Growing up in a town with a franchise in a brawling minor hockey league was great preparation for today’s social environment in which anyone whose opinion does not comport with yours is an obvious liar, charlatan and purveyor of misinformation, disinformation and general falsehoods.
Back in the day, we were too crazed by tribal loyalty to our Jets to see the hypocrisy. It took the passage of time and the making of the seminal movie “ Slap Shot,” about the Charlestown Chiefs, who were modeled after our Jets, to ram home the point.
That point was inconsistency.
The point was that a player low on hockey talent, but long on the ability to punch opponents into submission, was an ENFORCER if he skated in your team’s uniform. He was a noble protector and enabler of talented types trying to play the game.
A player of that description playing for the opposition was, of course a GOON. He was trying to terrorize your talented players into cowering on the ice and not displaying their talent.
The truth is, both were goons, or enforcers, but you can’t pick and choose. You can’t have it both ways, depending on your personal interest in an issue, person or activity.
But such partisan bluster is everywhere these days.
You can’t be Joe Biden, blaming Donald Trump for all COVID deaths during the past campaign and using that to paint him as not deserving to be president, then have more people die of COVID on your brief watch and just keep on licking ice cream cones and hope no one will notice.
You can’t be Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and issue decrees that are widely unpopular, wrongheaded and divisive, then go into hiding only to emerge to double down on your demands which polls show are wildly unpopular with the people you rule.
You can’t be a Black Lives Matter supporter and enabler and ignore the rash of accusations of financial hanky-panky within the socialist organization masquerading as a social justice warrior group.
You can’t be alarmist climatologists, sounding the Armageddon warning at every opportunity, then admit your models need 2000 times the capacity of current computers to be anywhere near accurate in the doom and gloom predictions.
You can’t be an official from the World Health Organization, which has served as a COVID propaganda operation for China and generally has passed more misinformation on the virus than any supposed denier, but single out over-the-hill rocker Neil Young for lavish praise due to Young demanding censorship of those who don’t spout the party COVID line.
You can’t praise Black Lives Matter and Antifa for merely expressing the angst of the people in their often violent protests that took over areas of weakly ruled cities, yet brand Canadian truckers as terrorists for peaceful protests of Trudeau that didn’t claim autonomy over parts of cities or otherwise flout the law in violent fashion.
You can’t be CNN and claim the high moral ground, preaching to us in the great unwashed, when you are the most busted name in news with a steady stream of scandals becoming public.
You can’t be Joe Biden, presiding over the highest inflation rate in 40 years and claim all is well and, by the way, real wages are climbing. The wages are falling, not climbing and all is not well, despite what Biden’s sycophants in the LameStream media might try to tell you.
You can’t call for the head of podcaster Joe Rogan for the alleged high crime of spreading misinformation until you’ve shut down the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and any other media outlet that spent years pushing the fake narrative of Russian collusion with Trump and interference to explain Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing loss to Trump two elections back.
Sam Ross Jr's site 