it in the Tennessee Senate race, why on earth do these same people believe she can do it a national level when they offer precisely zero evidence beyond their fantasies that she actually can take over the political thinking for her “followers?”

Nevertheless, the article in question:  wants to assure everyone that “the right” is “attacking” their sainted leftist icon out of “fear of a powerful woman.”

The irony of a reporter for the LA Times, or the NY Times or the Washington Post or almost ANY media outlet, including our own democratian, discussing a “carefully constructed web of deceit” is difficult to overstate, considering these same sources of “news” beating us senseless with the web of deceit of Russian collusion or Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation or “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” or any number of other leftist tropes used in an attempt to brutalize the right.

I’m reminded of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid getting up on the floor of the Senate and lying about then GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, when he knowingly claimed that Romney didn’t pay taxes for the last 10 years.., a lie so obvious and blatant that even the Washington Post admitted it, in an article entitled “Harry Reid lied about Mitt Romney’s taxes. He's still not sorry.”

When he was asked about it after the election, his response?

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

Politics, which took up most of my post-military life for some 30 odd years, taught me a great deal. But mainly, it taught me that it’s a brutal, vicious, blood-thirsty business, and while it can, and occasionally does, bring out the best in those involved, it all too often brings out the worst instead.

And this article in the left coast’s version of Pravda Izvestia is just another in the upcoming, and for the left, hopefully deafening, series of drum beats as we begin the process of what is likely to become the most brutal, hateful, despicable campaign the world has yet seen in the US, and this time, with the excuse that those perpetrating it didn’t do it… Artificial intelligence did it.

There is no denying that Taylor Swift is a huge success at what she does, as is her boyfriend of the month. That respect is definitely a testament to capitalism for her. To rise from relatively humble beginnings as a child to what she is now can only be called a _____________ success (Fill in the blank with whatever adjective works fort you) takes talent, drive, savvy and a world view that is difficult to quantify. Her political leanings are likely a result of the generally leftist bubble she lives in, but that’s also her privilege, in spite of the fact that when it suits them, to the left?

She represents everything they hate.

(As a brief aside, I’m reminded of gays protesting for Palestine… as if they wouldn’t be executed on the spot if they ever set foot in the place for being gay.)

But all of that is neither here nor there/

I don’t fear or dislike her personally at all. I don’t know her to do that one way or the other.

But it’s getting old. Real old. And if she was as far right as she is to the left, and if she was as male as Schwarzenegger; first, we wouldn’t be hearing about her and second, even if we did, I’d be saying/feeling the same way I do about any extensively over-hyped celebrity that leftists worship because it’s convenient right now for them to do so.

How many times does anyone want to watch the exact same show? How many times do you want to eat nothing but peanut butter sandwiches?

But I no more care about this woman and who she’s hanging out with than she cares about me. And I fail to see why I SHOULD care. Other than that, I don’t fear her in the least. But my thoughts are drawn to those 3 kids Biden got killed off in Jordan and the 13 dead in Kabul when he screwed Afghanistan with his embarrassing pullout and left tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons in the hands of the terrorist state.

I go to Willamette every now and then, and I see the stones of those who put their lives on the line to make Taylor Swift capable of achieving her heights of fame. My brother is one of them and I presume I will be as well at some point.

Their reward was just a stone, a flag, and for those who survived their time in the military for many, a lifetime of pain… until that lifetime quietly ended… for those not taken fighting a war we sent them to fight.

Who has done more? Who has achieved more? Who is more important?

Well, we all know the answer to that, even if we won’t admit it.

No comments: