Local Opinion: Straw men and scapegoats

I really enjoyed Bob Lee’s Op-ed about “grievance” and “victimhood” published in the Arizona Daily Star on March 4. The Star should be commended for giving Mr. Lee the space to vent against the liberals “who’ve enabled our enemies to threaten America.” The space was put to good use because it enabled Mr. Lee to vent, and in so doing, identify conservative “grievances” against liberals and the liberal media, and the “victimhood” suffered by conservatives.

What grievances? Mr. Lee says liberals “blame everything that goes bad as a result of failed liberal policies on Fox News.” What failed liberal policies? “Defunding police, freeing criminals, supporting illegal immigration, or otherwise ‘enabling’ the violence and lawlessness that seems to be increasing daily.” Mr. Lee’s policy attribution is both false and extreme in that he attributes his fabricated positions to scapegoated “others.”

These policy attributions to liberals are “straw men” fabricated in support of an extremist agenda on these subjects, and they appear to be a great example of what any psychology text refers to as the defense mechanism of “projection”—attributing to others that which describes you and your behavior.

Some of my thoughts about Mr. Lee’s policy attribution to liberals are these: The federal police (the Capitol police, IRS agents, the FBI, and the ATF) are under attack by right-wing extremists in Congress, including calls to defund the FBI; Trump pardoned and freed convicted criminals who were part of his inner circle; the only actual discernible conservative answer to an immigration system broken by both Republican and Democratic administrations was to construct a border wall (partly with Defense Department funds); and many Republicans currently in government defend (or have taken a vow of silence about) the violent and unlawful attack on the nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021.

I think that Mr. Lee loses any credibility he might have on the subject of “violence and lawlessness“ when he refers to the January 6 attack on the Capitol as an “incident.” Besides the deaths, injuries, and destruction of property, the full harm to America’s institutions, reputation around the world, and damage to democracy itself caused by the insurrection on January 6 can only be imagined but not calculated.

The insurrection can only be referred to as an “incident” by someone who, in my opinion, should grapple with the concept of “respect”—respect for the police who protect us, respect for democratic institutions and values, respect for the lives and rights of others, and respect for my right to call him out on his scapegoating of others. Scapegoating is not a substitute for debate.

Perhaps Mr. Lee’s most offensive remark about liberals and Democrats is that he says they have “enabled our enemies to threaten America.” No Democratic president or Democrats in Congress have cozied up to two communist dictators, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, or former communist KGB official (now dictator) Vladimir Putin. President Trump did, and he kept his conversations with Putin from being known or shared with our own intelligence officials.

No Democratic president sought to undermine NATO—the major pillar of the post-World War II global order. Our European allies and friends were put on notice by Trump that he didn’t trust NATO and that America couldn’t be relied on for European security. A credible case can be made that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 because of the weakening of NATO caused by Trump. Can anyone reasonably believe that a President Trump would have provided military assistance to Ukraine after Putin’s invasion? Putin, even if not a formal “enemy” of the United States, is a direct threat to American national security.

Let’s stop the scapegoating and have a civil debate. Let the debate begin. There are so many facts to be discovered and so many lies to be uncovered.