How many times have we seen leftists accuse Patriots of wrongdoing, only to later discover that the leftists were doing in secret exactly what they accused the Patriots of doing?
Here’s a recent illustration. For years, high ranking officials accused President Trump of colluding with Russia to assist his 2016 campaign, thereby “stealing” the election. After four years of investigation by the FBI and others, the Durham report demonstrated there was no evidence of coordination between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign. However, Americans have now learned that there actually was some Russian collusion — but the collusion was with a senior FBI official. Former FBI Special Agent In Charge Charles McGonigal, who ran its New York counterintelligence division, was convicted of colluding with and taking payments from a Russian oligarch.
Making unfounded accusations is a useful tool for tyrants, enabling them to stay on the offensive by hyping imagined fears. When those charges also relate to what the tyrants are themselves doing, it helps the tyrant evade scrutiny for their own behavior. It is clearly a political technique, but it has deep roots in human nature.
Psychologists call this type of behavior “Projection” or “Defensive Projection.” An example is “a woman wrestling with the urge to steal [who] comes to believe that her neighbors are trying to break into her home.”
Here is the key. Once we know this behavior pattern exists, we can make use of it. When a leftist accuses a Patriot of some nefarious deed, we can make two operating assumptions:
- the charge by the leftist against the Patriot is false; and
- the leftist is doing in secret what he has accused the Patriot of doing.
There is a Biblical principle involved here. Romans 2:3 explains that those who pass judgment on others often do the same things that they accuse others of doing. Romans 2:15 is less clear, but may explain that we often “accuse” others of the same behavior that we “excuse” in ourselves.
Literature also reveals this human characteristic. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the character Gertrude famously says, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” For 400 years, Shakespeare’s words discuss that when a person carries on and on about a matter, the opposite is likely to be true.
Let’s test how projection has worked by a review of recent events.
In recent months, Democrats have robotically compared Trump to Hitler. Former Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill declared Trump was “even more dangerous” than Hitler. Biden himself is “leaning heavily into the comparison….” If Trump actually is Hitler to them, leftists can justify use of any anti-democratic device to achieve the greater good — to “save Democracy.”
Washington Post editor at large Robert Kagan forecast a “Trump dictatorship,” demanding Democrats “throw everything [they] can at him — pots, pans, candlesticks — in the hope of … tripping him up,” and threatening that since “Democrats … threw every legitimate weapon against Trump and still failed,” they may be forced instead to “turn instead to illegitimate, extralegal action.” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said Trump “is destructive to our democracy, and … has to be eliminated.”
But when looking at the terrible things the Left thinks Trump will do, it’s clear the Left is projecting its own authoritarian tendencies. Kagan threatens Trump might “invok[e] the Insurrection Act” if leftists protested a Trump victory, using the National Guard against protestors. Is Kagan not aware of the January 6 prosecutions, where a weaponized Justice Department has jailed dozens of Americans for years, without trial, for trespassing during a political protest? That was Biden who did that, not Trump.
CNN’s Oliver Darcy warns Trump will “weaponize government and seek retribution against the news media.” Is Darcy not aware that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Biden’s administration “likely … coerced [social media] platforms … by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences … in violation of the First Amendment”? Missouri v. Biden, 83 F.4th 350, 381-381 (5th Cir. 2023).
Kagan frets, “Will those who balked at resisting Trump when the risk was merely political oblivion suddenly discover their courage when the cost might be the ruin of oneself and one’s family?” Has Kagan not heard of pro-life protestor Mark Houck, snagged by FBI SWAT teams in front of his panicked children for peacefully protesting Biden’s abortion policies?
Compare the FBI’s raid on Trump’s home for classified documents, an event unprecedented in American history, with the fact that Trump’s administration never sought charges against Hillary Clinton for maintaining an unsecured server in her home while Secretary of State, compromising hundreds of classified documents. Who’s the tyrant here?
As Allysia Finley writes in the Wall Street Journal, “the portrayal of Mr. Trump as a would-be dictator is a textbook case of psychological projection…. Biden and his supporters project their own authoritarian impulses onto Mr. Trump….”
Ronald Brownstein projects that Trump “would further escalate his war on blue America [via] federal legislation that would impose policies popular in red states onto the blue states that have rejected them.” Meanwhile, Biden has sought to force a federal takeover of state election laws, overturning many red states’ election integrity measures. Indiana attorney general Todd Rokita rightly called Biden’s plan a “heavy-handed effort to circumvent … state sovereignty, and the will of the people.”
The Left is hyperventilating over Trump’s joking to Sean Hannity that “[N]o, no, no, other than day one. We are closing the border and drilling, drilling, drilling. Other than that I am not a dictator.” “He’s saying it out loud,” Biden shrilled a week later. Yet the real dictator has been Joe Biden — according to Biden’s own definition.
Three weeks before the 2020 election, Biden said, “I have this strange notion, we are a democracy … you can’t [legislate] by executive order unless you’re a dictator.” It took Biden less than one week in office to become a dictator, by his standard. He signed 37 executive orders his first week. Barack Obama signed just five. Trump signed four. George W. Bush signed none. Even the New York Times essentially accused Biden of acting illegally.
Indeed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly had to act as the only counterbalancing force against a Biden dictatorship. As Allysia Finley writes, “With the stroke of a pen, Mr. Biden tried to cancel half a trillion dollars in student debt, ban evictions and mandate Covid vaccines—each of which the Supreme Court blocked because Congress never gave the president the authority….”
Democrats accuse a potential Trump administration of imposing the authoritarianism they themselves have imposed — although he was President for four years, and never did anything like he is now accused of planning.
When voices like Kagan call for stopping Trump’s comeback “by any means, legal or illegal,” taking “every conceivable measure … including many things that might not work,” and propose that “illegitimate, extralegal action” may be necessary, it’s time to take them at their word.
It turns out that 400 years ago Shakespeare fully understood the tactics of modern Leftists: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Editor’s Note: To read the articles in this series, please click here.
