The “whataboutism gang” is alive and functioning fully in this age of deflection and distraction.

I wrote to a critic of my blog who challenged my assertion that the Republican Party has become the “party of rage.” He said Democrats and progressives remained silent when rioters burned office buildings and marched in city streets to protect government policies.

I wrote this: I have condemned the rioting that occurred. Let me be clear on this point: There can be no possible moral equivalence between what the street rioters did and what the traitorous mob did on Jan. 6. The Jan. 6 mob launched a full-on frontal assault on our nation’s government at the behest of the POTUS. Do not equate the events. Therein lies the reason for my description of the GOP as the “party of rage.”

My critic no doubt will respond. That’s his right and I welcome the exchange. I just have lost patience, though, with those who use the “whataboutism” dodge as a justification for what their guy says or does. They seek to point fingers away from their own heroes and toward those on the other side. It’s a distraction, pure and simple.

The whataboutism strategy generally comes from those who are desperate to make a case — any case! — in favor of their guy. That’s what I can surmise in this instance. Absent any credible defense against the charges leveled against their hero, the Donald Trump MAGA moron crowd is left to hurl epithets at those who demonstrate their own anger.

Except that in the instance to which I have referred, they aren’t even close to the same thing.