Thursday, April 29, 2021

Tim Scott, Lying Or Stupid


South Carolina's junior senator, Tim Scott, delivered the GOP response to President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. Rationalizing voter suppression, he maintained

If you actually read this law, it’s mainstream. It will be easier to vote early in Georgia than in Democrat-run New York. But the left doesn’t want you to know that. They want people virtue-signaling by yelling about a law they haven’t even read.

That's Democratic to you, Senator, and though early voting is easier in Georgia than in New York, otherwise voting is more difficult in Georgia, whose Republicans have tried to make African-Americans jump through hoops since the discovery that their votes can help get a Democrat elected President and two elected to the US Senate.

Perhaps worse, Senator Scott's complaint about "virtue-signaling" takes a lot of nerve.... or gall.... or chutzpah.  First, there was the usual claptrap from successful celebrities, especially politicians, about how far they've gone in life. Scott grew up so poor and deprived that

When I was a kid, my parents divorced. My mother, my brother and I moved in with my grandparents. Three of us, sharing one bedroom. I was disillusioned and angry, and I nearly failed out of school. (Two boys and a mother in the same bedroom? I don't even want to think...)

Then comes the predictable twist, when we learn that they were raised by saints. Scott continued

But I was blessed. First, with a praying momma. And let me say this: To the single mothers out there, who are working their tails off, working hard, trying to make ends meet, wondering if it’s worth it? You can bet it is. God bless your amazing effort on the part of your kids.

Translation: You don't need government or an employer to lift you out of poverty when God and your guardians are on your side.  Presumably, if you have an alcoholic spouse, a son who is causing trouble in school, and holding down two jobs so you can pay the rent, you are not so lucky as to have been blessed by God.

But the real virtue signaling came when Senator Scott maintained

I have experienced the pain of discrimination. I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while I’m shopping. I remember, every morning, at the kitchen table, my grandfather would open the newspaper and read it — I thought....

I’ve also experienced a different kind of intolerance. I get called “Uncle Tom” and the n-word by progressives, by liberals.

If he currently is being called the "n-word," he needs to call people out. By name. And yet

You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.,,,

And we get to live in the greatest country on Earth.

Police officers flag motorists down because they're black. Store employees shadow people because they believe blacks regularly shoplift. A successful businessman, morally upright Christian and United States senator is periodically called the n-word.

But this is the greatest country on Earth- and "hear me clearly," it is not racist. If he can have it both ways, he will.

We can have a sociological or philosophical debate as to whether the USA is "a racist country."  However, if a guy who has experienced what Scott says he has experienced (and still experiences) insists that country is the greatest and not racist, he is not being candid.

Nonetheless, Tim Scott will continue down this path. He will persist because, while unusual as black and Republican, he does what Republicans regularly insist on doing in the Trump era: claiming victimhood.  He is "standing here (only) because my mom has prayed me through some really tough times" and now has "asked for grace and God has supplied it." He is not only a victim but the best kind- morally superior to you and me.

 

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