Stop Politicizing Commencement Addresses

I am proud to say that I have two children who graduated from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia last Saturday, but an otherwise very nice graduation ceremony was marred by a grossly inappropriate commencement address. The commencement speaker was J. Reginald Murphy, a Mercer graduate and a journalist of some acclaim. Mr. Murphy’s commencement address was a not even thinly veiled attack on President Donald Trump. Mercer posted a brief snippet of the address online, but I notice it is a couple of the more benign excerpts. I suspect that is not by accident.

Commencement addresses are supposed to be an occasion to encourage the graduates to achieve great things as they move forward into the next stage of their lives, not an opportunity for political ax grinding. From the conversations I have had with other people who attended the graduation as well as some pushback that I observed on social media, I was not the only one put off by the political nature of the address.

I sent a much shorter and more measured version of this compliant to the local newspaper, the Macon Telegraph, which, to their credit, they published, but that venue was not adequate to fully address the matter at hand.

Mr. Murphy’s theme was something along the lines of democracy and the threat posed to it by authoritarian regimes. The obvious implication was that Trump was potentially such an authoritarian and a threat to American democracy. Are you kidding me? The Deep State permanent government has been engaged in a blatant soft coup attempt since Trump was elected, but we’re really supposed to believe that Mr. Murphy is oh so concerned about democracy and authoritarian regimes?

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Hillary Clinton and her supporters feigned outrage and indignation when Trump suggested he would have to evaluate the results of the upcoming election before he would concede their legitimacy. This was at a time when Trump feared the election might be stolen from him, but the anti-Trump hysteria chorus acted as if this was somehow an existential threat to the Republic. Yet it has been the forces aligned against Trump, both Democrat Hillary supporters and Republican NeverTrumpers, who have since the election, engaged in an elaborate ruse about Russian interference and collusion. They have been the ones questioning the legitimacy of the election as part of said soft coup attempt, not regular Republicans. It was supporters of Hillary who rioted in D.C. following the inauguration of Trump. No such riots occurred following the election of Barack Obama. So again, we’re really supposed to believe that Mr. Murphy is oh so concerned about the fate of American democracy?

Mr. Murphy, a journalist, mentioned the need for a vigilant press. Yeah, right. The lickspittle “mainstream” media (MSM) has acted as a virtual mouthpiece for the Deep State in their ongoing coup attempt. The relentless attacks on Trump by the MSM are often so over the top that they are hard to distinguish from an Onion parody. Some journalists, abandoning all pretense of objectivity, openly admitted that they felt they had a responsibility to subvert Trump. So Mr. Murphy can spare me his supposed concern about the role of the press.

I don’t recall Mr. Murphy mentioning the Russian hacking allegations specifically, but he did mention Vladimir Putin as an example of the kind of authoritarian leader we need to be warry of. Recently Milo Yiannopoulos, Anne Coulter, Charles Murray, and Gavin McInnis, among others, have been prevented from speaking by “antifa” goons and other liberal hysterics. Women wearing Make America Great Again hats have been pepper sprayed, and pro-Trump demonstrators have been clocked over the head with bike locks for having the wrong opinions, but we’re supposed to believe that the authoritarian threat against this country is from far off Vladimir Putin? I can assure Mr. Murphy that Putin is not the authoritarian that Americans need to worry about.

Who is Mr. Murphy trying to kid? We all know good and well that if the situation was reversed and Hillary had won the election and Republicans were clamoring about Russia steeling the election for her, he would be giving a speech about the threat to American democracy posed by wild right-wing conspiracy theories and the unwillingness of some to accept the outcome of the election. No doubt there would be liberal references to McCarthy, red-baiting, and the Red Scare.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Murphy was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War. Well good for him. As a consistent non-interventionist, I think the U.S. should have minded our own business in Vietnam the same way I think we should be minding our own business in Syria now. So why then has Mr. Murphy thrown his support behind the Deep State forces that seek a permanent state of hostility? It is Trump’s stated desire for more friendly relations with Russia more than anything else that has the Warfare/Security permanent state aliened against him. Does Mr. Murphy not realize he has thrown his hat in with the forces he used to oppose? He is not alone. Too many old school liberals like Mr. Murphy have sold their souls to globalist neoliberalism in exchange for their opportunity to virtue signal against Trump.

Needless to say, many of the people in the Georgia audience that Mr. Murphy was hectoring voted for Trump. I’m sure the political nature of his speech was not appreciated by many of them anymore than it was appreciated by me. His speech was just another example of the detached liberal elite lecturing us regular folks for not thinking like they do. And then they scratch their heads and wonder why we’re all so angry and cast votes that communicate that rage.