Payrick Glenn Thompson

Read this on Facebook, and I agree 💯. I have been thinking about how to put into words how I feel about Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. This post is credited to: Senator Chris McDaniel. It's spot on. There used to be a line you didn’t cross, Ilhan Omar. But I’m not sure they teach U.S. civics in Somalia, so allow me to explain. You could despise a president. You could campaign against him, vote against him, and argue against every word out of his mouth. But when he stood in the chamber to give the State of the Union, you let him speak. You held your fire for later. That line started to crack in 2009 when Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Barack Obama during a joint session of Congress. The Left didn’t treat that as a small thing. They condemned him. The House formally rebuked him. Commentators said he’d disgraced the chamber and insulted the presidency itself. They said decorum mattered. They said the institution deserved better. On that point, they were right. But here we are. When Ilhan Omar shouts across the chamber during a State of the Union, suddenly it’s brave. Suddenly, it’s moral urgency. Suddenly, the same folks who once lectured the country about norms and respect tell us this is what courage looks like. It isn’t. Let’s be honest. There have been interruptions during President Biden’s speeches. There have been jeers and muttered barbs. None of it helped the country. None of it elevated the office. Foolishness doesn’t become wisdom just because it’s bipartisan. But the outrage has never been applied evenly. When Wilson spoke, the Left treated it like a constitutional rupture. When their own side does it, we’re told the moment demanded it. That’s not principle. That’s partisanship dressed up as virtue. And all of this madness is happening in a year when the world feels like it’s wobbling on its axis. Wars abroad. China pushing. Russia still grinding. The Middle East on edge. Cyber attacks humming in the background. Floods sweeping through states from Mississippi to California. Institutions here at home straining under debt, distrust, and fatigue. With all that on our plate, members of Congress choose to perform outrage for the cameras. That’s what it is. Performance. The State of the Union isn’t a rally. It isn’t cable news. It’s one of the few times all three branches gather under one roof. The Supreme Court sits there quietly. The military lines the aisle in dress uniform. For an hour, we’re supposed to remember that we share a constitutional order, even if we can’t stand each other. If we can’t even manage silence for that hour, something deeper is wrong. The American Left has spent years warning about threats to democracy, about the erosion of norms, about the need to protect institutions. Yet when those same institutions require restraint from their own members, the sermon changes. Decorum becomes optional. Respect becomes conditional. The Right has been guilty at times, no doubt. But most of its misbehavior has felt reactionary, an escalation in a culture that’s already been coarsened. The louder wing of the Left has made confrontation a governing style. It confuses disruption with strength. It mistakes noise for conviction. There’s a difference between passionate dissent and childish interruption. One persuades. The other just makes a scene. If decorum mattered in 2009, it matters now. If the presidency deserved respect then, it deserves it now, regardless of who’s holding the office. If the chamber is still the people’s House, it can’t also be a stage for childlike tantrums. We can fight hard at the ballot box. We can argue in committee rooms. We can campaign, protest, and vote. But if an elected official can’t sit still for a speech and answer it later like an adult, maybe the problem isn’t the speech. Maybe it’s that we’ve forgotten the difference between strength and spectacle.