Fusion GPS is a firm that is very important to anyone that wants to understand what is really happening relative to Russia.
Yet Democrats now have meekly and noiselessly retreated, agreeing to let both men speak to the committee in private. Why would they so suddenly be willing to let go of this moment of political opportunity?
Fusion GPS. That’s the oppo-research outfit behind the infamous and discredited “Trump dossier,” ginned up by a former British spook. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson also was supposed to testify at the Grassley hearing, where he might have been asked in public to reveal who hired him to put together the hit job on Mr. Trump, which was based largely on anonymous Russian sources. Turns out Democrats are willing to give up just about anything—including their Manafort moment—to protect Mr. Simpson from having to answer that question.
It is becoming more and more clear that the "Trump Dossier", that sordid document of urinating hookers cavorting with the germaphobe Donald in Russia, was paid for by the left.
It has also become VERY clear that the motive of the Russians relative to our elections was --- wait for it ... to sow chaos and pit both sides against each other. Mission accomplished.
When your state apparatus has the same ability to self-manage as a dog does with a ball, or a cat does with a laser light, you have a problem. We clearly do. All that needs be said is"Trump!" and our entire media and Deep State skitter toward the proffered tidbit in a frenzy. The left isn't even human anymore, they are a puppy with a shoe called Trump.
I have no interest in the "shithole" controversy because it came from "unnamed sources" in a "closed meeting". Respectable media and people ignore those who traffic in rumor and innuendo from a "closed meeting". When they don't, there is no trust or truth, and fake manipulation wins out over reality. To wit:
The meeting was CLOSED -- **IF** it was said, it should not have left the meeting.
CERTAINLY, the "leaker(s)" and the media that spread it had and have an agenda and it is to manipulate the sheep against Trump.
**IF** it was said, it was denied, both by Trump and others at the meeting, then it was CERTAINLY not some "important policy position". **IF** it was said, it might have been a "slip", it may have been just "tough talk you can use in closed meetings", OR, it could have been Trump putting something out to play the media cycle ... (**IF** he said it, that is my guess. He was sick of hearing about "the book" ).
Sadly, this sort of "shit" is what we deal with in BOistan ... the vast majority of the sheeple play the stupid media games, so prima donnas like Cory Booker shreik about what is "unacceptable" -- cry me a river Booker, this is why Trump was elected.
How this stuff plays out in the tribal media is really sad to watch. NPR has already converted this "leak" to a "fact" -- with multiple stories asking "What do YOU think of the RACIST LANGUAGE used by Trump to refer to PEOPLE from these countries!". It's classic "Dog Whistling" ... you manufacture a "controversy" that is essentially about nothing (The Seinfeld schtick), but makes some sort of marketing (or negative marketing) "point". You could just as well say "Trump is a crude racist unqualified to be president" ... which they do, frequently, but saying the same thing over and over gets old, you need "variety". Why not call your "variety" a "fact"? It's all marketing.
The Homeland Security Secretary happened to deny under oath that Trump said the supposedly offensive comment in a meeting that was supposed to be closed -- I would have preferred that she would have said "I don't comment on what is said in closed meetings", but we don't live in America anymore. We live in BOistan, where AMAZINGLY, Cory Booker is actually a SENATOR! I guess NJ must really be a "shithole"!
"Shit" is certainly a lowest common denominator human substance -- the issue is what does one DO with it? In the "shithole countries", one doesn't bother to keep it separate from drinking water, which means that Cholera is a major isssue, and humans literally shit themselves to death. Both shit and Cholera are completely color blind. Shit happens to all people, and Cholera is a completely color blind killer. Drink water contaminated with shit, and you have a really really high chance of dying! We ARE all equal in SOME ways -- the idea of America vs BOistan is that we were once able to realize that we really don't want to be equal in ALL ways!
In America, the idea was that we would ADVANCE from that lowest common denominator and aspire to levels where we wouldn't drink our own (and others) shit. Clearly NPR and Cory Booker are appalled that there are still people hanging around BOistan that believe in ridiculous things like "closed meetings", "honoring oaths", and even attempting to have some sort of "standards". Get rid of those "standards", and it tends to be not very long before you are literally drinking shit, rather than just drinking it figurativly since you have bought into things like this whole "shithole controversy".`
And so I get exposed to a lot of fecal material when I listen to NPR ... I just hope that I have enough other media sources and character to innoculate me against catching any diseases!
The Wizard of Oz is often an apt metaphor for the machinations of "The Party" (TP-D) ... the best scene is "the man behind the curtain" ... sometimes even when we see that Oz is just a media illusion, they decide to change up "the man behind the curtain" to further confuse the weak minded, as in this case ...
In his column McCarthy shows the Times sending its previous origin story down the memory hole. The Times has sent it down the memory hole in order to rewrite the history it previously served up. The Times has a new origin story in the putative collusion case. Where once was Carter Page, now is George Papadopoulos.
Because TP has so much power, and because the bulk of that power is unacknowledged -- eg. the media is supposedly "unbiased", the Administrative / Deep State is still supposed to be fiction, BOTH the "powers behind the curtain", AND "reality" itself are regularly manipulated.
Take Benghazi -- four Americans, 3 SEALS and the US Ambassador were killed, the US Embassy was overrun. These are actually FACTS in the real world -- both political sides agree that these happened. However in the Benghazi case, TP tells us that not only are we to pay no attention to the "man behind the curtain", but to reality itself! Nothing to see here folks "all caused by a movie" ... move along. The FACTS hang in some limbo land where "nobody is responsible". Four lives are lost because of ???? . well in this case, maybe a movie ... "But, what difference -- at this point, what difference does it make"?
In the Russian collusion case, 18 months after we were aprised of the supposed "crime", we still have nothing at all to show for that "crime". Even stranger, let's assume "collusion" was real. What pray tell was the mechanism to influence the election? The Russians bought some Facebook Ads? They helped some news outlet somewhere put out a "fake story"? They put drugs in the water in IA, WI, MI and PA? HOW did they "manipulate the election"? The mind boggles -- we are daily being hammered with the importance of investigating the "collusion to subvert our 2016 election" yet, could someone give us SOME idea as to what such "subversion" would entail?
So it is hard to figure out "how", it is impossible to figure out "why". The core of the Russian economy is energy -- they paid upwards of $50 million to "The Clinton Fund" (funds for Clintons) to capture 20% of the urainium in N America. We know that the Russians have spent 10's of millions funding anti-fracking groups. So riddle me this, which candidate was anti-fracking?? Yup, Hillary -- Hillary WINNING was in the best interest of the Russians! Bernie wiunning would have been even BETTER! My guess is that their e-mail hacking was in hopes of helping Bernie -- but of course the primaries were RIGGED! Poor Russians, stuck with pro-fracking Trump!
My mind goes back to the possibility of floridated water ... perhaps that is how they "subverted the election"???
We live in a nation where most of the media -- NY Times, WaPo, the TV networks, CNN, NPR, etc are fully dedicated to the advancement of TP and it's agenda to the exclusion of all else -- especially "facts". The fact that BO was saying that any questioning of the election was tantamount to treason just over two weeks prior to the election in 2016 is WELL down the memory hole! Over a year later, questioning the election is a full time job for most of the MSM ... although any sort of hint as to "how" the nefarious Ruskies might have pulled it off is conspicuously missing, let alone "why". Motive? TRUMP! It seems plenty for the MSM -- their power comes from unicorn farts.
The McCarthy column is well worth the read ... we are so far down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass and following the yellow brick road that any attempt for most of the public to see any sort of facsimilie of "reality" from here is quite impossible.
Could it be that enough people voted for Trump in mostly "red" areas that care VERY little about Russians, Facebook, the MSM, TP, or really ANY kind of news ... "fake" or otherwise to get him elected, and now, even though we were ASSURED by the MSM that he would ABSOLUTELY wreck the economy, the Dow has gone over 25K?, they are really finding things not so very bad after his election at all?
"Deplorables" get confused -- because we have been assured that it isn't going to go below zero anymore, we ran out of oil in the 1970's, Reagan blew us all up in the 1980's, and the "era of big government" was over in the late '90s ... it is just too confusing for us stupid folks!
Either more of the the Republican party will eventually "grow a set", or it will continue to fade. I sat in a cafe this AM and the TV was 100% various hand wringing about the 35+ year old "acusations" aginst Roy Moore. A couple of weeks ago we had FBI documentation that the Clinton's and BO sold 20% of our urainum reserves to the Russians for north of $100 million to the Clintons alone, plus a bunch of sordid kickbacks, payoffs, etc. Not really MSM newsworthy -- certainly no wall to wall coverage.
Then we had other FBI information showing that the DNC paid to work with Russians to dig up dirt on Trump to influence the election -- the DNC in fact admitted it. Not really newsworthy -- certainly not a "scandal".
Slick Willie received much fresher charges of RAPE, along with all sorts of groping, dropping trou, etc, etc, but all those were of no concern because they were "just sex". God only knows what he did decades prior to being Arkansas governor -- nobody really cares. He is a D. Oh ... and he as been on the "Lolita Express" a whole bunch, but that is just "circumstantial" ... he has certainly never shown any pattern of liking younger women! Oh, the Lolita Express thing isn't really "news", because it is only on "biased sites" .... and we KNOW that the MSM is not biased!
Can Trump manage to fashion a party that at least folds like damp cardboard rather than like a wet paper bag? Certainly I don't expect that one would even want to create a party as shameless as the D's, but does it REALLY damage you to AT LEAST question accusations that are over 35 years old and have never surfaced before?
The ONLY thing that the RNC ought to care about in Alabama is JUST WIN BABY! Trump campaigned for Moore's primary opponent. Look at the charges, decide if Moore still has the best chance or not, and then DECIDE!
Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES however does it make sense to run like 14 year old girls from 35+ year old charges. What were Democrat Senators doing 35 years ago? Hey, go out and at least make up a charge so they can deny it! Politics is STILL not bean bag!
Should Republicans have "higher standards"? SURE! But unless they are killing their current young secretaries, that really isn't much of a bar to get over is it?
Oh the sanctimony --- you CAN'T be a "Christian / Conservative / principled / etc" if you don't rush out and gratuiously castigate Roy Moore even if you don't live within a thousand miles of Alabama! Really? Do Republican idiots REALLY want to subscribe to the "standard" that 35 year old charges that have never shown up before and can't possibly be "proven" are an appropirate litmus test for a candidate???
Who amoung us is secure from some woman coming forward and making such a charge? Remember, she would be a DEMOCRAT -- the sort of women that said they would be happy to give Bill Clinton a blow job anytime while he was being charged with a long list of harrassment charges. Do you REALLY think that such a woman is going to pause for one second to make an old charge against an R to take them down? Who is even going to run for a party stupid enough to throw in the towel because "the charges sound bad" ?
The Democrat party is PROUD to have ZERO standards other than WIN! We just need an opposition party that sets the bar higher than proven sex at the office, killing your secretary, and not selling major US assets to our enemies for payoffs.
We all live within our own networks, systems, communities, clans, tribes, etc. Usually we don't really think about it much -- they "just are" ... like fish talking about being wet.
Hollywood, the Main Stream Media, the professionals, the "elite", they are all part of "The Party" (TP-D) ... you have to be if you want to be "elite". It is like the old USSR, or NAZI Germany, there is ONE real party of power, and membership is required if you want to be a power player. Sure, the US still has the ILLUSION of two parties, but the biggest service Trump has given us is smoking out that fantasy ... McCain, Flake, Corker, Snow ... and in many ways Ryan, McConnel and many others are more TP than the official TP folks with Ds next to their names!
They do the bidding of The Swamp ... the Administrative State, Davos, etc, and going against them gets you attacked "Bigly" ... see Trump!
The article doesn't mean to tell you how TP operates, but it does. We all know that the NY Times was sitting on Weinstein dirt for over a decade -- they were a major PART of the "racket" they suddenly claim to stand boldly against in this teary little column.
The racket is a formidable opponent for anyone who is trying to expose the truth. It uses everything at its disposal to wear down reporters or break their wills, either by wooing them with invitations to premieres, access to stars and, in some cases, possible book and movie deals.
TP is the BIG "racket", and it's tentacles include the Deep / Administrative State! See "Trump Dossier", courtesy of the DNC now ADMITTING to funding it ... with some level of complicity from the FBI, and likely CIA. Now THAT is a "racket", and the NY Times is right in the middle of that one as well!
As I've said before, the ability of Trump to take these folks on is AMAZING!
There are two answers to that. The scientific answer; TWO ... women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y, and the "socially constructed" answer which is somewhere north of 50 as we write this with FB still clinging to 58 genders and other gender sites north of 70 and rising.
Can a Democratic candidate for president answer to how many genders there are? I doubt it.
Coughlin went on: “A Democratic Party that can’t tell me how many genders there are, that ain’t flying in this country.”
I'm not so sure of that claim -- we DO have gay "marriage", and there is a whole bunch of "transgender" stuff floating around in a lot of states. Is it more "anti-science" to believe in 50+ genders, or to imagine that there could be other things responsible for climate change on planet earth given ice core data?
The columnist informs us that there are NOW two definitions of truth in the US.
There are now two definitions of truth in the United States. The first is that a truthful statement is one that conforms to facts or reality. By this standard, President Trump is a serial liar.
The second is that truth is “telling it like it is,” or speaking in a direct, unvarnished way without regard to political correctness or the offense it may give. By this measure, for millions of supporters, Trump is the most honest president ever.
So which standard would a media that reports there are 50+ genders and that Anthropogenic Global Warming is "settled science" be adhereing to? "facts/reality", or "speaking directly"? How about "If you like your health insurance you can keep it?"
Trump winks at white supremacists, thrives on confrontation and debases the Oval Office.
I remain completely baffled how anyone could "debase the Oval Office" after Slick Willie stained it indellibly and the same sort of folks as the guy writing the column defended his right to ejaculation at the office with a female employee -- a "right" shared in very few offices in the US. It has been well debased already, I've seen no "debasement" from Trump that even holds a candle to Slick. I found BO's "apology tour" to well exceed anything from Trump so far.
Trump certainly DOES thrive on confrontation -- many politicians have, BO certainly did, as well as Slick Willie and to some degree Reagan. "Winks at white supremacists"? Yes, I understand the media sorely wants that to be the Trump MO, however that doesn't really fit under the "conforms to facts or reality" rubric, does it?
Fake News has been the coin of the left for longer than my lifetime. Certainly once the "Fairness Doctrine" (only left wing news allowed!) was dropped, Fox and talk radio started doing it as well, but this is much like teens discovering, OMG! Mom and Dad must have had sex!
The bottom line here is that at least some folks on the left are starting to figure out that their odds of impeaching Trump are not what they had hoped, and their odds of beating him are certainly not a dead certainty.
I've read quite a bit of Haidt (pronounced "height"). Happiness Hypothesis, and Righteous Mind being examples -- in general he is a very smart guy and I enjoy his perspective.
It is a bit funny how in "Righteous", Jonathan points out that liberals claim to be virtually immune to "sanctity/degradation" relative to sexual mores because they have been so indoctrinated that no matter how "yucky" some sex act is, as long as it "doesn't harm anyone" (temporally, they don't believe in eternity), "it's OK". Of course, when asked about things like a guy taking a chicken home from the grocery store, warming it up a bit and having sex with it, a PET scan showed that the old tired morality centers of their brains were screaming "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" as God intended -- they had just been socialized to lie about it, so they claimed it didn't bother them.
Who says indoctrination doesn't work? (at least if one can't peek at the wetware (brain))
Haidt seems to have the hypothesis that while lefties have managed to get vast swaths of humans to deny and lie about their sense of sexual sanctity/degradation wired in by either many 10's of thousands of years of evolution or divine design. OTOH, somehow within the last "30 years or so" (being charitable -- BO and Hilly were against gay "marriage" in '08), sanctity/degradation about the KKK, created by Democrats in 1865 and being recruited for by Robert Byrd up to the 1950's is going to be absolutely the end of Republicans!
In that moment, Trump committed the gravest act of sacrilege of his presidency. In that moment, the president rendered himself untouchable by all who share the belief that Nazis and the KKK are not just bad—they are taboo.
"NAZI" of course stands for "National Socialist", and the party of socialism isn't the Republican party. KKK is a creation of DEMOCRATS, who were the party of slavery and Jim Crow for well over 100 years. Isn't it amazing how "sacrilege" fails to stick to Democrats? Yes, yes, I understand that the idea that "right" is "nazi" has been more marketed than lite beer, but I'm just not the lite beer sort. I'm guessing that Haidt has bought into it -- no matter how smart you are, marketing tends to work unless you are the sort of iconoclast that is WAY more disbelieving in human wisdom than someone tearing down monuments
This is why, for many Americans, things feel so unsettled this week. Extraordinary sacrilege has occurred, but divine retribution has not yet come down from the heavens, and we have no priest and no scripture to guide us. The world is out of balance, and America can’t just go on as before.
Yes, but can BOistan? America would have had to have a Constitutional Amendment to kill 60 million babies in their mothers wombs, it would have impeached AND removed from office any cad who would stain the oval office (literally) (Slick Willie), and it CERTAINLY would have had a Constitutional Amendment before there was such a wacko thing as gay "marriage".
I understand that Haidt can't go there, but doesn't his PET scanner give him a little insight to what ACTUAL sanctity/sacrilege/degradation looks like when something as basic to the species and every human religion in history as gender is supposedly beyond figuring out?
What is "sacred" in BOistan? I'm not so certain that divine retribution isn't raining down constantly ... people are dying in droves from suicide, substance abuse and just plain old hopelessness. Compared to what I grew up in, and certainly the '80's and the '90s, this is HELL -- hundreds of young black men die in just Chicago at each other's hands every year now ... thousands across the nation in other Democrat controlled cities. MUST the wrath of God be mass plague, nuclear war, dogs and cats living together?
I DO understand the marketing -- we are all supposed to decide that some tiny rump remnant of old National Socialists or Robert Byrd recruited KKK is "a big threat", while an Administrative State with it's roughly 14 million workers when fully accounted for is "nothing to worry about". Haidt would like it if our very paganized state of BOistan deeply felt "sacrilege" --- but how are we to do so when we have been indoctrinated to believe that the ultimate good is "equality and tolerance"? If you remove all distinctions and claim anything goes, how well does the "except THIS!" really work? (we believe the science except for that X and Y chromosome thing)
The truly strange thing is that if the universally left wing reviled Trump tweet ... "We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!" was said by a previous president (not that many of them could actually state something that succinctly), it would sound dangerously like a boring platitude. It is the horror of TRUMP that creates the hysteria.
I understand that to the ruling elite and media, "Trump and reviled" are synonyms, however does that REALLY sound any different from what you would have heard from every president in your lifetime? Certainly our betters have TOLD us that BLM, Antifa, and even "Islamic Terrorists" are not violent (and in the case of self labeled Islamic, they aren't even Islamic), but DOES ANYONE SANE BELIEVE THEM if you PET scanned their brain?
We need to remember the smarter old Bill ... or William S
“I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?”
Are there any pockets remaining in the US that don't know what they are SUPPOSED to think? My sense is that is precisely why there is Trump. I'm actually not the only one that quit buying "The Party" (TP-D) mass marketing sometime around when Slick shook his finger at me and said that I better quit making a spectacle of "his privates".
This is BOistan, not "America" ... that was a nice place with God, churches, intact families, common decency, respect for the Constitution, freedom of speech, hard work, individual responsibility ... you know, that kind of tired old crap that our modern schools and TP detest!
Taboo? Is that a science guy thing?
Yes, the name of "progressivism" is to create constant new realities at each instant, and given the wonders of modern marketing, to make sure everyone at least claims to buy these new realities.
But how does the more ancient brain behave? Haidt would seem to know -- he has seen that even with full modern indoctrination, the underlying wetware still signals the actual OLD taboo, the question is just if you can condition the subject to lie as long as you watch them. But what if you are not watching -- or your "subject" doesn't actually give a rats ass for your conditioning?
Certainly Haidt is indoctrinated enough to believe (at least for publication) that National Socialists and the KKK have been "rebranded" to fit the current narrative, but DOES IT WORK? Are we truly as "the flies of summer", or is there a wee bit more in the human core -- perhaps, dare I say it, even a SOUL?
I keep wondering if deep down Jonathan has not studied a bit too much too deeply and might end up having a dark night of the soul. I pray that he does. I believe that our time frame is a LOT longer than the past 50ish years of heavy duty progressive indoctrination -- as in eternal.
In these days of zero memory, it is so laughable to go WAY back to January 2015 before the primaries had got going. French goes through a bunch of mental gymnastics as to why the "establishment" like Trump better than Ctuz, but I think the reason is obvious. They thought Cruz might beat Hillary and they were CERTAIN that Trump would not. "The estabishment" in both parties preferred Hillary over either Cruz or Trump, and they were starting to see how weak the other R candidates were.
The establishment’s anti-Cruz faction sees the real-estate mogul as more capable of bringing disaffected Democrats to the GOP, and thus potentially more capable of defeating Hillary Clinton. They’ve developed a grudging respect for his success, and a hope for what it augurs, since one does not remain a going concern at such stratospheric levels without an ability to adapt and compromise. Though they still think he’d lose to Clinton, they’ve stopped waiting for his campaign to fall apart, and they’re noticing that he represents a classic constituency — Jacksonian America — that is in many ways perceived as less radical than Cruz’s grassroots army.
The failure of the GOP to repeal BOcare has convinced me that they had decided to sit this one out, let Hillary and the Davos crowd keep driving the bus, while the sitting GOP Congressmen and Senators kept riding the gravy train. The election of Trump was and is as painful for guys like Ryan, McConnel, McCain, etc as it is for D's ... maybe more so, since the R's have been exposed as the feckless liars that they are. Promising since '10 to "REPEAL BOcare!" ... and then not doing it when they have control!
As an avid NPR listener, I DO know how I am SUPPOSED to think about Charlottesville. Charlottesville is FINALLY the turning point for Trump. It unmasks him completely as the racist he has always been and shows once and for all that conservatism is racism! It's SIMPLE, as the positions of NPR tend to be -- oh, and if you refuse to agree with this obvious truth, then you too are a RACIST -- end of story. There are correct thinking progressives -- Democrats, the MSM, etc, and then there are the racists. We live in a very simple and easy to understand world -- at least for the standard NPR listener.
The linked article gets long, but it can be summarized in a valid fashion pretty easily -- you won't get it all from here, but you will get the sense of it.
The ALT-right is the modern equivalent of the campus radical left "Weathermen", etc from the 1960's. Acolytes of Saul Alinsky -- rebel revolutionaries and faux revolutionaries like Tom Hayden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (Obama worked as a "Community Organizer", the main foot soldier in the Alinsky revolutionary vision). The key words are YOUNG, radical and transgressive ... as the young often are.
The '60's lefty revolutionaries grew up and became Senators, Presidents and such -- somewhat less rabid than when they were young, but still with the same far left views. The left grew up, suffered under Reagan, then mostly took over the levers of power and gave us a stagnant economy, gay "marriage" and gender confusion -- not everyone was excited about these developments, so now the youth are "Alt-Right".
These young rebels, a subset of the alt-right, aren’t drawn to it because of an intellectual awakening, or because they’re instinctively conservative. Ironically, they’re drawn to the alt-right for the same reason that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s: because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don’t understand.
Of course, just as was the case in history, the parents and grandparents just won’t understand, man. That’s down to the age difference. Millennials aren’t old enough to remember the Second World War or the horrors of the Holocaust. They are barely old enough to remember Rwanda or 9/11. Racism, for them, is a monster under the bed, a story told by their parents to frighten them into being good little children.
Naturally, the dried up leftist old fogies like Hillary, BO, Bernie, Nancy and their buddies at all the major news outlets want to go as negative as they possibly can on the Alt-Right, so it is important for them to link the group with skinheads, National Socialists, white supremacists, etc, and those groups of course DO exist, just like the Black Panthers, Students For a Democratic Society, SLA (kidnapped Patty Hearst), Charlie Manson, etc existed in the '60s ... and the "right" attempted to tie them to the general anti-war, peace, free love movement. (when the media is on the other side, it never works)
Repudiating National Socialists, skinheads and actual white supremacists is great and correct. We don't want to be like the left is with "Black Lives Matter", Nation of Islam and Islam itself. BLM is obviously a black racist group that needed to be repudiated from the left a thousand times over, but of course it has not been. Likewise, the difficulty which BO had with uttering the term "Islamic Terrorism" would be funny if it were not so sad.
The problem is that since the left media is dominant, and the left are EXPERTS at identity politics, Trump is on very dangerous ground here. He would have been FAR better off sticking with his initial statement about "ALL SIDES". Absent the old world of actual principle -- eg. "we all revere God, Country, the Constitution, Apple Pie and Chevrolet", the "burn your bad actor "allies"" strategy is only demanded of one side. BO can cozy up to BLM even when they are yelling "Pigs in blankets, fry em like bacon!" with no MSM outcry to "repudiate BLM"!. (why would the media want to repudiate BLM? they are on the same side!!!) In a world with no actual shared values, WINNING is the only "value" that counts.
Racism is indeed wrong, although it is inherent in the human condition. "White Privilege" is the current black equivalent of calling whites the equivalent of the N-word. Every white has it, they can't escape it, it is evil, it invalidates whites, etc ... They are a bunch of white N-words! We all have racism in our DNA -- the magic for the left is to be allowed to use it for their side BOTH to make their own identity groups (BLM) feel superior, but to label the other side as "bad racist", while blacks braying about "white privilege" have "dog whistle privilege".
So what is a "true conservative", the sort that has values beyond economic success to do? The article covers the "true conservative" (they call it "natural conservative") definition pretty well.
For natural conservatives, culture, not economic efficiency, is the paramount value. More specifically, they value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe. Their perfect society does not necessarily produce a soaring GDP, but it does produce symphonies, basilicas and Old Masters. The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting."
Needless to say, natural conservatives’ concern with the flourishing of their own culture comes up against an intractable nemesis in the regressive left, which is currently intent on tearing down statues of Cecil Rhodes and Queen Victoria in the UK, and erasing the name of Woodrow Wilson from Princeton in the U.S. These attempts to scrub western history of its great figures are particularly galling to the alt-right, who in addition to the preservation of western culture, care deeply about heroes and heroic virtues.
So the Alt-Right has a strongly shared value with "natural conservatives" -- which is likely why we more natural conservatives are reticent to throw the whole Alt Right movement out with the bad apples travelling with them. We are perfectly willing to repudiate David Duke, skinheads, National (and other) Socialists, but draw the line at tarring the whole Alt-Right with that broad brush.
The left OTOH, won't even repudiate BLM -- let alone tar NAACP, Black Caucus, "White Privilege" intellectuals, etc with a validly repudiated negative label! In fact, they cowtow to BLM because they know how identity politics is played! Repudiation rhetoric is for SUCKERS -- which means Republicans to them.
I found this paragraph to be very intriguing:
Some alt-righters make a more subtle argument. They say that when different groups are brought together, the common culture starts to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Instead of mosques or English houses, you get atheism and stucco.
Sadly, this is often the case. Decide you want "Christian Unity", and soon you have women ministers, gay ministers, ministers that can't tell you what they are, atheist ministers, no historical Jesus ministers, etc, etc. As long as America was a "melting pot" where everyone signed up for AMERICAN values -- hard work, self-reliance, reverence for the Constitution, Christianity, speaking English, etc, etc (ie. "American Culture"), it was fine to be an "Italian AMERICAN" who did some different dances, drank some different wines, and served some tasty food -- but spoke English and revered America.
The current sort of BOistani balkanization is more like the Italians would own a section of the city, speak Italian, throw out non-Italians, and the Mafia would be in charge -- and that was OK, cuz it was "their culture", and there was no thought that there was any sort of "American culture". (why would there be? We live in BOistan). If the left Davos elite succeeds in defeating Trump, natural conservatives and assorted disenfranchised Christians, workers, misfits and hangers on (the likely outcome), the Alt-Right will be less than a footnote in a few years. **IF** however by some amazing luck, act of God, etc, "America" -- or something like it rises from the swampy wasteland of BOistan, then the Alt-Right likely contains the leaders of the future -- 30, 40, even 50 years in the future, as the Alisky left contained the leaders of today's now "mainstream left" -- even including avowed socialists like Bernie. Will Natural Conservatives stick around as researchers like Haidt would say they must because the position is "wired in" to everyone ... and dominant in many?
The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt,includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.
At one level, all humans want to "go home". I argue that "home" is actually Heaven (and the Garden of Eden), and the evolutionary psychology ideas of "Darwin's Cathedral" are VERY specialized wishful materialist imagination. Christ is the difference that allows Christian Conservatives to make the best attempt in world history at actually loving their enemies and viewing history / reality through the transcendent eyes of eternity.
Or we may just be deplorable white privileged racists as the left has confidently labeled us.
This somewhat longish column is a poster child for an attempted left wing analysis of "what went wrong"? How did they discover that something went "wrong"? Trump was elected. The wordy article leads us on a merry chase of how this terrible thing might have happened -- it is written by Kurt Anderson, who is a writer that graduated from Harvard and founded "Spy" magazine. An example of what "Spy" was about:
Founded by Kurt Andersen and E. Graydon Carter, who served as its first editors, and Thomas L. Phillips, Jr., its first publisher. After one folding and a rebirth, it ceased publication in 1998. The magazine specialized in irreverent and satirical pieces targeting the American media, entertainment industries and the mocking of high society.[4] Some of its features attempted to present the darker side of celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Steven Seagal,[5]Martha Stewart, and especially, the real-estate tycoon Donald Trump and his then-wife Ivana Trump.[6] Pejorative epithets of celebrities, e.g., "Abe 'I'm Writing As Bad As I Can' Rosenthal", "short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump",[7] "churlish dwarf billionaire Laurence Tisch", "bum-kissing toady Arthur Gelb", "bosomy dirty-book writer Shirley Lord" and "former fat girl Dianne Brill" became a Spy trademark.
Strangely, although Anderson finds Trump to be a disaster of the first order, a quick read of the paragraph would indicate that Kurt and Donald ought to be bosom buddies ... "former fat girl Dianne Brill"? Indeed. So what IS the shape our peril according to Kurt?
By my reckoning, the solidly reality-based are a minority, maybe a third of us but almost certainly fewer than half. Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. Two-thirds of Americans believe that “angels and demons are active in the world.” More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God—not a vague force or universal spirit or higher power, but some guy. A third of us believe not only that global warming is no big deal but that it’s a hoax perpetrated by scientists, the government, and journalists.
Kurt certainly seems to have a solid view of "reality" -- to the extent we can discern it's base, the key point seems to be strong materialist atheism -- creation, angels, heaven, and "a personal God" (we will assume he means Jesus) come in for special snark. For those of us that believe in Christ being God made Man, the "Word of Kurt" (WoK) calling him "some guy" seems just a bit presumptions. Somehow, I'm guessing he is far less snarky about "allah" ... at least around Muslims. They don't love their enemies, they kill them.
Kurt goes on a long discussion of how "America" has gone "haywire". So why is it that Kurt's ideas on this are supposed to be of interest to anyone at all? Kurt does a great job of answering the reason for that right up front -- there is really no reason to read the rest of it.
Why are we like this?
The short answer is because we’re Americans—because being American means we can believe anything we want; that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else’s, experts be damned. Once people commit to that approach, the world turns inside out, and no cause-and-effect connection is fixed. The credible becomes incredible and the incredible credible.
So what are the qualification of one of the founders of "Spy" magazine to give us a psuedo-intellectual tour of history? He is admittedly Ivy League educated, but certainly not philosopher, theologian, scientist, political scientist, or even sociologist; on what does he stand to provide us the answer for the deep meaning of "haywire". Clearly KURT believes that Trump defines "haywire", however what expertise, philosophy, revelation, equation, data, "standard", dream, etc is Kurt standing on as he says it? I'd argue it is exactly like Potter Stewart's definition of pornography ... "you know it when you see it'.
Kurt HIMSELF has clearly stated "expert's be damned" -- The WoK is being proffered as useful because he himself finds his own views to be "equal or superior to anyone else's". He invalidates his own case right up front.
My view is that we forgot that "the fear of God is the BEGINNING of all wisdom". Transcendence, something unchangeable and beyond mere matter -- TRUTH. A book that points out where we left the track is from my perspective is "Ideas Have Consequences" and the point and which we first became unglued was in the 14th century.
"This was a change that overtook the dominant philosophical thinking of the West in the fourteenth century, when the reality of transcendentals was first seriously challenged."
Without SOMETHING that is at least very close to an eternal principle, we ALL lack any place to stand to make any sort of judgments at all! Science leaps from the precipice that says "the universe is ORDERED, and results that we see today are assumed to be repeatable across time and space". The foundation of science is INDUCTION -- "it worked today, it will work tomorrow, and it will work anywhere for all time".
The difficulty with this is PERSPECTIVE. The Thanksgiving turkey postulates that humans are a benevolent species that cares and provides for turkeys. On the very day in which the turkey's "proof" has gained the status of maximally proven scientific "fact", the induction crashes and the turkey finds himself at a meal in which he is the guest of honor. The turkey lacked the perspective of a larger view -- as do we humans relative to eternity.
The other problem is of course that right/wrong, beauty, consciousness, love, etc are completely outside the realm of science, as science is about STUFF ... material, matter. Human life is founded on human consciousness -- right, wrong, up, down, inside out, or non-existent, it IS what WE perceive as humans!
Kurt certainly views HIS consciousness as a superb basis for analysis ... as do we all unless we recognize a power greater than our own perspective (eg. "the fear of God" or maybe "fear of Kurt"??).
Let's look at Kurt's "analysis" a bit":
Meanwhile, over in sociology, in 1966 a pair of professors published The Social Construction of Reality, one of the most influential works in their field. Not only were sanity and insanity and scientific truth somewhat dubious concoctions by elites, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann explained—so was everything else. The rulers of any tribe or society do not just dictate customs and laws; they are the masters of everyone’s perceptions, defining reality itself. To create the all-encompassing stage sets that everyone inhabits, rulers first use crude mythology, then more elaborate religion, and finally the “extreme step” of modern science. “Reality”? “Knowledge”? “If we were going to be meticulous,” Berger and Luckmann wrote, “we would put quotation marks around the two aforementioned terms every time we used them.” “What is ‘real’ to a Tibetan monk may not be ‘real’ to an American businessman.”
Therefore, Kurt's "reality" would also be relative ... however, since he wrote this long article, we are to understand that it isn't really. Somehow, "The WoK" is privileged. (See "reality based" above}.
So what kind of heresy has failure to accept the WoK unleased?
Even the social critic Paul Goodman, beloved by young leftists in the ’60s, was flabbergasted by his own students by 1969. “There was no knowledge,” he wrote, “only the sociology of knowledge. They had so well learned that … research is subsidized and conducted for the benefit of the ruling class that they did not believe there was such a thing as simple truth.”
Ever since, the American right has insistently decried the spread of relativism, the idea that nothing is any more correct or true than anything else. Conservatives hated how relativism undercut various venerable and comfortable ruling ideas—certain notions of entitlement (according to race and gender) and aesthetic beauty and metaphysical and moral certainty.
Ah, "simple truth" --- or as we can see from the column, "the WoK". Sadly, the evil American Right thought that there WERE ultimate truths ... like the Word of God, which included Genesis, now known to fail the "reality based" test, according to the WoK. So the decried "relativism", as now apparently so does Kurt -- it's just that he finds any "relativism" according to the "Word of Kirk" to be bad -- therefore, he is a "rightwing fundamentalist" in relation to the "Word of Kirk"!
"Just before the Clintons arrived in Washington, the right had managed to do away with the federal Fairness Doctrine, which had been enacted to keep radio and TV shows from being ideologically one-sided. Until then, big-time conservative opinion media had consisted of two magazines, William F. Buckley Jr.’s biweekly National Review and the monthly American Spectator, both with small circulations. But absent a Fairness Doctrine, Rush Limbaugh’s national right-wing radio show, launched in 1988, was free to thrive, and others promptly appeared."
Here I think we arrive at the crux of the matter. As long as whatever was being stated was duly approved by a part of the Administrative State lodged comfortably in the womb of the Federal Communications Commission, all could be certain that only Administrative State, Union Approved, Ivy League vetted, Davos Certified, "truth" would be provided to the masses. Everything was "ideologically SINGLE sided", which was "the good", and the idiots that provided the alternative comic relief -- Bill Buckley and the American Spectator, were "fringe" --- as heretics ought to be!
Did his voters know that his hogwash was hogwash? Yes and no, the way people paying to visit P. T. Barnum’s exhibitions 175 years ago didn’t much care whether the black woman on display was really George Washington’s 161-year-old former nanny or whether the stitched-together fish/ape was actually a mermaid; or the way today we immerse in the real-life fictions of Disney World. Trump waited to run for president until he sensed that a critical mass of Americans had decided politics were all a show and a sham. If the whole thing is rigged, Trump’s brilliance was calling that out in the most impolitic ways possible, deriding his straight-arrow competitors as fakers and losers and liars—because that bullshit-calling was uniquely candid and authentic in the age of fake.
Perhaps there really were consequences to Slick Wille having BJs in the oval office, lying about it, and skating. Maybe calling a vast power grab and re-distribution scam called the "Affordable" Care Act, "affordable" even though it added a grab bag of new benefits to health INSURANCE thus being certain to radically increase the cost, was slightly disingenuous. However, saying that "If you like your doctor you can keep him", "if you like your insurance plan you can keep it", etc was TOTALLY a direct lie which anyone that paid any attention understood to be a LIE ... or to put it in Kurt's words, "a show and a sham".
I personally know MANY people that budgeted for retiring with healthcare TOTAL costs (insurance + deductables + co-pays) of $8K for a 60 year old couple, finding that they needed $22K for insurance along, PLUS, another 8-10K for deductables and co-pays. $30K vs $8K ... PER YEAR!
Slick Willie ushered in the age of fake. BO made it the standard.
So what do I believe caused America to "go haywire", and turn into BOistan?
We have to stand on SOMETHING! As John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". That morality was founded on Jesus Christ -- we never had any other rock to stand on, and sorry to say, the WoK isn't much of a substitute.
So what does the "word of Kurt" say on this point?
What is to be done? I don’t have an actionable agenda, Seven Ways Sensible People Can Save America From the Craziness. But I think we can slow the flood, repair the levees, and maybe stop things from getting any worse. If we’re splitting into two different cultures, we in reality-based America—whether the blue part or the smaller red part—must try to keep our zone as large and robust and attractive as possible for ourselves and for future generations. We need to firmly commit to Moynihan’s aphorism about opinions versus facts. We must call out the dangerously untrue and unreal. A grassroots movement against one kind of cultural squishiness has taken off and lately reshaped our national politics—the opposition to political correctness. I envision a comparable struggle that insists on distinguishing between the factually true and the blatantly false.
What is "reality"? Is it matter only, with meaning defined by induction? Kurt, founder of "Spy" magazine firmly believes in the "World of Kurt" ... if you follow Kurt, you too can be "reality based". Isn't that special?
Choose ye this day whom you will serve ... Kurt? or something larger? Trump is only a very temporary occupant of the highest office in what is at this point the failed state of BOistan. I believe that God is bigger than Kurt, Trump, and BOistan, so God is my choice as the basis for reality -- eternal reality.
An excellent SHORT article on the failed decades long "negotiation" with NK -- the money paragraph.
But here’s the thing: If you go into negotiations with an enemy who sees negotiations as nothing more than a stalling tactic (or shakedown operation) in its pursuit of a goal, then you have to decide how far you’ll take negotiations.
Assuming that all the "intelligence" is true (and I'm forever skeptical of that) and NK does actually not only have a nuke, but a minaturized one they can put in a warhead, then negotiations have clearly failed.
The form of the decision seems very easy:
Hope and pray that the latest Kin Jong nutcase isn't really a nutcase -- although "un" has a very bad ring in english for the "end of the line" -- the "UNcola" comes to mind. If he really is a nutcase, then he is going to nuke someone on HIS terms -- which given the nutcase designation is pretty random. Guam? Really? Hank Johnson, a sitting Democrat House member is on record as being concerned it may "capsize " (that level of intelligence is OK if you are a Black Democrat)
Stop him. Of which the ways are nasty and long, but what needs to really be thought is the "worst case", which gives us:
Nuclear -- Which we have been taught is "unthinkable", however see top bullet 1.
We have highly paid people that have been thinking a really long time about I assume ALL the options ... although Republicans claiming they were going repeal BOcare for 7 years and not having an agreed to plan doesn't really give one that much confidence.
The saddest part about "success" is that much like I found at IBM, until things REALLY blow up -- and by that I certainly DON'T mean you start bleeding revenue, market share, people, relevance, etc; talk often really IS believed to be a subsitute for action. No, it takes something MUCH more immediate than that ... like a nuke in the face for a country, or bankruptcy / being purchased for a company. We humans are much more prone to talk smart than act smart.
I suspect the most likely near term outcome here is the "bluster and hope" from both sides. Longer term?
Well, "someday" I believe that somebody is going to use nukes again. We live in a world of Comunism having killed over 100 million in the 20th century, abortion killing 60 million in the US since '73, Hitler killing 6 million, Pol Pot 3ish. It is an extensive litany that just goes on all the time ... "ethnic cleansing, genocide, jihad, ..." killing and "unthinkable" are not really terms that are related in the human mind. Pretty much any sort of killing is VERY thinkable, and historically, always doable as well. The Kim Jong line seems like a likely candidate to take the "unthinkable" out of our lexicon relative to nukes.
This cartoon covers my views on the press and much of the left in the US ... Trump is their enemy, they recognize no other. , if nuclear war is a negative for Trump, it has gotta be good!
Can a nation struggling with gigantic issues like which bathroom to use take ANYTHING, including nuclear war, seriously? Count me skeptical.
If I was Trump? I'd go on TV and do a very short speech that went something like this ....
"We have looked at the options remaining relative to NK and have decided that there are no options that are likely less costly than living with a nuclear NK. That is extrodinarily regrettable, but it is the direct result of failure to act for decades across many administrations.
If NK launches missiles toward destinations that are protected with ABMs, we will do our best to shoot them down. If we succeed, if we fail, or if a nuke is used against an unprotected target, NK will cease to exist. We will do our best to choose a time where wind currents minimze effects to other populations in the area, including giving advance warning and evacuation of areas close to NK.
I have instructed the State Department to establish plans with all nations in close proximity with NK. I very much regret that this is the only option remaining. Let us resolve to never allow good intentions to bring us to this perilous juncture again. "
What will Trump choose? I have no idea -- but I sleep well at night secure in the knowledge that I *MUCH* prefer having him and his cabinet in charge than I would if Hillary was working on how to best build Clinton Fund cash and arrange for Chelsea to succeed her. We had BO for 8 years, and this is only one of the horrors it brought us.
I'm thinking Tom is on vacation and mailed this one in after a bit too much fine wine. He AGREES with Trump on four major points and thinks that Democrats should too!
Yes, yes, Fiedman works at the NY Times, and it was a nerd at Google that got fired for saying that women might have needs for different things if we want to be successful in tech -- if you read this blog, you must be smart enough so I just insulted your intelligence.
This is one that is worth just going out and reading top to bottom. If you need background, I cover that here. Just go and read it -- a teaser.
With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.
During wartime, things like “dignity” and “collegiality” simply aren’t the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, “I cannot spare this man. He fights.”
A shady lawyer from a foreign power offers a political campaign potenentially treasonous dirt on the opposition candidate. There is PLENTY of evidence to suspect that such hard evidence might be avaiable -- 20% of the US Urainium reserves transferred to Russia in a pay for play $50 million dollar deal -- all that is needed is solid lock her up and throw away the key proof. Her husband with a totally known history of womanizing having visiited Russia, laughed with Putin on deals unknown -- not hard at all to imagine all sorts of documentation on blackmail known that could embarrass the assumed future madame president.
Are we supposed to have forgotten Slick Willie and "Donor Maintainence" events in '96? As covered in this article:
Do they remember Chung — he was the one who in the pre-farecard era said the Clinton White House was like a subway because you had to put in a coin to open the gate — testified before the House of Representatives that the head of Chinese military intelligence told him: "We like your president very much. We hope to see him re-elected. I'll give you 300,000 U.S. dollars. You can give it to your president and the Democratic Party."
We could waste a lot of time on "facts", but why bother? Everyone that cared in the least knew that the White House was completely for sale in the Clinton years, and at least half the country cared not at all -- ho hum, it's our guy.
My colleague Jonah Goldberg has given perhaps the best one-sentence advice for conservatives in these troubling times: “Trust nothing, defend nothing.” We don’t know the truth. We don’t know the extent of the Trump team’s misdeeds. We do, however, know enough to reject the administration’s spin. Donald Jr.’s meeting was, in fact, a “big deal,” and Americans who aren’t troubled are Americans who need to check whether their tribalism has trumped their good sense.
Got that? National Review has gotten the "good sense" to have very little to say about a Republican party that swore they would repeal BOcare if they got the House, then swore they would repeal it if they got the Senate, then FAILED TO EVEN PASS SOMETHING FOR BO TO VETO! Then essentially fought Trump tooth and nail, and STILL can't repeal it!
Were NR even remotely "conservative" or "small government" rather than just being ELITIST, they would be embarrassed, as every other real conservative / small government person is. ABSOLUTELY we don't want to trust NR, and why the hell would one defend them? The idea of politics is to have "your side win" -- obviously NR's "side" -- Hillary, failed to win, and they are still in a tiff.
Justice Gorsuch ALONE is such a huge accomplishment for Trump compared to what we would have got with Hillary that anyone remotely conservaitve is willing to do a lot of "defense". One doesn't have to "trust" anyone to defend your obvious self interest.
The other question is "Whose Russians are these "???? There is "Natasha" circled with with "Boris" near her during a foreign affairs meeting in DC 8 days after Trump Tower. Both of these fine Russians were involved in the "Trump Dossier" caper where the ex-British spook worked with Russians to "leak" a tawdry tale involving hookers urinating -- something a little hard to buy about germaphobe Trump. Orbis, and Fusion GPS were involved, and both Boris and Natasha have connections with Fusion GPS.
But never mind -- clearly "The Party" (TP-D), the Deep State and nearly all the media including erstwhile supposedly "conservative" outlets like NR hate Trump. He is not the status quo, and ALL those groups, which at this point it is clearly obvious also included the bulk of the Republican Party, have been riding the same gravy train, and they DON'T want it to stop! In fact, they are REALLY worried about what happens to them if it stops.
Clinton Cash for the whole time from when they took office in '92 up through '16? Not an issue for anyone in the elite, including the Republican Party. BO using the IRS to attack conservative organizations like the Tea Party? Didn't bother any of the elite including the Republcian Party -- hell, they hated the Tea Party worse than the Democrats anyway!
We could waste a lot more time here, but there is ONE LEADERSHIP really -- the elite. It encompasses TP, The Republican Party, media (largely "both sides" as the NR article shows), business, education, etc ... and then there is the anti-elite -- TRUMP. How was the whole "Trump Dossier" funded? This from here:
According to a Vanity Fair article, Fusion GPS was first funded by an anti-Trump Republican donor, but, after Trump’s nomination, Fusion and Steele were paid by Democratic donors whose identity remains secret. Writes Satter: “Perhaps the time has come to expand the investigation into Russia’s meddling to include Mrs. Clinton’s campaign as well.”
The elite are nothing if not "bi-partisan", it is ALL about THEM, and Democrat or Republican are labels they are happy to wear in the service of themselves. Is Trump any different? Who knows -- he may just be doing the bidding of the elite for his own gain as well -- however it certainly LOOKS like all sides are against him.
Does ANYONE anywhere think that ANY political campaign would refuse to LISTEN to potential dirt on the opposition candidate, no matter what the source? I can't believe that anyone including NR actually believes that -- they just feel that they have to STOP TRUMP, so they fake like this is somehow "unusual" or "wrong".
Our MSM tells us that the Russians love Trump -- always have, helped get him elected, he is in their pocket -- lots of MSM stories on that narrative. Reminds me of when Reagan was totally dangerous buffoon for suggesting that the USSR would be "consigned to the ash heap of history". Gotta love our media -- always certain, frequently VERY wrong. They do however really understand that everyone needs a narrative. Push theirs, block their opposition -- anyone not worshiping at the progressive altar. Simple.
Alexandr Vondra, a former Czech deputy prime minister and ambassador to Washington intimately involved in the negotiations with the Americans, said he was surprised. "This is a U-turn in US policy," he said. "But first we expect the US to honour its commitments. If they don't they may have problems generating support for Afghanistan and on other things."
BO was certainly a reliable enemy to our friends and a reliable friend of our enemies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has called the missile defense systems in Eastern Europe a "great danger." Putin also threatened to enhance Russia's own missile strike capability in response.
I have no doubt that Russia is always happy to cast doubt on our elections by any means possible -- leaking actual emails showing that Democrats rigged their primaries, colluded with the media on the debates, and colluded with the media to have Trump as their opponent certainly doesn't make our poltical system look "fair and balanced". Those of us not in thrall to "The Party" (TP-D) pretty much knew that already.
My contention is that the Russians fully expected Hillary to win like everyone else. My guess is that they were much happier with that prospect than with Trump winning because of things like the above and the fact that his policies are much more likely to make them have to confront a srtonger BOistan.
No doubt what they are REALLY unhappy about with Trump is that he is certainly going to "drill baby drill", "frack baby frack", and even put in pipelines to transport the oil! As one of the big energy producing nations, Russia HATES competition, and has spent millions of dollars trying to stop fracking.
Their main mission on this front (and ours in reverse) is to make us weaker -- and making it look like our elections can be "manipulated" is a great way to do that. So relative to elections, Russion mission accomplished. Relative to actual interaction on the world stage, not so much.
Jonah Goldberg is having a tiff with the editors of NR over "What is America" (Rich Lowrey is editor in chief). The editors declare they would still love America even if it had a completely different set of ideals -- and Jonah apparently doesn't realize that the area of N America where the nation of America used to exist DOES have a completely different set of ideals -- which is why I call it BOistan.
Rich started by saying that America is a nation, not an idea. He then went on to demonstrate the ways in which America is a nation (it’s got borders and a people and a culture and the like). That’s fine with me, I suppose. I concluded a while ago that the “Nation vs. Idea” argument is poorly framed. If all you have to do is cite borders, roads, and a post office to prove it’s not an idea, then what’s the point?
Every philisopher understands neccessary vs sufficent. Philosophers all breathe, sweat, defecate, etc -- which are neccessary conditions. NONE of those is SUFFICIENT to call yourself a philosopher. All nations have borders, people, culture, post offices, etc -- those are neccessary conditions, not sufficient to being called "America".
"Idea, ideals, values, principles" -- The TRUTHS that America held to be self evident and endowed by GOD. To believe in America is to believe in divine founding -- else there are no transcendent truths, and America could not exist without transcendent truth. The founders certainly allowed people to live in the territory of America (the neccessary but not sufficient borders) without acknowledging God -- they were just to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and declare that the founding principles were self evident "just cuz" ... like created equal without any creator, rendering "equal" just another man made thought changeable by the only remaining moral authority when God dies -- power. "Might is right" with a ballot or a bullet.
Roe V Wade, Obergefell, BOcare, not impeaching Bill Clinton, 20 trillion in debt and a few hundred other things finally convinced me that "We weren't in Kansas (America) anymore".
The unwillingness of someone of Goldberg's stature to even recognize that we are fish swimming in a BOistani rather than American pond is traumatizing -- failure to recognize and accept reality is not a good sign for ability to remedy our situation. Jonah ends his column rather whimsically for such a serious matter.
Imagine one person tells you that his ideal form of government would be to get rid of the Constitution and make Kim Kardashian queen. You’d think that person is silly, probably even deranged. Now imagine that 270 million Americans believed that and, having the necessary supermajority to pull it off, voted away our Constitution. As the coronation of Queen Kim, First of Her Name, unfolded on every channel, would you not change your view of America, her culture, and her people? Might you not fall out of love with America as it is?
My hunch is Rich et al. would still love America, but you know what America they would love? The America That Was. They might even join the resistance to the regime of Queen Kim (I’m fairly certain Charlie would) in an effort to restore self-government to America. And here’s the funny thing: They’d be fighting against the American nation in the name of that great and glorious cause, the American Idea. And that’s the crucial difference.
It would really be nice to have a discussion about what ideas/values/truths/etc that we seek to return to -- I think we need a much clearer picture of the America that we see receeding away from us ... sort of a philosophical version of this shot of Queen Kim ... only in this case a picture of "The America That WAS" (TATW) receeding -- what would she look like in your mind?
Football season is close. When two NFC N teams that are not the Packers square off against each other, my typical hope is that they both lose. I DON'T wish for them to both have a lot of injuries because I love football, I played football, and I was injured in football -- injuries are part of the game, but I can't bring myself to hope for them.
I can however applaud the Crips and the Bloods shooting each other -- it's pretty much guaranteed to reduce overall violence. If China and North Korea want to get into a shooting war, or China and Russia for that matter, worse things could happen. I STRONGLY suspect that the Rusians, like me and pretty much everyone else in the world -- including Trump and Hillary, assumed that Hillary was going to win.
That is why BO (and the entire MSM) was on record even in late October telling us that any concerns about the elections being manipulated or "rigged" were totally false! He assumed Hillary would win, Democrats would win or come close to winning the Senate, and he wanted to be sure that Hillaries likely "landslide" was duly noted by what he expected to be a much diminished opposition. Hey, the weekend before the elction, Ron Johnson was dead in WI according to polls -- he won by nearly 4 points and I doubt the Russians did it. Ooops.
I think the Russians similarly erred -- they assumed they would get a weakened Hillary, but one that could clearly be purchased as they had done with the N American urainium payoff to the Clinton Fund. Nobody is perfect -- however, damaging Americans faith in our own elections is definitely positive for Russia, no matter who wins. We really don't need any help destroying ourselves, but one can't blame the Russians for doing what they can.
Some Russia-watchers believe that the goal of the 2016 Russian campaign shenanigans was not to elect Trump but to damage Clinton before her election. That would make a certain kind of sense: Putin does not want a President Trump or a President Clinton — he wants an American president so hamstrung by political rancor, personal weakness, and petty venality that American leadership around the world is compromised. Mission accomplished.
Naturally, the Democrats and a whole lot of the Republican party as well as 99% of the folks inside the beltway in DC are more than happy to play into the Russians hands if they can ever IMAGINE it hurts Trump! They have a pretty darned good scam going, and keeping it going is their HIGHEST priority by a REALLY long shot!
The term "appparatchik" comes to mind as I observe Comey. It used to be a common term used relative to officials of the USSR -- strong Communist Party members that worked in the state bureaucracy. "The Party" (TP-D) is socialist rather than communist at this point, however they don't seem to have much love of private property, so I assume that socialist is just as far as they are willing to go at present.
If one wants to know what a DC swamp creature looks like, Comey is a great example. Self serving to a fault, master at "CYA" (Cover Your Ass), lies impeccably and of course a loyal member of TP. Here is a more perfect picture of "apparatchik / swamp thing".
So he proudly volunteers! that he created a memo that was properly "declassified" and then leaked it in hopes that it would initiate a special prosecutor! Marvelous. If anyone foolishly had any doubt that the Deep State alphabet angency arms of TP are manufacturing anything they possibly can to take down Trump, this is way more than plenty to show what the Deep State is up to!
So, what we have here is a fired FBI director, who leaked private material to the press, so he could get his friend appointed as a special counsel in order to take retribution on the President – with the aid of a department full of federal lawyers who would have rather seen Hillary in the White House. And we are supposed to believe this will be an objective, unbiased investigation?
The unaccountable Administrative State breeds things like Comey -- it MUST be made to be accountable if we are to return to being America, let alone become great again!
The top linked article covers the obvious themes that I have covered many times -- "fascism" is driven by massive government control of business and cronyism with business, but not government OWNERSHIP of business. Very few people in the US have any comprehension of anything other than throwing labels around that they hear ... confusion is the order of the day.
Certainly the anti-Trump "resistance" forces are more than happy to resort to violence and have many times across the country. I'm certain there will be some actual Trump supporters that become violent. Given the rhetoric and the incendiary media against Trump, the general level of restraint from the right is admirable.
