Last March, during the presidential campaign, there was a Donald Trump rally, where there were a bunch of the usual paid union thugs and the like causing a disruption outside the place and inside as well. Since the left loves to talk and see their shining faces on camera, there was no shortage of people willing to be interviewed and try to explain why they were there.
The answers were about things like "hate" and "racism" and ... well, that was pretty much the substance. Since they were paid agitators, there wasn't a lot they actually knew about Trump -- or, for that matter, Ted Cruz or John Kasich, let alone Hillary and Bernie. So they went with the slogans professionally painted on their professionally-done signs, and huffed for the cameras.
Even Bill Ayers, the cop-killer and hero of the left who was interviewed outside one of those rallies in Chicago last week, talked for a while on camera, without actually saying anything that made sense about Trump's policies and countering with something that would solve the problem.
Then there was one guy.
No, he didn't actually talk policy either, but he did say something I immediately took note of. Now, this guy was a Bernie Sanders supporter, protesting outside a Trump rally. And while I can't quote him verbatim and don't really want to, he did say something like this:
"There's a Bernie Sanders rally right over [pointing], and you don't see anything like this going on over there!"
I was a little surprised that neither the reporter interviewing him, while summarizing, nor the team back in the studio, mentioned the irony or drew the logical conclusion that I drew. I saw that clip at least three times on Fox News, which would be expected to have commented accordingly, but I guess they missed it, too.
Think about it. Who would protest a Bernie Sanders rally? Outside of a few "black lives matter" types who forced him off the stage a few months back while he was giving a speech, the people who would protest Bernie Sanders would be people who disagree with him. That doesn't mean Hillary types, since she and Sanders don't differ on a whole lot except how huge a percentage of working people's income to seize to pay for their socialist view of government.
No, the people who would oppose Bernie Sanders enough to protest his speeches would be, logically, conservatives who realize that Sanders would push the USA over the cliff economically.
But there were NO protests at the Sanders rally, as the paid Trump-hating protester himself pointed out.
And the logical conclusion you would take from that? It is simple. Conservatives are not rioters; they do believe in the freedom of people who disagree with them to speak; when they're opposing an argument they make a counter-argument rather than screaming past the speaker. That sort of thing
The inference we should have gotten from the paid protester was simple: the left believes in screaming, yelling, picketing, carrying professionally-made signs and shouting down speakers they disagree with. Conservatives wouldn't think about doing the same to a liberal speaker. I would like to think that makes us the better folks.
Nope, Mr. Paid Protester, "you don't see anything like that a Sanders rally" indeed. But that, my friend, is an indictment of you and the left and your tactics.
It's actually a compliment to the rest of us.
Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton