PrintDems form lynch mob, the GOP holds the rope
The usual suspects are indignant, indignant, I tell you, about the fact that President Trump used the term "lynching" in one of his tweets:
So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here - a lynching. But we will WIN!
The accustomed media and left-of-center figures immediately began howling and caterwauling. This is unsurprising. If Trump stated, "The Democrats are pouring me a cup of tea," we could anticipate the same St. Vitus's dance of gibbering and hysteria, and we would not be disappointed.
What is dismaying is the number of Republicans crawling onto this particular bandwagon.
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said, "I don't agree with that language."
In the Senate, John Thune turned to the classic weasel term "inappropriate."
Adam Kinzinger, a GOP congressman evidently out to be primaried, tweeted, "...never should we use terms like 'lynching' here. The painful scourge in our history has no comparison to politics, and @realDonaldTrump should retract this immediately."
The basis of the complaint, it seems, is that "lynching," like "slavery," "suffering," and "racism," is a word reserved only for blacks and can be used only by them or on their terms. This is scarcely an exaggeration — there are people in this country who believe that blacks are the only people who ever suffered under slavery.
The case with "lynching" is similar. Lynching, it is claimed, was reserved only for blacks and was never suffered by whites.
This is asinine.
Crusading journalist Ida B. Wells focused for many years on exposing lynching. She carefully recorded the number of lynchings in the South, and her findings, while refined over the years, have never been challenged. There were 4,743 lynchings all told. While 3,446 victims were black, 1,297, over a quarter, were white. The Klan and similar trash were not necessarily picky about whom they strung up. It is also quite likely that some of the whites who were hanged were too friendly or supportive of them-there colored, a fact that has undoubtedly failed to occur to today's commentators.
It's also fair to point out that every last lyncher, every last Klan member, every last member of a Southern mob, in all these instances, without exception, was a Democrat. Things have not changed much.
Lynching was also commonly practiced on the frontier. It was the major enforcement tool against rustlers during the great cattle drive era of the 1870s–1880s. If anything, it was more widespread and accepted than in the South — not to mention more virulent: one posse operating on the Platte hanged 35 men in a matter of days.
(A few years ago, a black couple were outraged to spot a noose hanging in a steakhouse operating on a cattle-drive theme. While probably a less than wise decorating choice — would you want to tuck into a steak underneath a noose? — it was clearly a reference to the fate of rustlers, a fact completely missed by the complaining couple, who were absolutely sure that it was directed at blacks. It seems that they knew nothing of the cattle drives, another piece of history lost to P.C.)
Trump, of course, is not the only Republican to have referred to lynching. A legendary instance occurred when Justice Clarence Thomas was accused of being a sex maniac by the same institutions that are today attacking Trump. He termed the mob action a "high-tech lynching," which effectively brought the campaign to a close.
What is being done to Trump fits the definition of a lynching to a tee: a mob attempt to traduce the law by victimizing an innocent individual through extralegal means. This is clearly what Pelosi and Schiff are up to — they don't dare attempt a legal impeachment, and so are trying to goad the media and their fellow pols into a mob action. It's shameful that there are Republicans willing to oblige.
As for the Democrats, we will simply share an ancient piece of Southern wisdom handed down the generations: "Ain't never been a lynch town amounted to nothin'."
We'll find the same is true of political parties.
