President Trump has an amazing knack for pushing leftist buttons. His trolling of the media is epic; they always bite, chasing his squirrels and making genuine donkeys of themselves in the process.
The latest example of this involves a “saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again” tweet and an ad released by America First Policies. The left is, predictably and hilariously, melting down.
The president tweeted:
The prof astutely assessed the trolling impact on the left:
Heh. It did indeed work:
It’s so funny, too, to see the “fake news” that gets absorbed and repeated with holier-than-thou glee by rank-and-file lefties.
That, of course, is not true, as Leslie blogged back in August.
A couple of tweets speak to the heart of the “War on Christmas” matter that so resonates with Trump voters.
The first tweet referencing President Trump saying “Happy Holidays” in 2010 instead of “Merry Christmas” is a perfect example of the sort of pressure public (and not so public) figures felt in saying “Merry Christmas.”
The Washington Post published an article intended to debunk the “war on Christmas” narrative and President Trump’s efforts to make us proud to say “Merry Christmas” again. What they did, however, was quite the opposite.
WaPo highlights the “war on Christmas” by finding one tiny town in Tennessee that “never stopped saying ‘Merry Christmas’.” The exception that proves the rule.
In this rural Trump-supporting town, home to barely 1,000 people and at least 10 Christian churches, the word “holiday” doesn’t seem to exist.Outside the county courthouse there’s an evergreen tree covered with colored lights and ornaments made by local students, along with a sign that reads: “Welcome to our Christmas tree.” Light poles along Main Street are decorated with banners featuring Santa Claus and a greeting of “MERRY CHRISTMAS.” The beauty shop window has a sign reading, “Jesus is the reason for the season.”At the town’s Christmas parade earlier this month, children scurried to scoop up candy, and adults shouted to one another, “Merry Christmas!”“We’ve always said ‘Merry Christmas,’ ” said Melissa Cobb, 48, a local hairstylist wearing dangling cross earrings, who voted for President Trump and gathered before the parade with fellow church members and clients in the beauty salon where she works. She added that no one in the town has ever been offended by her saying the phrase.“It offends me,” she continued, “to see at the stores, where they just do ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Seasons Greetings.’ It should be ‘Merry Christmas.’ Put Christ back into Christmas. That’s what it’s supposed to be. . . . I just wish we would all get on the same page.”Trump tapped into this sentiment on the campaign trail when he promised that if he was elected president, everyone would say “Merry Christmas” again — never mind that most Americans never stopped.
We may not all have stopped saying it, but we did feel the weight of it outside of conservative regions like the South. We understood that “Happy Holidays” was preferred and that we risked offending and insulting others—or losing our jobs, i.e. mine in academia—by uttering the words “Merry Christmas.”
I felt it when I lived in Massachusetts, as I’ve attested in a post about my experience with this socio-cultural and economic pressure. No one said, “if you say ‘Merry Christmas,’ you’re out of here.” They didn’t have to. The left uses the fact that conservatives and others on the right don’t want to offend or upset others. They know we don’t like to make a fuss and that we are likely to turn the other cheek or remain silent when we are attacked or in the face of controversy . . . particularly when our jobs are on the line.
That assumption of the right’s reaction to leftist bullying and intolerance has been steam-rolled by President Trump. In leading the charge against the perpetually-offended, ever joyless, always bitter and angry left, he has freed us to speak just a bit more loudly, to push back just a bit more aggressively. That it manifests in our embrace of saying “Merry Christmas” without glancing around to make sure no one is offended is particularly problematic for the left for whom the eradication of belief in anything but government is the ultimate goal.
The second tweet references President Trump saying that he brought back the freedom to say “Merry Christmas.” The inference here is that the words “Merry Christmas” were not officially banned and didn’t lead to a citizen being arrested for saying the words.
That’s perfectly true; it was not officially banned, except at the VA and throughout executive agencies during the Obama presidency. As we’ve documented for years here at LI, college campuses have worked overtime to eliminate anything remotely religious from Christmas celebrations, and K-12 schools are limited to Christmas Holiday Winter pageants that feature songs about snow and reindeer . . . as long as the word “White” is not used. Because racism.
The left, in other words and despite their protestations, is fully aware that in the culture war there is no need for either an open declaration of war or for citizens to be arrested for saying “Merry Christmas.” Bullying and shaming and counting on our reluctance to rock the boat do the trick quite nicely, toss in the “I’m so offended” complaint to get Christmas decorations banned and “separation of church and state” lawsuits to ensure that no Christian symbology is evident on local, state, or federal government grounds, and you have an effective war on Christmas. Toss in “accidentally” leaving Christmas off of school calendars as the EU did in 2010, and it’s even more difficult to deny.
America First Policies, a non-profit started by former advisers to President Trump, released the following ad that has the left outraged.
Predictably, leftie heads exploded on Twitter.
The president didn’t stop with that one tweet; he followed up with two more “Merry Christmas” tweets:
Even the First Lady got in on the trolling action:
Trump tapped into something that is very real and that to many Americans represents an attack on our culture. The American left is so busy embracing every culture but their own that they fail to see their own intolerance and destruction of their own culture. It would be tragically sad if it weren’t so dangerous.
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