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Thoughts, the day after — 55 Comments

1. You are missing a key difference. Black people have been repressed and discriminated against. You can argue how prevalent it is today but it is a grievance.

   The Trump mob yesterday believe in fairy tails about a stolen election. Not excusing BLM violence, it is terrible. But theses are not equivalent mobs.

2. Whatever one may think of yesterday’s so-called “swarming” of the Capitol (perhaps instigated by leftist infiltrators, although this will be very difficult to prove, even if true), the completely unjustifiable killing of an unarmed young woman (according to unconfirmed reports, by a black policeman) was absolutely disgraceful, as neither she (nor any of the others) posed any real threat, being nothing beyond an annoying disturbance and a manifestation of popular frustration with all the corrupt swamp-creatures in Congress. Lest anyone doubt the worthlessness of most members of the GOP, the cowardly Loeffler decided to change her vote on questioning the electoral votes from the contested states purely out of what she perceived as self-interest.

3. Michael:

   If anti-Trump people of whatever party don’t face the fact that the general drift of society–especially government, journalism, academia, and entertainment–have fed the alienation that produced the Trump presidency, they are being willfully blind. And I’m somewhat of an anti-Trumper myself. Or at least not exactly pro-Trump. I’ve described myself as a Trump supporter supporter.

   Why do the people who for decades have reflexively preached “root causes” about the misbehaviour of all sorts of people not think about them with regard to Trumpism? (Rhetorical question with obvious answer)

4. When I saw what was happening yesterday at the Capitol, my first thought was Leftists, pussy-hatted “Not my president” mainstream Democrats, so-called antifascists, BLM brownshirts, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and all you self-righteous keyboard warriors of “Trump is Hitler” Facebook and “Orange Man Bad” Twitter — meet the real Resistance.

5. George W. Bush stated that we were approaching Banana Republic status. If I had a megaphone to respond, I would say that I agree, and it started quite awhile ago.

   As someone in the other thread (Kate W?) rightfully pointed out, the fainting goats were strangely quiet during the invasion of the Senate offices and intimidation of pro-confirmation Senators back during the Kavanaugh hearings. The DC police decreed that verbal and physical harassment of Sen. Hawley’s wife was within the bounds of a peaceful gathering. I could go on, of course.

   There is talk of Art 25, and so forth. I am no longer certain about Pence, but I assume that he would squash that. If for no other reason, what would follow pushing Trump aside with two weeks to go would likely make 1/6 look like a day at the beach (if Gruesome Newom let people go to the beach).

   The left coined the battle theme, “Resist”. Ok. I wish I knew what to do. I wonder if anyone will come up with a “non-violent” plan of action for the next four years? Who could do it?

   The options, other than mob action, have been sadly restricted. The media, including social media, will censor any push back. Law enforcement, particularly in the form of the so called Progressive DA’s that are now endemic in the cities actively support the hard Left. ;As far as I can tell, most Cops have “copped out”. (if I may insert a terrible pun in what I intend to be serious) I would no longer depend on them for anything. The Courts are either sympathetic to the Left; or are simply feckless. Republican politicians are running for cover.

   I grieve for the dead Air Force veteran. I have seen the video, it does not align with what I read in the media; but, instead of being martyred she will be written off.

   Late thought. Michael you are ridiculous. Have you been sleeping over the past four years, in particular this year? Did you think people were not watching?

6. Michael:

   Was it a fantasy that the legislatures of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin sent alternative slates of electors? Take note that the Constitution (Article 2, Section 1) mandates that all authority over the selection of Presidential electors resides in the state legislatures and only in the state legislatures.

7. What to do? What kind of “peaceful protest” can we who know for dead certain that widespread fraud decided this election do? I read somewhere that “sit-ins” might be an answer. How do we modify the “sit-in” protests for this situation? Where do we sit in? Sorry that all I have is questions and not answers, but I despair for my beloved country.

8. We are in a bad, bad place right now. The Left and Fake News despise Trump. They are going to use 1-6-21 in order to crush all opposition. The GOPe was no fan of DJT as evidenced by the resignation of Cocaine Mitch’s wife as Sec. of Transportation. Lots of piling on by Bill Barr and others.

   Trump, for his own part, has not handled this all that well. He couldn’t get over how the election was stolen from him. Once the state legislatures sent in their certified results, it was over. The Dems stole the election and no one stopped them. The judiciary (state and federal) bears a huge responsibility here for not reaching the merits in any case.

   The hypocrisy here is epic. In the BLM riots last year, 30 were killed and billions in property was destroyed.

   I listened some to Morning Joe on MSNBC. They were foaming at the mouth. Joe dropped an F bomb.

   This 25th Amendment talk won’t go anywhere but I think it is a signal to the Joint Chiefs not to obey an order by Trump to bomb Iran’s nuke facility at Fordor. This really worries me. Iran has to be stopped.

   Former Creighton basketball coach Dana Altman is famous for telling his players to, “Step on their throats.” When Creighton would get up by a fair number of points, Dana will tell the players that so the opposing team wouldn’t get back into the game later. It is great advice.

   I fully expect the Dems to step on the throats of the GOP; not that some of them won’t mind. The Dems will do any and every thing they want: two new states, Green New Deal, pack SCOTUS, end the filibuster, open borders, DACA citizenship and more. The tariffs against China will be dropped. The CCP now owns us.

   The Dems will make mail-in voting the standard. There will never be another fair election in the US. The Dems are ruthless and amoral. They love money and power more than they love their country and children.

9. Cap’n Rusty
   Michael knows all the stuff which has been brought up correcting him. He hopes we don’t, and that repetition will convince.
   His type is not unfamiliar hereabouts.

   Insty has an interesting piece about the inability of people to think. Using Arendt’s picture of Eichmann. She says he wasn’t evil. He simply didn’t think beyond slogans.

   Sometime back, on this blog, I posed the question as to whether people of reasonable cognitive ability have the moral duty to think instead of….in current circumstances go ape over MEAN TWEETS as if that’s all that matters.

   I think it was Sarah Hoyt who suggested that the People are just twigging to the fact that the feedback mechanisms we’ve been told all our lives are available to us are closed. To pick one of a thousand examples, Lois Lerner has a nice pension. And, for all we know, a benefactor on the side. And, so far, she hasn’t killed herself.

10. Scott Adams has a must listen to podcast (#1245) today. Best perspective so far.

11. Michael:

    “Black people have been repressed and discriminated against.” Oh my goodness that is astounding and completely changes everything (LOL). Start the injustice olympics.

    Lets do an accounting of the actual damage done facilities and property and the lives taken in said righteous BLM/Antifa mostly peaceful protests (MPP) and the “riot” at the Capitol. Why exactly was Ashli Babbit killed?

    What a tool.

12. I like DocZero. Always have. But that little tweetstorm was incredibly naïve.

    There is no incentive whatsoever for the right to back down at this point. Not until the left does. And I would expect more to come, not less. In fact, I have posted this in a few places. Will repost it here…

    Trumpism and everything associated with it has always been an effect, not a cause.

    Yesterday was the result of the riots all summer long. It was the result of the storming of the Senate during the Kavanaugh hearings. It was the result of the utter chaos after Trump’s inauguration. Frankly, it goes back farther than that. It was the result of Occupy Wall Street. It was the result of actual peaceful protests by the Tea Party being described as a threat to the very fabric of society.

    It was a result of four years of being told that black is white. Of having the false Russian collusion narrative shoved down our throats for three years. Of a farce of an impeachment that went down to a party line vote even though every single impeachment witness under direct questioning testified that they had no firsthand knowledge of Trump committing any impeachable offenses.

    It was the result of trying to convince us that Trump was involved in a quid pro quo while ignoring the established fact that Biden engaged in one himself. It was the result of ignoring the Hunter Biden laptop. It was the result of having to sit through a corrupt Mueller investigation. It was the result of being told repeatedly that there was no fraud in this election or any indication of it.

    It was the result of Nick Sandmann being destroyed by the media, when he did absolutely nothing wrong. It was the result of people being attacked in restaurants or on the streets merely for wearing a red hat. It was the result of years of fake racist incidents like Jussie Smollett. It was the result of many people being sick and tired of not being able to stand up and speak their mind. It was the result of years of monstrous attacks on free speech by the left.

    Yesterday’s not Trump’s fault. And if you think it is, then your stupidity is incurable.

    In short, yesterday was long overdue. Yes, it’s a shame that it happened, but the shame is what led us here.

    NeverTrumpers and other establishment types have been hoping for years that they could just ride this out and that Trumpism would go away. I think that’s the real reason they’re upset. They’ve just realized that Trumpism isn’t going away. This isn’t a fringe movement that will just die out. It’s going to get stronger, not weaker. You can either be a part of it, or get run over by it.

    Today, it seems to me that far too many have chosen to get run over. So be it.

    And yes, I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. You don’t like it? I don’t give a f*ck.

13. Michael:

    They haven’t been discriminated against for a long long time. Au contraire.

    And no, inequality of outcome is not discrimination. And the answer to inequality of outcome is not favoritism.

    Not only that, but research shows that, when adjusted for criminal behavior, black people are less likely than white people to be killed by police, not more.

14. The Dems just can’t abide 2 weeks without absolute power. Lusting after the “One Ring” their precious. 25th Ammendment to prevent any other pardons, declassifications, other final shoes that might drop? So many skeletons that have to be kept hidden?

    Masks have indeed come off, so many feckless cowards in high positions.

15. What Chris said

16. The Trump mob yesterday believe in fairy tails about a stolen election.

    They aren’t fairly tales because you’ve decided not to acknowledge what we know. The conduct of Democratic officialdom makes no sense except as efforts to promote electoral fraud.

    You are missing a key difference. Black people have been repressed and discriminated against. You can argue how prevalent it is today but it is a grievance.

    No, it’s not a grievance. A grievance presumes you have an unaddressed tort claim. None of the riot-and-demonstration fandangos we’ve seen in the last 8 years were triggered by misconduct by public authorities or private citizens and the actual logic of the complaints is one liberals refuse to acknowledge.

    1. There might be problems with rules-of-engagement made use of by police, but almost none of the complainers have the sort of granular knowledge of police-subject interaction that would allow them to make a contribution to improving police tactics. The poster cases we’ve seen in recent years which suggest actual misconduct can be counted on the fingers of one hand. (There was one in Cleveland, another in Chicago, two others in Minneapolis – not George Floyd, btw). Fewer than 5% of the blacks who die by homicide each year are killed by police officers, and these are generally the result of interactions which begin to go south when the subject is non-compliant. It’s not difficult to avoid being shot by a police officer.

    2. Instances of homicide which cross the color bar between the black population and the remainder are pretty unusual. They account for 13% of all homicides. About 70% of such homicides feature a black perpetrator and a non-black victim. The notion that criminal violence characterizes the treatment of blacks by the rest of the population is nonsense.

    3. You have a number of quality-of-life issues in slum neighborhoods, but these are not impositions of the larger society. The neglect of the larger society does sustain them. You might have a complaint about suburban indifference bar one thing: it’s somewhere between atypical and unknown to hear gentry liberals, black chauvinists, or black patronage brokers advocate much of anything which would actually address these problems. The whole BLM / defund-the-police fandango is hostile to the most important measure which would improve matters – vigorous police protection. Those employed in school administration are generally hostile to the sort of sanctions which would improve the level of order and decorum in slum schools. VoTech secondary education has little in the way of a vigorous constituency (about 2% of our teaching manpower is devoted to VoTech). There are students of the ill-effect of property taxes and cookie-cutter building codes on the built environment in slums, but these tend not to be prominent outside certain professional guilds. (Three I can think of are SH Hanke, Marc Hinshaw, and the late Edward Banfield).

    4. As far as the labor market’s promotion of racial preference schemes and institutional hostility to impersonal measures like screening tests has been a reality since about 1971. About 6% of the working population entered the labor force prior to 1971; the black population does not skew old, so the share of black workers of that vintage is bound to be lower. Higher education has had an indulgent disposition toward blacks for at least that long.

    5. Of course, blacks haven’t been ‘repressed’ in any peculiar and systematic way in nearly 50 years. And I have news for you: you’d have to scrounge to find someone who hadn’t been denied employment for some sort of extraneous reason. We just do not have organized grievance-mongers taking as their clientele socially awkward people, inarticulate people, or unattractive people. Of course, they don’t get thrown out of restaurants, either. Again, Lester Maddox hung up his axe handle 50 years ago.

    6. Blacks are less affluent than non-blacks, but they are not poor on any international or historic scale. Real personal income per capita among American blacks is similar to that in Mediterranean countries. You look at incomes and life expectancy, and the degree of prosperity in the black population is similar to that of non-blacks ca. 1992. You might improve the schools to assist in improving human capital and thus income, but Democratic pols do not take much of an interest in that.

17. Michael:

    “Black people have been repressed and discriminated against.”

    Not since white people faced up to and embraced Martin Luther King’s message they haven’t.

    Once seen as “despicable jews” and “slanty eyed” asians… both groups have long done better in this country than do Christian whites. Which disproves “systemic racism”.

    Blacks hang out together, Hispanics hang out together, various Asian ethnicities hang out together. But when Whites hang out together it’s racist?

    America’s whites died in the hundreds of thousands to end slavery. No other racial group comes even close to what whites have done to end that abomination.

    Trillions have been spent as reparations, otherwise known as the “War on Poverty”. Blacks have been by far the largest recipient of those funds and have, through affirmative action programs been given opportunities denied to the more qualified.

    Yet today, the majority of blacks continue to play the race card, unwilling to compete on merit in all but athletics. Where are the calls among blacks for equal representation for other races in team sports?

    The hypocrisy and duplicity is literally evil. Bemoaning slavery, ignoring their African brother’s ancestors having enslaved and then sold their ancestors into slavery. While today, black athletes gain great wealth off the slave labor in Chinese labor camps…

    You’ve been exposed to some truths, either confirm it or be complicit in that evil.

18. The chasm of the disconnect between what the media reports and what politicians from both parties are saying and what millions of people have seen with their own eyes has just gotten much wider. The reaction to the capitol chaos has shown just how much most Republicans loathe Donald Trump and the little people who support him (as if more evidence was needed). And yeah, what Chris said.

19. Not since white people faced up to and embraced Martin Luther King’s message they haven’t.

    David Beck, then president of the Teamsters, wrote an article on race and employment for the union rag in 1955 which I would wager expressed the sentiments of most (northern) whites of that era. I’m going to offer the hypothesis that it was Beck’s more practical and vernacular viewpoint that was embraced by northerners (and, later Southerners), while Southerners could no longer abide the daily friction and breaches of decorum necessary to maintain the previous regime. Maclin Horton can instruct us.

20. Oldflyer and I are nowhere near comment trading pals. But he has nailed it with his response above.

    If he can address an issue and point the crux out that clearly and systematically, he cannot be that old …

21. The violence will escalate because the tyranny of the left has barely gotten started. When the left’s boot keeps smashing our face into the ground, no other recourse will remain. Count on it, the oppression will reach far greater levels.

    The DOJ has announced that it will prosecute protesters who entered the Capitol building. Now clearing out the prisons of hardened criminals makes sense. The left had to make room for its future political prisoners. Kyle Rittenhouse will have lots of company in the future.

    “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated…” Thomas Paine, The Crisis Dec. 23, 1776

22. “The Trump mob yesterday believe in fairy tails about a stolen election.”

    The media and the political establishment, with apparent help from the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence community, spent over TWO YEARS spreading a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to fraudulently win the 2016 election.

    They spent four years violating every norm, tradition, and custom to defame, smear and lie about Donald Trump and undermine his legitimacy as President. I would invite you to go back and watch the press conferences and interviews where so-called journalists DELIBERATELY tried to get Dr. Fauci to say something critical of Trump, hoping it would provoke Trump into firing Fauci and they could then crucify Trump for doing so…all in the middle of a deadly global pandemic.

    They almost entirely ignored and failed to cover virtually EVERY positive achievement of the Trump administration, while criticizing it more harshly, unfairly, and straight up deceitfully than any previous Presidency in our lifetimes.

    I don’t know if the election was stolen but I know people believe it was because stealing the election PERFECTLY FITS ALONGSIDE EVERYTHING ELSE that has happened the last four years.

    And why did all this happen? Not because Trump is a fascist or a tyrant or a “threat to democracy.” They did it all because they all thought Trump was an idiot and him winning the White House shattered all their egocentric delusions of how smart and important they are all. Trump succeeded at what they do more than they ever have and they couldn’t stand what that said about them.

    Now we’re all going to suffer for their butthurt.

    Mike

23. I suspect the object of trying to get Trump to resign with threats of impeachment and calls to use the 25th Amendment is to prevent Trump from being able to run for a second Presidential term in 2024. They see him as the foremost potential threat in 2024.

    Failing that, they’re going to do their best to criminalize and imprison him and then pull an Epstein.

    Failing that, there’s always assassination.

    There’s literally no depth in depravity to which the left won’t descend.

24. An anti-drug commercial that ran in the 80’s – early 90’s had a father yelling at his son, “Where did you learn to do this? Tell me, who taught you this?”

    The kid replied, “I learned it from you.”

    The father looked stunned and began to think about the example he was giving. Unfortunately, the “progressives” will not think this way. They always attack and blame others.

    Soon, you will hear the reports from the FBI about the real danger to the country, the far-right, which is defined as anyone who doesn’t think the same as the “progressives.”

    They will never see themselves as a large part of the problem, that their insistence we shut up and take what they are giving, bending over and saying, “Thank you, may I have another.”

    The concept of the rule of law requires it to be applied all, regardless of race, status or wealth. But when liars like Schiff says he has evidence of Russian involvement with Trump and produces nothing and still gets reelected, where is justice.

    Hillary gets off, Biden can brag about shaking down a country, social networks block anything against their narratives and reporters no longer report but make narratives. Courts immediately grant injunctions against lawful laws and orders, or deny even looking at evidence of fraud, where do people go?

    The future will be uncertain until people believe they are listened to.

25. Cornhead,

    “Trump, for his own part, has not handled this all that well. He couldn’t get over how the election was stolen from him.”

    I think he’s held up remarkably well given the unprecedented level of oppositional pressure he’s endured. Even a bit lesser man would have folded much sooner.

    The level of internal betrayal by those designated to work closely with him is also unprecedented. Never before has a President been so ill served and betrayed by so many people who claimed to support him.

    The entire upper echelon of the government, in every agency slipped the knife in his back and did so throughout his term. Nearly every actual supporter of Trump in the White House was forced out.

    After Pence’s “my hands are tied” ‘support’ for the Constitution, it makes me wonder; did Flynn actually lie to Pence or did he unknowingly state things in a way to Pence, which could be spun as lying?

26. No more celebration of Noble Lies that illuminate Deeper Truth by the light of burning homes and businesses that were destroyed by mobs with Legitimate Grievances.

    And from Tom Cotton: Last summer, as insurrection gripped the streets, I called to send in the troops if necessary to restore order. Today, insurrectionists occupied our Capitol. Fortunately, the Capitol Police and other law-enforcement agencies restored order without the need for federal troops. But the principle remains the same: no quarter for insurrectionists. Those who attacked the Capitol today should face the full extent of federal law.

27. I see that Andrew McCarthy has gone full 25th Amendment. Ugh.

28. A fine compilation of what has gone down by Neo. Much fodder for thought.

    And a a great summary by Chris of Rights of the manifold insults and injustices that have angered those of us who have believed in Trump’s populist policies. Thanks, Chris.

    At this time, we are emotionally beat down. We saw our cause suffer a severe blow yesterday. Instead of a headline about enormous crowds of Trump supporters rallying peacefully while inside the House and Senate solid evidence of election fraud was presented. We now have a story of out of control mob behavior that is being blamed on Trump. The election fraud evidence has been negated. The MSM is attempting to turn the event into something worse than any riot we saw last summer. Wow, a complete turn of events. And it may have been planned. There are now stories of a busload of Antifa thugs being brought in to create as much chaos as they could. If true, it shows how cunning and resourceful the left is.

    So, what to do? Do not give up. Trump has at least 75 million supporters. That ain’t hay. Among many citizens, if they knew what was coming, there are many more. Our cause is freedom – free speech, freedom of religion, free and reciprocal trade, economic growth, fiscal sanity, America and Americans first, pride in our heritage, pro-family, pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-legal merit based immigration, strong borders, peace through strength (and the will to use it), anti-undeclared and unwinnable wars, anti-moving jobs to foreign shores, anti-UN schemes to weaken the U.S, anti-the Green New Deal, and more.

    The art of persuasion is difficult. Especially when you are competing with the MSM. However, this blog, Prager University, Newsmax, and more are all worth supporting. Short of a hot Civil War, it is our best tool.
    Donald J. Trump may not be the leader we need to take us forward, but I wouldn’t count him out. If he leads, I will follow.

29. I have been one of those harping on the need for documenting specific and direct evidence of Democrat electoral fraud.

    No one is skeptical of the traditional taken-for-granted Democrat voter fraud tactics which have for generations subverted the democratic process in the United States; but even there it helps to have a look.

    Here is one look on Rumble https://rumble.com/vbd3dz-compilation-of-voter-fraud-video.html

30. “I see that Andrew McCarthy has gone full 25th Amendment.”

    The only thing I can say in the defense of McCarthy and those like him is that some of this is about social media and being prisoner of the moment. I genuinely believe that McCarthy is incapable capable of focusing on anything besides what’s in front of him and cannot put anything into any sort of meaningful context.

    This, of course, renders you incapable of understanding what is actually happening and how to effectively respond to it. Which is the thing that still gives me hope. The Soviet Union controlled virtually every aspect of public life and even it couldn’t survive the incompetent failures of communism. The folks in charge now don’t have nearly as much power or technique but are just as clueless.

    Mike

31. Neo,

    I did the same thought experiment earlier today. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of thing that will get anywhere in a “discussion” with the other side.

    All good food for thought, as is Cornhead’s post here. Yes, the left will exploit this to the max.

32. Zuckerberg has loudly and personally banned Trump from Facebook. Does he think that he can stay more than 800 yards from the Cattle for the rest of his natural (I am dubious) life?

33. @Watt:

    The other side has determined that all future communications will be Clausewitzian in nature.

    In other news, the Left exploits and twists everything. Therefore why worry about optics?

    The HK Quisling Government the other day arrested practically every non CCP stooge politician still not behind bars on laughably ridiculous pretexts. They don’t care about optics. Not anymore.

    If you have power or wish to be perceived as possessing power, optics must be dispensed with when SHTF. Willingness to act baldly is the only real test of power. Can be all Augustus-like and observe all those quaint old republican proprieties one sunny day long in the future when the proscriptions are just a memory.

    The Right (For that is what you all here are, whether you like it or not; as the Right you will most assuredly hang together.) must now fight or submit. Talking and analysing optics is total waste of time. Tactics and logistics FTW. How many of you know much about your local National Guard dispositions and memberships?

34. “the Capitol Police and other law-enforcement agencies restored order” Tom Cotton

    Yup Tommy boy they did right well. Once they murdered a young woman patriot, those insurrectionists settled right down.

    See? Setting an example of what will happen if the serfs get too much out of line and imprisoning a few is all that is needed… (sarc/off)

    You’d think by now Cotton would distrust the MSM enough to check conservative blogs for a bit more of what actually happened before opening his pie hole.

    Maybe now Cotton, Cruz, Hawley, et al can explain why an unruly bunch of protestors who expressed some righteous and fully justified anger is justification for Senators and Representatives in their silence, effectively covering up the most massive electoral fraud in history? Especially as allowing it to happen without getting the evidence into the congressional record effectively renders the Constitution into a dead letter. Not to mention their covert support for making a mockery of the rule of law.

    The morons just eliminated their own jobs but are either too stupid to realize it or too corrupt to care.

    Once again, personal aggrandizement and CYA supercedes sworn oaths. No doubt rationalized with a pathetic, ‘if I’m not here, I can’t work to reduce the corruption’…

35. J. J.,

    When the game is rigged and the law is in the pocket of the riggers, the House always wins.

    The people who count the votes are now all that matters and they’re not about to let anyone else sit at the counting table.

    “I do not say law, for law is often but the tyrant’s will and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” the Declaration of Independence

36. John Hayward’s tweets are unrolled here, which makes them much easier to read.
    Neo omitted the final paragraph, which answers some of the considerations raised by the commenters her:

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347154640039718912.html

    That is a principle, and we should all be able to agree on it, no matter what else we disagree on. Absolute zero tolerance for political violence is a message that can save lives and prevent destruction if we all say it together and demand our government acts accordingly.

    But if we decide the tolerance level for political violence will not be 0.0, then all that remains is for our armies to meet in the streets. Violence is too powerful, too USEFUL, and too profitable to be ignored when it is indulged. /end

    Doc Zero has been my favorite blogger since before Salem kicked him, and the rest of us, out of the Hot Air Greenroom, although Neo is definitely my BBFF (blogger best friend forever), and of course one cannot have a decent conversation responding to a writer on Twitter (delenda est).

    Strongly recommend many of his other posts, but these recent ones in particular. I suspect he will be on the Twitter Ban List soon.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1346852751469400065.html

    One big long-term, and long-running, problem for the GOP is that it still has no idea how to harness populist energy, and no idea how to fight back when Democrats perpetually use it against them. Leadership still thinks populism is witchcraft and burns adepts at the stake.
    …
    When the Left sees – or, more often, creates and cultivates – a populist movement, it immediately begins making detailed plans for translating that energy into practical political gains. It thinks *purely* in populist terms on almost every issue.
    The Left straight-up manufactures populism every day. Its factories work around the clock to pump it out. That’s how a busload of loons griping on Twitter suddenly become a “mass movement” who can “set the Internet on fire” and impose policy and cultural changes overnight.
    For all sorts of reasons – ranging from common political interests with the Left, and a preference for serving as the genial, comfortable, ineffective opposition, to gaslighting and cultural disdain for populism of the Right – the GOP treats populism like radioactive waste.
    That’s why the GOP has a knack for losing chunks of its base at crucial moments and failing to win over enough new voters during moments of crisis. The party seems insincere and uncommitted to its nominal ideas, more interested in complaining than DOING anything.
    …
    It’s a lot to hope for, but just *maybe* we’ll get some people with influence in the GOP who can learn from how Trump was able to perceive and harness populist energy. It’s a lesson that even Republicans who disliked Trump or his policy agenda *should* be able to understand.
    Love him or hate him, approve or disapprove, there’s no question Trump won in 2016 by seeing a populist wave and running toward it with a surfboard instead of hiding under his beach blanket with the GOP establishment and waiting for it to crash.
    Imagine what could be done with a party that used all of its resources, all of its power and influence, everything inside AND outside the Beltway, to work with populism and ride it to constructive policy ends. Maybe next time…? /end

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347170973557030914.html

    Speaking of principles we should all agree on, let’s have a full stop to Democrat politicians describing America as an illegitimate nation when it suits them, and to left-wing teachers imparting that message to our children. No more flag-burning and kneeling theatrics.
    We cannot indulge irresponsible rhetoric and teaching about the legitimacy of America for 99% of the year from lefties and then suddenly start yelling at rioters who break into the Capitol for trespassing upon the sacred ground of democracy.
    …
    YOU DEMOCRATS threw the “peaceful transition of power” out the window in 2016 and laughed uproariously while you did it. What a fun lark that was! How the Obama and Clinton loyalists congratulated each other on their stunning and brave acts of Resistance sabotage!
    America is either a legitimate nation with the right and duty to act in the interest of its citizens – no matter who wins what election – or it isn’t. The Left profited for decades by pretending it isn’t, especially when they’re not in power. Surprise! The message resonated. /end

37. The only thing I can say in the defense of McCarthy and those like him is that some of this is about social media and being prisoner of the moment. I genuinely believe that McCarthy is incapable capable of focusing on anything besides what’s in front of him and cannot put anything into any sort of meaningful context.

    I’d never had that impression of McCarthy. He’s struck me as an institutional loyalist whose viewpoint on the events of the last several years was regulated by what he saw as gross breaches of professionalism at the Department of Justice. He gave the benefit of every doubt to Patrick FitzGerald, perhaps because his prosecutorial misconduct was done according to protocol.

    McCarthy knows perfectly well why the 25th Amendment was enacted and he knows it simply does not apply in these circumstances. It has never been formally invoked. Ronald Reagan made a public declaration in 1985 that while he was under anaesthesia VP Bush had the authority to act as president but made it explicit that he was not invoking the amendment and did not think the circumstances he was in were that for what it was intended. It was never invoked in 1981 when he was in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. Since there’s nothing wrong with the President and since he’s due to leave office in 13 days, the only point to invoking it is to attempt to humiliate him and advance a narrative.

    What’s notable about the starboard pundit class is how little rapport they have with actual voters. Ordinary Republican voters have been satisfied with Trump, as satisfied as they were with Bush II, Reagan, and Nixon and rather more satisfied than they were with Bush I and Ford. National Review‘s most obnoxious NeverTrumpers decamped elsewhere, but it’s a reasonable wager that was to keep from alienating the readership as thoroughly as did the shlemiels who ran The Weekly Standard into the ground. It’s also a reasonable wager most of the staff remains hostile to Trump. Same deal with the crew at Hot Air. In the hands of some, this extends to anyone who sends certain social signals. See, for example, how Nicholas Frankovich reacted to Nicholas Sandmann,

38. Watt:

    Unfortunately, at this point virtually nothing will get anywhere in a “discussion” with the other side. Especially now. My feeling is that this incident will make them feel even more justified in everything they have ever claimed about the perniciousness of the right.

39. “I’d never had that impression of McCarthy.”

    Read his post on the matter and tell me that’s not a man who can’t think about anything but getting past the problem in front of him.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/against-the-25th-amendment-and-warily-against-impeachment/

    By the way, did McCarthy’s public admission of how utterly WRONG he was on the whole Russia collusion thing actually lead to any change or adjustment in his thinking/pontificating?

    Mike

40. My reading today was limited to my preferred Silo, so that AesopSpouse would be subjected to a minimum number of wrathful rants.
    I looked at some of the Headline Picks at PowerLine, but read none of their own posts, as judging from the headlines they would raise my blood pressure too high, and I still like the PBL guys.
    I chose only one post at National Review to read, as their “menu” looked like a concerted reprise of their 2019 “Never Trump” issue with a coda of “We told you so!” and I am just not in the mood.

    I particularly avoided their hagiography of Turtle Mitch, who is going through Cocaine withdrawal for his reluctant alliance with Trump on judge-ships, as I am of the camp that his mishandling of the most recent funding bills was at least partly responsible for the Burning of Georgia.
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/mitch-mcconnells-finest-hour/

    However, this was a thoughtful piece by MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY (his caps), and is more in accord with the tenor of the sentiments expressed by most of us here.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/a-mostly-peaceful-maga/?utm_source=recirc-%5BSCREENSIZE%5D&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifth

    Tucker Carlson pleaded on his show last night for America’s leaders to move a step beyond condemning the riotous actions that delayed the counting of the Electoral College vote and left several dead. Carlson demanded that they (and we) try to understand why they happened, why thousands of people descended on their own government’s Capitol building. Carlson granted that they believe that their democracy is rigged against them. “Rather than trying to change their minds, convince them and reassure them that the system is real,” Carlson said, “our leaders will try to silence them.” He added, “If you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, then you’re a fool. You lack wisdom and self-awareness.”

    Carlson has a point. The scene will very likely be used to justify expanded surveillance of right-wing groups, and more suppression of right-wing speech on social media. Much of the action was just shambolic, with the Capitol’s occupiers goofing off, taking selfies, chanting, and banging on doors. An insurrection? A coup? That seems to be dignifying it. But it surely wasn’t a mere protest, either. Hearken back to a phrase that gained currency over the summer, and it might have been what this MAGA mob would call their “mostly peaceful” occupation of the Capitol.

    He then goes through the obligatory denunciation of Trump, but it’s mild compared to some rhetoric on the cntrl-Right.

    But let’s go one step beyond and try to understand what’s happening here. I’ve been trying to understand it myself. My old friend James Poulos observed the scene yesterday and commented: “When it is absolutely impossible to remove those from power who hate them, people eventually go berserk. Politics 101.”

    I recommend perusing the replies to Poulos’s Tweet.
    Some familiar names are represented, and worth a hearing.
    https://twitter.com/jamespoulos/status/1346888784336412673?s=20
    Dougherty again:

    I asked another Trump-friendly friend if he was LARPing by pretending Mike Pence had the power to keep Trump in office. His response: “The correct answer to that question is: no one cares. I don’t think the CIA has the power to secretly set up the president using fake intelligence dossiers. And yet, here we are.”

    I think my friends express the thing exactly. A substantial portion of people, identified with the Right, no longer believe the norms and institutions of American life protect them. They believe the rules are applied by the dictates of an implacably hostile enemy. For them, the evidence is everywhere. A government in which they had a meaningful say would have noticed declining life expectancy among middle-aged whites earlier and treated it as an emergency. A government in which they had a meaningful say would not promote synthetic ideologies about transgenderism. If truth is no defense for them, and lies are no handicap for their enemies, why should they continue to play the game?

    “Mostly peaceful” is now the leaden joke phrase among conservatives to describe the riots that the media tried to minimize in the summer of 2020. But, in a way it’s fitting for the MAGA rampagers as well. Like the BLM movement, they believe American institutions are irretrievably corrupted by a hostile ideology. Instead of “Defund the Police,” it might be “Defund Social Science and the Media.”

41. Geoffrey Britain:

    I agree that Trump has held up well compared to how well the vast majority of people would have held up under the same intense pressure and attack for the same lengthy amount of time. But I still think that since the election, he’s not been holding up well, and definitely not well enough.

    No, he’s not insane nor incompetent to finish out his term. But I think he’s exhausted and striking out impulsively.

42. Trillions have been spent as reparations, otherwise known as the “War on Poverty”. Blacks have been by far the largest recipient of those funds and have, through affirmative action programs been given opportunities denied to the more qualified.

    Lyndon Johnson’s Office of Economic Opportunity was largely dismantled during the late Nixon Administration. There was a residue which subsisted for about a decade more.

    The most troublesome program was Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It wasn’t a War on Poverty initiative. It was founded in 1935. However, for a mix of reasons spending on the program exploded after 1965. Its successor, TANF, is a much smaller program. It’s less socially damaging and of lesser significance.

    There were a mess of scheme in that era, before, and after, to promote housing consumption among the impecunious. The current portfolio of programs enrolls about 3.5% of the general population. Maybe it’s 10% of the black population.

    SNAP (ne Food Stamps) and a mess of initiatives like the School Lunch program were Great Society initiatives and (as we speak) about 25% of the clientele is black. Keep in mind that expenditure on Social Security and expenditure on Medicare and expenditure on Medicaid each exceed that on SHAP and other programs by 10-fold.

    SSI is a program of that era and disproportionately black (blacks are about 2x as likely to be enrolled as others), but it’s a reasonable wager that the difference in propensity to enroll is a function of more blacks qualifying under the provision that grants benefits automatically to people with IQ scores below 60.

    The subsidy for people’s utility bills (LIHEAP) post-dates the Great Society (IIRC, a Carter-era program insisted on by Tip O’Neill when Carter wanted to decontrol prices in the energy sector). There were also a mess of small benefit programs enacted during the Reagan era for AIDS patients.

    The most consequential initiatives of that era in terms of their dimensions were Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare requires buy-in, it’s recipients are the elderly and disabled, and it’s beneficiary population is less likely to be black than the general population. Medicaid has two sides: financing nursing home care (and all but a few go on Medicaid if they’re in a nursing home for any length of time) and financing medical care for people below a certain income threshold who lack employer-provided insurance. Medicaid is a disproportionately black program (about 38% of blacks are enrolled v. 16% of the non-black population). You can make a mess of practical complaints about how these programs are structured, but I wouldn’t offer a normative complaint unless I were going full Ayn Rand.

43. Paying Blacks to breed and continue being dysfunctional. What could possibly go wrong?

    To be fair, the State also pays Black Women to murder their (tautology alert) illegitimate unborn at rate much higher than that of White Women.

    Oh what a tangled web…

    So many Gordian Knots, so few Chainsaws.

    But so much Time.

44. Another thoughtful piece (thoughtful = gives at least minimal credence to the thought that the MAGA movement has legitimate grievances, even if they don’t yet reach the status of unaddressed tort claims*).

    https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-february-2021/round-up-the-ordinary-subjects/
    FEATURES By Nick Cohen January/February 2021

    …cancel culture began with a democratic element. Public shaming relies on tens or hundreds of thousands of social media users following their leaders’ instructions. Mob raisers need mobs. If they declare a pile-on and no one turns up, their authority vanishes. Difficult though I find it to give them credit, cancel culture’s defenders have the right to say that social media gives large numbers of people the power to hold elite individuals and institutions to account.

    Less evident is the ability to direct power from above against ordinary people. For the social justice movement, if I can use the label to capture the whirling confusion of middle-class leftish protest, is not concerned with challenging the elite. It wants to be the elite. As befits a movement staffed by the educated children of the bourgeoisie, its main concern is to control the masses. Average people get abused as regularly as the famous. The socialist concept of oppressive power pressing down from above has been replaced by the Foucauldian notion of oppressive power circulating at all levels via problematic discourses that need to be corrected. Needless to add, those with the time and education to address thought crime are drawn from the ranks of the privileged.
    …
    (Normal people) are targets because the social justice movement wants a revolution in manners of the masses that is beyond the ability of normal democratic politics to achieve. Because the fight is impossible to win by argument, social justice warriors, like all utopians, must resort to duress. The explanation for their authoritarianism is not hard to find if you study their ideology. It could never convince anyone beyond a zealous minority because its ideas are strange beyond measure.
    

    He gives the familiar recitation of the DiAngelo-Kendi Social Justice White Fragility Anti-Racist hustle.

    The social justice movement appears to be concerned about racism but it does not understand that true racists work hard at being racists. White supremacists notice every black and brown face. Antisemites compile lists of Jews in politics and the media. Racists are like snobs: they are always on duty, always finding reasons to justify their superiority and contempt. You can only believe that the unconscious biases of “white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of colour” if you choose to minimise actual racists.

    He explains how the SJWs are not actually trying to do anything productive to decrease racist oppression, should any actually exist in today’s world, by using existing laws and procedures (he does not mention that most or even all of the race-adjacent atrocities of the Smollett variety have been revealed, upon sober investigation, as hoaxes).

    In 1961, Martin Luther King wrote from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, to clergymen who tut-tutted that the civil rights movement was breaking the law as it fought segregation and the denial of the franchise. “The shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” he said.

    The MLK quote impressed me as applying to the current situation of the Right, which is ironic, since the Left condemns conservatives wholesale as White Supremacists, even if they are not of Anglo-Saxon heritage.
    However, more than one public & private pundit (blogger / journalists & commenters) has pointed out that the fury of the MAGA movement is directed at the NeverTrump & RINO & GOPe “conservatives” even more than at the open and stealth Left (Antifa / BLM & Democrat Media).

    I believe that is because the Establishment Republicans, in general, have forfeited the presumption of being “people of good will” because of their back-handed, reluctant, or non-existent support of the middle-class populace, the government policies that would help both them and the “marginalized” people the Left at least claims to champion, and the specific person selected by the majority of conservative voters in 2016 to lead the party.

    You can think today’s theorists are merely echoing him (MLK) until you look at what they want, which is miles away from the concrete demands of radical politics.

    Indeed, they treat concrete improvements with intense suspicion.

    Cynical Theories, Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay’s history of 50 years of intellectual history, is essential reading because it shows how apparently reasonable demands for a more just society can take an authoritarian turn.

    Their argument will be familiar to most readers here; if not, I recommend reading the long discussion in the cited post, and the book.

    As is becoming clear, a free society cannot remain free if it attempts to implement this ideology.
    …
    A few years ago, you would hear people say that political correctness was just modern politeness. Now the arts, liberal press, publishing and academia are being torn apart by demands to blacklist and ban. Movements that once had emancipatory potential have degenerated. They wanted to recognise queer identities or to stop governments from trying to persuade people with disabilities to adapt themselves to society and work a little harder on persuading society to adapt itself to them. Now they have been taken over by heresy hunters scouring social media to find and punish unbelievers.

    In other words, having been “victorious” in one “request” after another (you will all remember the examples justifying the sarc quotes), the Left consistently refuses to take “yes” for an answer, and instead proceeds immediately to the next level of the 1984 Social Justice MMORPG.

    Except they are operating in real-space-time using on-line tools, are not role-playing but are in deadly earnest (even though they do take on a pretend-role when they need to conceal their true agenda), and this is not a game to the people whose lives they have destroyed, and will continue to destroy.

    * * *

    * * *
    *Although some of the harms to individuals or conservative groups might constitute actionable torts, and that route should be addressed; perhaps the Right should consider using the sue-and-settle example of the Left, should there ever again be a Conservative administration (h/t and wink to Art Deco)

45. Neo & Geoffrey: I don’t think we should discount the possibility that President Trump is still suffering residual health problems from his bout with Covid; apparently, many people do (including my DiL).

46. Another PowerLine headline Pick, from the Libertarians, debunking (or at least claiming to) the It Was Antifa! believers.

    I have not attempted to verify his sources, but am putting all of that in the “3 day rule” quarantine until reputable reports sort out who did what.

    https://reason.com/2021/01/07/antifa-violence-trump-capitol-riot/?utm_medium=email

    However, I will say that Reason’s story list at their home page is another example of the acute cognitive dissonance of the right-wing-ish outlets that simultaneously hate on Trump, advocate policies he enacts (sometimes crediting him and sometimes not), and fume at the Democrats’ plans and now-publicly-admitted agenda.

47. Steven Hayward’s post at City Journal is less caustic and more sober than most offerings on the right yesterday and today, but even his Lincoln example misfires IMNVHO.

    https://www.city-journal.org/the-end-of-trump

    The Fast Fisk version (my comments in parentheses)

    “No grievance,” Lincoln said, “is a fit object of redress by mob law.” … Trump, still the party’s leader, badly misjudged the effect of his words and deeds on the Georgia Senate races, and on the crowd gathered in Washington to support him the next day.
    (agreed, but was the riot started by Antifa? opinions differ)

    Now would be a good time for everyone—especially Republicans—to reread Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address of 1838, which warned against the threat of mob rule alongside the peril of overweening political ambition. Though the speech’s language and style are archaic, its message is just as timely now as it was then, and for the same reason: political violence, whether localized in Portland, Oregon, or the nation’s capital by a comparatively small number of people, is a harbinger of the end of democratic self-government if it grows more frequent.
    (it’s too late to ask Democrats to read it)

    …(Lincoln) directly criticized the mob actions of abolitionists, whose aim he shared, but whose violent means, he saw, would undermine their goal
    (they didn’t stop and the Union won)

    How we are to judge when our government is trampling our natural rights such as to trip the Declaration’s right of revolution is a difficult matter, but it is doubtful that Lincoln would have thought that the allegations of vote fraud rise to that awful threshold.
    (allegations no, proof yes)

    The controversy over the fairness of the recent election needs to be seen in a broader context of the broad swath of the American people—perhaps a majority—who believe that the government is not presently protecting their individual rights and the principle of self-government. This is a serious issue—maybe the central issue—in our politics today. Judging the scene, and what to do about it, are matters requiring statesmanship of the highest order.
    (Lincoln was accused by the South and some Northeners of becoming the Caesar he warned against)

    Donald Trump has shown great perception of the defects of our political order; he has had many salutary achievements in office; he has fought hard for worthy objects against the intransigent opposition of the permanent government; his love of country is undoubted; he has given new hope to many unheard and hitherto unrespected Americans.
    At the same time, his reckless public pronouncements have fallen short of the standard of the high statesmanship most needed—never more so than his remarks on the Capitol Mall on Wednesday. He has left himself vulnerable to the charge that he will exit office amid a flurry of “pulling down” not only fellow partisans, but the very institutions of our government itself.
    (if he hadn’t given an alleged pretext the Left would have still done something)

48. AesopFan:

    I have thought of the COVID residual effects angle as a possible influence. But basically, I think he is exhausted emotionally and physically. I can’t even imagine the stresses of being president for a day, much less 4 years, and after a long and grueling campaign, and at his age. Then to be under seige the entire time, the way he has been – absolutely incredible. Then to get COVID in the middle of the campaign home stretch and debates – dreadful. To recover quickly and keep campaigning – amazing. And then to lose to Biden, a barely-functioning mediocrity who hardly left his own home? And to lose under such suspicious circumstances with so many reports of fraud? And then to even have the Senate slip away? And to know that they will be out to get you and your family for the rest of your life?

    I think it’s astounding that he functions at all.

49. “I have been one of those harping on the need for documenting specific and direct evidence of Democrat electoral fraud.” – DNW

    In the spirit of the video you linked, here is the full 2-part Navarro Report detailing some of the “baseless” claims that are “without evidence.”
    https://navarroreport.com/

    This is the Georgia Senate Subcommittee report of December 3, 2020, which was getting some traction until the train ran off the rails yesterday.

    http://www.senatorligon.com/THE_FINAL%20REPORT.PDF

    There should be video of the Senators who spoke Wednesday before the “riot” happened.
    It was here yesterday, but don’t know if it’s still accessible, or available elsewhere. The DDG search is all taken up by the pontificating on the riots themselves.

    https://livestream.com/fednet/senate

    Any one know where to find a video?

50. Eva Marie recommended Scott Adams’ podcast #1245 today.
    He has others up from before the fracas, on the election itself.

    https://www.scottadamssays.com/2021/01/07/episode-1245-scott-adams-lets-discuss-the-capitol-protest-and-elon-musks-prediction/
    Content: 1245

    We NEED to know elections are credible
    Why not take 10 days for a confidence audit?
    We NEED an honest free press…we don’t have one
    Supporting protests while condemning violence
    NO fraud evidence has been court reviewed
    Why they don’t want Assange free to speak

    https://www.scottadamssays.com/2021/01/06/episode-1244-scott-adams-in-hindsight-a-more-transparent-election-mightve-been-a-good-idea/
    Content: 1244
    The lack of a transparent, credible election
    Refusal to even allow evaluation of the evidence
    A failure of government
    A need to treat corruption concerns fairly
    Congress is a disaster
    Should social media manipulate public opinion?

    https://www.scottadamssays.com/2021/01/06/episode-1243-scott-adams-part1-georgia-election-credibility-and-where-do-we-go-from-here/

    https://www.scottadamssays.com/2021/01/06/episode-1243-scott-adams-part2-georgia-election-credibility-and-where-do-we-go-from-here/

    Content: 1243-1&2

    Your age and believing election fraud
    Stacey Abrams won Georgia
    ALL the exact same questionable behavior?
    Ranking the credibility of various fraud claims
    What will VP Pence do?

    * * *
    Got to admit I’m curious about his thoughts on Abrams.
    Maybe I’ll listen sometime, but I dislike podcasts & much prefer written essays.

51. neo @ 10:03,

    I entirely agree. The man has proven to be a force of nature but even nature has its limits.

    For someone to have exceeded his fortitude under the conditions you have described would IMO take a direct connection to God. It is apparently true that all to often great men have great flaws. I perceive Trump to have demonstrated both qualities. How much more could he have accomplished were he less abrasive and not been opposed by ideologues who have proven themselves to be incapable of moral self-examination?

52. Aesopfan,

    I find it a bit distressing and more than a bit frustrating when public commentators fail to grasp the nature of their political opponents. Adams’ advice would be entirely appropriate for politics previous to Goldwater- Johnson. Back then the majority on both sides, in the main agreed with Moynihan that politics stops at the water’s edge.

    Today, the left’s ideological goal is to transform America into an Oligarchy ruled Marxist State. Failing that, they’ll happily settle for its destruction.

    “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.” George Soros

    That’s not a POV that is open to compromise or limitations to any degree. I suspect, based on their words and actions that at least 90% of Congressional democrats privately share Soros’ viewpoint. And we now know that 90% of Congressional Republicans accept the shredding of a Constitution they’ve “freely and without reservation” sworn to defend.

    Most relevant to our current situation is that a substantial percentage of Americans share Soros’ point of view.

53. Episode 1243 part 1 ends in the middle of ranking credibility of claims.
    The Abrams thing was not “she really should be the governor” but “she is an influencer who swayed the opinion of many many people” thus probably contributing to the Democrat win.

    Adams is a slow talker, and very repetitive, and deals in thought-experiments rather than evidence (by his own admissions that he hasn’t tried to research the various claims and counter-claims).
    However, he does know something about how people think, and respond to propaganda and narratives.
    There was nothing substantially new to informed readers.
    HOWEVER he noted one “fail” by the Democrats and issued one challenge.
    (1) Given the allegations about the Presidential election, Georgia needed to avoid some of the most contentious behaviors, which were (a) stopping the count overnight; (b) blocking observers.
    They committed both infractions again.
    (2) in response to charges that Trump’s vote counts went down, the counter-claim is that they were normal human data-entry errors that were reversed, which did not satisfy the objectors. A proper proof would have been to show that was at least one instance where the vote total for the Democrat went down. Very simple – they haven’t shown one yet.

    Listen if you have nothing better to do or are washing the dishes.

54. “I find it a bit distressing and more than a bit frustrating when public commentators fail to grasp the nature of their political opponents. Adams’ advice would be entirely appropriate for politics previous to Goldwater- Johnson.” – Geoffrey

    Hasn’t that been the driving story since November 2016?
    We have too many pundits who are either operating in a fantasy world, or complicit with the Opposition.

    Case in point: look at this story from last August that I pulled from New York Post to make another point, and then what they are running today. How can they be so disconnected after what the Democrats did to them over the Hunter Biden laptop story??!!

    Then:
    https://nypost.com/2020/08/30/blm-activists-celebrated-as-trump-supporter-killed-devine/

    It’s spine-chilling to hear activists in Portland cheering about the cold-blooded murder of a Trump supporter Saturday night.
    …
    Wheeler doesn’t seem to understand that the more he appeases the mob, the more they demand. These are not peaceful protests. They are organized anti-police riots, marked by arson and property destruction. Yet Wheeler never says a word of criticism for the thugs. He only tries to find ways of satisfying their absurd demands.
    …
    Instead of expressing condolences to the family of the dead man, vowing that the perpetrators would be brought to justice or saying he would finally accept a standing offer of help from President Trump, Wheeler chose to make a political campaign speech attacking Trump: “Now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create. What America needs is for you to be stopped.”

    Wheeler must have received the panicked memo from Biden campaign HQ after polls in swing states started moving toward the president over law-and-order fears in Middle America.

    The Republican convention last week successfully pinned the riots in Democrat-run cities on Joe Biden and his supporters.

    How the Democrats didn’t see the backlash coming illustrates just what a bubble they are in.

    Now, after mentioning not one word about violence in their cities at the Democratic convention, they acknowledge it by trying to blame Trump.

    Biden issued a statement Sunday, saying “we must not become a country that accepts the killing of fellow Americans who do not agree with you.”

    He should direct that comment at the BLM-Antifa ghouls celebrating the Portland murder victim’s death.

    “What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters,” said Biden.

    But it is not Trump who has been inciting violent riots and disempowering police, it is Democrats.

    Now:
    https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/trump-destroys-republican-party-on-way-out-the-door-devine/
    (same writer)

    https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/president-trumps-utterly-disgraceful-utterly-selfish-finale/

    https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/trump-is-responsible-for-this-day-of-infamy-in-america-goodwin/

    If you click and read, take a look at their past posts in their side-bars.

    Schizoid much?

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