There’s only one winner in Taylor Swift and Scott Kelly’s gutless surrender to the howling Twitter mob - President Trump
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
October 8, 2018
Oh Taylor.
Why, why, WHY?
Just when I thought you were the only sane celebrity left in this increasingly mad world of frenzied partisan bullsh*t, you suddenly decide to go all ‘woke’ on me.
As you once sang: ‘Why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?’
Of course, we all know the answer.
Taylor Swift, who is hugely popular in middle America, hasn’t chosen this moment to abandon her very sensible apolitical stance and come out as a Democrat because she genuinely thought: ‘Oh, I must alienate half my audience today.’
No, she’s done it because the howling Twitter mob hammered her into submission.
‘I’m not going to sit here and go into my political views,’ she said a few years ago, ‘because that’s not what I choose to do. I choose to do music.’
Exactly.
She was right then, and she would be right now.
But such a refreshing attitude from an entertainer is now deemed unacceptable.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected President, Taylor has been roundly abused by vicious trolls on social media for NOT attacking him in public.
She was branded a coward and a traitor, and a dog whistler for white supremacists.
Even mainstream media piled on her, condemning her for her silence.
Marie Claire magazine seethed: ‘We’re still waiting for an explanation of Taylor Swift’s decision to remain apolitical during the 2016 election. Fall of 2016 saw a slew of celebrities get vocally and visibly involved in the political process, supporting candidates and encouraging their fans to get out and vote. Taylor is not required to be open about her politics, of course, but it’s also fair to question her decision to remain silent in what was a particularly contentious and consequential presidential battle.’
The Guardian, Britain’s supposedly most cerebral pro-feminism newspaper, sneered: ‘Taylor Swift: an envoy for Trump’s values’.
And so it went on, with increasingly ferocity.
The message was clear: if Taylor Swift refused to get political, she was a disgrace.
So now she’s got political, bowing to the pressure.
Her Instagram post last night attacking Republican senate candidate Marsha Blackburn read like a Democrat press release, and absolutely nothing like Taylor Swift’s own voice as anyone who studies her previous posts could confirm.
I groaned out loud when I read it.
There was something laudable and valiant about a major star declining to join the rush to join the self-styled ‘rage resistance’.
Now, she’s all in.
She even ‘liked’ a Tumblr meme of herself onstage, kickboxing a shadowy male figure with the word ‘REPUBLICANS’ written across his jacket.
Nothing could possibly please today’s illiberal hate-filled liberals better than violent imagery like that.
Sure enough, all the same people who hated her before for her political silence have now raced to cheer her from the rooftops.
Taylor the enemy is now Taylor the heroine.
Of course, if she’d come out for the Republicans and kicked the Democrats, she’d now be dead to them.
Astonishingly, Taylor Swift’s capitulation to the Twitter mob wasn’t even the worst of the day.
Yesterday, acclaimed astronaut Scott Kelly quoted Sir Winston Churchill as he bemoaned the fall-out from Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court.
He wrote: ‘One of the greatest leaders of modern times, Sir Winston Churchill, said, ‘in victory, magnanimity.” I guess those days are over.’
Within seconds, Kelly was bombarded with shocking abuse.
‘Churchill was a mass murderer and a racist, Scott!’ screamed one tweeter.
The savagery of the reaction disconcerted Kelly so much that he felt compelled to issue a grovelling apology:
‘Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill,’ he tweeted. ‘I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support.’
Sorry, WHAT?
Sir Winston Churchill almost single-handedly saved the world from the Nazis.
He was recently voted the Greatest Ever Briton in a BBC poll, beating Darwin, Shakespeare, Brunel and Newton.
The notion that Churchill – who was by no means a perfect human being - cannot now be quoted for fear of offending people is so utterly absurd and outrageous it’s almost beyond parody.
For someone like Scott Kelly, who has commanded three International Space Station Expeditions, to be bullied into abject surrender for quoting Churchill is even more extraordinary and lamentable.
Yet, as with Taylor Swift, this is what happens when the Twitter mob decides to issue summary execution to people it disagrees with.
I’ve regularly been on the receiving end of similar cyberspace savagery and it can be an ugly and threatening experience.
But the correct response is to tough it out, and stand by your opinions - not throw the towel in because a bunch of demented narrow-minded freaks hiding behind keyboards scream at you to think what they think.
Taylor Swift should have simply said: ‘I’m not apologising for keeping my counsel about politics. I respect everyone’s right to free political speech, just as I expect people to respect my right not to express political speech.’
Scott Kelly should have said: ‘I’m not apologising for quoting one of the greatest men the world has seen, and a man who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with America to defeat Adolf Hitler.’
Instead, they both gave the Twitter mob their souls on a supine, guilt-and-fear-laden plate and I bet they will both live to regret it.
We live in very strange, dangerous world now where traditional democratic debate based on mutual respect for alternate views has been replaced by furiously indignant self-righteousness.
Anyone who doesn’t share the PC-crazed, virtue-signalling Twitter mob view must be instantly hounded and crushed into simpering white flag pulp.
Refuse to denounce Trump? DEAD.
Quote Churchill? DEAD
Think Kavanaugh should be allowed on the Supreme Court? DEAD.
What these shrieking trolls don’t seem to have yet learned is that the more they do this, the stronger the support for PC-averse populists like Trump becomes.
The President will be thrilled Taylor Swift has come out for the Democrats, because he knows that will enrage and fire up his base.
Just as he was thrilled at the outrage over Kavanaugh because he knew it would help get him elected.
Trump will also be thrilled at the liberal demonization of Churchill, one of his own heroes whose bust resides in the Oval Office.
Because he knows Sir Winston would have despised these hysterical, democracy-destroying numpties even more than he does, which is why Churchill was a winner.
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