Townhall Review | Commentaries

Our capitalist system generally rewards companies for manufacturing quality products, but that’s not always true of Hollywood. The new movie “Joker” is a vile concoction about a comic book villain, but set an all-time October record by earning $234 million in its opening weekend worldwide. Some hailed the film for its bleak, desolate view of society and humanity, and its portrayal of a lonely, bullied, mentally ill protagonist achieving empowerment through murderous violence.

Jeff Yang, however, derided the movie’s exploitative nihilism as “an insidious validation of the white male resentment that helped bring President Donald Trump to Power.” He described the anti-hero as a victim “who has been crushed underfoot by the elite, dragged down by equality demanding feminists, and climbed over by upstart nonwhite and immigrant masses.”

The president’s critics blame him for a lot, but a tortured effort to connect Trump to “Joker” is as loathsome and irresponsible as the film itself.

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When Democrats demanded President Trump release the transcript of his phone call with Ukraine’s President Zelensky, the president quickly did so, even though such a precedent is deeply disturbing when one considers the need for any president to be able to assure their counterparts of confidentiality.

Now the tables have turned: Democrats staged a showy hearing in the House Intelligence Committee last week, featuring former Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker. Selected tiny bits of the proceedings were leaked in an attempt to bolster the Democrats’ threadbare argument that a quid pro quo happened. Republicans in the hearing say the full testimony reveals exactly the opposite, that there was no quid pro quo.

But: Adam Schiff—the chair—won’t release the transcript of the hearing after he demanded Trump release the transcript of the call.

Which one has something to hide?

The gravity of impeachment and the polarized nature of today’s political environment demands transparency.

Release the transcript, Adam Schiff.

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For years, we’ve been told by elite media that Trump was a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Now, we’re being told that Trump has a corrupt relationship with the new president of Ukraine. There’s just one problem: Russia and Ukraine are enemies. In fact, since 2014, the two nations have been locked in a war that has cost over 12,000 lives.

So: how can media argue Trump is Putin’s puppet—while he offers military aid to Putin’s enemies? This contradiction has apparently never occurred to today’s media elites.

They are pushing for impeachment based on an alleged attempt by our president to conspire with the Ukrainian president for political gain. So: which is it?—conspiring with Russia or conspiring against Russia?

Before they move on to their next attempt to end Trump’s presidency over this conspiracy theory, media should at least have the decency to admit that their last conspiracy theory was dead wrong.

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In the midst of their seemingly endless and unpredictable fight for the 2020 presidential nomination, does it make sense for Democrats to promote some of their least likable Congressional leaders as the new face of their party?

The result of the new impeachment investigation, assigned to six different House committees, is that the leaders of those committees—including Maxine Waters, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff and Elijah Cummings—will dominate the debate and upstage the flailing presidential contenders.

As it happens, all six chairs are from New York, California, Maryland and Massachusetts, perfectly positioned to alienate key suburban voters in swing states that will decide the outcome of the election. The impeachment pursuit elevates some of the Democrats’ least appealing proponents to positions of pre-eminence, helping to ensure party losses in the upcoming battles for control of the House, the Senate and the White House.

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When the law is working the way it’s supposed to work, the prosecution decides what the charge is and then the jury decides the verdict. In the case of the Resistance vs. Trump, the verdict has always been known in advance: Guilty. It’s the charges which keep changing.

When the verdict never changes, but the charges keep changing, that’s a thumb on the scale of justice.

That’s what we’ve seen in recent weeks with Trumpeachment 2.0: Ukraine edition. New charge, collusion with Russia is out, collusion with Russia’s enemy is in. Only the verdict remains the same.

Remember: Impeachment is an extraordinary legal step, designed to investigate under-investigated matters. By what objective measure could anyone argue that Trump has been under-investigated?

Oh, I forgot, he will always be seen as under investigation, because no matter what the official charge is, the real offense is that he won the election.

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The same Democrats who decried the Bill Clinton impeachment as a product of GOP hatred and an illicit effort to nullify the results of a presidential election have now become exactly what they accused Republicans of being.

And I mean literally the same Democrats who gave an endless defense of Clinton two decades ago: Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Jerry Nadler and then Senator Joe Biden.

But Democrats cannot guarantee Trump’s removal from office—or anything close to it.

Their combination of hypocrisy with show-me-the-man-and-I’ll-show-you-the-crime Soviet-style justice has assured only one thing:

The results—whatever the result—of the 2020 presidential election will be seen as fraudulent by half the country.

If Trump wins, Democrats will contend he did so by rigging the election.

If the Democrat wins, Trump loyalists and anti-Socialists will see it as the byproduct of four years of inquisitions.

For all their talk of protecting the integrity and legitimacy of the 2020 election, Democrats have gravely damaged both.

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Politicians have learned that, if they don’t know how to solve a problem, they declare a war on it.

So: now we live under countless domestic policy wars—the war on poverty, war on crime, war on drugs, war on terror, war on energy consumption and the like. These wars spend money, increase federal executive power, but solve very little.

Now comes a dangerous cry to declare a war on climate change. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls climate change “our World War Two” and Senator Sanders, who proposes an even bigger Green New Deal, agrees. Scholars claim it is already a war that we are losing and ask the president to declare an emergency.

All of this is code for “we don’t really know what needs to be done, but it needs to be big, expensive and federal.” Beware a new policy war on climate change.

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If the goal of the trade war is to hurt China as we push them to change, it’s working.

China’s economic growth rates are definitely falling. But—as we recently showed on Townhall Finance—the jobs are leaving China, but they’re not coming to the U.S. Jobs are heading to other parts of emerging Asia, often still employed by Chinese-owned companies.

And doesn’t that make sense?

As we slap tariffs on China, markets push supply chains further down the labor scale, not up to high wage America. Markets are highly fluid. Throw a rock in the stream and the water finds its way around it.

For most of human history, China was the world’s economic superpower. The U.S. did not surpass China until we abolished slavery, repealed the war-time income tax and established sound money.

We need to go back to that basic formula, the one that that permitted us to end Chinese dominance in the first place: Universal human dignity, low taxes and sound money.

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With her proclamation of an impeachment inquiry, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the American people that the 2020 election will be about Democrats’ past political failures and not their future quality of life.

House Democrats will not move to protect private health insurance for 175 million Americans; nor will they take up the U.S-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

House Democrats will not forge a compromise on border security that would provide permanent legal status to DREAMers or participate in a tax relief 2.0 discussion.

House Democrats will not work to improve the quality of public education, public housing or public infrastructure.

They’ll be too busy talking Ukraine and Russia and impeachment, holding hearings, issuing subpoenas and looking for sound bites to feed a willing media.

Pelosi and company have proven to be fanatical partisans in perpetual tantrum mode over losing the 2016 election. Ironically, by choosing to be so, they are guaranteeing a rerun of the election they lost.

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It was a landmark day for the English Language.

Last week, Merriam Webster added the singular, genderless word “they” to their online dictionary—a change that will be reflected in subsequent editions of the hard copies of their dictionary as well.

Merriam Webster is the oldest publisher of dictionaries in the United States. It's had wide influence. This is more than a simply symbolic act—and Merriam-Webster understands that.

But here’s the question: How long will this current definition or this newly added definition last? How long will it be before ‘he’ and ‘she’ or ‘his’ and ‘hers’ are re-spelled—or simply disappear?

I'm going to make a prediction right now. The gender and sexual revolutionaries will not be satisfied with the singular “they.”

And that’s why this is so important: If you can control the language, if you can change the language … you will control and you will change the direction of the culture.

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