Stacey Abrams Loses in Georgia, and Democrats Claim GOP ‘Stole’ Election

Posted on | November 17, 2018 | Comments Off on Stacey Abrams Loses in Georgia, and Democrats Claim GOP ‘Stole’ Election

As a native Georgian, I’m frankly shocked that this election was even close, but Democrats don’t live in reality:

Democrat Georgia gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams admitted Friday that she cannot win against Republican opponent Brian Kemp and vowed to file a federal lawsuit challenging the “gross mismanagement” of the state’s elections
Abrams made her announcement shortly after 5 p.m., the earliest state officials could certify the results after a court-ordered review of absentee, provisional and other uncounted ballots. Abrams’ campaign had contended there were potentially enough uncounted votes to force a runoff.
Abrams told supporters that Kemp placed “his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote.”
“Concession means to acknowledge an act is right, true or proper…I cannot concede that,” she added. . . .
“In the coming days, we will be filing a major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections,” she said.
Abrams had hoped to become the first black governor of the Deep South state and the first black female governor of any state.
Abrams and voting rights activists have claimed for months that Kemp mismanaged the elections system in his post as secretary of state. . . .
Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, Abrams’ campaign chairwoman, is overseeing a team of almost three-dozen lawyers who in the coming days will draft the petition, along with a ream of affidavits from voters and would-be voters who say they were disenfranchised.

Call this what it is, a paranoid conspiracy theory, a partisan propaganda claim deliberately intended to inflame racial fear: “The white folks cheated! We’re disenfranchised! It’s a 21st-century Jim Crow!”

Bullshit.

Permit me to explain, in case it is not obvious, what happened in Georgia. National Democrats had hoped that an anti-Trump backlash would inspire a “blue wave” of such miraculous proportions that, for example, Beto O’Rourke could beat Ted Cruz in Texas. You can see the delusional aspect of Democrats’ 2018 hopes in the kind of candidates they nominated in various “swing” congressional districts. In race after race where the GOP was vulnerable, Democrats lost because their primary voters went for nominees (e.g., Gina Ortiz Jones in TX23, Lauren Baer in FL18, Leslie Cockburn in VA5) who were simply too extreme to be competitive. And this was the story of Stacey Abrams in a nutshell — another far-left candidate who won the Democrat primary on the basis of unrealistic “blue wave” hopes. Inside the echo-chamber of liberal media, Abrams’ primary victory in May was celebrated with this CNN headline: “Stacey Abrams wins Democratic primary in Georgia. She could become the nation’s first black woman governor.”

Georgia Republicans were laughing out loud at that headline. Brian Kemp might not have been the smoothest politician in the GOP field, but he wasn’t so bad he could lose to . . . well, an Atlanta Democrat.

Do I really need to explain what that means? I should hope not.

We live in the real world, and not in the liberal fantasyland inhabited by CNN viewers, so we understand why an Atlanta Democrat might have difficulty winning a statewide election in Georgia. But let’s take a look at some exit-poll numbers, just to make the point.

White voters went 3-to-1 for Kemp, who also won 2-to-1 among married voters, and won decisive majorities of all voters earning over $30,000. Did you notice, by the way, that Kemp got more than 10% of black male voters? You can bet most of those are upper-income married black men. Despite the polarizing effect of Trump — whose personality tends to alienate some respectable church-going types who normally vote Republican — Kemp nevertheless won what we might call the bourgeois vote, because Stacey Abrams was simply not the kind of candidate who could appeal to responsible middle-class taxpayers.

Why, then, are Democrats claiming Kemp had to cheat to win?

Democrat donors like George Soros poured millions of dollars into the Abrams campaign, because “experts” (like former Clinton strategist Peter Daou) somehow convinced these wealthy idiots that Abrams had a chance of winning. If you spend enough money, and get Oprah and Obama to campaign for you, it’s possible to “energize the base” enough to make such an election competitive, even in a Republican stronghold like Georgia. But even with a maximum turnout of, uh, Atlanta Democrats (Abrams racked up more than 300,000 votes in Fulton County, and more than 250,000 in DeKalb), liberal fantasies ultimately encounter the “red wall.” Go look at the election map in Georgia, particularly in those counties north of Atlanta — Kemp won Paulding with 67%, Forsyth with 71%, Cherokee with 72%, Hall with 73%. Abrams amassed huge margins in Atlanta, and even won about 55% in the Cobb and Gwinnett suburbs, but in vast swaths of the state, Kemp won by 70% or more. (In Gordon County, where I spent four years as sports editor of the local newspaper, Kemp got 82%.) Democrats and their big-money donors simply can’t cope with that kind of political reality. It’s racist for white people in Georgia to vote Republican, liberals believe, and so they claim “voter suppression tactics” must have been involved. As if officials in Atlanta were “suppressing” Democrat voters? Never mind. It’s a paranoid conspiracy theory, and as such doesn’t require facts or logic.

One the one hand, Democrats claim the election was “stolen” as an excuse for wasting all that money from their liberal donors, but on the other hand, such claims are about maintaining anti-white resentment among their voter base, because if Democrats don’t get 90% of the black vote (and 80% of the Hispanic vote) they can’t win any elections anywhere south of Illinois or east of Nevada. There simply aren’t enough white liberals in most of America to make up a Democrat majority, and so the kind of people who live inside the CNN echo chamber must always have some kind of wacko theory to explain away Republican victories.

By the way, does anyone think racism alone explains why Abrams lost?

“One million dollars — that’s how much Stacey Abrams made over the last five years. But when it came time to pay her $54,000 tax bill, she didn’t. Instead, Abrams decided to loan her campaign for governor $50,000. Pushing a radical agenda to raise your taxes while delaying what she owes in order to fund her political campaign — Stacey Abrams, a self-serving, fiscally irresponsible career politician.”

That ad highlighted something Peter Daou and the Democrats don’t want to talk about. Despite her high income, Abrams had personal debt of more than $170,000, including a $54,000 debt to the IRS. Is that the kind of person you want to elect governor? Maybe if you’re a Democrat, but most Georgians are Republicans. And thank God for that.

Category: Democrats, Election, Georgia

Wretchedly Late Night With In The Mailbox: 11.16.18

Posted on | November 17, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Roy Clark, RIP
Twitchy: After Threatening To Nuke Americans Who Won’t Give Up Their Guns, Rep. Eric Swalwell Bemoans Lack of Progress On Gun Control Debate
Louder With Crowder: Republic, WA Police Chief Refuses To Enforce Unconstitutional Gun Laws
According To Hoyt: Lift That Light High!
Monster Hunter Nation: November Update Post
Vox Popoli: Just Do It Already

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Links & Chicks – Angrywhitemenistan Edition
American Thinker: Democrat Corruption Is A Clear & Present Danger To America
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Three-Time Loser Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For November 16
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Downballot, Some Life-Issue News
Don Surber: Trump Everyone’s Hard Passes Then
Dustbury: That Side Of Paradise
First Street Journal: Gov. Cuomo Slips Up & Tells The Truth
The Geller Report: UN Passes Nine Resolutions Slamming Israel In One Day, also, Judge Orders Trump Admin To Restore Acosta’s Press Pass
Hogewash: Kamala Harris, ICE, And The Klan, also, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day
JustOneMinute: Keep Hate Alive!
Legal Insurrection: Stacey Abrams May Sue For Do-Over In GA Governor Race, also, Justice Kavanaugh Gets Standing Ovation At Federalist Society Convention
The PanAm Post: Cabello Accuses Petro Of Seeking Chavista Help For Colombian Presidential Campaign
Power Line: Democrats Begin To Fold Their Tents, also, High Snobbery From The Washington Post
Shot In The Dark: Paranoid
The Jawa Report: Cornhole Watch – Tyler Barriss
The Political Hat: How SJWs Infest Companies & Destroy Industries
This Ain’t Hell: Friday Feelgood Stories, also, Fort Trump? Maybe
Victory Girls: Virtue Signalers Swoop Down On Baraboo, WI
Volokh Conspiracy: What Constitutional Lawyers Can Learn From Spiderman
Weasel Zippers: NARAL & Rep. Joe Kennedy Lie About Title IX Change, also, GOP To Audit AZ County Elections Office That Swung Elections To Democrats
Mark Steyn: Voting & Counting, also, Steyn In For Rush Friday

Black Friday Deals Week
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Outlet Deals

Category: Linkagery

There Are No ‘Good’ Public Schools

Posted on | November 16, 2018 | 1 Comment

Public education in America is a disaster. If taxpayers had any idea what was being done to children in these government indoctrination centers, they would be outraged. However, the bureaucrats who run the system are trained in methods of suppressing the sordid secrets of what goes on, and it is only when disaster strikes — e.g., the Parkland massacre — that the public gets a glimpse of the corruption and incompetence that prevails even in allegedly “good” suburban schools. Parents who think it is safe to send their children to public school generally have no inkling of actual conditions inside their child’s school. Consider what’s happening at Harlandale High School in San Antonio, Texas:

A 9th grader and her family fear for their safety after the Harlandale High School student was jumped just minutes after the last bell rang.
Melissa Serna said when she was on her way to pick up her daughter from school, she got a text saying her daughter had been attacked.
“My thing was just going to the hospital to make sure my daughter was fine,” Serna said. “Because she had suffered from a concussion, she passed out when she was getting the kicks and punches to her head.”
Serna said surveillance and cell phone video captured the assault, showing two female students beating her daughter on school grounds while others watched. Serna said school staff was still on campus but claim they did not see the fight until the students fled.
“I mean every person, my family, that’s seen the video has cried watching it,” Serna said. “She had two teachers who cried with her.”
The two students were suspended for three days, but are now back on campus. Serna said additional video surfacing on social media shows one of the students shooting a gun out of a moving car.
Serna said her daughter is still being bullied and taunted at school every day.
Harlandale ISD released this statement Wednesday regarding the incident:
“The Harlandale Police Department is investigating this incident and has filed charges with the District Attorney’s office. The students will follow due process to the fullest extent of the law and will be disciplined according to the Harlandale ISD Student Code of Conduct and School Board Policy. The safety of our students is always our top priority and the Harlandale ISD takes all potential threats to students’ safety very seriously.”

Watch the video:

What was the motive for this brutal attack on a 14-year-old girl? Well, it can’t be racism or homophobia, because if that was the motive, there would be a massive civil-rights protest and you’d probably be getting hourly updates on CNN. Most likely, the motive is that Ms. Serna’s daughter is pretty, and this gang of ugly goons were jealous of her.

But the “Student Code of Conduct and School Board Policy,” you see, doesn’t allow the school to permanently ban these juvenile thugs. The little monsters have a “right” to attend school and so, after serving a mere three-day suspension, the attackers are back on campus, and this girl “is still being bullied and taunted at school every day.”

DO NOT SEND YOUR CHILDREN TO PUBLIC SCHOOL. It’s not safe.

(Hat-tip: Kirby McCain on Twitter.)

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Education, Texas

A Reliable Warning Sign of Craziness

Posted on | November 16, 2018 | 1 Comment

Interest in astrology is evidence of irrationality. Nothing could be more obviously false than the claim that all people born under a particular “sign” share the same traits and are linked by a common destiny, so that by knowing my birthday is Oct. 6 you could say, “Oh, a Libra!” and then make generalizations about my personality and provide me with a horoscope that predicts what will happen to me today. Demonstrating the falsehood of astrology is a matter of simple math. The year I was born, there were about 4.3 million births in the United States, which means there were approximately 360,000 Americans born under each of the Zodiac signs that year. What commonalities of personality, or what similarities of fortune, could I possibly share with all of the other 359,999 Americans born as Libras in 1959? Yet this is the basic claim of astrology. It is manifestly absurd, and no sane person could believe in it.

Nonetheless, there are plenty of crazy people in the world who can’t understand what’s wrong with such ridiculous superstition and — surprise, surprise! — many of these people are queer feminists:

Over the past two to three years, astrology has shifted from being a niche interest to a major point of enthusiasm for many women and queer people. Broadly, VICE’s channel geared towards women and the LGBTQ community, gets a huge amount of traffic from astrological features and horoscopes. Other media platforms for women have noticeably ramped up astrology content from filler to the forefront. In the UK, Google searches for “birth chart” doubled between November of 2013 and November of 2018. Since September of 2017, there’s been a steady increase in people searching “astrological compatibility”. All that interest has given publishing a boost: sales of mind, body and spirit books are booming; in 2017, sales rose by 13 percent in just a year.
Swipe through a dating app and you’ll soon find a woman who’s included their sign in emoji in their bio as shorthand for personality traits, likes and dislikes, and an indicator for compatibility. . . .
[S]traight men seem to be frequently apathetic or adverse to astrology. In a 2005 Gallup UK poll, just over twice as many women in the UK believed in astrology compared to men (30 percent to 14 percent of a data pool of 1,010 people). A 2017 study by Pew Research Centre found that 20 percent of adult men in the US believed in astrology, compared to 37 percent of women.
If you’re a straight man with a lot of female friends, you probably tolerate astrology (“It’s gotten to the point where I’m sharing Virgo memes in the group chat like ‘lol, me’, but I still don’t like it,” says Adam from Manchester). And if you don’t, you likely think it’s a load of sh– (“If you try to bring up that sh– with me, I’ll think you’re a mindless bimbo,” Tom, 25, London). There are obviously women and LGBTQ people who feel similarly, but why is this attitude so prevalent among straight men in particular? Is it because astrology is generally seen as a “women’s” interest?

No, ma’am, it’s because straight men know that crazy women are trouble.

Why are you 28 and unmarried, Hannah Rose Ewens? Isn’t it a fact that you struggle with mental health problems? Isn’t your “bisexuality” merely a rationalization of your inability to get a boyfriend? And why, in addition to astrology, are you also dabbling in tarot readings? Well, I didn’t need to do a Zodiac chart to know these things about you, Ms. Ewens, I just spent a few minutes browsing your social media and it’s pretty obvious why heterosexual men avoid you. A quick scan of your Instagram account would be sufficient to convince any shrewd observer that you’re a kook.

Is it a coincidence that interest in astrology has increased during the same timeframe as the increase in interest in feminism? I think not. For a woman to believe she is a victim of heteropatriarchy is as irrational as believing that “Libra” is a meaningful category. Both feminism and astrology appeal to irrational impulses, and take advantage of confirmation bias to create a cult mentality, an echo chamber that automatically delegitimizes (and thereby excludes) voices of skepticism and dissent. As a devotee of astrology, Ms. Ewens thinks of herself as possessing esoteric knowledge that makes her superior to anyone who doesn’t share her belief, and the same is true with regard to her feminist worldview. (Did I mention she’s a Labour voter?) So the real question is not, as Ms. Ewens would have us believe, “Why Straight Men Hate Astrology So Much,” but rather why she can’t recognize the folly of her own superstition. Does it really make sense for her to put her Zodiac sign in her dating-app profile? This is the kind of gesture — like her dyeing her hair pink — calculated to frighten away any male with common sense.

Men really should be grateful for the self-identifying gestures by which crazy women alert us to their craziness. Aposematic hairstyles, facial piercing, tattoos — as much as men might lament these fashionable self-desecrations, at least when you see a woman with pink hair (or notice the Zodiac sign in her Tinder profile) you have a fair warning that she’s a dangerous nutjob who’s probably on Prozac and/or Xanax.

Category: Sex Trouble

Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Hates You

Posted on | November 16, 2018 | Comments Off on Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Hates You

Oh, where to start with this intellectual bilge?

Donna Zuckerberg didn’t expect to spend two years trawling through the corner of the internet defined as “the manosphere”, unpicking the grim alliance between pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, incels (involuntarily celibate men), the far right and the most ardent Make America Great Again advocates.
“It started as a curiosity,” she says, as we video call from her home in Silicon Valley, which she shares with her husband and two children. “But it took on a life of its own.” A classicist with a PhD from Princeton, Zuckerberg edits the online journal Eidolon, publishing scholarly essays on the Greco-Roman world from academics and students.
In the summer of 2015, she noticed an unprecedented level of traffic towards a piece entitled “Why is stoicism having a cultural moment?” and went down a rabbit hole to determine why. The results stunned her: men — or rather, misogynists — were using an armchair enthusiasm for the classics to justify manifestos of hate against women. The results were spreading online under a pseudo-intellectual guise, twisting ancient world philosophy to buttress a contemporary hatred of feminism. And it wasn’t a one-off.
“So, there are online communities that exist under the umbrella of what we know as the Red Pill, which are men connected by common resentments against women, immigrants, people of colour,” she explains. “What I was surprised to find was the extent to which they are using ancient Greek and Roman figures and texts to prop up an ideal of white masculinity.”
Red Pillers name themselves after a scene in The Matrix, in which Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers Neo (Keanu Reeves) the option of taking the red or blue pill and arriving at either gritty, painful truth (red) or blissful ignorance (blue). Jordan Peterson, the Canadian professor and YouTube sermoniser who rails against identity politics and feminism, is revered as one of the high priests of the movement, while incels have gathered much attention this year.
But in the case of stoicism’s sudden revival, Zuckerberg found that an active corner of Reddit was applying Hellenistic philosophy to explain the pain and hardship white western men were suffering in the 21st century. Except these men didn’t consider themselves angry – they considered themselves oppressed.
“The ancient world was deeply misogynistic — it was a time when there was no word for rape, feminism did not exist and women’s actions were determined by male relatives,” says Zuckerberg. But now the classical texts are being “distorted and stripped of context” online to lend gravitas to campaigns of misogyny and white supremacy. Not only is it toxic but, as Zuckerberg calmly outlines in her new book, Not All Dead White Men, it is deeply dangerous.

First of all, what does it mean to be Stoic? Among other things, the Stoic admires a certain temperament, not being prone to panic or rage, not endlessly complaining about one’s misfortunes. Given the fact that white males are currently the targets of a left-wing propaganda campaign that demonizes them as “privileged” scapegoats for every problem in the world, one could see why a study of Stoic philosophy — as part of an effort to remain calm and reasonable in the face of this relentless drumbeat of anti-white, anti-male rhetoric — might be helpful. Personally, I would recommend that they read Ecclesiastes or Proverbs, but if they find the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius more helpful, OK.

Ms. Zuckerberg evidently does not wish to acknowledge that (a) feminism is an anti-male hate movement and therefore (b) every man intelligent enough to understand feminism is against feminism. There is no need for an Ivy League intellectual to offer us an elaborate explanation of why men hate feminism; all that is necessary is to know what feminism actually is, a truth that Ms. Zuckerberg wishes to obscure. This is how it always is with left-wing ideologues; they never question their own destructive agenda. Anti-male policies that deprive young men of opportunities for education and employment are advocated by feminists as “social justice.” To be male is to be wrong, according to feminists like Donna Zuckerberg, and what needs to be explained, in her mind, is why some men refuse to accept the inferior status assigned to them.

A point that I have repeatedly made:

Rule One: Never argue with a feminist.
This is the only rule you need. There is no point trying to persuade a feminist that she’s wrong. If she were intellectually honest (and thus capable of admitting error) she would not be a feminist.
Because feminists never argue in good faith, nothing is to be gained by engaging in a back-and-forth discussion with them.

Avoid feminists as far as possible, and never speak to a feminist at all. If men were to follow my advice — to shun feminists with aloof silence — there would never be any complaint about “harassment.”

How can a man harass feminists if he never speaks to feminists, if he makes it his habit to walk out of the room as soon as a feminist walks in? This would be the genuinely Stoic response to feminism. What is happening — idiots making obscene comments to women on the Internet, or “incels” going on murder rampages — is definitely not Stoic.

(Hat-tip: Donald Douglas on Twitter.)

Category: Sex Trouble

Maryland Democrat Shouts ‘Heil Hitler,’ Causes Scene in Baltimore Theater

Posted on | November 16, 2018 | Comments Off on Maryland Democrat Shouts ‘Heil Hitler,’ Causes Scene in Baltimore Theater

Drunk Trump-hater provokes outrage:

A man shouting “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump” during a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Baltimore smelled of alcohol and told police he was motivated by his hatred of President Donald Trump.
Anthony M. Derlunas, 58, told an officer he “had been drinking heavily throughout the night” before the outburst at the Hippodrome Theatre on Wednesday night, according to a police report.
But before details of the police report became public in the early evening, the incident rattled many already anxious about a recent spike in anti-Semitism and hate crimes in Maryland and nationwide.
Audience member Rich Scherr said the outburst, which happened during intermission, sparked fears of a shooting like the one in a Pittsburgh synagogue last month that killed 11 people.
The man, later identified as Derlunas, had been seated in the balcony and began shouting “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump.”
“People started running,” Scherr said. “I’ll be honest, I was waiting to hear a gunshot. I thought, ‘Here we go.’”
Samit Verma was seated in the balcony when he heard shouting and saw a man holding his hand straight up in a Nazi salute, he said in an email Thursday. Ushers rushed over to the man while audience members quickly made their way out of the theater and into the hall, Verma said.
“The people around me appeared to be quite shaken by the incident,” Verma said in the email. “There were some people in tears.”
According to the report, Derlunas said that the final scene of the play before intermission had reminded him of his hatred for the president, which is why he shouted. He was confused when people around him became angry. The officer deduced “that his intention was to express his dislike for President Donald Trump.”

When the incident first drew attention, before the police report disclosed the actual motive, many suggested that it was a Trump supporter, not a Trump-hater, who shouted “Hail Hitler.” If this had turned out to be the case, it would have been 24/7 news on CNN for a week. Instead, the liberal media will now forget that this ever happened.

Also, “In Democratic circles, anti-Semitism is becoming normal.”

Category: Maryland

In The Mailbox: 11.15.18

Posted on | November 15, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.15.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

You get a double dose of linkagery today because I missed a couple of days – as you probably noticed, the previous post was mostly links from Tuesday & Wednesday. Here’s the fresh stuff.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Why Did McSally Lose To Sinema In Arizona?
Twitchy: Federal Judge Wants To Hear More From Hillary About Her Server & The E-Mails On It
Louder With Crowder: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had Her ID Checked. Then Her World Came Tumbling Down.

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Broward County Elections Supervisor Mulls Retirement, also, Dana Loesch – “Law-Abiding People Shouldn’t Alwys Be Paying The Price For Criminals’ Actions”
American Thinker: Thanks, NeverTrumpers, Are You Happy Now?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Fallen Legends News
BattleSwarm: Texas Election Results Analysis – The Warning Shot
CDR Salamander: I Hope You Didn’t Giggle Too Much At The Russians’ Sunken Drydock
Da Tech Guy: Why Do Conservatives & Libertarians Squabble So Much?
Don Surber: Nazi Till Proven Innocent, also, One In Fourteen Americans Are Millionaires
Dustbury: Fine Chinese Wheels
First Street Journal: Red Flag Laws?
The Geller Report: Trudeau Silent About Attack On Jewish Teens By Muslim Gang, also, Merkel Urged Romanian President Not To Move Embassy To Jerusalem
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
JustOneMinute: When The Elephants Scuffle…, also, Oh FFFFFudge!
Legal Insurrection: Kamala Harris Asks Nominee If She Sees Parallels Between ICE & The KKK, also, Florida Recount – DeSantis Wins Governor’s Race
The PanAm Post: Is Latin America Harboring A Mafia State?
Power Line: Systematic Fraud In Florida Election, also, In Defense Of American Nationalism
Shark Tank: Sen. Gillibrand Accuses President Trump Of Cultivating Hate And Demonizing Immigrants
Shot In The Dark: The Exposed Inner Id Of The Metrocrats
STUMP: Causes Of Public [Pension] Plan Insolvency
The Political Hat: The Grand Old Sundering
This Ain’t Hell: Expired Pigeon Carries Secret Code, also, 108 Years Ago Today, The Navy Launched An Airplane From A Ship For The First Time
Victory Girls: Ted Olson Is Wrong – It’s About Acosta, Not The !st Amendment, also, NJ Couple, Homeless Man Busted For GoFundMe Scam
Volokh Conspiracy: Neomi Rao For The D.C. Circuit, also, About The Internet of Things – “The ‘S’ In IoT Stands For Security”
Weasel Zippers: Border Patrol Arrests Caravan Members Trying To Enter U.S., also, Rep. Clyburn Accuses Fellow Democrats Of Racism
Mark Steyn: A Tale of Two Migrants, also, The Twain Meet

Featured Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Certified Refurbs At Amazon Renewed

Category: Linkagery

Jim Jones, Harvey Milk and the Weird Cult of ‘Revolutionary Suicide’

Posted on | November 15, 2018 | Comments Off on Jim Jones, Harvey Milk and the Weird Cult of ‘Revolutionary Suicide’

Daniel J. Flynn and his new book, ‘Cult City.’

A strange and chilling saga:

Thanksgiving, 1978 was bookended by two of the most bizarre and notorious events in American history. On November 18 in Guyana, hundreds of members of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple committed mass suicide, or were murdered. Over the next few days, news trickled out from the jungle of 300, 400, 600, and finally more than 900 poisoned cultists, most of them from the San Francisco Bay Area, including many children; and of a congressman, Leo Ryan, ambushed and assassinated as he left with a dozen or so apostates whom he had rescued. Then, the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend, San Francisco mayor George Moscone and a city supervisor, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay non-incumbent politician elected to office in America, were shot and killed in City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled city supervisor who had quit his job and then wanted it back.
The connection — sometimes tenuous, sometimes shocking — between these incidents has been brushed over by a society eager to sanctify its martyrs and forget its villains, but Daniel Flynn in Cult City brings to light a kind of secret history of California in the 1970s, showing how modern progressive politics intersected with cults of madness and despair. Jim Jones came from Depression-Era Indiana, and was drawn to charismatic Christianity and radical politics from an early age. He founded a church called People Temple, dedicated to racial harmony, the living Christ, and veneration of the Soviet Union, and presented a compelling enough message that he attracted thousands of followers over the years.
Having moved his flock to northern California in the 1960s, Jones began leveraging their labor toward political ends, volunteering them for protests or electioneering on behalf of friendly aspirants to public office. Gaining the respect of San Francisco’s political class, Jones became a player in his own right. Many gave him credit for Moscone’s tight victory in the 1975 mayoral runoff, and he was appointed head of the San Francisco Housing Authority. Praised as a hero of social justice and a crusader for racial equality, Jones became an important figure in Democratic politics.
Among his advocates was Harvey Milk, also a newcomer to San Francisco. Milk, formerly a Goldwater Republican, became politically radical in California and repeatedly sought election to office as an outsider to the political machine. Milk attended services at Peoples Temple dozens of times, and wrote effusive letters to Jones. “Such greatness I have found in Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple,” Milk proclaimed.
Milk wasn’t Jones’s only fan. Many powerful people — Governor Jerry Brown, columnist Herb Caen, and Vice President Walter Mondale, to name a few — sought Jones’s blessings and expressed admiration for his dedication to racial equality and a better world. . . .

Read the rest at City Journal.

I’ve previously recommended Daniel Flynn’s new book Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco.