Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:00 PM | May 18, 2025
meme

We all have a general sense of how the Establishment weaponizes the levers of government against people it doesn't like, but it is still possible (at least for me) to be shocked at individual cases where the law gets distorted beyond recognition, and the truth is twisted to the breaking point. 

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The clearest example in recent history is the Covington kids hoax, where the media and Democrats viciously slandered Nicholas Sandmann and his schoolmates for actions that never took place. The video was manipulated to create a narrative, a known liar was turned into a "Native American Elder," and a lynch mob was sent to destroy the lives of perfectly innocent high schoolers.

Almost nobody apologized, and even when the hoax was revealed, almost nobody apologized. Because the truth or falsity wasn't the issue, but rather harming anybody associated with Donald Trump and sending a warning to them that nobody was safe. 

 A similar, if less prominent case happened in New Haven, Connecticut, in which a conservative had a racial bias case concocted against her, costing her her reputation, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and almost a year of her life. Her life has been irreparably changed, and that was the point of the whole exercise. 

All based on a race hoax that was easily disproven, if anybody cared to know the truth.  The video was there, but her accusers refused to look. 

I never thought I’d end up in handcuffs and a jail cell for something I didn’t say.

But last May, police in New Haven, Conn., arrested me — because a parking attendant falsely claimed I had used a racial slur against him nearly a year earlier.

I denied it. I asked the cops to check the parking lot’s surveillance video.

They didn’t — and the state charged me first with disorderly conduct, then with three counts of breach of peace in the second degree.

It took almost a year, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and endless stress before the nightmare ended on March 27, when the prosecutor finally dropped all charges.

Why? “Insufficient evidence,” “inconsistencies,” “credibility issues,” video that “clearly contradicted” the accuser’s claims — and a possibility that I wasn’t even the right person.

The judge dismissed the case.

If this can happen to me — a First Amendment advocate with resources, legal counsel and a public reputation to defend — it can happen to anyone.

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The parking lot where the incident didn't take place had video surveillance, and the supposed incident supposedly happened months before it was reported, but Lauren Noble was hauled off to jail for a (non) crime (using a racial slur) because it suited the ideological preferences of all involved. 

She was charged for saying unpleasant words--words that she never actually said. That is a two-fer of injustice. 

Lauren was a target because she founded the Buckley Institute at Yale, promoting conservative and free speech values in an environment deeply hostile to both. She had to be silenced, and what better way than to play into prejudices that all the liberals around her harbor? She is a conservative. Therefore, she is racist. When accused of racism (for reasons we, to this day, do not know), the police were sent to arrest her for wrongthink.

The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing.

Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.

They made the malicious assumption that those who defend free speech do so to say offensive things.

The case was a farce from the start: There were no threats, no violence — just a made-up accusation, rubber-stamped by a system that didn’t bother to check basic facts before putting someone’s life through a meat grinder.

When the state finally obtained the video footage I had asked the police to view before arresting me — footage that had been accessible all along — it showed me, on multiple dates, calmly parking, getting out of my car and walking away.

No confrontation, not even any interaction, with the accuser.

No slurs.

No drama.

There was absolutely no evidence that the incident took place, and since there was video of all times it could have, there was plenty of evidence that it didn't. Yet police and the prosecutors refused to look at it because, well, you know why. Proving that the accusation was a hoax would hurt the Narrative™, and refusing to prove it allowed the media to concoct a story of a mean, nasty conservative who let her freak flag fly. 

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Did the media folks believe the Narrative™? Who knows and who cares? "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out." Nobody bothered to check it out. The presumption of guilt was the point of the exercise. 

I got no apology. Not from the accuser, his employer or the police.

Not from the prosecutor who entertained this blatantly unconstitutional charade, and not from the media outlets that treated an unproven allegation as fact.

The media didn’t seek out the truth. They just repeated one lie after another, eager to convict me in the court of public opinion.

One outlet uncritically published a local pastor’s comment that I was guilty “according to all the information that we have now” — even though the pastor’s church possessed the video footage that ultimately vindicated me.

One reporter asked my organization if I had been disciplined or asked to resign.

Now that the hoax has been revealed, one might ask if any apologies have been given, news stories corrected, or punishment meted out to the officials who wrongly charged--unconstitutionally, by the way--for (non) crimes she never committed. 

The questions answer themselves. They did exactly what they are charged to do by the elite: slander a conservative, so of course, they will pay no price. Why would they? The goal was achieved. You don't punish people when they fulfill their duty, and their duty was to threaten conservatives--a goal they achieved. 

Lauren didn't win--quite the opposite. She avoided jail, but the process served to punish her for being conservative, and it is a warning to others. Who would willingly have to endure anything like this? 

No matter how corrupt you think our "betters" are, you underestimate the lengths they will go to in order to punish dissent. 

ON TO THE MEMES


































































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