One of my favorite movie scenes is from the first Star Wars episode. While Luke and Obi Wan try to avoid capture by the Stormtroopers, Obi Wan exercises the power of the force. He waves his hand saying, “These aren’t the droids you are looking for. He can go about his business.” The Stormtroopers who stop them say, “These aren’t the droids we are looking for. You can go about your business.” The power of the force influenced their minds.
I can’t help thinking about that scene whenever I hear a liberal try to argue their point of view using something quite less than rational argument. They heard a focus-group tested soundbite, and like the weak minded storm troopers, they dutifully repeat the phrase as if it is true and has some weight of evidence. Sometimes these pseudo-arguments are as simple as brandishing denigrating terms like “racist,” “misogynist” or “xenophobe.” I can’t count the times someone has said to me, “You are hateful racist if you don’t vote my way.” (Well I see your point. Thank you for loving me enough express such deep compassion to correct my error in thought.)
One doesn’t have to look far in this political season to find examples of this sound-bite mimicry. In response to the accusation that Hillary often lies I have heard people say, “You say that Hillary lied because you only watch conservative media.” Now this commits several informal fallacies that an Introduction to Logic student with a “C” average for the course could easily identify. But why would someone commit such errors in thinking? Something that a liberal just can’t imagine is that the reason a person might assert that Hillary lies is, well, because she lies. I have watched and heard her lie about a great many things from multiple fabrications about her emails, to her testimony to congress, during her husband’s tenure as President, in the debates – over and over and over again for decades. This knowledge didn’t come from Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. It is direct and clear from her own lips, obvious to anyone who spends a mere smidgen of mental energy to consider her claims. People who seriously assert that Hillary is not a perpetual, obsessive liar have either been locked in a dark basement room cut off from the outside world with only MSNBC for acquisition of knowledge or are so jaded by their own preconceptions that they honestly cannot tell the truth from a lie. In either case, they are like the Stormtroopers who mindlessly succumb to Jedi mind control – “These aren’t the droids we are looking for.”
Some liberals claim other people lie more, as if this is a legitimate defense of Hillary that somehow makes her lying OK. It is a bit like saying that a child serial murderer must be a decent fellow because he killed three less children than John Wayne Gacy. It pretends to be an argument, but demonstrates so little it is hardly worth speaking – unless you believe, “These aren’t the droids you are looking for.” Likewise, the argument that she is held to a different standard suffers much the same fate. So is this what you are saying: it is unfair, perhaps even sexist, to expect her to tell the truth? I am not sure how she became the first person in history to be held to such a high, unachievable moral standard – telling the truth. It does sound unfair, doesn’t it. We certainly would never expect truth-telling from our kids, or a realtor, or our doctor. And of course, we would never expect any male to be truthful. Right? Apparently for some Stormtroopers, expecting truth is misogyny at its worst – “These aren’t the droids you are looking for.”
My Star Wars analogy might break down at one point though. After the encounter with the Stormtroopers Obi Wan comments to Luke Skywalker, “The force can have a strong influence on the weak minded.” The Stormtroopers in the film don’t appear to be intellectual giants (I mean, who wears plastic armor?). Many of the people who parrot liberal press releases are not weak-minded, however, or at least they shouldn’t be. Some are professors and have multiple degrees. Many are well-respected in their field of study and widely published. If anyone could resist the Jedi mind-trick, they should be able to do it. But they don’t. The liberal “Obi Wan” waves his hand and says, “Hillary is not a liar.” They dutifully echo like a good Stormtrooper, “She is not a liar.” They hear some pundit say that Hillary didn’t send or receive classified emails. They ape, “No, she didn’t send or receive classified emails.” They substitute political image-making for reason, all the while accusing others of ignorance. They regurgitate hate speech at those they have been told are haters without seeing the moral hypocrisy in their own hate. They hold up Hillary Clinton as honorable, wiping out every fact that marks her as one of the most corrupt, scandal-ridden politicians in the history of our nation. They sacrifice truth for a mind trick and don’t even know they have done it. The only reasonable conclusion is that these Hillary defenders have fallen under the influence of the Force (or some force), that compels them to recite, “These aren’t the droids you are looking for.”
Steven Long 