J.T. YoungTaylor Swift’s unwarranted encounter proves the radical Left is coming for us all. Despite having taken stances that seemingly should pacify the radical Left, she somehow still triggered an LA Black Lives Matter leader to question whether her fans are racists. It just goes to show that you cannot hope to avoid America’s radical Left.
Recently Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Los Angeles’ BLM chapter indicted Taylor Swift’s fans with the Left’s ultimate charge, writing on X: “Why do I feel like it’s slightly racist to be a Taylor Swift fan?”
There should be no doubt in this transparent drive-by denunciation: Being “slightly racist” is like being slightly pregnant — you either are or you aren’t. And of course, in Ms. Abdullah’s unfair musing, there comes an implicit question whether she sees culpability for Taylor Swift herself.
At least Ms. Swift is in good company with Old Glory. When another X user asked for clarification, Abdullah responded: “I said FEEL, not think. Kind of like that feeling I get when there are too many American flags.”
The whole episode smacks of Kamala Harris’ attack on Biden in the 2019 Democrat primary debate: “It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
It’s tempting to want to move on — just as the Left and its apologists wanted us to do with Harris’s attack on Biden — and let its radicals get away with saying without saying what everyone heard — and the far Left hope all will subliminally remember. Let Abdullah have her “hot take” moment and bask herself in the reflected glare of Swift’s stardom — a wattage she could never generate herself.
However, that would merely let the Left retrieve their errant arrow to fire again. Instead, America can and should learn a lot from Abdullahs’ outspoken misfire.
Swift has taken no shortage of stances that should have mitigated her liabilities with the radical Left — supporting gun control, opposing Republicans, promoting LGBTQ rights, calling Trump’s presidency an “autocracy,” and endorsing Biden in 2020.
Yet both she and her fans were nonetheless targeted.
What Taylor Swift, her fans, and Americans in general should realize is that there is no safe haven when it comes to America’s extreme Left. It is a mistake to believe that the radical Left’s salami slice approach to dividing America will not eventually cut most of us out.
Giving power to a self-appointed Politburo of probity has always meant giving it the power to exclude. The radical Left’s shouts for inclusion have always carried with them the whispers for exclusion—that inclusion for favored groups inherently meant exclusion for unfavored ones. After all, if everyone’s a VIP then no one is.
The radical Left’s dangerous dichotomy of inclusion/exclusion is on full view with its interpretation of, and solution to, racism. The radical Left’s version of ending racism means focusing entirely on race. Instead of MLK’s colorblind society, the radical Left wants a color-centric one with a tunnel vision on nothing else.
Anyone with an objective view sees the radical Left’s game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose. This is why the radical Left insists that only their subjective spectacles are permissible for viewing the world.
What the radical Left have stridently done is to recast narcissism into ideology. It is a cult of Me. It wields a subjective scepter over its obsequious subjects in a realm where Me Rules and Thee Serves.
The radical Left will not be placated. They only want more—more resources, more redistribution, more focus on them. And still more. Until more is no longer enough and only “all” will suffice.
Taylor Swift and her fans’ recent brush with the radical Left’s subjective and unwarranted broad-brush rush to judgment is both a lesson and a reminder to America. Try as you might to ignore it, the radical Left are coming for you too.
It calls to mind the cautionary adage about joining a poker game with strangers: if, when you sit down, you can’t find the chump, then you’re the chump.
In the Left’s poker game, the Americans who imagine they can placate the extremists are the chumps. They keep putting their chips in the pot, vainly hoping they can ante their way out of the far Left’s crosshairs and eventually win their favor.
To that forlorn belief, we offer Taylor Swift and her fans’ unfair experience as evidence. In the words of Kenny Rogers — another, earlier, famous American singer — we also offer The Gambler’s advice: “Know when to walk away and know when to run.”
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
It’s interesting and should be pointed out: Notice how Abdullah’s “feelings” about Taylor Swift fans should count as being legitimate. Sort of like the not intellectually rigorous beliefs about African-Americans.
It was never intelligent to lynch, but it was a “feeling” of all lynchers of African-Americans that all African-Americans wanted and raped white women and girls.
This “feeling” is the same emotion that is responsible for Trump Derangement Syndrome. Whenever you talk about the alternative to Trump (ie Biden’s re-election) the subject changes to how awful Trump is-of course they never talk about his sterling record of achievements prior to COVID hitting our shores. Why don’t they talk about it? Why don’t they admit it?
Well, because of the”feelings” that are embedded in Trump Derangement Syndrome.
“This is why the radical Left insists that only their subjective spectacles are permissible for viewing the world.” Also why they believe in “freedom of speech” while they are “underdogs”(remember the 60s and 70s) but not so much when they are in charge(or very close to taking total power) like now.
Also kind of like lenin calling for “free elections” to validate the communist takeover, then cancelling them when the communists didn’t win a majority.
It is how chicken s–t totalitarians play.