The New Newspeak

From Victor Davis Hanson:


Here are the more serious and latest samples of the corrected Animal Farm Commandments on the American Farm barn wall for the age of the Trump presidency.

1. The Senate filibuster is an archaic and disruptive obstacle to government an essential tool of legislative democracy.
2. The Senate’s “nuclear option” of approving nominees by majority votes is a legitimate tool to restore legislative balance crackpot idea to erode Senate traditions.
3. Pen-and-phone executive orders are critical presidential prerogatives when Congress won’t act undermine the Constitution’s separation of powers.
4. Past Supreme Court decisions are always fluid rulings and hold no real sway over present court prerogatives established judicial precedents that should not be tampered with by current politicized justices.
5. Pressuring private companies like Boeing or Chrysler for political purposes like Carrier to keep jobs in the U.S. is unwise presidential intrusion into the marketplace.
6. Edgy, out-of-the-box foreign-policy outreach to democracies like Taiwan dictatorships like Cuba and Iran is proof of presidential leadership and imagination.
7. Presidential informality like inviting rappers with rap sheets to the White House or doing interviews with GloZell like tweeting and videos are ominous signs of presidential frivolity and immaturity.
8. States-rights nullification of federal law has been traditionally racist, and subversive to the idea of the United States, leading to crisis or war is a legitimate expression of progressive cultural exceptionalism.
9. Running up huge deficits in Keynesian fashion primes the economy is a dangerous sign of presidential laxity.
10. Regular press conferences with vigorous cross-examinations of the president are noisy anachronisms from the bygone age of print journalism a must for a functioning democracy.
11. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio voting twice for Barack Obama over John McCain and Mitt Romney was at last proof that the white working class was tolerant and enlightened for Trump shows that these deplorable voters are still irredeemable white clingers and supremacists.
12. Worries that registration and voting can be rigged Rioting, demanding superfluous recounts, damning the legitimacy of the Electoral College, and threatening Electors are efforts to subvert American democracy.
13. Criticizing a former president allots proper blame where it belongs for current messes is bad sportsmanship, cheap, and unbecoming.
14. Former presidents making business deals and earning exorbitant speaking and consulting fees as they cash in and globe-trot demeans the office is an acceptable right and welcome duty of an ex-president.
15. Weighing in on contemporary news stories such as the Skip Gates psychodrama or the Trayvon Martin murder case a flag-burning incident is symptomatic of presidential puerility.
16. Vladimir Putin was unfairly alienated by George W. Bush, sophomorically hyped into an existential threat by Mitt Romney, and deserving of reset is dangerous, a Trump fan, and an inveterate enemy of the U.S.

All the above have a shelf-life of about four years and may be recalibrated according to the results of the 2020 election.