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Shortly after completing my first draft of this article, I read David Troisi's compelling coulmn posted in the Sun-Gazette's Sept. 10 titled "Name-calling will not unite Americans -- or win over future voters." Mr. Troisi succinctly summarized his column with his closing line "Name calling is not a policy. It's a strategy in place of a viable plan."
Mr. Troisi's column sufficiently described the current strategy of the left, which is to paint Republicans as "haters," "far-right extremists," "dangers to our democracy" and "fascists" to name a few. I would like to add more context by delving into the history of these strategies, and what the left hopes to achieve by them.
In simplest terms, the current "name-calling" strategy can be broken down into at least two known Marxist tactics:
1. Psychologize your opponent with a label instead of debating them.
2. Accuse your opponent of what YOU are actually doing.
In the world of politics, labeling opponents with derogatory descriptors is nothing new, and not unique to any political party. But in our era, the leftist strategists have taken their rhetoric to a new low. In true Marxist fashion, they follow tactics fine-tuned in Germany's Frankfurt School, a.k.a. "Karl Marx University" by philosopher Herbert Marcuse and his peers in the 1920s, and later imported to America by Marcuse in the 1930s. Marcuse first arrived at New York City's Columbia University, and soon after disseminated these strategies throughout our system of higher education across America. Marcuse made such an impact on American society that he became know in popular culture as "The Guru of the New Left". It was he who coined the phrase "Make love, not war" to align with the left wing causes and liberal values he was promoting.
Naturally, some of the Frankfurt School strategies were specific to politics. Recognizing that those who hold conservative viewpoints were a danger to the left's subversive, anti-capitalism, anti-western values mission, their remedy was to begin branding political opponents as mentally ill extremists posing a threat to our society. The goal of this strategy was and is to silence others through means of diagnosis instead of dialogue, a scare tactic obviously meant to influence voters and thus elections.
A recent vivid example of this leftist strategy appeared in American newspapers on August 17 by the complicit New York Times' op-ed columnist Charles Blow, who declared the Republican Party as "the real problem in America," and "a threat to our democracy." This, according to Blow, because voters in the State of Wyoming had the audacity to hand Liz Cheney a humiliating primary election trouncing to a conservative opponent.
Understand, branding candidates as "dangerous" or "extreme," or tagging them with some newly made-up diagnosis of the left such as "homophobic," "transphobic" or "xenophobic" has now become their primary strategic weapon of choice. This because they recognize, correctly, that most Americans would align with many of the view points of conservatives, were a debate over the issues to occur. They therefore make preemptive strikes at conservatives by labeling them as "neurotic," "racist," "fascist" or, if the person happens to believe the November 2020 election may have been stolen, even "delusional." Interestingly, if one happened to believe the 2016 Presidential Election was stolen by a Trump-Russian collusion, the left considered them completely lucid.
And that is exactly what we see in this year's talking points, op-ed columns and paid advertisements by the left, where no conservative candidate is safe. As to be expected, these felicitous attacks are repeatedly appearing right here in our Commonwealth's media outlets against conservative candidates, specifically state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Fayetteville, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who are labeled as "extremist," "racist" and "dangerous," among many other ad hominem tags. The left would be foolish to attack these men on actual policy because, by and large, the policies they believe in are the same ones many Pennsylvanians tend to believe in.
So it is only fitting to turn the spotlight for a moment onto the beliefs and platforms of Josh Shapiro, John Fetterman and their party in general, whose policies both Shapiro and Fetterman, by their own admissions and actions, wholeheartedly embrace.
Extreme are candidates like these who support the murder of a child in their mother's womb, even up to the moment of birth, often referred to as partial birth abortion. Both Shapiro and Fetterman said they would be against any restriction on abortions.
Dangerous to our economy and our way of life is a party that attempts to describe an inflation rate five times higher than it has been in the past 10 years as simply "transitory." This is the party whose policies, in their zeal to advance "green energy," have sent gas, electric, residential heating oil and grocery prices soaring while our retirement plans tumble. Those who speak out against the climate-change "sky is falling" propaganda are immediately diagnosed as "denialists" and written off or even cancelled.
Believing Americans are completely credulous, they smugly took a victory lap recently over what they call "decreasing gas prices," which are now in fact nearly double what they were when they took control Nationally. Their hope is that the American public will forget or remain ignorant of the fact that in May of this year they began a six-month, one million barrels per day withdrawal from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) with no plan to replenish it. The SPR was created "to counter disruptions in America's commercial supplies." In the original language, "disruptions" referred to OPEC and other entities who controlled the price of oil, and held our Nation hostage to their price fixing. "Disruptions" did NOT refer to a U.S. administration that purposely has been an enemy of domestic oil and gas production, choke-holding our supply.
These daily withdrawals are set to end around early November 2022, predictably sending gas, energy and food prices soaring again just after the Fall election. At the end of September 2022, the SPR will stand at 410 million barrels, its lowest level in nearly 40 years, down from 638 million barrels in January of 2021. And when the daily withdrawals end in November (if they end), it will be at nearly 360 million barrels, down below the "half-full" mark for first time in history since we began filling it in 1977.
Extreme is a party that touts "follow the science" but can't even define a woman, and believes that men can become pregnant. They do not follow the science on biology -- insisting that boys can be girls, and therefore should compete against them in sports, and afterwards shower with them in the same locker rooms. They refuse to follow the science on vaccinations and mask mandates. Their credo "my body my choice" only applies to things they cherish like infanticide, but not to forced experimental vaccinations upon Americans under threat of losing their jobs and livelihood. The vaccines were even forced upon millions of our healthcare, industrial and governmental workers who had already developed the safer and preferable "natural immunity". Those who disagreed were diagnosed with a severe case of "vaccine hesitancy", and their voices quickly fell behind the iron curtain of the left's complicit cancel-culture media. "Follow the science" for them is a one-way ratchet which means, follow the science that fits their narrative and their agenda of taking control over the will of a free people. These are hallmarks of a rising fascist system of government ("Accuse your opponent of what YOU are actually doing."). Tactics like these fit nicely into Benito Mussolini's summarization of fascism: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State".
Extreme is a political party that weaponizes our law enforcement, from school district police officers at open board meetings all the way up to our Department of Justice, who fast-tracked the FBI's classification of "domestic terrorists" to apply to parents who spoke out against their local school boards. When it comes to law enforcement, this the party that cries "defund the police", while permitting criminals to escape prosecution, exit our prisons, and enter our Country unimpeded through our open southern border.
Dangerous is a party and their candidates who seek to take away the guns of law abiding Americans, while simultaneously arming 86,000 new Internal Revenue Service agents who will soon be unleashed primarily upon small businesses and their owners. This move aptly sums up their understanding of economics, which is "The government doesn't have a spending problem, it has an income problem". A "problem" they plan to fix with more taxation.
This IRS agent-hiring was part of the recent 1/2 trillion dollar spending bill they dubbed the "Inflation Reduction Act", which was known in advance by everyone NOT to reduce inflation at all. It is a leftist bait-and-switch scheme whose name even the liberal media are now calling "Orwellian disinformation" by achieving the opposite of what its name portrays – a purposely misleading bold faced lie that is dangerous to a nation which values truth, integrity and transparency.
In closing, Mr. Troisi's summarization "Name calling is not a policy. It's a strategy in place of a viable plan" could not be more accurate. His assertion that "name-calling will not win voters" is only true to a point. Sadly, these tactics will influence many uninformed voters. They will not however win over thinking and researching Independent, Libertarian and other openminded voters of any party who do not fall for the schemes of any candidate or party.
This Fall's election will require that all voters sift out the political propaganda to find what is true and good. Careful research will demonstrate who the true "extreme" party and candidates are. In light of this, it is incumbent upon the Pennsylvania electorate to check their source, check their facts, and then check their ballots on November 8th for candidates who are committed to saving our Commonwealth and Country from the grips of authoritarianism and lawlessness, and elect to office women and men who wholeheartedly value life, freedom, family, free enterprise, energy independence and our Constitutions.
Donald Peters currently serves as the Chairman of the Lycoming County Republican Committee, a group of 80 elected and appointed volunteers from various communities throughout Lycoming County. Chairman Peters has been a Lycoming County resident for 27 years. He previously served in Lycoming County as Commanding Officer of the Pennsylvania State Police – Troop F, Montoursville.