Taylor’s Takes: Never write when you can speak
Much can change in five years. But I sincerely doubt that any of the changes have had a positive impact on Platner’s communist aggressions.
Ah, the internet. A somewhat lawless wasteland where people assume they’re just shouting into a void, thinking their echoes will fade away into nothingness.
The past few weeks have shown this assumption to be completely baseless, but not exactly with consequence.
Most recently, the omniscient cyberspace struck back at a rugged oyster farmer in Maine. Graham Platner, until the last several days, was a mostly unknown name. A campaign launch for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Susan Collins went largely unnoticed by the nation in August.
Platner’s first campaign video portrays him as a hardworking American man, rooted in community and love of family. The promo features the Grizzly Adams lookalike chopping wood and swinging kettlebells. He speaks of the dire need to take care of veterans returning home from service and bringing an end to endless wars. He’s a U.S. Marine with ten years of service under his belt. Hell, if you blinked during the ad, you may even mistake Platner for a MAGA candidate.
Upon closer inspection, Platner’s image is a carefully crafted deception.
His campaign website is riddled with anti-billionaire rhetoric. It reads more like a Bernie Sanders manifesto, claiming Republicans are bought and paid for by the super wealthy. As also outlined in his promo, he lists universal healthcare as one of his top priorities on his site. He claims the Trump administration is “kidnapping people and imprisoning them in hellish conditions” as part of the mass deportation operations.
But the words on his website are among the least of my concerns about Graham Platner.
CNN’s exposé of Platner’s pandemic-era internet ramblings shows a truer picture of the man running to be a U.S. senator.
Using the pseudonym of P-Hustle on Reddit, Platner shared with the world that he “grew older and became a communist,” further describing himself as a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist”.
He espoused police officers, saying “All of them, in fact,” when replying to a post calling them “Bastards.”
Platner labeled his fellow community members, white rural Americans, as racist and stupid.
He called fellow veterans “traitors” and “f**king p*ssies” after the events of January 6, 2021.
Graham Platner explained to CNN that these were the screeds of a younger, angrier man who was dissatisfied with “the state of things back then.”
“Back then.”
The oldest of these posts I’ve shared was from the year 2020. Only five years have gone by.
Much can change in five years. But I sincerely doubt that any of the changes have had a positive impact on Platner’s communist aggressions.
We’ve seen the corrupt election of a lifelong sellout in Joe Biden and the subsequent cover-up of his inept intelligence. His administration allowed for the botched and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, the allowance of a forever war between Ukraine and Russia, and the rekindling of war against Israel through Iranian proxies.
Illegal aliens were ushered into the United States by the millions, bogging down our healthcare, education, and housing infrastructure, all of which Platner admits need restructuring.
When Biden fizzled out in public view during his debate with Donald Trump, it paved the way for another corrupt campaign for Kamala Harris. The oligarch-backed candidate had not earned a single delegate, but was rather crowned the Democrat Party’s candidate.
And finally, a socialist’s worst nightmare, Donald Trump was reelected as President of the United States, fulfilling campaign promise after campaign promise to restore the country to a first-world nation rather than the near-third-world shadow of it’s former self.
None of these developments since the Year of our Lord 2020 must have sat well with the self-professed communist oyster-farming Marine from Maine.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve only become more radicalized and entrenched in my conservatism in the past five years in accordance with my worldview. I must assume that Platner’s liberal leanings have tilted further left.
Platner’s anonymous admissions on Reddit were deleted the same month he launched his senatorial campaign. But Platner must have forgotten that the internet is forever.
I’m sure Platner is regretful of his comments, but I doubt that he no longer stands by them.
Drunk minds speak sober thoughts.
Perhaps the same is true for those shuttered in by authoritarian lockdowns.
“Never write when you can speak. Never speak when you can nod. Never nod when you can blink.”
― M.B. Walsh, Tammany Hall: Graft, murder and politics in old New York
