"Enemy of the people"

[detbuch]

Today, Senator Jeff Flake, an inveterate Never-Trumper, compared Trump to Stalin because he used the phrase "enemy of the people" in regards to the Press.

Why did he zero in on Stalin using that Phrase? It has been around for at least a couple of thousand years. It was the title of a play By Ibsen, with who's politics, I'm sure, Flake would agree.

Many people have used that phrase well before and after Stalin. I have used it a few times in different contexts. It never had anything to do with Stalin (unless I was accusing him of being one).

Flake was saying that Trump was attacking freedom of the Press by using that phrase. That he was attacking our treasured ideal as it is enunciated in the Second Amendment. That the Press is our uncensored source of the truth.

Has Trump actually attacked the Second Amendment? Has he actually attacked the entire Press, or the notion of a free Press? Or has he objected to how much of the Press reports on him? And isn't the objective of his opponents, an objective which much of the Press seems to have, is to make Trump appear to be an "enemy of the people"?

Trump, as usual, throws it back at them--he says it is not he but they who are the enemy of the people because of what he considers their false portrayal lf him with the objective of bringing down a President who was duly elected by the people.

The Stalin bit is the typical propagandistic guilt by association, by merely an association of using a phrase, that Progressives and anti-Trumpers (many of whom are Progressive or Progressive-lite) use to misdirect or brainwash the public.

Trump is not attacking free speech, he is practicing it. The Second Amendment doesn't just protect the Press. And if we consider anyone "an enemy of the people" who calls out the Press when it is wrong, or deliberately false or misleading, especially for political purposes, then we would be an enemy of free speech, that is, we would be an enemy of the people.