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Imagine a scenario in which a woman posts a picture of herself with her son and people simply appreciate the expression of parental love. Sounds nice, and rational, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, thanks to the liberal mob, nice and rational no longer exist in the public arena. Rather than enjoy it or ignore it, Ivanka Trump committing the simple act of posting a picture with her son set off a series of unhinged political commentary and attacks that culminated in the use of a slur that is more likely to get you slapped by a woman than setting them up on a blind date with Harvey Weinstein would. And liberal elites rushing to defend it.

It wouldn’t work as a piece of fiction, no one would believe it. Yet this is where the political left has led their angry mob, or their angry mob has led the political left. It’s an irrelevant “chicken and egg” scenario, because however they got there, that is where they are now.

I couldn’t care less what causes liberals to clutch their collective pearls, especially since they’ve done it so much in the past 2 years their fingers seem to have fused to them like a fat guy who grew into his couch. My problem comes when they insist their will, their reaction to a seemingly endless stream of “outrages,” must be addressed by everyone else.

First, CNN declared the picture of Ivanka and her son “tone deaf” because President Trump’s Justice Department is following federal law and separating illegal alien children from their illegal alien parents. Placing children with relatives or foster families rather than holding them in detention centers while their parents await their immigration hearing, in accordance with the law, is akin to torture to the left.

But because someone, somewhere, is unhappy, Ivanka Trump isn’t allowed to publicly share her love for her child.

Samantha Bee, an alleged comedian who delivers political speeches with applause lines rather than jokes with punchlines, called Ivanka a “feckless c**t” on her TBS show for sharing the picture. Bee then implied incest when she advised her to “Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to f-ing stop it.” The crowd cheered wildly, what they didn’t do was laugh. It wasn’t a joke, Bee doesn’t do those, it was a vile insult.

After a day of criticism, Bee apologized for using the c-word, not the incest. She did so in the cheapest, least sincere way – by releasing a statement.

“I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it,” the statement read. It was released through TBS, so there’s a possibility Bee never actually saw it first. (Plus, it was discovered later, her staff has a history of using that word, and other slurs, against conservative women.)

Bee’s show airs one night per week, Wednesdays, and she has a full staff of writers and producers to put it together. It was taped, not live, so that bit went through the entire process – it was pitched, written, rehearsed, recorded, edited, and finally aired and no one said a word about it. It was not improvised, it was planned. But she’s sorry, so all is forgiven.

People have been contrasting Bee’s smear with the tweet Roseanne Barr sent this week that got her show cancelled, but that’s not the way to look at this. Barr was fired within a day of their offensive comment, Bee received an award from Television Academy for “advancing social change” the next day.

But the more accurate comparison would be the tweet from Laura Ingraham. The Fox News host made a joke about anti-Second Amendment activist David Hogg, then quickly apologized for it. The apology was not good enough for liberals, they wanted Ingraham’s job.

A coordinated effort was launched by the liberal outrage machine to drive away sponsors and destroy Laura long after she, herself, issued her apology. But no apology was ever going to be enough, the left wanted a scalp. Thankfully, they didn’t get it.

Contrast the response to Ingraham’s spontaneous tweet with the response to Bee’s planned remarks and you see how selective outrage is weaponized based solely on politics. Liberals called for a boycott of Ingraham’s show, they rallied to Bee’s defense.

Slate, the near-parody progressive website, called Trump posting the picture “tone-deaf at best and sociopathic at worst.” Written by a “woke” white guy ironically named him Sam Adams, he said, “Ivanka’s broadcast of her affection for her own white, wealthy child displayed an obscene disconnection from the suffering and rupture her father not only allows to happen but actively seeks to cause, under the dubious logic of deterrence.”

Adams continued, “and Bee was responding to one obscenity with another.”

If I were mean I’d say a mother loving her child can only be an “obscenity” to someone who didn’t experience that growing up, but I’m not mean. Heh.

Forgotten actresses Sally Field and Minnie Driver quickly joined in attacking Trump to defend Bee. “I like Samantha Bee a lot, but she is flat wrong to call Ivanka a c**t. C**ts are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest,” Field tweeted. Driver added, “That was the wrong word for Samantha Bee to have used. But mostly because (to paraphrase the French) Ivanka has neither the warmth nor the depth.”

Philandering director Joss Whedon added, “Ivanka legitimized trump by being pretty & seeming sane, & libs created a (kinda sexist) Rapunzel narrative that she was ‘trapped’. She’s from a crime family, she married into a crime family, she’s a grown up. She will do as much damage as she can get away with. Sam was too kind.”

Lovely people, aren’t they?

Misogyny is A-OK with liberals, it seems. As is racism, as long as it’s directed against someone who is not a liberal – ask Clarence Thomas or Condoleezza Rice how tolerant they’ve found liberals to be. And don’t get me started on the insanity MSNBC’s Joy Reid spewed for years before hammering big checks to espouse the opposite opinions. Homophobia, anti-Israeli screeds, implied rape jokes about conservative women, equating John McCain with a mass shooter, and much more was all wiped away with a statement “apologizing” and a claim of having evolved on the issues. MSNBC, extending a courtesy that would never, ever, stretch across the aisle to a conservative, says it’s all good and stands with her.

As important as the hypocrisy is how the opposite reactions to similarly disgusting comments demonstrates the breakdown of the civil society.

What are the rules for a civil society? Are there any anymore? Are there a set of norms by which we all function? That dependents upon which side of the political aisle an offending party falls.

The “line” of what is and is not acceptable has not been blurred, it’s been turned into a circle around conservatives that they can’t help but cross no matter what they do. Liberals, on the other hand, function free of any semblance of a civil society, nothing is beyond the pale or off limits. Should someone attempt to hold them to any standards their fellow travelers stand at the ready to defend them, no matter how reprehensible their actions until such point as they reach critical mass and risk doing damage to the progressive cause. That is the left’s only real line.

Harvey Weinstein and all the other Hollywood perverts were protected for decades because they were on the team. Whispers were ignored and buried, anyone attempting to expose them was blacklisted. When finally the world learned what they all knew, liberals clapped their hands like a blackjack dealer in Vegas and left the table, comfortable in knowing their complicity would be ignored for the “greater good.”

As the failures of communism and socialism have shown, societies can’t function long with a set of rules that only apply to some while exempting others. Eventually they collapse. That may be liberal’s long-term hope. Till then, they’ll keep their mob at the ready to attack anyone who refuses to conform or keep quiet. Whatever you do, don’t.