The Other McCain

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

Post-Thanksgiving After-Action Report

Posted on | November 23, 2018 | 1 Comment

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing;
Sing praises to His Name, He forgets not His own.

Our family sang that ancient hymn — which originated in 16th-century Holland — before we ate the turkey, which was cooked by my son-in-law. We had 15 adults plus four grandchildren for the family meal, the first time all six of our children had been together this year. It was fun. I also offered a pre-meal reading of the following proclamation:

 

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation. . . .
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
George Washington

Our holiday joy was made possible by ignoring such insults as this:

 

Notice that this deliberate demonization of white people, as perpetrators of “genocide” (a libel invented by radical activists in the 1960s), is necessary to an assertion of black supremacy — implying that black people are morally superior to whites, and that their Thanksgiving “ritual” is therefore superior to whatever white families do.

What is remarkable to me is not merely that the exercise of identity politics has become so habitual that no one can be allowed to take a day off from it, but that so many white people seem not to care that this kind of hateful nonsense is being promoted in our culture. Dose anyone suppose that anti-white propaganda has no effect? Go read Michael Harriot’s article, “The Caucasian’s Guide to Black Thanksgiving” and notice how many gratuitous anti-white insults he includes, e.g.:

It is about tradition. It is about family. It is the only day of the year where we have a respite from the world around us and we gather to celebrate our delicious blackness without worrying about white people coming around.
Except for that one white girl and her sh–ty tuna casserole.

Was this necessary? Was it humorous? To whom is it funny?

As I say, a joyous holiday requires us to ignore such insults, and Christianity commands us to refrain from answering in kind.  However, now that it’s Friday, I’m back to my usual business of cultural criticism, and I hope intelligent readers will consider what a firestorm of outrage would be generated if any white person did respond to Harriot’s celebration of “delicious blackness” with the level of scorn it deserves.

Here’s a helpful suggestion: Never write anything about race that you would not wish to be read by anyone of any race. I have no problem with Michael Harriot making fun of the kind of “white girl” who would show up at a black family’s Thanksgiving dinner with a tuna casserole, but how many white people might respond to such a joke by saying something genuinely offensive? Among the many things for which we should be thankful this time of year are human decency and courtesy. Amen.

By the way: Be sure to shop Black Friday Deals at Amazon.



 

Category: Family

Was the ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Against President Trump a Trans-Atlantic Affair?

Posted on | November 22, 2018 | 2 Comments

 

When Steve Bannon and others began speaking of the “Deep State,” many people dismissed this as a paranoid conspiracy theory, without bothering to investigate what this phrase actually signifies. Let me summarize briefly: During the past 25 years or so, since the end of the Cold War, a general consensus about the shape of the international order has emerged among the policy-making elite, and the bureaucracies of the federal government are staffed with people who share this consensus. On a host of issues from climate change to immigration to trade, this consensus has solidified into a sort of secular religion among government employees, who oppose any attempt to disrupt the existing arrangements (e.g., “Brexit” or revising NAFTA). In 2016, those who share this policy consensus were “all-in” for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, because she was committed to a continuation of the status quo, whereas Donald Trump vowed to disrupt the existing order.

The “Deep State” refers to the fact — and it is a now an established fact, not a paranoid theory — that efforts to prevent Trump’s election were supported by personnel of national-security agencies, including the CIA and the FBI. Anyone who has paid attention to the texts between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Pages can see this. And U.S. allies have also been implicated in the effort to prevent Trump’s election:

MI6 [the British intelligence agency] is locked in a secret battle with US President Donald Trump to persuade him not to disclose documents linked to the Russian election-meddling probe — it has been revealed.
Intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic told the Telegraph that spy bosses in London were frantically appealing to Trump not to make the classified documents public.
The President’s aides have reportedly hit back with questions over why Britain wants the documents to be kept secret.
But authorities in the UK say they have ‘genuine concern’ about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public.
Other sources also said MI6 was concerned the publication of the documents would set a ‘dangerous precedent’ for the release of top secret information, and may dissuade future sources from coming forward.
A US based intelligence source said: ‘I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don’t want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA.’
The documents in question concern an FBI request to wiretap former Trump policy adviser Carter Page, submitted a month before the Presidential election in 2016.
Documents show the FBI suspected Page of being lured in by Russian intelligence, and the bureau was given leave to place him under intense surveillance for several months. . . .
Memos describing alleged ties between Trump and Russia compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele are contained in the papers, which may form part of the reason for Britain’s concern.
Steele is most notable for authoring a dossier which claims Russia collected a file of compromising information on Trump.

Whatever policy quarrels Americans might have amongst ourselves, we ought to be able to agree that policy should be determined by elected officials, and not by the “hired help.” Employees of the FBI and the CIA are not independent policy-makers, but must answer to the President and to Congress. If federal employees are permitted to use their offices to interfere in the electoral process — effectively, to choose their own bosses — then the government ceases to be the servant of the people, and becomes the master. The manufactured outrage over “Russian collusion,” claiming that Trump is a Putin puppet, is a distraction from the issue of how the bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government has become a subversive influence in our politics and an obstacle to real reform.

What the alarm in British intelligence agencies shows is that “Deep State” operatives like Peter Strzok had the assistance of “Deep State” operatives in the U.K. in attempting to prevent Trump’s election. The claims by MI6 that declassification of these wiretaps might reveal sensitive counter-terrorism secrets are almost certainly a bogus argument, as what they actually seek to conceal is the extent to which Her Majesty’s government was part of a corrupt project intended to help elect Hillary Clinton.



 

Category: Corruption

Thank God for Liberals

Posted on | November 22, 2018 | Comments Off on Thank God for Liberals

 

If it weren’t for liberals, we might enjoy our turkey in peace:

Around this time every year, coastal media trot out a series of articles “preparing” a very particular set of readers for encounters with opinions unlike their own, which says more about them than the subject of their writing, but anyway…
This year is no different, except for the fact that their attempts to normalize contentious Thanksgiving Dinner conversation are far less veiled than years past. Once upon a time, there was at least a pretense of impartiality. But this is 2018 and everything with which they disagree is abhorrent and at the very least, racist.

Like the Pilgrims, liberals are convinced of their own moral superiority. The rest of us are ignorant savages, in need of enlightenment.

Here’s the thing, though: No actual effort is necessary for the liberal to feel superior to others. All he has to do is to espouse the appropriate belief — and vote Democrat — and he’s better than you. This is why liberalism tends to flourish in fields like academia, journalism and show business, where everything is about words and ideas. Also, liberalism is common among atheists, for whom it functions as a substitute for religion, and is rare among Christians. If you think of yourself as dependent upon God’s grace, you’re not a liberal because (a) liberalism is a godless creed, and (b) the liberal believes everyone is, or should be, dependent on the federal government. Their grim atheist belief system makes liberals humorless and hateful:

Student groups at the University of Oregon are hosting an event on Tuesday to “decolonize” Thanksgiving.
The UO’s Native American Law Students Association and the Native American Student Union are hosting an event, titled, “Thanks But No Thanks-giving: Decolonizing an American Holiday.” The event will focus on how people can continue to give thanks, while at the same time “raising [their] critical consciousness and identifying ways to decolonize the holiday.”
“Millions of families gather together every year to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. Many Americans do not grow up thinking much of the history behind the holiday,” the event description states. “The main messages are that of gratitude, food, and family; however, Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe.”
Several departments at the university are sponsoring the event, including the Division of Student Life, University Counseling Center, Division of Equity and Inclusion, and Center for Multicultural Academic Excellence.

So, yes, be thankful for the liberals who show up at your Thanksgiving feast, to remind you how lucky you are to maintain your sanity.



 

Category: Liberals

In The Mailbox: 11.21.18

Posted on | November 21, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.21.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

No linkagery tomorrow on account of Thanksgiving, which I’ll be spending with friends in Utah. Do people want me to double up on the linkagery for Friday, or should I just do a book post along with the usual linkfest? Let me know in the comments.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #446
EBL: Bulgaria Shows How To Treat Old Soviet Statues
Twitchy: Jon Favreau Remembers Obama Being Much More Respectful To SCOTUs, Trips Over Notorious SOTU Speech
Louder With Crowder: Rose McGowan Wants To Meet With Trump On Guns. He Should Take The Meeting

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Tough Guys
American Power: Rains Threaten Northern California’s Burned Areas
American Thinker: When Muslims Rape European White Women, Whose Fault Is It?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: World’s Shortest Rebellion Ends
CDR Salamander: Front Line Nations Can’t Take A Back Seat Against Russian Submarines
Da Tech Guy: The Mysteries Of A Lame Duck Congress
Don Surber: Judge Lifts Ban On Mutilating Girls
Dustbury: That Sagging Back End
First Street Journal: Hold Them Accountable!
The Geller Report: Oz PM Scott Morrison Accuses Muslim Leaders Of Failing Community, also, Asia Bibi’s Family Being Hunted “House To House” In Pakistan
Hogewash: Don’t Know Much Biology, also, Avoid Black Friday
JustOneMinute: More Resistance Porn, also, They Forgot To Repeal The Rule Of Unintended Consequences
Legal Insurrection: Mexican Ambassador To U.S. Says There’s Criminals In The Migrant Caravan, also, Court Allows NRA Lawsuit Against NY Gov Cuomo Over “blacklist” To Proceed
Michelle Malkin: First Step – Pro-Cop, Pro-Borders, Pro-Criminal Justice Reform
The PanAm Post: I Am I And My Circumstances
Power Line: Liberal Racism In Action, also, Orange (County) Is The New Blue
Shark Tank: Trump Bashes Liberal 9th Circuit Court Over Asylum Decision
Shot In The Dark: A Man Needs A Woman Like A Fish Needs A Bicycle
STUMP: Mornings With Meep – Dostoevsky’s The Gambler
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – It’s Time
The Political Hat:
This Ain’t Hell: Vietnam Hero Awarded The Navy Cross, also, Sock Puppet Alert!
Victory Girls: Election Fraud? What Election Fraud?, also, On Thanksgiving, Be Grateful And Ignore The Political
Volokh Conspiracy: FASORP – Pushing Back Against Identity Politics On Campus
Weasel Zippers: After Vicious Broward County School Fight, Student Not Arrested Until Video Goes Viral, also, NJ Gov Doles Out $2 Million For Legal Help To Illegals Facing Deportation
Megan McArdle: The History Of Thanksgiving Dinner Is Proof Of American Greatness
Mark Steyn: The New Face of The Democrats, also, Caravan Of Dreams


Black Friday Deals Week
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Amazon Outlet Deals

Category: Linkagery

The Banality of Liberalism

Posted on | November 21, 2018 | Comments Off on The Banality of Liberalism

 

This photo, showing SS men and female auxiliaries (Helferinnen, “helpers”) is from an album collected during World War II by Karl Hoecker, a top SS officer at the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The photo was taken in 1944 at Solahütte, “a little-known resort for the Nazi German guards, administrators, and auxiliary personnel” who worked at Auschwitz and other nearby death camps. This photo was featured in a Nov. 2 Facebook post by Josh Ellis:

This picture always struck me, because unlike so many photos of the time, it’s so relaxed and unposed — just a bunch of coworkers, having fun. But this is a resort called Solahütte. It was built for these people, and it was 18 miles from where they worked, a place called Auschwitz. It was built to give them a break from their very important work.
These smiling, happy people were on their day off from putting Jews in ovens.
A lot of times people will say they look at the faces in photos like these and try to understand. But I don’t need to try. I understand these people thoroughly. . . .
[T]he nice people in this photo were f–king monsters, many of whom ended their war at the end of a rope or in front of a firing squad. And you know what? I bet they did it crying, begging, screaming that it wasn’t fair, that they had a job to do, that’s all, they were given a job and they were expected to do it, and what would you have done in their place?
That, right there, is the most important question you have to ask yourself. It’s one I’ve pondered my entire life. And I know my answer: I would never allow myself to be put in the position of finding out. I’d rather run or die. It’s why I could never have been a cop or a soldier. The lesson I learned from these people was to never put myself in a position where I was required to do evil in the name of following orders. And I have very little sympathy for those who choose otherwise.
There are not good people on both sides. There are party girls and weekend polka players everywhere, people who are kind to their children and bake extra cookies for their neighbors, but some people choose to be the instruments of horror and others do not, and history is rightfully merciless to the former.
So when you tell me that some of the people in America espousing the same madness that these people in this picture committed atrocities for are really not that bad if you get to know them, that there are good people on both sides, I don’t believe you.
Because I do know them. And I do not care.

That post has been shared more than 25,000 times on Facebook and, here’s the thing: It is disastrously and irretrievably wrong, not merely in its cheap conflation of Nazis with American conservatives, but also in the general lesson that Ellis attempts to draw from this bit of history.

Ask yourself this: Why did the Holocaust happen? Or to put it another way, how did Auschwitz come into existence? Why were these Nazi SS men running a concentration camp in Poland? Do you see my point?

Germany had invaded Poland in September 1939. No invasion, no Auschwitz. Tracing back the sequence of events that led up to the invasion of Poland, we go backwards to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 1939), then to the Munich agreement (September 1938), the Anschluss of Austria (March 1938), the remilitarization of the Rhineland (March 1936) and so on back to the political crisis in Germany (1931-33) that put Hitler in power. You could trace that timeline on backward to Germany’s defeat in World War I (1918), but the point I’m making is that Auschwitz, and the Holocaust in general, can only be understood in a particular historical context. Trying to make the Holocaust an analogy for any contemporary political situation is idiotic. The way Josh Ellis rips this out of context, by saying that Americans whose politics he doesn’t like are comparable to those SS personnel at Solahütte, is not merely an insult to those Americans, but a dangerous misunderstanding of what happened in Europe in the 1930s and ’40s.

Insofar as there actually are “people in America espousing the same madness” as those German SS men (i.e., serious neo-Nazis), such people are (a) quite few in number, (b) probably under surveillance by federal law enforcement, and (c) unlikely ever to obtain any actual power. You could name the most right-wing members of Congress — perhaps Rep. Steve King or Sen. Rand Paul, depending on what you mean by “right-wing” — and even their fiercest opponents would admit these men don’t contemplate anything remotely like Auschwitz. When you consider how long it takes between the time a court sentences a convicted murderer to death, and the time the death penalty is actually carried out, you see how difficult it would be for our country to become a place where a totalitarian government carries out mass murder in concentration camps.

The implausibility of any “Fourth Reich” scenario in America is one reason why only fools ever become neo-Nazis, and why such fools tend to end up in prison, or dying by suicide, after they’ve committed a desperate crime (e.g., the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter). Because there is zero chance of a neo-Nazi takeover in America, these fools are driven to “lone wolf” attacks by the utter hopelessness of their Nazi fantasies.

Now consider a point Glenn Reynolds has made: “The thing is, you don’t get Hitler because of Hitler — there are always potential Hitlers out there. You get Hitler because of Weimar, and you get Weimar because the liberals are too corrupt and incompetent to maintain a liberal polity.”

In other words, the totalitarian danger — insofar as such a danger is more than deluded fantasy, or a rhetorical bogeyman used to frighten ignorant people — resides in the kind of corruption, incompetence and decadence that preceded Hitler’s rise to power. A prosperous and peaceful society does not suddenly give birth to a Hitler; rather, it is societies bankrupted by bad policy and devastated by bad wars that are at risk. The most recent genocides in world history occurred in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, neither of which enjoyed the combination of economic prosperity and a robust democratic tradition that prevails in the United States. Even after the economic crisis of 2008, Americans never lost faith in the basic constitutional framework of representative government. As fiercely as conservatives opposed President Obama, we still adhered to the path of democracy in expressing that opposition, and expect opponents of Donald Trump to do the same. If we don’t like the results of an election (and obviously the recent midterm results were not to my liking), we can only redouble our efforts to persuade others to come over to our side. Who is advocating a putsch? Certainly not me.

By the way, who is this Josh Ellis, looking at a photo of Nazis and seeing a resemblance to “some of the people in America”? He is a website designer, an editor at a blog for divorced men, a former columnist for a now-defunct “alternative” weekly, Las Vegas CityLife. He’s a musician and is “currently working on a book about surviving climate collapse.” On his personal website, he has a list of “Stuff I Dislike” that includes “Nationalism, Religion . . . George W. Bush” and “Fox News.” Your basic liberal, in other words. But what could he possibly mean by this weird passage from his Facebook post?

I could never have been a cop or a soldier. The lesson I learned from [the Auschwitz camp guards] was to never put myself in a position where I was required to do evil in the name of following orders. And I have very little sympathy for those who choose otherwise.

Really? Police officers and the military are “required to do evil in the name of following orders”? So you are morally superior to them?

Look, I’ve got a pretty strong libertarian streak and am deeply suspicious of power, but it takes a special kind of paranoia to look at a picture of Nazi death-camp guards and interpret it as a condemnation of all organized authority. Because that’s what Josh Ellis is saying, that all policemen and soldiers — every last one of them — are immoral agents of evil, insofar as their callings involve “following orders.” It’s as if Josh Ellis is not even aware that American soldiers fought against the Nazis, and that police officers risk their own lives to protect the innocent.

Do U.S. troops “choose to be the instruments of horror,” as Josh Ellis asserts? The Navy SEALs who took out Osama bin Laden, were they “instruments of horror”? The four cops wounded while trying to take out the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, were they “instruments of horror”?

Perhaps these implications were not intended by Josh Ellis. Maybe he’s just a clumsy writer who unintentionally insulted decent people with a sloppy analogy. And it doesn’t matter, except that his Facebook post was shared 25,000 times, meaning that there are many thousands of people who don’t understand what’s wrong with what he wrote. Also, perhaps, they don’t recognize he’s peddling secondhand ideas.

Ellis has borrowed the theme of “The Banality of Evil” from Hannah Arendt, whose 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem is one of the most widely praised books ever written about the Holocaust. Arendt had been sent to cover Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker and was struck by the fact that the infamous Nazi was so ordinary, so bland, so banal. Eichmann wasn’t a fanatical monster, but an unremarkable bureaucrat who just happened to be assigned the job of annihilating Jews. At the time it was published, Arendt’s work was universally acclaimed for its insight into the nature of human evil, and has since become a classic.

So, is Ellis so ignorant that he’s never heard of Hannah Arendt? Or was he just too lazy to name-check her? The third possibility — deliberate dishonesty, depriving Arendt of the credit she deserves — is one I’d rather not contemplate. Laziness is the most likely explanation, I suspect. Liberalism is so pervasive in our culture that it doesn’t require much intellectual effort to espouse it, and this liberal particular theme — making the Holocaust an analogy for whatever the contemporary Right is doing — has been done so often, for so long that Josh Ellis probably didn’t even pause to think that he was just recycling Hannah Arendt.

What the photo of the SS men and women at Solahütte shows is how evil can be normalized, and it does not occur to Josh Ellis (nor to any of the thousands who shared his post) to think that liberalism may itself be implicated in the normalization of evil. Have these people ever heard of Dr. Bernard Nathanson? But let’s not start that argument now.

More important, I think, is how little most people actually know about how and why Hitler came to power in Germany. The specific historical context from which the Third Reich emerged is seldom explained clearly to students, and depictions of Nazi Germany in popular culture replicate this ahistoricism. Because of this, most Americans don’t realize that Hitler’s Germany was neither the first totalitarian regime in Europe nor the most deadly. By the time Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the Bolsheviks had already slaughtered millions. Indeed, during the same time-frame (1932-33) that the Nazis were rising to power in Germany, Stalin was killing some 4 million people through the terror-famine in the Ukraine (the Holomodor). What Hitler and the Nazis did in Germany was arguably more of an imitation of what Lenin and Stalin had done in Russia than what Mussolini had done in Italy. Hitler viewed his National Socialism as an ideological antidote to the international socialism of the Bolsheviks. Whereas Marxists viewed economic class struggle as the revolutionary force in history, Hitler viewed race as the decisive category. And this was ultimately the only real difference between Nazism and Communism except that (b) Communism killed more people, and (b) Communism is still an idea defended by many liberals in the West.

How many liberals have ever read Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror or The Harvest of Sorrow? For that matter, how many liberals have read anything by Lenin or Trotsky? There is a remarkable lack of curiosity among liberals about what Communism actually was (and is), and while liberals endlessly conjure up Hitler as a bogeyman — Trump is Hitler and all Republicans are Nazis — they seldom mention Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. A liberal like Josh Ellis knows he can evoke an emotional reaction by showing Nazis having a good time at Solahütte, but when was the last time you heard a liberal mention Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov or Lavrentiy Beria, to name three of Stalin’s most murderous henchmen?

The death toll of Communism — estimated between 85 million and 100 million during the 20th century — has disappeared from view, erased by the liberals who control America’s education system, and seldom mentioned nowadays even by conservatives. There is a reason, after all, why Hayek warned against The Road to Serfdom, the slow-motion piecemeal drift toward totalitarianism that was discernible in the West even at the time our troops were fighting to destroy the Nazi menace. Yet if we are not conscious of this danger, if we permit liberals to convince us that all we have to fear is a “right-wing” menace, a latter-day Hitler, we can easily be persuaded to permit our society to continue drifting ever further toward the Left. And this is exactly what is happening:

Even before President Trump’s election, hatred had begun to emerge on the American left — counterintuitively, as an assertion of guilelessness and moral superiority. At the Women’s March in Washington the weekend after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the pop star Madonna said, “I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House.” Here hatred was a vanity, a braggadocio meant to signal her innocence of the sort of evil that, in her mind, the White House represented. (She later said the comment was “taken wildly out of context.”)
For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.
For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left — Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind — are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.
How did the American left — conceived to bring more compassion and justice to the world — become so given to hate? . . .

Read the rest of that by Shelby Steele. The emergence of hate as a unifying force on the Left is to a great extent the result of the kind of ahistorical belief system that Josh Ellis promotes. If every Republican is a Nazi, then the hatemongers on the Left can congratulate themselves on their own “moral superiority,” as Steele says, and this belief empowers them to tyrannize their enemies in the name of “social justice.”



 

Category: History

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 11.20.18

Posted on | November 21, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Is The FBI Joining Forces With Antifa & The SPLC Against The Proud Boys?
Twitchy: Joe Scarborough’s Past Just Caught Up With Him, And Boy, Is It Awkward
Louder With Crowder: Alexandria Occasional-Cortex Incorrectly Identifies “Three Chambers” Of Government

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: A Follow-Up On The Things We Like In Chicks, also, Australian Leaders In Denial Over Islam
American Power: Joachim Fest, Hitler
American Thinker: White Racists Picking On D.C. Metro Riders, Again
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Ironic News
BattleSwarm: Dan Crenshaw On Face The Nation
CDR Salamander: Next They Came For The Submarines…
Da Tech Guy: I’m A Racist, Not A Victim! also, Moral Preening App
Don Surber: Words Speak Louder Than Actions In D.C.
Dustbury: The Mystery Of the Cubic Crap [POST OF THE DAY]
First Street Journal: The #NeverTrumpers Push An Option That Doesn’t Really Exist
Fred On Everything: Cheng Two – More Notes On Two Weeks In Red China
The Geller Report: Federal Judge Orders Female Genital Mutilation Charges Against Muslim Doctor Dropped, also, A Corbyn Government In The UK Will Be A Threat To Jews And Israel
Hogewash: Like What? also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
JustOneMinute: Throw Another Straw On the Fire
Legal Insurrection: Actress Files Restraining Order Against #CreepyPornLawyer, also, Eastern Michigan U. Ends “The Vagina Monologues” Since “Not All Women Have Vaginas”
The PanAm Post: Christina Kirchner Continues To “Play A Part” For Macri
Power Line: Opinion Rhapsody, also, The Fine Art Of Dine & Dash
Shot In The Dark: The Bolt From The Blue
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Election Results
The Jawa Report: Al-Kabaab Has Another Bad Day
The Political Hat: Leviathan’s Play Date
This Ain’t Hell: Hell Freezes Over, also, Judge Bars Administration From Refusing Asylum Between Ports Of Entry
Victory Girls: Obama Says We Won’t Fight Climate Change Because Of “Mommy Issues”
Volokh Conspiracy: Remembering The Dale Akiki Case
Weasel Zippers: South African White Farmer Land Grabs Will Be Legal After Constitution Changed, also, Science Journal Nature Claims Defining Gender By Genitals “Has No Basis In Science”
Mark Steyn: Of Rain And Wrecks, also, Welcome To The Hotel Brexifornia


Black Friday Deals Week
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Amazon Renewed – Certified Refurbs

Category: Linkagery

E-Mail to a Liberal Professor

Posted on | November 20, 2018 | 2 Comments

Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2018 9:45 a.m. ET
From: Robert McCain ([email protected])
To: Joan C. Williams ([email protected])

Dear Professor Williams:
Your article in The Atlantic (“The Democrats’ White-People Problem”) has come to my attention. You make many interesting points, e.g.:

“Why not just wait for the white working class to die off?” asked an audience member at last year’s Berkeley Festival of Ideas. I get this question a lot, and I always reply: “Do you understand now why they voted for Trump? Your attitude is offensive, and Trump is their middle finger.”

This is in some sense accurate, although I think you (and liberals more generally) are guilty of over-interpreting the 2016 election. Isn’t it true that liberals would have been shocked and alarmed if any Republican had won the presidency? That is to say, after eight years of Obama, liberals seemed to assume that the Permanent Democrat Majority was now a fact of history and, with the massive hype of Hillary’s campaign as the next logical step of Progress-with-a-capital-P (the first female president succeeding the first black president), failure in 2016 would have been deeply disappointing to liberals, no matter who the GOP had nominated. Since the shocking result of Nov. 8, 2016, the professional analysts whose job it is to tell us What It Means have seized upon Trump as a symbol of racism and misogyny without considering the possibility that maybe those 63 million Trump voters just didn’t like Hillary.

If Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had won the Republican nomination, perhaps the pain of liberals would not be so acute, but why did Trump destroy the GOP primary field like Godzilla stomping through Tokyo? Well, he had the celebrity factor working for him, and he was Not a Politician. Going back at least as far as the Ross Perot campaign of 1992, a sizable number of Americans have shown a willingness to elect non-politicians to high office. Remember pro wrestler Jesse Ventura getting elected governor of Minnesota? Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger getting elected governor of California? Remember Al Franken getting elected to the Senate? Indeed, if you will recall, businessman Herman [Cain] was the front-runner in the 2012 GOP presidential field until accusations of sexual impropriety wrecked his campaign. So the populist appeal of the “outsider” — the Not-a-Politician candidate — was demonstrable before Trump entered the 2016 campaign and, more than anything else, his success showed that a lot of voters are just sick and tired of the status quo. And while many liberals saw Hillary’s campaign as progressive (#ImWithHer), a lot of voters saw her as very much part of the status quo, seeking a dynastic succession to her husband’s presidency.

For a Democrat to lose Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan required something of a Perfect Storm convergence of factors, and perhaps if the Clintons had not rigged the nomination through their control of the DNC (thanks for that information, Wikileaks!), maybe she would have gotten all those Bernie voters who felt they got cheated in the primaries. This sense that “the fix was in” — that Hillary’s nomination was arranged, rather than fairly won — only reinforced Trump’s populist argument that our government had been captured by insiders (“the Deep State”) and was not responsive to We the People. Probably a university law professor would scoff at that argument, but it was persuasive to a lot of voters who aren’t law professors and who, quite frankly, don’t care much for the opinions of law professors. But I digress . . .

Your basic argument is that working-class white voters rejected Hillary Clinton because she failed to articulate a message that addressed the economic interests of those voters. But was that really it? Was Obama’s success due to his economic agenda? Was Bill Clinton elected because of economic issues? I don’t think so. Rather, both of the recent two-term Democrat presidents won mainly on the basis of personality. They were likeable in a way that Hillary Clinton (and Al Gore, and John Kerry) were not likeable. There is a notable tendency of intellectuals to believe that, because elections should be decided on matters of policy, that they actually are decided that way, but is this really true? If policy decides elections, what did the three consecutive Republican landslides of 1980, 1984 and 1988 signify? What did the Republican midterm victories of 1994 and 2010 signify? In other words, when Republicans win elections, isn’t it fair to assume this indicates voters have rejected Democrat policies? Why is it, however, that liberals always react to GOP victories as if some kind of terrible trick has been played on the electorate, that voters have been deceived by those crafty Republicans?

Isn’t it a fact that liberals always consider Republican victories to be illegitimate in some sense? Don’t you, as a liberal, believe that the Democrat Party is the sole repository of political virtue in America, and that Republicans are the party of “hate”? Your particular field of academic expertise is focused on feminism. Would I be incorrect in presuming that you see male-female relations as a zero-sum-game, so that you oppose anything which advances the general interests of males, e.g., efforts to protect the kind of industrial jobs that provide a decent wage for men without college educations? This suggestion may shock you, but if working-class men believe that academic feminists are generally hostile to their interests, are they wrong? And isn’t it true that academic feminists almost universally support the Democrat Party? Indeed, wasn’t Yale Law alumna Hillary Clinton a representative of this alliance between elite academia and the Democrat Party?

What I am driving at here, Professor Williams, is that while working-class white people may not always be articulate in expressing their grievances, it is wrong to suppose that they are incapable of identifying their own interests, and voting accordingly. For more than 20 years, working-class voters have expressed their opposition to trade deals like NAFTA, and also their opposition to an “open borders” immigration policy. Rejecting the standard-issue Chamber of Commerce “country club Republican” line on these issues, Trump gave voice to the grievances of these voters — “Build the wall!” — and won their votes. Insofar as policy issues determine election results, then, Trump’s election was not only a rejection of Clinton and the Democrats, but also a rebuke to the Republican establishment. If racism and misogyny were factors, well, are working-class white men wrong to believe that the Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party are against them? If they are incorrect in this assessment, certainly Democrats have done little since 2016 to persuade them otherwise. And it would appear, based on 2018 exit-poll data, that many white women share the belief that Democrats are the anti-white party (e.g., 75% of white women in Georgia voted for Brian Kemp).

Personalities matter in politics. As I have said for many years, good candidates win and bad candidates lose. It is a mistake, generally, to read too much into election results as a ratification of one set of policies or a rejection of another set of policies. In a two-party system, presidential elections are decided by “swing” voters who have no strong partisan loyalty and who are often so-called “low-information voters.” Such people are apt to declare, “I vote for the man, not the party,” and form their judgments on a general impression of the two candidates’ character. One reason liberals (and many Republicans) were so shocked by Trump’s success was that he speaks in a rude, crude, bullying way. Why did his obnoxious manner appeal to so many voters? Isn’t it because Trump was addressing grievances that many Americans have long felt, but which no one in public life could express because of political correctness?

Attempting to predict future election results based on recent events is a fool’s errand, because future elections can be influenced by events that political pundits do not anticipate. The 9/11 attacks in 2001 were such an event, and so was the economic crisis of 2008. In both of those cases, errors of interpretation led to reversals. Karl Rove and other Republican strategists believed the “War on Terror” would serve to unite a center-right majority for the GOP, but the backlash against Bush’s policy in Iraq led eventually to Democrats winning a congressional majority in 2006, and taking back the White House in 2008. President Obama saw his election as a mandate for “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” which included ramming ObamaCare through Congress on a party-line vote. His hubris was rebuked in 2010 when Republicans gained more than 60 congressional seats to recapture the House. This seesaw battle has recently seen Democrats win a House majority, but not with the kind of landslide “wave” numbers Republicans posted in 2010.

As a conservative Republican, of course, I always want Democrats to lose, and therefore hope they ignore your advice about the way they have alienated white working-class voters, e.g.:

“I want them to talk about racism every day,” Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former strategist, told The American Prospect last year. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Steve Bannon is a friend of mine, whom I first interviewed in 2011 when he was promoting his Sarah Palin documentary. Whatever his faults and errors, Bannon is correct that Democrats will keep losing if they continue pointing the accusatory finger at white people: “Raaaaacist!”

How did that work out for Democrats in Florida this year? Wasn’t the nomination of Andrew Gillum for governor yet another example of how “the left is focused on race and identity,” as Bannon said? Was the mayor of crime-plagued Tallahassee the best candidate Florida Democrats had? And wasn’t this also the case with Stacey Abrams in Georgia? Liberals have a habit of blaming Republicans for political “polarization,” but who is actually responsible for polarizing elections this way?

The fact that liberals in Berkeley openly avow their desire “for the white working class to die off” demonstrates quite clearly the problem the Democrat Party has created for itself. Trying to blame the GOP for “polarization” is psychological projection, given how widespread this hostility toward the white working class is on the Left. And isn’t it possible for you, Professor Williams, to look around the campus in Berkeley, and the Bay Area generally, and discern the possibility that the current policies of the Democrat Party are not just anti-white, or anti-male, or anti-working class, but also generally bad for America?

The streets of San Francisco are plagued by homelessness, and the middle class is now fleeing California, a state where liberal Democrats exercise hegemonic control of the government at every level. (Nancy Pelosi: “San Francisco values, that’s what we’re about.”) What would it mean for America to follow California’s path? The non-Hispanic white population of California has decreased by nearly 3 million during the past 40 years. Whereas in 1970, California’s population was almost 90% white, by 2010 the majority population of the state was either Hispanic (37.6%) or Asian (13%) and the non-Hispanic population had declined to 40%. Cui bono? This demographic transition has benefited Democrats politically, but has it enhanced the quality of life in California?

Kate Steinle could not be reached for comment.

To congratulate Democrats for their “success” in taking power in California is rather like praising Democrats for their control of St. Louis, Baltimore and Detroit — the three U.S. cities with the highest per-capita murder rates. If you turn an entire community into a “no-go zone” for white people, well, yes, this is good for Democrats in terms of winning elections, but is electing Democrats the summum bonum? Are the residents of St. Louis, Baltimore and Detroit better off for having elected Democrats whose policies had the effect of making their communities off-limits to white people? Isn’t this the general direction of current policy in California? What should we expect, then, if Democrat capture control of the federal government? Wouldn’t this likely produce the “Californication” of America? And is anyone surprised that working-class white voters in, e.g., Wisconsin voted against such an agenda?

My point, Professor Williams, is that your concern about the perception of Democrat policies ignores the reality of Democrat policies, which are demonstrably anti-white in their effect, and perhaps also in their intent. If Democrats have chosen to become the anti-white party, then nothing Democrats say can ultimately obscure this reality. Trying to conceal the party’s anti-white policy agenda behind rhetoric aimed at exploiting class divisions among white voters will, I suspect, only increase the hostility of working-class white voters toward Democrats. What could be more insulting to the working-class white voter, really, than a bunch of college-educated liberals trying to persuade him to elect Democrats because he allegedly needs help from these “enlightened” superiors?

Probably your Atlantic article will generate a far more hostile reaction from Democrats than from conservatives, Professor Williams, and you should seriously contemplate what this reaction means. There has been a lot of talk from liberals that Trump’s election represents “hate,” but who is hating whom? In the blowback from the Left that you are getting in reaction to your Atlantic article, aren’t there a lot of expressions of hatred for white people, and for white men in particular?

The phrase “white heterosexual male” has become a popular term of demonization in the rhetoric of the Left, and you cannot expect white men to enjoy being assigned the role of Emmanuel Goldstein in this 21st-century version of Orwell’s dystopia. If the reaction of white men to being scapegoated is sometimes irrational and violent, this is to be lamented, but the irrationality of their reaction doesn’t mean that they are incorrect in their perception, or that they are wrong to be angry about being unfairly demonized as “privileged” by the college-educated Left.

How is the ordinary working-class white man, toiling in a low-status job to support himself and his family, “privileged” in any meaningful way? And how is it that the people accusing him of “privilege” are almost exclusively members of the college-educated elite? The average salary of a law professor at the University of California is over $270,000, whereas the median household income in Wisconsin is $66,432. Is the working man in Sheboygan more “privileged” than you, Professor Williams?

Well, I’ve now gone past the 2,000-word mark and rather than continue extending my argument, it is better to conclude briefly by mentioning that I was born and raised a Democrat, and didn’t vote Republican until I was in my mid-30s. Almost as soon as I changed my partisan allegiance, I found myself being accused of racism by liberals, and guess what? This only increased my contempt for Democrats. Insults and name-calling (which is what such accusations of racism usually are) are not persuasive arguments, and exactly why was it racist to vote against Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry anyway? Long before Democrats nominated Obama, this tactic of accusing Republicans of racism was already a cliché of liberal rhetoric, and repetition has not made it less insulting.

Sincerely,
Robert Stacy McCain

Correspondent, The American Spectator
https://spectator.org/bio/robert-stacy-mccain/



 

Category: Education, Intellectuals, Racism

Portland Antifa Mob Riots

Posted on | November 20, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Hannah McClintock was one of six people arrested Saturday in Portland, Oregon, where left-wing “Antifa” attacked a men’s rights group:

One of the six members of far-left extremist group Antifa, arrested in Portland, Oregon, on Nov. 17, was captured on video spitting on and punching protesters before being apprehended.
The latest clash between Antifa — a group that advocates openly for violence against people and groups it disfavors — and people holding permitted rallies and events began with police officers blocking the radicals from a “Him Too” rally, organized by Haley Adams for men’s rights. She said the gathering was to support due process and men falsely accused of sexual assault.
Members of the conservative Patriot Prayer group attended the rally but said they were not its organizers.
After the rally, people departing the site were stalked by Antifa members and others, leading to several flare-ups of violence.
In one scene, people who had attended the rally were confronted by a large group of radicals, including Hannah McClintock, 19, distinctive with purple hair. McClintock “repeatedly spit at a man and hurled punches at him. I had witnessed her trying to fight people over and over,” said journalist Andy Ngo, who recorded the video.
McClintock was later arrested on a charge of harassment.
The other five people arrested were identified as Ruben Delahuerga, 25, Betsy Toll, 68, Brittany Frost, 35, and Elizabeth Cheek, 33, all on one charge each of interfering with a peace officer; and Gary Fresquez, 52, on charges of second-degree disorderly conduct and two counts of interfering with a peace officer.
The Portland Police Department said it saw Antifa members and other people interfering with the Him Too demonstration using a number of weapons. “Officers observed sticks, glass bottles, lit road flares, bottles filled with a substance believed to be urine, and gopher gas used as projectiles,” it said.
The projectiles were thrown at officers and demonstrators, the police said.

By the way, Andy Ngo’s got a tip jar to help support his journalism. His work is excellent, and he deserves your support.

 

Category: Crime, Oregon
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