They Want You To Notice

     It’s been a while since the term studied insult was common in American discourse. Yet the thing itself has been much with us these past few years, so it’s well to understand what the term signifies:

studied insult: An insult carefully designed to pertain to a particular person or group, such that the insulted one(s) cannot fail to take note of the offense.

     The intention is to give offense to a specific person, and in a specific way. The British have long been celebrated for excellence in this field. Consider the following exchange of telegrams between playwright George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill. The subject matter was the opening night of Shaw’s play Pygmalion:

     Shaw wired to Churchill: “Have reserved two tickets for my first night. Come and bring a friend, if you have one.”
     In reply, Churchill wired to Shaw: “Impossible to come to first night. Will come to second night, if you have one.”

     Ouch! In each direction, the object of the barb is clear, and clearly deliberate. Another example is writer Evelyn Waugh’s comment on Lord Randolph Churchill, after the latter had endured an operation to remove a benign tumor: “Leave it to modern medical science to cut out of Randolph the only thing that was not malignant.”

     You simply can’t miss what’s intended by these zingers…especially if you’re the target. That’s the point! A gentleman, in the British tradition, never gives offense unintentionally.

     Just now, the normal people of America are being barraged with studied insults. They’re being issued by the Usurpers who’ve captured our political system and their enablers in the domesticated “opposition.” And they want us to notice.

     The question good-hearted people of every kind have been asking since January 20, 2021 is simple and plaintive: “How could they not have known this would happen?” The stolen elections of November 2020 were followed by one incredibly “stupid” policy after another. Surely the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch remember the high points:

• Strangling the supply of oil and gas.
• Opening wide the southern border.
• Massive inflation of the currency.
• Pansification of the military.
• Involvement in Russia-Ukraine War.
• Massive financial gifts to Iran.
• Abandonment of $80 billion in weaponry to the Taliban.
• Use of the DOJ and FBI as political tools.
• De facto legalization of rioting, vandalism, vagrancy, and theft.
• Sam Brinton, Karine Jean-Pierre, and “Rachel” Levine.

     I could go on, of course. Every single thing in the list above was done deliberately, with full foreknowledge of its consequences. They were strokes intentionally delivered to achieve two effects:

• To weaken the United States, whether politically, militarily, or economically;
• To insult decent Americans so blatantly that there could be no doubt about it.

     Many good-hearted people simply can’t believe that the Usurpers really meant to offend us so blatantly…that those were studied insults. But in fact they’d been planned since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in November 2016. Those barbs were intended to be blunt and brutal: We can do what we like to you, and there’s not one damn thing you can do about it.

     I’m a fair hand with such things, and I tell you plainly: I could not have contrived more blatant, humiliating insults if I were given a decade to do it.

     You are meant to be offended. If you’re not, why not? Why have you sat still through all the above? I know we no longer allow the pre-dawn duel, but surely there’s some riposte available to us. Yet here we sit, unable to comprehend why such things have been done to us…and unwilling to stir ourselves to corrective action.

     If you’re not yet terminally weary of references to 1984, perhaps you’ll allow me one more:

     ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.’

     Other commentators have mused about how the Left appears to have adopted 1984 as a set of instructions. They may have meant such comments facetiously, but as time has progressed the observation seems ever more to bear the stamp of truth.

     And it will continue. Indeed, I predict that just about any day now, it will become an admitted fact – admitted by those who are perpetrating the outrages against us. They will tire of concealing their glee at making us suffer. They will want to celebrate our subjection openly, perhaps with a public fete and the declaration of a federal holiday.

     What will we do on that day?