Within weeks of Trump winning the election last fall, liberals were already shrieking about how the election was stolen by Russia. It’s easier and more comforting to say it was stolen than to admit you lost for a reason.
The tendency to rely on conspiracy however, has become a weekly or sometimes daily occurrence.
Even Chris Cillizza of CNN who is hardly a conservative has noticed this:
Donald Trump is turning liberals into conspiracy theoristsMuch has been written about how President Trump’s election has had a profound impact on the Republican party. What’s drawn less attention — but deserves more! — is how Trump is affecting Democrats.Sure, we’ve seen coverage of how Trump’s election has emboldened the liberal left whose call for confrontation at all times has become the rallying cry of the party. (This New Yorker profile of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer describes the rapid evolution from compromise to confrontation well.)What’s drawn less attention is how Trump’s presidency has convinced liberals that every bad thing whispered about any Republican is, by default, true. Consider that in the last week alone, liberal outrage has been sparked on (at least) four occasions by alleged incidents that simply aren’t accurate.1. There was no health care vote beer celebrationAs the House was voting on the American Health Care Act, Vice News’s Alexandra Jaffe spotted cases of beer being brought into the Capitol. She tweeted about it:
That tweet became the basis of an outrage campaign among liberals. This headline, from Mic, is indicative of the early coverage: “Republicans celebrated taking away Americans’ health insurance with cases of beer.” (Mic has since changed the headline to: “Reports of beer delivery to GOP health care celebration called into question.”)Less than a half hour later, Jaffe tweeted again, noting that the beer wasn’t, in fact, for a celebration party for House Republicans. (She had never implied it was.)
Cillizza goes on to point out the false rumors that rape would be a pre-existing condition under the new healthcare law, the false claim that Stephen Colbert is being extraordinarily targeted by the FCC, and more.
While his article is accurate, Cillizza incorrectly attributes this development to Trump when in fact this sort of thing has happened before. Under George W. Bush, liberals insisted that the president lied us into war and an entire industry sprang up around the idea that the Bush administration was somehow complicit in the attacks of September 11th.
Part of what’s driving this phenomenon today is the left’s new habit of dialing up their outrage meter to ten or higher on a daily basis.
It’s something Kurt Schlichter explores in his new column at Town Hall:
For Fussy Liberals, It’s Always Apocalypse Right NowLiberals are upset – they’re always upset – that the evil GOP of Hate has condemned America to a return to a marginally more progressive version of the nightmarish hellscape that was our country before Obamacare passed on March 21, 2010. Once again, the lifeless bodies of those who fail to buy themselves health insurance will be piled upon the sidewalks, left to be carted away as they were in the dark ages of the ‘90s and ‘00s – no doubt by industrious undocumented workers who should be paid a living wage for performing this job that Americans just won’t do. And the Republicans will sit by, watching through their monocles, giggling at this grim tableau of human misery until they grow bored and return to their regularly scheduled agenda of puppy torture and crushing the dreams of young women who want only break the glass ceiling and “be the very best me I can be.”Or something.Because, for Democrats trying to appeal to their Party’s base of unaccomplished coastal snobs and indolent, welfare-grifting morons, Armageddon is always just around the corner whenever conservatives do anything.
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