We have been drenched in “whataboutism” and hypocrisy-policing for a while now. But it’s mutating into something different. People are just inventing standards on the fly. Watching people slap together rationalizations to explain why their pervert or cad shouldn’t be held to the same standard as our pervert or cad is exhausting. At times, it’s like listening John Candy explain why he should get the top bunk or Captain Kirk teaching the mob how to play Fizzbin. For instance, I’ve particularly enjoyed listening to members of the Congressional Black Caucus grab at every branch as they collectively fall down the jackass tree. Representative James Clyburn apparently tried to suggest this was all a white, racist conspiracy:
.. It is intriguing, however, to think that Clyburn actually believes that white women — who were ideologically inclined to work for Conyers in the first place — are still so racist that they would falsely accuse a black icon, just to take him down.
Here’s ‘what about’ Roy Moore that is different
We’re having a severe outbreak of whataboutism.
In mild forms, the primary symptom is a vulnerability to false equivalencies. Virulent strains, such as the current one, can cause victims to lose all moral perspective.
.. Moore denies the allegations of sexual misconduct but has not denied that he was involved with girls half his age when he was in his 30s... That’s why Republican Ed Gillespie, in his Trump-style gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, ran an ad falsely accusing his opponent, Democrat Ralph Northam, of calling “restoring the rights of unrepentant sex offenders one of his greatest feats.” An ad by an outside group asked: “Does a convicted sexual predator work near your child? Ralph Northam doesn’t want you to know. . . . Tell Ralph Northam. Protect our children. Not predators.”
Trump wants to upend 230 years of constitutional principle
Okay, it’s official. President Trump wants to upend 230 years of constitutional history and principle to run the U.S. justice system like a banana republic, or perhaps more aptly like what now passes for the rule of law in the country he aspires to emulate, the Russian Federation.
.. For months, Trump has been trying to divert attention from the walls closing in on his former campaign chairman, his former national security adviser and his own son Donald Trump Jr., who are caught up in the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Trump has practiced some of the favorite tactics of his role model Vladimir Putin, labeling any damaging revelation as “fake news” and practicing a refined form of “whataboutism.”
.. This is what authoritarians and tyrants do. They use the instruments of state power, particularly the wrath of the prosecutor, to rain opprobrium down upon citizens with whom they disagree... The first line of defense against authoritarianism is an independent Justice Department committed to the rule of law. In 1940, Attorney General (and future Supreme Court Justice) Robert Jackson, in a famous speech to U.S. attorneys in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice warned that when “the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that [is where] the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group.”
Hamilton 68 Dashboard
Between October 14 and October 20, we examined 58 unique URLs that were promoted by Kremlin-oriented Twitter accounts. The most prominent theme (24% of all URLs shared) was the probe into the sale of a uranium mining company to Russia’s Atomic Energy Agency that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010. The original reporting by The Hill was a top URL for several consecutive days, all other URLs shared promoted some variation on a theme of corruption, collusion, cover-up by the Clinton-led State Department and/or the Mueller-led FBI (#ClintonRussianCollusion was also a top hashtag last week). Outside of the uranium probe, ten other URLs shared (17% of the total) were coded as anti-Mueller, Comey, and/or Clinton. Conversely, four stories (7%) shared by the network were pro-Julian Assange/Wikileaks. Syria was again the most discussed geopolitical topic, appearing in 10% of the URLs shared by the network. Among other geopolitical topics, “whatboutism” was a prominent theme, with individual stories shared that compared Catalonia to Kosovo and that blamed the United States for worsening U.S./Russian relations due to the bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
How One Group Is Monitoring Cyber Trolls Potentially Tied To The Kremlin