Why The Left Always Projects
The slurs and smears levelled by the elites are all the more toxic because they have always known these sins firsthand as their own.
By Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
November 14, 2021
(Emphasis added)
The Left is addicted to projection—the psycho-political syndrome of attributing all of one’s own sins to one’s opponents.
The woke apparently do this out of some Freudian effort to square the circle of their own guilt or sense of privilege, by fobbing off their own fearful realities onto others. It is the atheist version of confession or medieval penance. In addition, in the spirit of “always being on the offense,” wokists know that those who slander do so most successfully when they lodge exactly those charges most familiar and applicable to themselves.
The Privileged Damn Privilege
Take for example, the worn-out charge of “privilege,” as in the phrase “check your privilege.” This trope originates exclusively from the Left. Purportedly, it signifies a rigged system in which white males have gained, unfairly and undeservedly, “privilege” to exercise cultural, economic, political, and social control over the “other”—occasionally defined as women, more often “people of color,” and most frequently African Americans.
How odd, given that by any indicator the political Left is the party of wealth and privilege. The wealthiest ZIP codes are found in blue states such as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. Twenty-six of the 27 wealthiest congressional districts, gauged by per capita incomes, are represented by liberal Democrats.
Registered Democrats on average have higher incomes than their Republican counterparts. Democratic presidential candidates have vastly outspent Republicans over the last 20 years. Note that the old liberal saw about “dark money” has steadily disappeared from the left-wing lexicon (nothing is darker than Mark Zuckerberg’s infusions of cash to warp particular voting precincts). Likewise, in the once trendy academic trifecta of “race, class, and gender,” “class” has been dropped quietly.
The most elite and wealthy institutions in America are predominantly liberal bastions: Silicon Valley, entertainment, universities, professional sports, Wall Street, the mainstream media, and foundations. Most “people of color,” who are the loudest about focusing on the evils of privilege and lack of equity, are themselves multimillionaires or multibillionaires, such as the Obamas, Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James, Jay-Z, or Meghan Markle.
Accusing an entire group—white people, or conservatives, or Trump supporters—of being privileged deflects the apparent shame of elitism away from oneself on the cheap. After all, accusing some part-time lecturer or Trump deplorable of “white privilege” is a lot easier, both psychologically and materially, than giving up a nanny, trading in the gas-guzzling big Mercedes, or just saying no to private jets.
The elite accuser knows especially how to level such charges given his own intimacy with what wealth, power, and influence bring. Worse still, the projectionist feels he is making the greatest sacrifice of all by his empty confessions—even as he is a beneficiary of the rigged system that he demands be ended.
When Barack Obama flies to Glasgow to lecture the western world’s climate-wrecking middle class that it is going to have to be content with less—while acknowledging that his own wealth and privilege mean he will suffer less than others—one wonders why Obama simply does not, right now pledge to live in just one mansion rather than two?
After all, if Obama urges the middle to class to cut back on energy use and to forfeit lifestyle privileges, why wouldn’t Obama himself set the moral example, given his huge carbon footprint. Why would he be so cynical to warn the world that our shores will soon be inundated shortly after he himself bought a shoreline estate?
The answer, of course, is that by constantly projecting their covetousness onto others, the woke feel that they can enjoy their own privileges with diminished guilt, claim the psychological higher moral ground, and, as performance artists, show they suffer on our behalf as “traitors to their class.”
The Colluders Invent Collusion
“Collusion” is also a good example of the absurdities of leftist projection. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment simply concocted the charge that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was colluding with the Russians, based on rumors and lies collected by an incompetent and long-retired British left-wing spook, a couple of Clinton cronies at home and abroad, a washed-up Wall Street Journal reporter, and various Hillary functionaries seeded among beltway bureaucracies, media megaphones, and law firms.
Remember, it was Team Hillary, after the 2016 election, that rounded up celebrities to cut commercials urging the electors not to honor their states’ popular votes. Then we went to the surrogate Jill Stein’s lawsuits challenging voting machine counting. And finally, during the transition and Trump presidency, Hillary bragged of the new maquis “Resistance” that spread her fake Steele-Clinton dossier throughout the State Department, FBI, CIA, and Justice Department. There is a slight chance that John Durham may eventually work his way up to this largely illegal effort—from Hillary’s minions to those in her inner circle.
As far as the charge of Russian collusion itself, both the Left and Hillary, Inc. always knew that in comparison to their own Clinton and Obama years (e.g., the red plastic reset button, the prohibition of offensive weapons sales to Ukraine, the anti-drilling agenda in the United States, the snoring while Putin gobbled up Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and the “tell Vladimir to wait till after the election” hot mic Obama moment), the Left had for years insidiously appeased Putin.
In contrast, Trump’s reversal of the reset (such as selling offensive weaponry to Ukraine, the push to produce more gas and oil, beefing up U.S. and NATO military preparedness, killing Russian mercenaries in Syria, and pulling out of a missile treaty with Russia) reestablished deterrence against Russia that Obama’s administration frittered away. How strange, then, that Trump, the supposed Russian “asset,” increased deterrence against Russian aggression, while the promulgators of the collusion charge deliberately weakened the United States in relation to Russia.
Yet with the recent indictments from Durham, collated with the Mueller report bust, the House Intelligence Committee majority report, and the inspector general’s internal audit, most are beginning to concede that Hillary Clinton cooked up the idea of sabotaging a rival presidential campaign by enlisting the aid of Russians, or at least those familiar with Russia in partnership with her own team.
She sought to hide both the funding and expenditures of this effort to plant lies throughout the U.S. government—with the aid of the FBI and likely Obama appointees in the Justice Department, CIA, and State Department—by the firewalls of the DNC, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS front.
So, in the end, we are left with the post-2016 Hillary Clinton loudly yelling “rigged!” and “collusion!” even as she had first sought to rig the election by smearing her opponent with Russian dirt, and then explaining away her own self-created defeat by fueling further the “collusion” hoax.
No political figure in modern memory has done more damage to the political process than Hillary Clinton and her unethical and illegal effort to sabotage a rival campaign and then manufacture a hoax both to mask her own culpability and to sabotage an American presidency.
In sum, Hillary Clinton already proved herself master projectionist when she fobbed off the Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation escapades onto others, but the Russian collusion hoax remains her greatest masterpiece of deceit.
Election Denialists Scream Denialist
Then we come to the projections of “undermining the integrity of elections” and “subverting democracy.”
Donald Trump complained and is still complaining about the 2020 election. To the degree that anything was “rigged” or can be proven to have been “rigged,” an entirely alterable election likely cannot be tied to Election Day per se. The real anomalies occurred in spring 2020, when activists, often with help from left-wing billionaires, funded lawsuits that persuaded local magistrates and bureaucrats to overturn balloting procedures established by their state legislatures. And then under the cloak of the COVID-19 lockdown, 102 million ballots were not cast on Election Day—over twice the 2016 absentee and early-voting numbers. Even as the number of ballots to be counted radically soared, the rejection rate mysteriously dropped.
So, the more the Left trashed Trump’s insistence of voter irregularities, the more we forget that casting doubt on election integrity has long been a staple of Democratic losers.
Hillary Clinton repeatedly claimed that Donald Trump did not win the 2016 election, and that in essence over half the country should have no confidence in the nation’s election integrity. Three years later she was still calling Trump “an illegitimate president”—based on nothing more than the very Russian collusion hoax that she had birthed and paid for, while using her vast network to destroy a presidency and erode confidence in the 2016 Electoral College vote count. She urged Joe Biden not to concede the 2020 election “under any circumstances”.
“Selected not elected” was long a left-wing mantra leveled at George W. Bush as the “illegitimate” president who “stole” the 2000 election in “hanging chad” Florida. Al Gore was shamed into publicly accepting the verdict only to go on a lifelong public jihad whining about how he was robbed, an obsession that eventually drove him in some sense quite mad and resulted in his current diminished state.
Even after the undisputed 2004 election, the Democratic minority in the House still forced Congress to hold hearings on the supposedly rigged election and “illegitimate” Ohio electors—the first such challenge since 1877.
There is no need to say much about the strange career of the denialist Stacey Abrams, who has spent the better part of three years playing shadow governor of Georgia. She has never fully accepted the results of her not-even-close 2018 loss by some 50,000 votes. And yet screaming voter fraud made Abrams a folk hero among progressives to the point that they asked her to deliver the State of the Union response in 2019.
Racists Cry Racism
Racism is the latest left-wing projectionist tic. White liberal elites, who live mostly privileged and segregated lives, are obsessed with calling their opponents racists, elite blacks, on the other hand, focus on conservatives—e.g., Winsome Sears, Larry Elder, Tim Scott, Clarence Thomas—for special racial vituperation. So, in the Left’s lexicon of racist smears, Virginia Lieutenant Governor-elect Sears becomes a mere black mouth spouting white-scripted supremacy, talk-show host Larry Elder is rendered the “black face of white supremacy,” and Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is reduced to an Uncle Tom.
Projection is an innate human trait. Perhaps it is hard wired as a survival mechanism into the human brain, dating back to our Neanderthal predecessors. But in the early 21st century, projection has been honed and refined as a special trademark of the Left, largely because of the growing contradictions, paradoxes, and hypocrisies that are inherent in the postmodern woke movement.
Progressives and the Democratic Party in general once professed empathy and solidarity with the lunch-bucket crowd. But through globalization, the Left got rich—and all the richer because the professional and credentialed classes in the media, law, finance, academia, investment, entertainment, and sports found 8 billion consumers for their wares. Unfortunately, that wealth didn’t reach the muscular classes and the ancient trades of earthier production in assembly, manufacturing, farming, mining, timber, and construction, which faced new competition abroad through offshoring, outsourcing, and relocation.
We can see the radical changes in the Democrats’ utter abandonment of the white working classes in the red state interior. In their place grew a romantic leftist infatuation with billionaires who can make things happen with big money, bypassing old-time penny-ante fund-raising. That’s why the Left loves and has enlisted the likes of Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and Mark Zuckerberg along with the Google, Apple, and Twitter fortunes.
They find it cute that their own capitalists are using their capitalist-created fortunes to push anti-capitalist and left-wing cultural agendas.
In the ancient days, what Mark Zuckerberg did in the 2020 election (channel over $400 million to appropriate the duties of state polling officers in key swing precincts) or the vast left-wing effort of the rich to warp the election—as boasted about in a now-infamous Time essay by a preening Molly Ball—would have created screaming headlines of “dark money.”
The Mind of the Projectionist
In sum, the Left got woke because it largely got rich.
Wokism is now an elite scramble for the best seats on the cruise ship’s top deck—who gets into Harvard, whether the new diversity, equity, and inclusion provost is higher or lower than the dean on the academic totem pole, which anchor grabs the prime-time slot, and whether the white hard-Left actress or a “diverse” rival wins the coveted superheroine role in the latest Hollywood schlock comic book film.
Yet when wokeness trickles down finally to the middle classes, it is often seen as nonsensical. As outsiders, those without privilege see that real wokeness is racist, segregationist, careerist, and narcissistic—the guilty accusing the innocent of their own perceived guilt. The woke blame the steerage class below them for their own perceived sins of privilege—slurs and smears levelled all the more toxically because their promulgators have always known them firsthand as their own.
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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, now 94, pictured in 2010 at age 83 (Vatican Media). On October 11, Benedict wrote a letter remembering an old friend, Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Damaskinos Papandreou, who died 10 years ago (the occasion for this letter was the 10th anniversary of his death). Benedict came to know the Metropolitan in 1959, when Damaskinos was just 23 and Benedict only 32 and a new professor at the University of Bonn, Germany. Their friendship last for more than half a century. Below, two screenshots of the text of the letter in German, showing the beginning and the end of the letter, with the actual signature of the Emeritus Pope.
“The friendship with Metropolitan Damaskinos Papandreou grew all the more for me, and thus the sadness over his all-too-early death [10 years ago]. But the fruit of a lively inner relationship with Orthodoxy has remained and continues to grow in the friendship that unites me more and more with the Ecumenical Patriarch.” —Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, 94 (he will turn 95 in April), in a note written on October 11, five weeks ago, which was read on November 5, 14 days ago, to a conference in Switzerland, in which he recalls his friendship with MetropolitanDamaskinos Papandreou, who died 10 years ago ===== Letter #147, 2021, Thursday, November 18: Benedict A letter written by Emeritus Pope Benedict is not any longer common, since the Emeritus Pope is now 94 years old, but he wrote a letter dated October 11 which shows well the clarity of his mind and memory. Also worth noting is the closeness of the friendship Benedict feels with the present Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew. Here is a November 8 Catholic News Agency report on the brief letter: Benedict XVI marks 10th anniversary of Orthodox leader’s death (link) By CNA Staff Fribourg, Switzerland, Nov 8, 2021 / 05:00 am Pope emeritus Benedict XVI has paid tribute to an Orthodox leader on the 10th anniversary of his death. In a letter dated Oct. 11, the retired German pope said it seemed “inconceivable” that a decade had passed since the death of Metropolitan Damaskinos Papandreou, the first Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Switzerland, in 2011. CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that Benedict XVI made the comment in a message to a conference held in the metropolitan’s honor on Nov. 5 at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Metropolitan Damaskinos, a bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, was born in Thermo, Greece, on Feb. 23, 1936. He was elected as the first metropolitan of Switzerland in 1982. The author of numerous works on ecumenism, he served as the metropolitan bishop of Adrianople from 2003 until his death on Nov. 5, 2011, at the age of 75. “That 10 years have already passed since the death of Metropolitan Damaskinos Papandreou of Switzerland is quite inconceivable to me,” the pope emeritus wrote in his message, addressed to Metropolitan Maximos of Switzerland and Professor Stefanos Athanasiou. The letter was read out in a video message to the conference by Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Swiss president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Benedict, who served as Pope from 2005 to 2013, said it was “a very special gift of Providence” that shortly after he was appointed a professor at the University of Bonn, Germany, in 1959, two Orthodox archimandrites began studying at the university’s Catholic and Protestant theological faculties. “This was something new and unexpected, because until then Orthodox students never studied at Catholic faculties, but exclusively at the Protestant and the so-called Christian Catholic (= Old Catholic) faculty in Bern [Switzerland],” he explained. “Both archimandrites became friends of mine. Unfortunately, my friend Stylianos Harkianakis, who later became Metropolitan of Australia, subsequently took a rigorous position that cooled our friendship,” the 94-year-old wrote. “The friendship with Metropolitan Damaskinos Papandreou grew all the more for me, and thus the sadness over his all-too-early death.” “But the fruit of a lively inner relationship with Orthodoxy has remained and continues to grow in the friendship that unites me more and more with the Ecumenical Patriarch,” Benedict concluded. [End, CNA report on this letter] 
American Bishop David Talley, chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, with His Eminence, Archbishop Elpidophoros yesterday morning, November 17, for a breakfast workshop on Christian unity during the annual meeting of the US bishops in Baltimore, Maryland (link) Here is a Catholic News Agency report by Christine Rousselle on a meeting two days ago, November 16, between an Orthodox bishop and the American bishops meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first time in history that an Orthodox leader had been present at an assembly of the US bishops: Orthodox archbishop makes historic address to USCCB assembly By Christine Rousselle Baltimore, Md., Nov 17, 2021 / 07:40 am His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros, Chairman of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States, spoke of a “dialogue of love” between the two faiths and the potential for increased unity in a historic address to the Fall General Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Elpidophoros said he had “heartfelt joy” being with his “brother bishops of the USCCB,” and that Tuesday, Nov. 16, marked the first time in the history of the United States that Orthodox leadership had been present at the USCCB’s general assembly. He was joined by several other Orthodox bishops who were present as observers. Archbishop Jose Gomez, the president of the USCCB, and Bishop David Talley, chairman of the committee on ecumenical and interreligious affairs, arranged for the Orthodox delegation to join the assembly. Gomez invited Elpidophoros to address the assembly. “As you are well aware, a few weeks ago we had the honor and blessing to welcome His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for a historic visit to this country during which he met some of you either in Washington, DC, or in New York City,” said Elphidoros. He thanked the bishops for their “warm and ecumencial presence” with the patriarch. Elphidoros quoted Patriarch Bartholomew’s address to the Ecumenical Reception at the National Council of Churches, where the patriarch stated that a “dialogue of love” between the faiths was the future for the two Churches, and that the 21st century “should become the century of the restoration of unity.” “Today, I am convinced, as I present myself in front of my brother hierarchs, that this dialogue of love, initiated by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in 1964 in Jerusalem, continues with a particular density in this blessed country,” said Elphidoros. This “dialogue of love” should be modeled by the relationship of Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew, explained the archbishop. In 2013, Bartholomew became the first Archbishop of Constantinople to attend a papal enthronement, and the two have worked together, along with other faith leaders, to discuss the best approaches on societal issues. This dialogue between Catholicism and Orthodoxy “is a clear manifestation of our common desire for unity and communion on both a global and local level,” said Elphidoros, and he said that the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation “should not be shy” about what it has accomplished in its existence. “Since 1965 — at the happy coincidence of the reestablishment of Catholic-Orthodox relations and the Second Vatican Council — this Consultation has produced thirty-two documents, reports, and statements,” he said. “Some of them became real references for theologians, and for our Churches to walk together towards unity.” These writings, he said, are the “real fruits” of the collaboration between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, fruits that serve to “nourish both our communities.” In addition to the publications, Elphidoros said that the improving relationships between the two faiths produce spiritual fruits as well. “Every year the Assembly of Bishops together with the USCCB offer the opening prayer at the March for Life,” he said. “Just a few months ago, the Assembly of Bishops also signed on to an Amicus brief supporting the sanctity of life.” Looking ahead, Elphidoros said that the Orthodox Christians are “very interested” in the synodal process, particularly the October 2023 Catholic Synod of Bishops, and would be interested in providing input as the preparations for the synod begin. “I am convinced that the future and mission of Catholic-Orthodox relations in the USA is to continue to bear witness to God’s presence in the world, faithful to the Spirit of Jerusalem that we received as a legacy,” he said. “Ecumenical dialogue bears in itself a synodal dimension that explores the meaning and praxis of the very nature of the Church structure and mission,” said Elphidoros, adding that while international dialogue is studying the interdependence between synodality and primacy, “perhaps, in our American context, as we dedicate our energy and time to sharing this important issue and reflecting together, it will bear fruit in due course.” Elphidoros closed his speech by thanking the bishops, saying he hopes that “there will be many more opportunities to come together as brothers.” He then gave Archbishop Gomez a silver pectoral cross from the Hagia Sophia, “the universal cathedral of Christianity,” as a symbol of his “love and appreciation.” —Christine Rousselle is a DC Correspondent for Catholic News Agency. Prior to working at CNA, she was the managing web editor of Townhall.com; she has a BA in political science from Providence College. [End, CNA report on the bishops’ meeting] *** And here below is another CNA report, also by Rousselle, on the issue of the Eucharist, and the reception of communion, which was discussed by the bishops at their meeting. The bishops approved a document that does not make explicit mention of denying the sacrament to certain high-profile Catholics. Rather, their document focuses on the importance of teaching the Real Presence of the Eucharist and the Eucharist as a tool for evangelization. Here is her report (link): U.S. Bishops vote to accept Eucharist document By Christine Rousselle Baltimore, Md., Nov 17, 2021 / 10:00 am The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly to accept the document “The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church” during the morning session of the fall USCCB meeting on Nov. 17, 2021. The vote, which is held in a secret electronic ballot, was 222 in favor to eight against, with three abstentions. To pass, two-thirds of the bishops had to vote in favor of the document. This vote total was even more lopsided than the June vote to move forward with the drafting of the document. In June, the bishops voted 168 to 55 to move forward with the document. Initially, it was speculated that the document would provide explicit directives on who and who is not eligible to receive the Eucharist. Particularly, it was feared that the bishops would use the document to rebuke Catholic politicians who are in favor of abortion rights. President Joe Biden (D), the second Catholic president of the United States, has publicly supported a right to legal abortion throughout the entirety of a pregnancy. During his presidential campaign, he broke from several decades of his past beliefs and announced that he was now opposed to the Hyde Amendment. The final draft of the document does not make explicit mention of denying the sacrament from certain high-profile Catholics, and instead focuses on the importance of teaching the Real Presence of the Eucharist and the Eucharist as a tool for evangelization. The two sections of the document are “The Gift,” which centers on the Eucharist as a gift from Christ through his incarnation, death, and resurrection, and “Our Response,” which focuses on gratitude for the gift of the Eucharist, the role the laity play in regards to reception of the Eucharist, and the importance of the Eucharist in conversion. [End, CNA report on the bishops’ document on the Eucharist]
Dr. Robert Moynihan 
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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