The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 02.05.21

Posted on | February 6, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.05.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Well, I guess I’m just not going to get caught up on this week’s linkagery, and next week doesn’t look good either. That’s life in the tax mines at this time of year. Usual deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Would You Act In Defense Of A Stranger? also, COVID Lies From The CDC
EBL: Trump Lives Rent-Free In Their Heads, also, Christopher Plummer, RIP
Twitchy: Kurt Eichenwald Takes On Nancy Mace To Defend Occasional Cortex, Gets Rekt, also, Ana “Gordita” Navarro Tries Attacking Van Jones For Taking Pic With Candace Owens, Gets Whupped
Louder With Crowder: David Hogg Pillow Update – This Genius Can’t Find A Union Pillow Factory
Vox Popoli: The Never Learn, also, They “Saved” The Election
Stoic Observations: In Defiance Of Categories
According To Hoyt: Reducing An Occupied Country
Monster Hunter Nation: Gun Runner Release Updates, also, Using A Goofy Review To Show How Collaborations Work

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Neither Madge Nor Liz
American Greatness: America’s Political Prisoners First, also, The Limits Of “Free Speech”
American Power: Occasional Cortex Moans About “Revictimization”
American Thinker: First Steps For Surviving What’s Coming, also, It’s A Big Club, And You Ain’t In It
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Climate Hypocrite News, also, Rule Five Second Amendment Friday
Babalu Blog: Cuban Dissident Arrested for Denouncing Abusive Culture Minister, also, “Cuba Expert” Advice To Biden Based On Factual Inaccuracies & Omissions
BattleSwarm: Reinstatement Of Austin Camping Ban Makes May 1 Ballot, also, LinkSwarm For February 5
Beyond The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American (Thursday) (Friday), also, INVASION OF MARS BEGINS NEXT WEEK
Cafe Hayek: Down Down Under, also, Economic Reality Isn’t Optional
CDR Salamander: Return To Transformationalism, also, Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: To Preserve Our Constitutional Republic, States Need To Nullify The Biden Administration’s Unconstitutional Acts, also, Blue States Without Trump Are Like Belichick Without Brady
Don Surber: Democrats Represent 19 Of The 20 Wealthiest Congressional Districts, also, Why Dick Cheney’s Daughter Lost Her Party
First Street Journal: President* Biden Acts Like He Cares About American Workers, But It’s Just An Act
The Geller Report: Video Shows Late Night Deliveries Of Thousands Of Illegal Ballots To Detroit’s TCF Arena, also, Muslim Brotherhood Supporter & Non-Veteran Confirmed As Head Of VA
Hogewash: Spinning The First Draft Of History To Fit The Narrative, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: The Dazzling Robin Williams Role We Missed, also, Why The Borat Sequel Has All The Oscar Buzz
The Lid: Biden’s Reopening Illegal Alien Detention Center For Kids That Trump Closed
Legal Insurrection: Remember When Biden Promised $2000 (Not $1400) Stimulus Checks? also, Biden’s EPA Pick Says The Rest Of The Country Can Learn From California
Nebraska Energy Observer: When The Left-Leaning Are Rational, also, The Sound Of Freedom
Power Line: Democratic Governors Have Devastated Their States, also, The Deep Secret Of Electric Cars
Shark Tank: Deutch Singles Out Greene, But Has Nothing To Say About Omar & Tlaib
Shot In The Dark: Nineteen And Life
STUMP: GameStop Follies – Hedge Funds, r/wallstreetbets, and Public Pensions
The Political Hat: Woke Education – Woke College Majors, Woke Business, & Woke Dentistry, also, Why Proportional Representation For Congress Is Unwise
This Ain’t Hell: Navy Task Force To Change Ship Names That Honor Confederacy, also, Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: Space Force Journal, also, Campus Diversity Efforts
Victory Girls: SecDef Orders Stand Down To Combat Extremism, also, Left Admits 2020 Election Was “Fortified” The Democrat Way
Volokh Conspiracy: SCOTUS Removes Border Wall Case From Oral Argument Calendar
Weasel Zippers: COVID Cases Mysteriously Fall 50% Since Election, also, MSNBC Discusses Using Drone Strikes Against “Extremist” Americans In America
The Federalist: How Biden’s Energy Policies Will Decimate American Jobs For No Good Reason, also, The QAnon Takeover Of The GOP Is A Leftist Fantasy
Mark Steyn: When Free Speech Becomes A Right-Wing Fetish, also, The Post-Political World

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Category: Linkagery

You Can’t Say ‘Rigged’

Posted on | February 5, 2021 | Comments Off on You Can’t Say ‘Rigged’

One of the things you learn, if you spend as many years in the news business as I have, is that the news is not random. That is to say, the question of what stories will appear on the front page of the New York Times is not merely a matter of what happened the day before, because all kinds of things happen every day, and there is only so much space on the front page of a paper. Actual choices have to be made, by human beings called “editors,” to determine what’s front-page news, what gets stuck back on Page A14, and what never gets reported at all.

The process of deciding what is “news” is not random, as I say, even though some events are of such unquestioned importance that they must be at the top of the front page. If you picked up any American newspaper on Sept. 12, 2001, this was rather obvious, but such historic events are rare, and on most days the question of what goes on A1 leaves a fair amount of leeway to the editors to make their own choices. There may be one or two stories of such unquestioned importance that they must be on the front page, but when it comes to the rest — Story 3, Story 4, Story 5, etc. — the editors have more room to exercise discretion.

Trust me, there is often a lot of internal disagreement over such things. When I was at The Washington Times, some reporters would get very angry if a story they had pitched for A1 didn’t make the cut. It was generally the policy that A1 would have at least one Metro story, and on most days also there would be something from Sports or Features on the front page, so that out of a total of seven or eight front-page stories, the National desk would only get five or six. Well, if Bill Gertz had a story about the Chinese military that he felt deserved to be on A1, he’d get rather peeved — and understandably so — if his story was bumped back to Page A3 so that we could have, say, a feature about Georgetown University basketball on the front page. It happens.

Human beings make decisions about what counts as front-page news, and there is a certain amount of selectivity involved. You know who figured this out? Matt Drudge. The story is that when he was working as the overnight clerk at a 7-Eleven in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., he would read all the newspapers to pass the time in the wee hours when there were no customers. Reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, the New York Post, USA Today, etc., back-to-back every day for weeks on end, Drudge began to notice the different choices reflected in the content of the papers. From that insight sprang his subsequent approach to aggregating news at the Drudge Report (which, alas, he seems to have turned over to a gang of liberal dimwits in the past couple of years). Thanks to the Internet, all of us now have more access to different sources than was possible for most people back when Drudge was reading all those newspapers at 7-Eleven, so there is more widespread understanding of how media bias operates.

“Why is this story national news?”

That’s the question you have to ask, whenever a crime story makes it to CNN or to the network evening news broadcasts. Because America is a very large country, with more than 325 million people, the vast majority of crime in the United States is strictly “local news.” There were more than 16,000 murders in America in 2019, which works out to about 45 murder per day. How many of those murders even get mentioned on CNN? Not many. So when something like the Trayvon Martin shooting or the death of George Floyd becomes national news — hourly updates 24/7 on CNN — this means that a decision was made by someone. These stories didn’t just coincidentally become national news. On the day that George Floyd died, about 40 other Americans were shot to death, but none of those other deaths were deemed newsworthy by CNN.

Everybody today is talking about this Time magazine story by Molly Ball, which looks an awful lot like a secret plan to rig the election, but you’re not allowed to say “rigged” or “stolen,” because if you do, you’re an “extremist” and potentially a terrorist. Ace gives the story a thorough fisking here, and my podcast partner John Hoge also takes notice.

This story is nearly 7,000 words, which is a lot to chew on, but here’s one part that attracted my attention:

The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives.
The best way to ensure people’s voices were heard, they decided, was to protect their ability to vote. “We started thinking about a program that would complement the traditional election-protection area but also didn’t rely on calling the police,” says Nelini Stamp, the Working Families Party’s national organizing director. They created a force of “election defenders” who, unlike traditional poll watchers, were trained in de-escalation techniques. During early voting and on Election Day, they surrounded lines of voters in urban areas with a “joy to the polls” effort that turned the act of casting a ballot into a street party. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.
The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

Do you see that these dots connect in a non-random way? And do you understand how the news media was part of this coordinated operation?

Notice also that Molly Ball says the George Floyd riots were “not primarily a political movement.” Well, what does “political” mean? You’re not supposed to ask such questions. That’s the important thing about the media narrative, is how skepticism is basically forbidden. Ordinary citizens are not supposed to notice the strings by which the puppet-masters manipulate the story, and don’t you dare point out the political objectives toward which the media narrative is aimed:

In three consecutive presidential elections — 1980, 1984, and 1988 — the Republicans won landslide majorities. In order to win back the White House, the Democrats began examining the demographic composition of the electorate, looking for some cleavage point by which they could break up the Reagan–Bush majority. Poring over exit-poll data and convening focus groups, the Democrats went to work, and with Bill Clinton as their candidate assembled a new coalition.
Part of the Clinton message strategy — and one that Democrats have exploited ever since — was to accuse Republicans of representing forces of hate and division and saying they are to blame for the suffering of victims of oppression. This message has been ably reinforced by the Democrats’ allies in the news media. Who was it, after all, that decided to replay the video of L.A. cops beating Rodney King over and over on CNN until eventually Los Angeles erupted in the worst race riot in recent U.S. history? That episode helped Clinton win the 1992 election, and are we to suppose that this was merely coincidental? Likewise the summer-long wave of racial violence that began with protests over George Floyd’s death last May — just another election-year coincidence? Or is it the case, as I rather suspect, that CNN and other Democrat-controlled media operations are not just randomly choosing local crime stories to turn into national controversies? . . .

Read the rest of my latest column in The American Spectator.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: American Spectator, Crime, Election, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 02.04.21 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | February 4, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.04.21 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #1252
357 Magnum: He Was Told To Leave. He Didn’t Leave
EBL: The North American Man Boy Lincoln Association (a/k/a The Lincoln Project)
Twitchy: “We Are In Receipt Of Your Latest Public Relations Stunt”
Louder With Crowder: Black NC Lt. Gov Rips Into Media Comparing Him & Others To KKK
Vox Popoli: GamerGate TV, also, Boomers Baffled As Their Music Dies

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Biden’s EO On Wind Power Is More Hot Air
American Greatness: Liz Cheney’s GOP Is No More, also, #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett
American Power: CNN’s Big Trump Ratings Bubble Begins To Collapse In Earnest
American Thinker: Toward A Renewable Chaos, also, Trump Will Play The Senate’s Game Using The Democrats’ Chips
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Babalu Blog: Black Cuban Artist Denounces Systemic Racism Of The Revolution
BattleSwarm: Austin Votes On Wilco Homeless Hotel
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, The Muppets – Bohemian Rhapsody
Cafe Hayek: A Conversation Between George Will & Oren Cass
Da Tech Guy: A Quick Reminder for Those Who Are Losing Hope, also, Philly’s COVID Mess
Don Surber: Xiden Sinks CNN’s Ratings
First Street Journal: The NYT & The Ministry Of Truth
The Geller Report: Hamas Supporter Placed In Charge Of State Department’s Israel-Palestinian Desk, also, Lying Occasional Cortex Was NOT In The Capitol During Breach
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Democracy Dies In Derpness
Hollywood In Toto: The Reckoning Commits The Worst Horror Movie Sin, also, Toronto Sketch Troupe Cancels Itself
The Lid: Time For Biden’s EO Pen To Run Out Of Ink
Legal Insurrection: Occasional Cortex’ Tale Of Capitol Invasion Woe Is Mostly #FakeNews, also, Biased NYU Study Claims “No Reliable Evidence” Of Big Tech Bias Against Conservatives
Michelle Malkin: Biden’s Department Of Homeland Sleaze Chief
Nebraska Energy Observer: That Reminds Me
Power Line: Biden Staffs Up With Chicom Sympathizers, also, Our Biggest Liar? Joe Biden
Shark Tank: Laura Loomer Defends Marjorie Taylor Greene, Disavows Republican Jewish Coalition
Shot In The Dark: Not An Animal
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – PA, IL, OH, GA, NC, & MI By Race/Ethnicity
The Political Hat: Fisking An Anti-TERF Sports Rant
This Ain’t Hell: Another Idea From The Roman Army, also, There’s No Such Things As The “Deep State”, But Biden Is Purging Trump “Loyalists”
Transterrestrial Musings: Big Tech Censorship
Victory Girls: The Toxic Tears Of AOC’s Femininity
Volokh Conspiracy: My USA TODAY Op-Ed On Biden’s Impressively Far-Reaching Immigration Agenda
Weasel Zippers: President Grandpa Somehow Lost 20 Million Doses Of COVID Vaccine, also, Meme Of The Day – AOC Wasn’t Really There
The Federalist: Chuck Schumer Used Violent Rhetoric To Set A Mob On Two Supreme Court Justices, also, Explore Thomas Sowell’s Remarkable Life In New Documentary
Mark Steyn: Walking On, also, Battling Wokeness

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Category: Linkagery

AOC’s Fake Victimhood Narrative

Posted on | February 4, 2021 | Comments Off on AOC’s Fake Victimhood Narrative

Why would anyone believe anything she says?

“Alexandria Ocasio Smollett” and “AOC Lied” trended on Twitter amidst backlash over Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tale of her experiences during the Capitol Riot.
The New York Democrat has repeatedly described fearing for her life during the Jan. 6 riot. In a Monday evening Instagram Live video, she said she hid in her office bathroom after hearing loud banging and shouting.
She described her fears at length before revealing that it was not rioters but a Capitol Police officer who entered her office. . . .
“I thought I was going to die,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I have never been quieter in my entire life.”

Journalists who actually bothered to check the facts — there are precious few of those in D.C. nowadays — pointed out that Ocasio-Cortez’s office is not in the Capitol building, which was stormed by a mob of Trump supporters Jan. 6. Instead, her office is in the Cannon House Office Building, on the south side of Independence Avenue, across from the Capitol. None of the rioters ever entered the building where AOC was in her office, cowering in her bathroom and allegedly fearing for her life.

Democrats generally have lied about the Capitol riot, in which a relatively small number of angry nutjobs breached the police barricades, allowing a somewhat larger number of pro-Trump protesters to enter the Capitol, where they mostly wandered around taking selfies, like tourists. Democrats expect us to believe that this incident was a “terrorist attack” comparable to Sept. 11, 2001, and AOC’s “I thought I was going to die” sob story was clearly intended to dramatize that narrative.

My advice to conservatives since before Election Day has been to remain calm. If the news is depressing you or making you angry, stop watching the news. Find something pleasant to divert your attention from these daily provocations. Maintaining sanity in these crazy times can be difficult, but if you don’t work at it, you might end up jabbering about “lizard people” and doing something crazy and/or illegal.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)




 

Category: Congress, Democrats

In The Mailbox: 02.03.21 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | February 3, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.03.21 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

New frontiers in enhanced interrogation. (h/t Ace)
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Chronicles Of A Falling Civilization
EBL: Punxsutawney Joe
Twitchy: Biden DoJ Drops Suit Against Yale Alleging Discrimination Against White & Asian Applicants
Louder With Crowder: Ron DeSantis Proposes Actual Legislation To Combat Big Tech 
Vox Popoli: Now Here’s A Thought, also, Totally Has NOTHING To Do With Election Fraud
Stoic Observations: The End Of Hope

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Edmund Burke Warned Us About The Woke
American Greatness: Bail Fund Supported By Biden Campaign & Kamala Harris Keeps Setting Violent Criminals Free 
American Power: Tucker Carlson On The Democrats’ Mobilization Of The Military
American Thinker: The Real Constitutional Crisis Is Upon Us, also, The “Tells” Of The Deep State Poker Players
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Great Land News
Babalu Blog: Will Tom Brady Save The NFL? also, “In Cuba, Our Parents’ Generation Is Collapsing”
BattleSwarm: Hi Ho Silver, Away To The Moon! also, Followup – Is The Silver Squeeze A Ruse?
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Bezos To Step Down As Amazon CEO
Cafe Hayek: Sounds Like Something Out Of An Ayn Rand Novel
CDR Salamander: Killing Small Ships, Again
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Our Turn With COVID, also, The Sausage, The Tell, & Other Goodies Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Nobody Wants #NeverTrumpers, also, The Search Is On For WV’s Occasional Cortex
First Street Journal: Is There No Actual Journalism Practiced At The Philadelphia Inquirer?
The Geller Report: America Was Energy Independent For The First Time in 70 Years, Until The Democrats Stole The Election, also, Secretly Recorded Videos Show Zuckerberg Justifying Trump Ban, Praising Biden
Hogewash: I’m Not Making This Up, You Know, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Don’t Fall For Hollywood’s Newest Virtue Signal, also, Netflix’ Moxie Promises Woke On Steroids Storytelling
The Lid: Leftists Push Publix Boycott Over Heiress’ Donation To Trump Rally
Legal Insurrection: CA Recall Petition For Gov. Newsom Nears Qualifying Mark, also, Progressive LA DA Supports Parole For Manson Family Murderer
Nebraska Energy Observer: Vindication Or Vindictive?
Power Line: Incompetent Dem Donor To Lead Biden’s Economic Response To Pandemic, also, How To Strike Back Against Big Tech Censorship
Shark Tank: Wasserman-Schultz Threatens Minority Leader If He Doesn’t Act Against Taylor Greene
Shot In The Dark: Sic Transit
STUMP: Mortality with Meep – Excess Mortality In CA, TX, & FL By Race/Ethnicity
The Political Hat: Presumptive Turnabout Is Presumptive Fair Play
This Ain’t Hell: NPRC Backlog Finally Getting Congressional Attention, also, Pushing Biden’s Buttons
Transterrestrial Musings: Bidenharris, also, Is Today The Day?
Victory Girls: Manipulation By AOC In Instagram Post
Volokh Conspiracy: House Impeachment Managers, Trump Defense Lawyers File Briefs
Weasel Zippers: Biden Advisor Has Deep Ties To Chicom Military, also, CNN “Legal” Analyst Says President Trump Doesn’t Have A 1st Amendment Right To Lie
The Federalist: White House Asked Reporters To Share Questions With Administration Before Pressers, also, Ten Steps For Resisting Joe Biden’s Order To Transgender Public Schools
Mark Steyn: Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! also, Thinking Globally, Stuck Locally

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.01.21

Posted on | February 2, 2021 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.01.21

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links in January.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: This Was Not One Cop Having A Bad Day
EBL: Joe Biden Protects Only Certain Jobs, also, Cuomo Doesn’t Care
Twitchy: “As Ignorant As My Out-Of-Order Toaster”
Louder With Crowder: Louder With Crowder Is Suing Facebook
Vox Popoli: Preemptively Burning The Books, also, Never Trust “The Science”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Sunday Pork Roast
American Conservative: Blue Bloods – Television’s Last American Aristocrats
American Greatness: Donald Trump, Counterculture Icon, also, Why Are Progressives So Illiberal?
American Power: THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES
American Thinker: You Will Be Made To Believe Implausible Things, also, Liz Cheney’s Predestined Future
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Cuba’s Ministry Of Culture So Cultured, They Have Their Own Special Forces, also, Cuban Phrase Of The Day – “Me importa tres pepinos”
BattleSwarm: GameStop Short Sellers Refusing To Fold? also, Stop That Tank!
Behind The Black: Today’s Blacklisted American, also, Pseudo-Private Chicom Rocket Fails On Second Launch
Cafe Hayek: Industrial Policy – Obviously A Blind, Lame, & Drunk Donkey, also, The Market Makes People Pay For Their Prejudices
CDR Salamander: The War On (Military) History – Half A Century Ina
Da Tech Guy: The Short Guide To Using MeWe, also, Republicans Might Need 53% Of The Vote To Win Elections
Don Surber: No, Jonah, It’s On You, also, We Put The USA In The Hands Of Dangerous Imbeciles
First Street Journal: The Truth Will Not Set You Free, also, The NYT And WaPo Want To Censor Other Peoples’ Speech
The Geller Report: Seven Of The Ten GOP Congressmen Who Voted To Impeach Trump Already Facing Primary Challenges, also, New HCQ Study Shows Its Effectiveness – How Many Died From COVID Because Democrats Vilified It?
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Nothing To See Here, Move Along
Hollywood In Toto: Mosquito Coast Gave Harrison Ford & His Fans The Ultimate Challenge 
The Lid: Jackson Lee’s Gun Control Bill Seeks Federal License, Psych Exams To Own Firearms
Legal Insurrection: After Months Of Rioting & Looting, Black Lives Matter Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize, also, The Speech As Incitement Case Against Trump Continues To Crumble
Nebraska Energy Observer: Random Observations, also, Rowan’s Way – 9 Trust
Power Line: A Tsunami Of Hate, also, Who Will Tell The Greens There Is No Battery Fairy?
Shark Tank: Rubio – Biased Media Rhetoric Isn’t Healthy For America
Shot In The Dark: Our Illiterate Overlords
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – Excess Mortality In NY & NYC
The Political Hat: The Tyranny Of Equity – The Totalitarianism Of Wokeness
This Ain’t Hell: Another Six Accounted For, also, Seven Army Reservists (Including Two NOPD Officers) Indicted For Funeral Detail Fraud
Transterrestrial Musings: The Hydroxichloroquine Scandal, also, First The FAA…
Victory Girls: Ted Cruz – Naming Names & Protecting The Republic
Volokh Conspiracy: Explaining The Great 2020 Homicide Spike
Weasel Zippers: Lincoln Project Founders All Have Ties To Russia & Tax Troubles, also, Biden Administration Can’t Find 20 Million Doses Of COVID Vaccine
The Federalist: Confused Kamala Harris Warns Of West Virginia’s “Abandoned Land Mines”, also, Biden’s Swampy Pick To Run Unemployment Lost Millions In Pandemic Aid To Nigerian Fraudsters
Mark Steyn: La Grande Illusion, also, The Hundred Years Ago Show

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Category: Uncategorized

The ‘Nationalist’ Kafkatrap

Posted on | February 1, 2021 | Comments Off on The ‘Nationalist’ Kafkatrap

Earlier today, I took note of how the “extremist” label is being used by the media to smear all opposition to the Biden administration, as a pretext for silencing all criticism of the Biden administration. And as I noted, this accusation of “extremism” is a Kafkatrap — a sort of circular argument, whereby denying guilt is taken as proof of guilt.

Liberals argue this way habitually, and never get called out for it. They will claim that a certain policy proposal is intended to help a certain category of (allegedly) oppressed people and, if you dare criticize or oppose their policy for any reason, you will be accused of Thoughtcrime, i.e., some sort of hate toward the oppressed victim group. Anyone who objects that such accusations are unfair — “I’ve known Tom for years, there’s not a prejudiced bone in his body” — will be accused of sympathizing with the haters. You are just like a “good German,” complicit in the Nazi murder six million Jews. No protest of innocence can save you, once you are so accused. If, for example, you think it’s a bad idea for the federal government to mandate that “transwomen” compete in women’s athletics, you will be accused of murderous hatred toward transgendered people. The next time a “transwoman of color” is murdered in Chicago, the blood is on your hands! Never mind the fact that you’ve never been to Chicago, a place where becoming a murder victim is notoriously easy. Because of (a) your policy disagreement with liberals, (b) you are a “hater,” and therefore (c) your opinion is invalid, and (d) you deserve to be “doxxed” and fired from your job.

All of that is a preamble to the way “nationalist” is now routinely deployed by liberals to discredit anyone who doesn’t vote Democrat.

It is obvious that “nationalist” has become a preferred epithet because liberals know that this word evokes ideas of Nazism. Any honest student of political science realizes that Nazism was a totalitarian ideology, and thus akin to Communism. The Nazis did not have a monopoly on hate, nor did they have a monopoly on genocide, which Communist regimes actually perpetrated on a much larger scale than Hitler ever did.

For American liberals, however, any opponent of the Democratic Party agenda is more or less automatically assumed to be a crypto-Nazi. During the Cold War, this smear was used against every Republican who gained any prominence or success as an opponent of Communism, including Richard Nixon, Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. It may be observed that there were many conservative Democrats during that era — among them Pat McCarran and John F. Kennedy — who were as vehemently anti-Communist as any Republican, yet somehow only Republican anti-Communists were subjected to the Nazi smear. This is a clue about the partisan nature of such accusations, which are simply a tactic that Democrats have learned to exploit with the help of their media friends.

The way liberals have been slinging around accusations of “white nationalism” against Republicans lately, you might suppose that the GOP was controlled by dangerous racist Jew-haters. But no, Republicans are not the party of Ilhan Omar, and the people attacking Jews in New York don’t seem much like Republican voters, IYKWIMAITYD.

Well, here is a headline from USA Today:

Christian nationalism is a threat, and not
just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus

You can examine that “argument” (the scare-quotes indicating it is not actually an argument, but merely a tendentious smear) for yourself.

The author spends a lot of time talking about Jacob Chansley, a/k/a “Jake Angelli,” a/k/a “The QAnon Shaman,” who is somehow converted into a symbol of . . . well what? Any Christian who didn’t vote for Joe Biden, would seem to be the implication of her non sequitur claim.

Examine her claim closely, and you can only conclude that, to this author, any sentiment which might predispose one to vote Republican is a dangerous form of hatred. “Christian nationalism” is merely the author’s way of smearing Christians who vote Republican. And let us consult the author’s thumbnail biographical blurb:

Rachel S. Mikva is the Herman Schaalman Professor in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Oh, Chicago? The place where “transwomen of color” are murdered?

Perhaps Professor Mikva can do something to stop all those murderers in Chicago. Pretty sure they’re not Republican voters, IYKWIMAITYD.




 

Category: Racism

Who Is an ‘Extremist’?

Posted on | February 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Who Is an ‘Extremist’?

A few recent headlines:

Republican extremists could doom party
to endless defeats
— CNN, Jan. 26

Rachel Maddow: GOP has become party of a
‘fringe, violent, extremist criminal movement’
— The Hill, Jan. 27

“This Is War”: Inside the Secret Chat
Where Far-Right Extremists Devised
Their Post-Capitol Plans
— Pro Publica, Jan. 28

Extremists Emboldened by Capitol Attack
Pose Growing Threat, Homeland Security Says
— New York Times, Jan. 29

Republican Ties to Extremist Groups
Are Under Scrutiny
— New York Times, Jan. 29

Domestic violent extremists will be harder
to combat than homegrown jihadists
— The Hill, Jan. 31

‘It’s endemic’: state-level Republican groups
lead party’s drift to extremism
— The Guardian, Jan. 31

Perhaps you notice the similar theme and you might wonder if all these journalists are operating in collusion to promote the idea of a dangerous “extremist” GOP threat. However, if you don’t trust the media, that’s a “conspiracy theory,” which means you’re an “extremist.”

Now, I am personally acquainted with people who were involved in organizing the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in D.C. I am also personally acquainted with Oath Keepers, who did not attend that rally. Several members of Oath Keepers were among those charged with planning the Capitol riot, which was a separate thing from the “Stop the Steal” rally, except for this: All of these people believe Democrats stole the election and, frankly, I am inclined toward the same belief.

The difference between my friends and the people arrested in the Capitol riot is not whether we believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Like approximately 50 million Americans, we suspect the Democrats engaged in widespread election fraud. The question is whether we think resorting to lawless violence is the proper response. While the guys who planned the “storming” of the Capitol apparently believed only violence could solve this problem, the rest of us — i.e., those who aren’t facing federal charges — are generally of the opinion that what we need to do is be patient, get organized and try to win future elections by margins so large that Democrats can’t steal it. An “extremist” is violent; the rest of us are just engaged in ordinary political activity.

What is happening in the media is that they are using the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as an excuse to smear all Republicans as “extremists,” and thus to enable the suppression of dissent in the Biden era.

You see, however, the circular logic — the Kafkatrap — of the “extremist” accusation: If you believe that this alleged menace is being exaggerated as a pretext to suppress dissent, you’re an “extremist”!




 

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Media Bias, Terrorism
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