The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Mud Below

Posted on | November 6, 2021 | Comments Off on The Mud Below

— by Wombat-socho

“We’ve left blood in the dust of twenty-five worlds,
and our dead on a dozen more,
and all that we have at the end of our hitch,
buys a night with a second-class whore.

“The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls,
the orders come down from on high,
It’s ‘On Full Kits’ and sound ‘Board Ships,’
We’re sending you where you can die.”

– March of the CoDominium Line Marines (verses 1 & 2), from Jerry Pournelle’s The Prince

Welcome back to the continued trashing of what may be the worst list of recommended SF not published on Tor.com. In this post, we’re going to talk about combat SF that is set on planetary surfaces, the province of the poor bloody infantry, tankers of various sorts, and of course the Mobile Infantry with its several imitators. 

Which is really where we should start, with Uncle Bob’s seminal novel. Starship Troopers is a surprising book for a lot of people; unlike many of the books we’re going to look at later, it’s not primarily about combat, and there’s a lot of time spent on the questions of why soldiers fight and how governments come about. This is because the book is a coming of age story, the story of how Johnny Rico matures from clueless high-school kid to a hardened professional soldier, a man among men. Contrary to the assertions of New Wave attention whores and their Pink Goo descendants, there is not one word in the book that praises fascism nor one example of how the Terran Federation in any way resembles Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, or even Franco’s Spain. But as we all know, facts and logic are tools of the patriarchal conspiracy. Read the book anyway.

I don’t think it’s really possible to understand Joe Haldeman’s Forever War and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War without reading Starship Troopers, since these books were both written as responses to/knockoffs of Heinlein’s novel. Haldeman’s novel, originally published as a series of short stories in Analog in the early 1970s, was extremely controversial at the time for its depiction of mandatory sex among the draftee soldiers of the UN Expeditionary Force, as well as its very negative attitude toward the military and what turned out to be an unnecessary & pointless war. One could even point out that Haldeman’s novel has little in common with Heinlein’s except that Mandella & Rico both use powered armor and rise from private soldier to commanding officer – but there again, Mandella has almost nothing in common with his cloned soldiers at the end except that they’re both human. Sort of. It is very much a product of the Vietnam War, which is logical since Haldeman spent a year there as a combat engineer and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against The War on getting out. As for Scalzi’s book, it has even less in common with Starship Troopers – it is not a coming-of-age novel, there is very little philosophizing about war and the military, and in fact it’s pretty obvious that Scalzi neither spent time in the military nor around veterans of any vintage. It’s a decent book, and not an obvious ripoff like Fuzzy Nation, but if you didn’t read it, you wouldn’t be missing a whole lot.

There have been many bad reviews of David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, but one of the worst and most surprising came from the otherwise respectable Eric S. Raymond, who pretty clearly demonstrates that he didn’t understand what Drake (or Pournelle) were getting at. The mercenaries of Hammer’s Regiment (originally the Auxiliary Regiment of Friesland’s army) are not good people, for the most part – they’re just very, very good at their business, and their business is killing. It’s no secret that Drake, a Vietnam vet like Haldeman, modeled the Slammers on the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment he served with there, and for which he still feels a strong bond. Anyhow, the Slammers are an armored regiment, whose core is the hideously expensive, fusion-powered, and powergun-armed main battle tanks, but a lot of the stories deal with the troopers in the combat cars, futuristic versions of the M113 expedient cavalry fighting vehicles that eventually became the M3 Bradley. The series has grown from the first story, “Under The Hammer”, to the anthology and several novels, which were eventually combined into a three-volume set. I submit that you cannot intelligently discuss combat SF if you haven’t read at least the first anthology, which really encompasses the entire history of Hammer’s regiment.

At the other end of the technology spectrum, there is Drake’s Ranks Of Bronze.  Purchased in a Persian slave market by alien traders, the survivors of Crassus’ disastrous defeat at Carrhae now fight for their alien masters under strange suns against stranger opponents, for the traders’ law prohibits the use of higher technologies against primitive natives. This is a coming of age story as well – we see Gaius Vibulenus Caper mature from a young officer to the unquestioned commander of his legionaries, and in the process, finding a way home for his men and himself while teaching the aliens not to underestimate the intelligence of humans – or their ferocity.

In the middle, there is Raj Whitehall. Co-written with S.M. Stirling, the five General novels (since collected in a bewildering variety of anthologies along with the five sequels set on other planets) depict a young officer of the Gubernio Civil on Bellevue, which has after four millenia recovered from the crash of interstellar civilization to a 19th-century level of technology, but with riding dogs in place of horses. When we first meet young Whitehall, he’s exploring the ruins beneath the capital city of East Residence with his friend Thom Poplanich when they encounter a relic of the Pre-Fall times: a sector command & control computer, which imprisons Thom in stasis and chooses Raj to be its agent in unifying Bellevue. Center gives Raj a certain amount of assistance, showing him possible results of his actions, giving him an eidetic memory, providing him historical information, and minor tweaks to his own physical ability – at one point, Raj shoots a grenade out of the air with Center’s help. With this assistance building on his own charisma and talents, Whitehall recapitulates the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius (though with a happier ending) by defeating the barbarian Military Governments and finally the Muslims of the Colony, whose technology is equal to the Gubierno Civil and whose best general, the one-eyed Tewfik, is almost as good as Raj even considering Center’s help. The comparison of the civilized Gubierno Civil and its Latino population to the “blond, blue-eyed barbarians” of the Military Governments is a running joke, as is the conflict between the official computer idolatry of the Church of the Spirit of Man of the Stars and Raj’s own (secret) status as an Avatar of the Spirit through his connection with Center. The best place to start is with the original anthology, Warlord, which contains the first two books, followed by Conqueror, which has the last three books of the original series. 

S.M. Stirling makes for a good transition to the next book, since he pretty much wrote the last third of it. The Prince is the Falkenberg’s Legion omnibus, encompassing Jerry Pournelle’s original story, “The Mercenary”, the novels West of Honor and Sword & Scepter, the short story “Peace With Honor”*, and the three novels of the Helot War on Sparta, (Prince of Mercenaries**, Go Tell The Spartans, and Prince of Sparta) which is where Stirling comes in. There’s also some interstitial material shedding light on Senator Bronson’s hatred for Falkenberg and other matters. Amazon doesn’t help in its listing of these novels; they have the order of the Helot War novels scrambled, and Prince of Mercenaries is omitted from the listing of the “CoDominium Future History”. At any rate, critics (including the aforementioned ESR) howled about the Falkenberg stories; usually not so much about the politics, oddly, but about the lack of futuristic weaponry carried by the CoDominium Marines and by Falkenberg’s mercenaries. This is annoying, because it’s explained in several of the stories exactly why the predominant weapons are chemical-powered slugthrowers instead of lasers and blasters, but some people apparently can’t understand simple English. Except for a brief scene at the beginning of The Prince, we don’t see Falkenberg as a young man; he is always the cold, remote senior officer we see in “The Mercenary” and West of Honor, and we see that façade break only twice: when he loses his temper with President Hamner in “The Mercenary” and towards the end of Sword and Scepter, when it seems he’s allowing himself to fall in love again. I have been told by people I respect that one should avoid John Carr’s Falkenberg’s Regiment*** like the plague; I sell it to you for what I bought it, as our Russian friends say. 

No article on combat SF would be complete without a brief discussion of Keith Laumer’s Bolo stories. Self-aware robotic tanks of enormous size, with the later versions being able to devastate entire continents with their Hellbore main gun and onboard missile batteries, the history of the Bolo Combat Units extends from contemporary times to the far future of the 31st century and beyond. All of Laumer’s original stories, from “Night of the Trolls” to “Combat Unit” are included in The Compleat Bolo, which seems to have been reissued as Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade if you’d rather have it on Kindle. Baen Books published a series of anthologies expanding the Boloverse, and the best of those anthologies (which were very good indeed) were collected in Their Finest Hour. The David Weber, John Ringo, and William Keith novels written as part of the series were also worth your time.

Finally, a short story which is unfortunately overlooked, although Steve Jackson Games did credit it as one of the inspirations for their game OGRE. Colin Kapp’s “Gottlos” is a grim little tale, quite unlike the Bolo stories; in tone, it has a lot of similarities to L. Ron Hubbard’s Final Blackout, although things haven’t completely come apart – yet. Manton is the pilot of a remotely-controlled warmech, Fiendish, that has dominated the battlefield until one day it encounters an enemy warmech that proceeds to defeat and systematically dismantle Fiendish, until all that remains is the camera, which shows the nameplate on the enemy mech, which reads simply GOTTLOS. Manton hits the self-destruct on Fiendish, and has to be slapped back to his senses by his commander. The remainder of the story covers Gottlos’ stalking of Manton, until the final confrontation when he finally realizes what Gottlos actually is, and what it wants from him. Unfortunately, the story has only been reprinted once to the best of my knowledge, and the prices demanded for used copies of Analog 8 and the November 1969 issue of Analog on Amazon are nothing short of extortionate. The Unz Review used to have a PDF copy up, but apparently got slapped with a copyright demand, but if you can find a copy somewhere else, it’s well worth reading. 

* This is not, strictly speaking, a story about Falkenberg or his men, but like some of the stories that are, it helps you get a picture of just how bad the CoDominium is, and the price otherwise decent men pay to hold it together, knowing that the alternative is far worse.
** Prince of Mercenaries is a fixup novel that incorporates “His Truth Is Marching On” and “Silent Leges”, and I occasionally wonder if this was a tryout for Stirling to see if he had a good enough grip on the characters to write the other two Helot War novels. It introduced a great character, the hotel girl Ursula Gordon, who has a decent role in Go Tell The Spartans but then got written out of Prince of Sparta completely. Damn shame. 
*** Not to be confused with an earlier collection of the CoDominium/Falkenberg stories, Falkenberg’s Legion. This is essentially the same book as The Prince, lacking only four pages of interstitial material that the latter has


Previous posts in this series:
“And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good – need we anyone to tell us these things?”
The Stars Above

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Books

Aspiring Rapper Update: Mom Shocked by the Unexpected Death of ‘Lil Theze’

Posted on | November 6, 2021 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update: Mom Shocked by the Unexpected Death of ‘Lil Theze’

Say hello to Desoni “Lil Theze” Gardner, 20, and while you’re at it, you can also say good-bye, because Lil Theze was shot to death last month at a gas station in Oakland, California. According to Vibe magazine:

Lil Theze was affiliated with Vallejo rap group, SOB x RBE, a group featured on the Black Panther soundtrack with their song, “Paramedic!” Lil Theze rose to fame with his collaboration, “Hashtag,” with SOB x RBE’s Daboii.

To say that someone “rose to fame” implies a level of success and notoriety that I’m not sure Lil Theze obtained during his brief lifetime, but he certainly deserves to be known for the manner of his death.

However much money Lil Theze made after he “rose to fame” as a rapper, his musical earnings were apparently insufficient to meet his financial needs, because on the afternoon of Oct. 21, he and two accomplices were cruising around Oakland in a black 2007 Nissan Sentra looking to rob somebody. They found an intended victim — an older man, driving a white late-model Porsche, who was getting gas at a Chevron station on Castro Street, just off I-980. They chose poorly.

Ersie Joyner, 52, retired from the Oakland Police Department in 2019, after a 28-year law-enforcement career in which he rose from patrolman to captain leading the city’s homicide unit, where he led more than 300 murder investigations. After his retirement, Joyner became a businessman in the (now legal in California) cannabis industry.

Lil Theze and his crew evidently had no idea who they were trying to rob. All they saw was a man pumping gas into a Porsche, and figured he must have some valuables worth stealing. But as an Oakland native who was very familiar with the dangers of the city’s streets, Ersie Joyner certainly would never go anywhere in Oakland unarmed.

Surveillance video captured the outcome of Lil Theze’s final crime. If you’ll watch that video carefully, Desoni “Lil Theze” Gardner is the one dressed in all black, clearly the leader of this robbery gang, who first approaches Joyner. At the five-second mark, the weapon in Gardner’s right hand is visible. Joyner is clearly paying attention to his surroundings, and turns to look at Gardner as soon as he comes around the back of the Nissan. Joyner has his cellphone in his left hand. From that point, about 30 seconds elapse during which Joyner makes no resistance to the robbery, until Gardner opens the right rear door of the Porsche. Joyner then steps back toward the rear of the car, and at the 38-second mark, draws his concealed pistol. He fires first at Gardner’s accomplice in the red hoodie, then shoots Gardner. By that time, the third robber (black coat, white pants) is driving off in the Nissan, and Joyner gets a shot or two off at him before the getaway driver returns fire. Here’s a report from the San Francisco NBC affliate:

 

Joyner was shot six times but survived. Gardner died at the scene, and police are still looking for the dead rapper’s accomplices.

By far the most interesting aspect of the story, however, was the reaction of the mother of the dead rapper/robber:

The mother of a young man shot dead by a retired Oakland police captain said her son was wrong to rob the man, but questions whether use of deadly force was necessary.
“I want to apologize to everyone in the Oakland community who was affected by that situation,” Trepania Williams told the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday of the robbery attempt on Oct. 21. “But death was not the answer.”
Her 20-year-old son, Desoni Gardner of Vallejo, was identified by authorities as one of three people who tried to rob Ersie Joyner as he pumped gas near downtown Oakland on Oct. 21. Joyner pulled out a gun and fired at the assailants, killing Gardner, before being shot and wounded as the other two suspects fled in a car.
“I understand my son was wrong but he’s already been held accountable,” Williams said. She said she has watched surveillance camera footage of the shootout numerous times and wants more scrutiny placed on Joyner, “who took the initiative to shoot and kill.” . . .
Gardner is the second son Williams has lost to gun violence in just over a year. Her older son, Demazhe Gardner, was killed in July 2020. The brothers were rap musicians and had recorded several songs and appeared in music videos.

You see that the acorns did not fall far from the oak. Evidently, this woman raised her sons to believe that (a) robbery is an acceptable career choice, and (b) it’s wrong for victims to fight back.

Aspiring Rapper
North American euphemism for a member of the urban criminal class. This unusual occupation is usually mentioned in conjunction with the subject either being slain or being taken into custody for a violent or property-related crime. A relative of the subject usually points out that the subject’s demise or incarceration comes at an extremely inopportune moment, occurring just as the subject was “turning they(sic) life around.”

The aspiring rapper “rose to fame” and became an expiring rapper.




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

Aspiring Rapper Update: The Promising Criminal Career of ‘JayDaYoungan’

Posted on | November 6, 2021 | Comments Off on Aspiring Rapper Update: The Promising Criminal Career of ‘JayDaYoungan’

Say hello to Javorius Tykies Scott, 23, a/k/a “JayDaYoungan,” a rapper who has more felony charges than hit records:

Popular Louisiana rapper JayDaYoungan was arrested by federal agents Thursday, hours after posting bond in Washington Parish, where he was jailed for five days on counts of drug and weapon possession.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives took the rapper, whose legal name is Javorius Tykies Scott, into custody Thursday. It’s unclear what federal charges he’s facing and, as of Thursday evening, federal court records for the middle and eastern districts of Louisiana showed no criminal proceedings pending against Scott.
However, Thursday’s apprehension marks the fourth arrest since August for the 23-year-old artist, who is known for singles like “23 Island,” “Elimination” and “Opps,” which have together garnered more than 170 million streams on Spotify.
Scott was arrested Aug. 20 for driving recklessly at a high speed with his passenger door open, according to the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office.
After authorities stopped him, police say they discovered Scott had two passengers in the car, including a baby sitting without a seatbelt in a woman’s lap.
Scott was cited for careless operation of a vehicle, no child restraint and driving with a suspended license. He was issued a summons arrest to appear in court.
On Sept. 16, he was arrested by the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office on counts of accessory to second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in connection with a shooting on a trail in northern Tangipahoa Parish a year earlier that left one person dead and two others injured. He was released in less than a week after posting a $175,000 bond.
The traffic stop in Washington Parish happened a month after that.
In addition to the recent arrests, officials say he was jailed April 21 in Coweta County, Georgia, and charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, narcotics possession and tampering with evidence. The Coweta County Sheriff’s Office also accused him of having several bottles of codeine cough syrup, oxycodone pills, several firearms and “a quantity of cash.”
According to media reports, Scott was also arrested a couple years ago in Harris County, Texas, accused of hitting a pregnant woman. Police reportedly fond him hiding in the attic. During that arrest, police say they seized $24,000 in cash, oxycodone, promethazine and several guns where Scott was hiding.

Drugs and guns and cash — it’s almost as if there’s a pattern here.

PREVIOUSLY:




 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

8 Killed as Houston Hip Hop Show Becomes ‘Mass Casualty Incident’

Posted on | November 6, 2021 | Comments Off on 8 Killed as Houston Hip Hop Show Becomes ‘Mass Casualty Incident’

If you’ve never heard of Travis Scott, he’s a rapper who is also Kylie Jenner’s baby daddy. A native of Houston, his 2018 album Astroworld, which went triple platinum, was named for a Houston amusement park that closed in 2005. The title now has deadly significance:

At least eight people died and scores more were injured when chaos, including a crowd crush, broke out during opening night of rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld music festival in Texas Friday, authorities said.
A mass of concertgoers at Houston’s NRG Park “began to compress” to the front of the stage at around 9:15 p.m., causing mayhem and some people to get hurt, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña told reporters early Saturday.
“People started to fall out, become unconscious and it created additional panic,” Peña said during a press conference.
At around 9:38 p.m. Peña said a “mass casualty incident” was triggered as the number of victims grew and emergency responders became overwhelmed.
At least 23 people were rushed to a hospital, including a 10-year-old, authorities said. Of those hospitalized, 11 were in cardiac arrest. Some 300 people were treated at a field hospital on the scene.

Some 100,000 tickets were sold to the event.




 

Category: Celebrities, Music

In The Mailbox: 11.05.21

Posted on | November 5, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.05.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

H/T Ace of Spades HQ

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Remember, Remember, The 5th Of November, also, Heroine Of Free Speech: Brigitte Bardot
Twitchy: “Stroke Or Glitch? You Decide”, also, The Milkshake Ducking Of Edward Durr Has Begun
Louder With Crowder: Travis Tritt Stood His Ground On Mandates – Now A Venue Is Changing Its Requirements To Support Him 
Vox Popoli: The Evidence Of Evil, also, It’s The Vaccines, Stupid
According To Hoyt: It’s A Wonderful Life, also, Looking In
Monster Hunter Nation: No WriterDojo Today – Producer Jack Out Sick

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: More Parents In The Classroom, Please
American Greatness: James O’Keefe Speaks Out After FBI Raids Homes Of Project Veritas Reporters
American Thinker: Second-Class Citizens In Biden’s America, also, Reporting On Muslim Persecution Of Christians Violates Facebook’s “Standards”
Animal Magnetism: Hunt Week Totty Friday
Babalu Blog: The Forty Democrats Who Sided With The Cuban Dictatorship, also, Mia Khalifa Drags Cuba’s Sock Puppet On Twitter Again
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For November 5
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, NASA Runs Out Of Money To Build Second SLS Mobile Launcher, and The Strange Surface Of Mars’ North Polar Icecap
Cafe Hayek: On Non-Compete Contracts, An Open Letter To A Power-Seeker, Federalism At Work, and Federalism At Work II
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Biden’s Workdays Vs. Trump’s, And Other Matters Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Lefties Get Racist & Sexist After Losing On Tuesday, also, Learn From Russiagate
First Street Journal: I’m In Twitter Jail! also, Murder #33 In Lexington
Gates Of Vienna: Quiz III – Fourteen Clues
The Geller Report: RITTENHOUSE CASE COLLAPSES, also, “What Percent Of The CDC Are Vaccinated?”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, Starbirth Nebulae, and The Left’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Hollywood In Toto: Finch Cares More About Robots Than A Double Oscar Winner, also, Rolling Stone Whines That Dave Chappelle Isn’t Cancelled Enough
The Lid: FAUCI LIED – These Documents Prove Sen. Paul Was Correct
Legal Insurrection: Progressives Rage At “White Women” In Wake Of Virginia Drubbing, Indiana Educator Explains How CRT Is Taught Under The Radar, and Rider U. Removes Name Of Revolutionary War Veteran From Campus Building
Michelle Malkin: America’s Nutty Professor Of Anti-White Rage
Nebraska Energy Observer: Scattershot Friday
Outkick: Aaron Rodgers Consults With Joe Rogan On Coof Treatment And Blue Checkmarks’ Heads Explode, also, What Would It Be Like If John Madden Called One More Game?
Power Line: David Vs. Goliath American Style, “They” Was A Teenage Witch, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shark Tank: Gov. DeSantis Leads On Clean Energy
Shot In The Dark: Logic 090, Every Time, and Definitions
The Political Hat: The Magic Of Transgenderism, also, Firing Line Friday – Should We Regulate The Use Of Words?
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, Democrat Spending Bill Risks Giving Unemployed Paid Leave, and 5/11/09 – Fort Hood Attack
Transterrestrial Musings: The Future Of Space, also, The Danchenko Indictment
Victory Girls: USS Connecticut Officers Relieved After Seamount Collision 
Volokh Conspiracy: Realtors Group Hearing “Hate Speech Ethics Complaint” Against Pastor/Realtor
Weasel Zippers: Taliban Has Kill List Of LGBT Afghans, Energy Sec. Granholm Laughs When Asked About Biden Plans To Lower Gas Prices, and Disney Fires Emilio Estevez From Mighty Ducks Season 2 For Not Getting Jab
The Federalist: Boy Scouts Announce New Critical Race Theory Requirement, also, Democrats Are Right To Be Scared About Losing The Parent Vote
Mark Steyn: Steyn In For Farage Today! also, “Saving The Planet” Is The Soft Option

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Category: Linkagery

The Weird Logic of Wajahat Ali

Posted on | November 5, 2021 | Comments Off on The Weird Logic of Wajahat Ali

How many of y’all remember the “white feminism” discourse among progressives following Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat? Because I’d spent the previous two years researching radical feminism, this phenomenon caught my attention at the time. What drove this discourse was the exit polls showing that Donald Trump had won a majority of white women voters. In the minds of certain progressives, especially Women of Color (WOC), the problem was something they labeled “White Feminism,” which was critiqued for its allegedly insufficient “intersectionality.” This led to conflict in the “Women’s March” movement.

In a sense, the “White Feminism” discourse was an expression of unrealistic expectations left over from Obama’s “Hope and Change” promises. When you encourage your supporters to believe that your election will bring about a Heaven-on-Earth utopia — “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” — their inevitable disappointment will have many consequences, including a hunt for scapegoats to blame. You could see this coming, almost immediately after Obama was reelected in 2012, as Team Clinton began laying the groundwork for her 2016 campaign. The idea that Our First Black President should be followed by Our First Woman President — because “the arc of the moral universe . . . bends toward justice” — was so taken for granted by Team Clinton that almost nobody seemed to question Hillary’s qualifications as a world-historic figure.

Inside the liberal echo chamber, there was a willful blindness to Hillary Clinton’s notorious “likeability” deficit. Like, why do you think she didn’t get the Democratic nomination in 2008? Wasn’t there a huge clue in the fact that Democratic primary voters preferred an obscure Illinois legislator to the former First Lady of the United States? And when she ran again in 2016, she nearly lost the nomination to a kooky old socialist from Vermont — and would have lost, were it not for the fact that the fix was in at DNC headquarters. You don’t need any conspiracy theories to explain why Donald Trump beat Hillary: People don’t like Hillary.

It’s actually that simple, and yet while Team Hillary was spinning up the “Russian collusion” theory for her 2016 defeat, a significant segment of the Democratic Party’s progressive base was offering their own kooky explanation, blaming “White Feminism” because exit polls showed 53% of white women voted for Trump. And now comes Wajahat Ali to blame the “white rage” of suburban women for Terry McAuliffe’s defeat:

As a student of American history and a person of color, I never underestimate the white, hot rage, anxiety, and resentment of a Karen scorned. You might think you’ve won them over with Beyonce, Oprah, chai latte, and henna, but the cult of Karen will always turn on people of color on a dime to uphold oppressive systems that ensure they remain influential and powerful handmaidens of white supremacy. . . .
In some bright news, 62 percent of college-educated white women went for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, up from 58 percent who went for Biden last year. But overall a majority of white women, around 57 percent, went for Youngkin—a remarkable 15-point swing from 2020 when 50 percent went for Biden and 49 percent for Trump.
I’m not surprised. . . .
The sad truth is that a majority of white women have voted for Republican candidates since 1952, every single time except for Lyndon B. Johnson and for Clinton’s second term.
It makes sense. They vote for their interests, which is preserving whiteness at all costs. . . .

Could someone ask Wajahat Ali what “preserving whiteness” means in this context? Because I am not at all certain how voting against Terry McAuliffe — who is, by the way, a white man — expresses this. Does Ali mean to say that Terry McAuliffe’s agenda is anti-white? If so, why didn’t Terry McAuliffe make this clear during his campaign? But enough with the sarcastic rhetorical questions. What is obviously going on here is that identity politics is the only tool in Wajahat Ali’s analytical toolbox, so that to him, every problem looks like “white supremacy.” His paranoid projection — attributing malevolent motives to his chosen enemies — is analogous to the way radical feminists see the oppressive of forces of heteropatriarchy lurking everywhere. Every segment of the Democratic Party’s coalition has some version of this paranoid scapegoat mentality, including the belief that the evil rich — the “top 1%” or shadowy forces of “corporate America” — are cheating them out of the money that they deserve, and which they intend to get by taxing the rich into bankruptcy.

When your entire political philosophy is rooted in irrational resentments — that is to say, when you are a Democrat — your reaction to electoral defeat will necessarily take the form of a search for scapegoats who can be blamed for this failure. You, of course, bear no responsibility; the whole point of the Democratic Party’s agenda is to absolve its supporters of individual responsibility. Joe Biden kind of shrugged off Terry McAuliffe’s defeat, as if the multiple disasters of the Biden presidency could not possibly have affected the Virginia election. And likewise Wajahat Ali won’t pause to contemplate whether the identity-politics rhetoric in which he specializes might have played some role in this. To be a Democrat is to be forever blameless, and so Wajahat Ali is certain he knows what Democrats are doing wrong:

Democrats might not win the majority of white women, but they haven’t for a while. That ship has sailed. It’s time to court and win over women of color and a diverse coalition that can save this country from itself and its self-destructive addiction to white supremacy. At the very least, now Youngkin can stop playing footsie with Trump and his MAGA acolytes and give them a full-throated bear hug while wearing his winter fleece. However, he should reserve the parade for white women who came out for whiteness like a Bath and Body Works candle sale.

Got that message, Democrats? White women are the enemy!

That’s your 2022 midterm campaign platform. Good luck.




 

Category: Democrats, Racism

In The Mailbox: 11.04.21

Posted on | November 5, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.04.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Bob Zimmerman at Behind The Black is doing a pledge drive. I kicked in and you should too.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Rural Minnesota knows what’s up.

OVER THE TRANSOM
McG’s Tally Book: Back On The (Supply) Chain Gang
357 Magnum: Rats, Meet Sinking Ship
EBL: Lieutenant Governor Of Virginia Winsome Sears
Twitchy: Tom Nichols Pretty Grumpy About GOP Truck Driver Who Won NJ Senate Seat, also, Winsome Sears Dumps More Salt In The Lincoln Project’s Open Wound
Louder With Crowder: Emails Reveal Why The CDC Changed Their Definition For Vaccine
Vox Popoli: Another One Bites The Ice, The Anti-President Doubles Down, and I Stand With Them
Gab News: Remember, Remember, The 3rd Of November
Stoic Observations: Multipolar Democracy
Granite Grok: Did Pfizer Submit False And/Or Corrupt Trial Data?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Greasy Pole #19 – The Addicted To Porn Episode
American Conservative: Don’t Be Too Happy Glenn Youngkin Won
American Greatness: Trump Nearing The Crossroads, also, Racine County Sheriff Refers Election Fraud Charges Against State Elections Commissioners To County DA
American Thinker: Virginia Must Clean House At Its Department Of Education, also, In 2022, The Democrats’ Biggest Enemy Will Be Voter Revulsion
Animal Magnetism: Hunt Week Totty Thursday
Babalu Blog: House Passes Resolution Supporting Cuban Protesters Despite Progressive Democrats, also, Cuban Dictatorship Increases Number Of Dissidents Forcibly Exiled
BattleSwarm: 2021 Post-Election Tidbits
Behind The Black: Boeing Wins FCC Approval For Its Own Satellite Internet Constellation, Today’s Blacklisted Americans, and Court Rejects Blue Origin’s Lawsuit Against SpaceX Moon Lander Contract
Cafe Hayek: Yet On An Age-Adjusted Basis…
CDR Salamander: The “Unsexy But Important” Is Sexy To The Professional. Where Are Our Professionals?
Da Tech Guy: More Under The Fedora Election Thoughts, also, The Democrats Lost Big In Virginia Because They Let Their Marxist Masks Slip
Don Surber: Vax Mandate Deadline Moved Until After The Holidays, also, Time To Dump Clueless Obama
First Street Journal: Mask Mandate Fights In Pennsylvania, also, A Victory For Normal People
Gates Of Vienna: Taking The Fifth, COP26 – Sodom & Gomorrah On Steroids, and The RINO Won After All
The Geller Report: Durham Arrests Clinton Dossier Operative, also, GOP Truck Driver Who Spent Just $153 On Campaign Upsets Democrat NJ Senate Kingpin
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, Don’t Know Much About History, and Zooming In On CW Leonis
Hollywood In Toto: Media Run Lame Ghostbusters Defense For Woke Eternals, also, How Comedian Steven Lolli Beat The System
The Lid: The Ragin’ Cajun Blames “Stupid Wokeness” For Va. Election Results
Legal Insurrection: Winsome Sears Challenges Joy Reid To Debate Over Racism Allegations, Rittenhouse Prosecution Implodes With State Witness Richard McGinnis Of Daily Caller, and Virginia’s New AG Jason Miyares Will Investigate Loudoun County Schools Over Rapes
Nebraska Energy Observer: If We’re Not Careful
Outkick: Tennessee Feeling “Healthy” After The Bye, Peyton Manning Suggests Browns Player Sh*t Himself Out Of Cleveland, and NFL Reporter Exposes The View On Kaepernick Slavery Comparison
Power Line: The Hive Does CRT, St. Augustine’s Climate Summit, and Tax Cuts For The Rich!
Shark Tank: Gov. DeSantis Leads On Clean Energy
Shot In The Dark: White Progressive Hipster Affectation #2, Strib Editorial 2041, and Even Odds
The Political Hat: School Smut Hypocrisy, also, The Latest Things That Are Now Racist – Jedi Knights, Baby Carriers, & Classical Music
This Ain’t Hell: We’ve Investigated Ourselves And Found We Did Nothing Wrong, Marines Schooled By Brits, also, Congratulations Winsome Sears
Victory Girls: Democrats Determined To Go Big AND Go Home, also, Biden Is Clueless About His Own Administration
Volokh Conspiracy: OSHA Finally Issues Emergency Jab/Testing Mandate For Large Employers
Weasel Zippers: Democrat Supercut – Racisms, Racisms, Racisms!, Nineteen States Suing Administration Over Jab Mandate, and NJ Governor’s Race Heading To Recount
The Federalist: Audit – Wisc. Could Have Counted Enough Illegal Votes To Tip The Election To Biden, How Jab Coercion Drove Me Out Of West Point, and U. Mich. Paid CRT Grifter $266/Minute For Zoom Lecture
Mark Steyn: Penny For The Percy

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Category: Linkagery

When Democrats Say ‘Our Children’

Posted on | November 4, 2021 | Comments Off on When Democrats Say ‘Our Children’

Never trust a Democrat, especially when they start speaking in first-person plural pronouns, e.g., Joe Biden on Wednesday:

“Vaccinating our children will help us keep our schools open — keep our kids in the classroom, learning and socializing with their classmates and teachers. I think every reporter in this room who has a child understands the difference of a child going to school and having to learn from home. It matters. It matters in terms of their not just physical health, their mental health.”

Joe Biden does not care about your children. If it were up to him, your children would have been aborted before they were born — and this would have been paid for with “our” taxpayer dollars.

As for his kids, Hunter Biden never set foot in a public school. Joe Biden’s son attended Archmere Academy, then went to Georgetown University before getting his law degree at Yale. Joe Biden, who has been a full-time politician since 1971, made sure that his children were exempt from the policies he and his Democrat buddies impose on other people’s children.

Joe Biden hates you. He hates your children, too. Why? Beceause Joe Biden is a Democrat and Democrats hate America.

That’s why they are doing all they can to destroy our country.




 

Category: Education, Joe Biden
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