This Week's Weaponization Of Government Hearings Revealed Even More About Democrats Than The Government's Corruption.
The qualities necessary to succeed in the Democrat Party are not those that make for successful Republics or "democracies."
This week, the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held hearings on the Twitter Files. The Twitter Files are threads from Twitter that started shortly after Elon Musk purchased the platform.
When Musk became the owner and CEO of Twitter, he worked with independent journalists to share internal documents about the company’s content moderation policies and procedures under its prior ownership. These quickly became known as the “Twitter Files.” Thus far, the documents have been released in many installments, with topics including:
Twitter’s moderation process regarding New York Post coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop;
The decision to suspend former President Donald Trump from Twitter;
The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol; and
The company’s communications with the FBI and U.S. intelligence community about those agencies’ “requests” for Twitter to remove content or users.
It was this latter issue that the Committee focused on this week and Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee’s presentation of the Twitter Files was a bombshell. Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger both provided breathtaking testimony demonstrating that, among other things, the United States government had abused its power to, among other things, censor speech and influence elections.
However, for today’s purposes, I want to focus not on the malfeasance of social media companies and the government, but on what the hearing revealed about the current state of the Democrat Party. Specifically, the type of personality and character traits that are necessary to succeed within it. It is not pretty and, worse, if this conduct continues, and continues not only not sanctioned, but rewarded, it will lead to the problem worsening in the future.
In light of uniformity and improperness of their individual and collective behavior this week, we could start with pretty much any Democrat member of the Committee. To my mind, it is most interesting to start with freshly elected Daniel Goldman because he provides clues of the type of person currently being attracted to the Democrat Party considering he only decided to run in 2022. Consistent with his Democrat colleagues on the Committee, Goldman was rude, arrogant, and, most importantly, dismissive of any viewpoint other than his own. Here, you can watched him grilling Taibbi about the FBI and elections:
Among the most important things to note in that clip is that Goldman never provided the witnesses with an opportunity to speak. To prevent them from speaking, he necessarily had to be rude and arrogant. For example, he was rude by cutting off Taibbi several times mid sentence. Moreover, he hurled insults at Taibbi such as, “you should know that by now.” (one “should know by now” that politeness is no longer required when Democrat House members questions witnesses they disagree with?). He was arrogant by advising for former Rolling Stone journalist that he should go read material Goldman preferred and then return. It goes without writing to state that witnesses are not required to testify about what a questioner believes they should or should not know or believe, but solely about about his or her own knowledge and opinions.
Sadly, the rudeness and arrogance were the least of the Goldman’s improper conduct. The bigger problem with his actions is that his monologue was designed to suggest that a debunked Democrat talking point, that Russia interfered in the 2016 Election to help Trump, not only was fact, but that any person that disagreed with it should not be permitted to speak (and perhaps worse). Conducting hearings in this manner in the United States House is not “democracy;” it is not even governance.
It is fascism, plain and simple. But that is where we currently are as a Country. It not only exists, at least in the House, but it praised.
Before moving on to the other Democrats on the Committee, consider that Goldman did not get to the United States House and this Committee by accident. He was attracted to run for office, and as a Democrat, because he saw how past Democrats conducted themselves in hearings and inpublic, and the like. It takes a certain type of person to treat other Americans as he did this past week, especially in public. Now that Goldman has done so, and been praised for so doing it, more like him will be encouraged to run for office, and as Democrats. Over time, the entire party will conduct itself as he does (if it does not already). Thus, you will have a major political party in America that believes only its view may be held and you may freely be rude and arrogant to those that do not to the point of not permitting them to speak, among other things.
Which brings us to the rest of the Democrats on the Committee. Each Democrat acted as did Goldman. For example, in her opening statement, the Democrat Ranking Member Plaskett blasted the two witnesses as “so-called journalists:”
Were that not sufficient, Congresswoman Plaskett continued to personally attack the witnesses and their integrity, claiming they were "two of Elon Musk's public scribes" who "release cherry-picked, out of context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative, that is now being parroted by the Republicans.”
Note: she never actually produced any evidence of the “cherry-picked, out of context e-mails” or any of her other baseless claims. More on that in a moment.
Again, it would be bad enough that this is happening, but the fact that such rudeness and arrogance is praised makes it all the worse. Here is famous Left wing “commentator” Aaron Rupar praising Plaskett for treating an American citizen and journalist like a criminal:
If you praise behavior, you get more of it and that is what has been happening on the Democrat side for far too long. As a result, Americans that believe in treating their fellow citizens with dignity or even fairness are not the ones attracted to the Democrat Party.
For her part, Debbie Wasserman Schultz might have put on the worst display. She used her question time to smear Taibbi not simply as a “so-called journalist” (note the infirmity of the talking points), but also as someone so ethically challenged that he violated his own prior statements. She was immediately debunked by Taibbi when the next questioner, a Republican, gave him the few seconds he needed to demonstrate that Ms. Shultz’s attacks were not only improper, but baseless. The exchange went like this:
Consider what type of person you must be to want to be rude and dismissive of your fellow citizens, and in public, and to state things, openly and in public, that you know to be false and will be demonstrated as false. But, as the hearings demonstrated, each and every Democrat on the Committee is that type of person. With no signs that there is any mechanism to reverse this type of conduct, or even to put a check on it, look for it to continue and get worse.