Another fabulous contribution from the gifted Jani Allan, once a hugely popular South African columnist. Jani was pulled into a political fight in the turbulent mid-1980s and after one too many threats on her life, abandoned her then all-powerful platform on the Sunday Times to start a new life in the USA. After years of rebuilding, she published a best-selling autobiography and from time to time turns her cultured hand to the keyboard. Never shirking the difficult issues, Jani’s latest contribution looks at continued attacks by self-proclaimed “liberals” on those who voted for her adopted country’s new President. They’re the real bullies, she argues. Hard to disagree. – Alec Hogg

By Jani Allan

The liberal media, both print and electronic, has lost all credibility. I am reasonably sure that none of the mainstream print media had stories prepared for a Trump victory. I watched the networks and cable stations in their midnight meltdown — embodied by Rachel Maddow explaining to viewers that they were not having a “terrible, terrible dream” and that they had not died and “gone to hell.” Maureen Dowd, (Aka Maureen Dowdy, High Priestess of the NYT)

Dear liberal friends in America,

I usually don’t write about politics. In the past, it has gotten me into All Sorts of Trouble.

Why, when I was asked to write a piece about the American election for papers in both London and South Africa, I refrained from doing so, fearing a backlash. My political ideology has been misconstrued in the past.

In any event, I am rather more interested in writing about those who don’t have support groups i.e. animals.

But I can remain silent no longer about the climate of political bullying that exists in America.

A few months ago I mused on Facebook (one shouldn’t muse on Facebook, I now realize) that it is a tad ironic that Hillary and her right-hand-woman, Huma Abedin, happened to be married to men who treat women execrably – Anthony Wiener and Bill Clinton.

An anti-apartheid activist scolded me thoroughly and publicly.

Then, piling Pelion upon Ossa, (apparently) a few weeks later I wrote a TIC (as they call it these days) comment on my Facebook page in response to the latest tsunami of horror reaction to Donald Trump’s gross and juvenile comments made in private 11 years ago.

I said something to the effect that I didn’t care who Trump was groping, had groped, was thinking about groping… there were larger issues at stake. Jobs, illegal immigration, Obamacare going up by 100% in my state etc etc.

A South African journalist now living in Boston went postal.

“I am disgusted by your recent post saying that groping is OK, Jesus, what is wrong with you. I’m unfriending you. I now know that everything …said about you was true and I am saddened that I extended friendship to you…

It is a worry that this person is going as a journalist and biographer. She is unable to interpret or comprehend what I said. She is also not able to be fair and detached, the qualities that used to be encouraged in journalists.

I didn’t condone Trump’s activities. I merely suggested there were other things more important. She had no compunction in slut-shaming me (despite her alleged views on feminism) in a hate-filled post in which I was reduced to a ‘famous blonde South African journalist’ of dubious morality.

Why didn’t she contact me privately? Why this venom? Why this unearned sense of moral superiority over me? She was intent on castigating me, in debasing ME as a nasty being because she evidently disagrees with me. Violently. The “Jesus what is WRONG with you’ said it all.

After Hillary’s shock defeat the same scold wrote a column:

“At a book group on the night before the election a deeply religious, highly educated woman (all the people she knows are highly educated and deeply fabulous) confessed somewhat shamefacedly, “I’ve deleted someone off my Facebook because I found their pro-Trump bigotry so loathsome.”

“Me too,” I admitted, “two.”

“Yes,” she said, “two for me too.” And we high-fived.”

The “highly educated” woman and my former ‘friend’ clearly didn’t see that there is no difference between her brand of bigotry and the pro-Trump bigotry she finds so repulsive.

Bigot

Noun.

1. A person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief or opinion.

The fact that the journalist and her highly-educated woman friend ‘high-fived’ ‘deleting’ people is political infantilism.

Defriending ‘is a grand rhetorical exercise that hardens hearts and minds instead of changing them.’

Perhaps the deepest cut of all was from my Pommies godmother.

Her email read “I can never forgive the un-American immoral majority who voted for a selfish, dishonest, stupid, sexist, narcissistic, protracted adolescent for president. I shudder to think of his influence on children.”

Personally I can’t help thinking that judging by his children he has a rather marvelous influence on children. All Trump’s kids are super-bright, have wonderful teeth and are completely devoted to their father. Even Hillary, says so.

Ben Shapiro points out “Obama and his friends in the media and on the organized left picked the one thing all Americans can agree on: bullying. With Obama at the head of the anti-bulling cause it was easy to segue the concept into a brilliant gambit:

The subsequent linguistic trick of conflating anti-bulling with anti-conservatism is the single best bully tactic in the history of American politics.”

Some on the left like to bully anyone or anything remotely conservative:

Christianity. Global warming sceptics. Opponents of affirmative action. Political Correctness. Open borders.

Liberals claim that they are all about protecting victim classes from bullies.

In truth it seems that anyone who disagrees with a ‘liberal’ is risking character assassination. When someone calls you a racist, sexist, bigot because you happen to disagree with them this is a bully tactic.

There’s a common fallacy in believing that 61 million Trump voters are racist, homophobic, Islamaphobic and sexist.

This election has been so divisive that the New York Times published a front-page article on the subject headlined ‘Political Divide Splits Relationships – and Thanksgiving too.”

Gavin McInnes writes ‘There are a lot of articles about relationships falling apart over Trump, but the tone is often ‘Racist man ostracizes significant other with his terrible bigotry’ as opposed to ‘Woman who has never cared about politics or known anything about it suddenly ruins relationship based on juvenile narrative…”

Says McInnes ‘I have spoken to a couple of dozen Trump supporters about the reactions they’ve received since the election (very few would allow me to use their full names…)

There are stories of waiters being fired from their jobs, whole offices mocking known Trump supporters and friends bailing on friends. The ostracization that black Trumpers get is a column in itself. One black bloke was disinvited from Thanksgiving and his invitation filled by a known paedophile.

A number of people who voted for Trump are refusing to allow their grandparents to see their grandchildren. All of this raises an obvious question: Why don’t we hear about conservatives eschewing their relationships with those who supported Hillary Clinton?

I would welcome the chance to discuss my views but many liberals don’t have views. They have emotions. And righteous anger. Lots and lots of righteous anger.

The venom and vitriol spewed at conservatives, imagined Trump voters and Fox watchers should be reserved for the truly terrifying – like ISIS – though none dare speak Radical Jihad’s name, right?

The left are separating Americans from one another with their intolerance.

Why, even Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote ‘Preaching – and pandering – with a message of inclusion the Democrats have instead become a party where incivility and bad manners are taken for granted, rudeness is routine and there is absolutely no respect for a differing opinion.”

I happen to live in the bluest of blue states. I have never felt more alone in my life. There are about 3 conservatives in the village. We occasionally have a whispered conversation in the chemist or an antique shop.

I long to have someone, anyone, ask me to debate or discuss my views.

Frankly, my dear liberal friends, I have grown weary of being bullied.

I did not vote.

I am not entitled to a vote, but surely I am entitled to my own opinions, shaped as they have been, by a long and tumultuous life in many countries. I have never considered myself ‘right-wing’ or ‘left-wing.’ Those are dated terms.

But I am with Edmund Burke, the Irish-born philosopher who emphasised the dangers of mob rule, fearing that the Revolution’s fervour was destroying French society. He appealed to the British virtues of continuity, tradition, rank and property and opposed the Revolution to the end of his life. He spoke of civilization as being a contract between the dead, the living and the about to be born. He is justly regarded as one of the founders of the British conservative tradition.

If I have probably committed social suicide by writing this, I implore you: prove me wrong, my progressive friends.

If not, I rest my Louis Vuitton.

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