Analysis: true.

WASHINGTON — In case Senate Republicans weren’t already having enough trouble rounding up votes to repeal and replace Obamacare, here comes ex-House speaker John Boehner with a prediction that the GOP will “never” succeed in their quest to kill the law.

“Now, they’re never — they’re not going to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Boehner said at a private speech in Las Vegas, according to The Washington Post, which obtained video of the Republican’s remarks.

Of course they’re not. They don’t want to, which ought to be obvious to even the meanest intelligence by now. Anybody who still insists on believing that we have anything even resembling a “two-party system” in this country is a damned fool.

Government health care, once implemented, has never yet been removed anywhere on Earth except by violent revolution—if then. This country will be no different; “American exceptionalism” stops right here, folks.

The whole country ought to be breathing a sigh of relief at this undoing of another of Obama’s sneaky attempts at hamstringing the military one small, umm, cut at a time.

President Trump tweeted on Wednesday that “transgender individuals” should not be allowed to serve in “any capacity” in the US military.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow …,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…”

He finished up by writing: “victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”

Needless to say, the Hitler comparisons and general hysterical hyperbole are flying thick and heavy on the deranged Left over this. Which as far as I’m concerned is an added benefit. As Bill says:

First, enjoy the sound of nuclear-level splody-heads among the usual suspects.

Second: Note that he’s not banning actual gays, (or bisexuals) only various forms of drag costuming. I’ve never thought that people who want to cut off their plumbing or put on dresses and wigs should be a civil rights issue in the first place.

Nope, it ain’t. It’s a mental health issue; “transgenderism” is a psychological disorder, yet another in a long list of non-issues that the Left has tried to use to further undermine and demoralize mainstream America, deploying the power of tyranny to force the hated Normals not just to tolerate and/or benignly ignore, but to wildly celebrate.

So-called “transgenders” are, put plainly, sick. There is absolutely no reason whatever to hand them rifles and stick them into the ranks, and plenty of reasons not to. Ordinary people not pimping a hate-America agenda know this full well; you can bet your life that the overwhelming majority of our much-put-upon soldiery does too. They also know full well who has supported them all through the years…and who has lined up at airports on their return home from every conflict in the last five or six decades to spit on and obscenely berate them.

Steyn hit on a topic very near to my own heart with that opening line.

One of the occupational hazards of the commentative biz is that what’s new – the daily news item – simply illustrates the same old thesis you’ve been hammering for years, so that life’s rich pageant comes to seem like a Broadway catalogue song, a great torrent of accumulation all making the ever wearier point – that “You’re the Top”, “The Lady is a Tramp”, “These Foolish Things remind me of you”. Or in our case: We’re the Pits, The Lady is a Transitioning Gentleman, and These Foolish Things remind me that our civilization’s on the express chute to oblivion.

Here, by way of example, are a couple of stories readers asked for my thoughts on in the last 24 hours:

Richard Dawkins has become the latest speaker to be prevented from speaking at Berkeley. Professor Dawkins is a world-famous scientist, whose book The Selfish Gene has just been voted “the most inspiring science book of all time” in a poll commissioned by the Royal Society.

His science is not the problem. Dawkins is also an atheist.

That’s not the problem, either – or it wasn’t when he was principally urinating over the Pope (“a leering old villain in a frock”) and the Catholic Church (an “evil corrupt institution” that’s also a “child-raping institution”). All three quotes are from just one Washington Post column: that’s how respectable and mainstream Dawkins was back then in 2010.

Alas, Dawkins is an equal-opportunity atheist, and feels just as unkindly toward Islam. Hence the announcement from the “liberal” sponsor of his Berkeley talk, KPFA Radio:

Dear Richard Dawkins event ticket buyers,

We regret to inform you that KPFA has canceled our event with Richard Dawkins. We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt – in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people.

KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier. We also apologize to all those inconvenienced by this cancellation. Your ticket purchases will automatically be refunded by Brown Paper Tickets.

Sincerely,
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM

It would have to be “sincere”, wouldn’t it? Because it’s hard to see how apparently sentient beings could otherwise write such effete desiccated tripe. Notice how the shriveling of free expression smoothly proceeds to the next diminished staging post: Once upon a time, Berkeley professed to believe in free speech. Then it believed in free speech except for “hate speech”. Now it supports “serious” free speech, but not “hurtful” speech.

Well, we live in a world of hurt. Personally, I’m hurt by people who say they don’t like my cat album, or by the director’s decision to give me purple hair in this video. But what’s really hurtful is that KPFA and Berkeley can’t even be bothered to pretend to a principled defense of free speech. What is “serious” free speech? Not so long ago, arguments for same-sex marriage or tampons for menstruating men would have been dismissed as utterly unserious – indeed, preposterous. What KPFA means by “serious” speech is compliant, conformist speech that brooks no ideological dissent from the pieties of the day – on male menstruation, climate change, Islam, and whatever’s next on the list. You can be as “hurtful” as you like to cardinals but not imams, to climate deniers but not climate alarmists, to homophobic pastry chefs but not to gay newlyweds.

Its “emphatic support” of “serious free speech” is, thus, merely a regime of apostasy enforcement – which is why it has no place for an atheist such as Dawkins.

But see, that’s the beauty of it: Progressivism has no new ideas at all, and their tired, old ones are so self-contradictory as to be completely incoherent by now.

They. Have. Nothing. They’re intensely, smugly dismissive of all religion—except the most primitive, ass-backwards, hateful one in all human history, which absolutely no one is allowed to criticize in even the smallest way. They’re all for “free speech”—but only of the kind they approve of and agree with. They’re all for “dissent”—as long as that doesn’t involve dissenting from them. They believe in individual liberty—entirely and exclusively on matters of sexual hedonism and perversion, the right to unrestricted access to mind-altering chemicals, abortion, and government “assistance.” They are fervent believers in “science”—and oppose any commitment to free and open inquiry, skepticism, and the scientific method itself.

They cherish “diversity”…and ruthlessly enforce a blank, grey-man uniformity of opinion, philosophy, and even physical appearance. They revel in access to the latest trendy-hipster Micronesian/Cajun/Ethiopian “fusion” cuisine, while denouncing the horror of “cultural appropriation.” They smugly consider themselves “citizens of the world”…and disdainfully regard Flyover America as some sort of bizarre, incomprehensible terrain unworthy of any serious consideration at all.

And now, in their open-hearted magnanimity, they have decided that what we benighted ignoramuses are most in need of is another lecture.

The other night, I had an amazing conversation with a friend who admitted he was a Donald Trump voter. Having known him for most of my life, I was shocked. But as a result, as a proud member of The Resistance, I’m even more certain that we progressives are largely responsible for the rise of Trump’s America.

My typical response to conservatives who see me as a smug, elitist hypocrite for not being tolerant of their beliefs is that I’m “intolerant of intolerance,” but I’ve realized that that mistake is the issue. No, we don’t have to accept and respect others’ bigotry or ignorance, but it’s incredibly important that we understand where it comes from and why it exists.

Actually, you smarmy, self-righteous asshole, what’s more important is that you begin to understand that what you’re pleased to refer to as “ignorance” and “bigotry” is usually no such thing at all. It’s merely a difference of opinion, a refusal to accept your convoluted premises and twisted reasoning. But by all means, go on calling us names and refusing to imagine that we might actually have a valid point once in a while. See where that you gets you.

The folks who voted for Trump are by and large people who see progressivism, and specifically concepts like political correctness and intersectionalism, as an attack on all of those deeply held feelings of what America “is.” To them, our movement is an assault on their Field of Dreams. They’re afraid of losing their (yes, white and Christian) America in the tidal wave of cultural shifts that have occurred over recent decades.

Is calling them racist going to change that? Is calling them bigots going to do it? Hateful? Monsters? Ignorant? Uneducated? Privileged? We don’t have to agree with it, but we have to attempt to understand it.

You’re too fucking stupid and sanctimonious to even begin to understand it.

The only way The Resistance succeeds is if we fundamentally change our tactics. We must realize that the way into these hearts is to respectfully suggest that the causes we fight for actually align with their deeply held patriotism and love for America. That yes, our marginalized communities may look different and speak a different language, but they want all the same things you do, and they want to have them in this incredible country we’ve built together.

Umm, excuse me, but: “built together”? You puerile, adolescent shitwits haven’t built a goddamned thing. You denigrate; you insult; you attack; you destroy. You make outlandish and absurd claims about the egregious harm America has inflicted on the world, without ever once acknowledging the good we’ve done. You denounce American capitalist “greed” without ever admitting that the profit motive has sparked more real progress than any sort of collectivist fantasy you could name ever has. You bitch, piss, and moan about our assumed lack of “compassion” and “humanity” and “decency” while condemning millions to dependence on a Leviathan superstate as blank and pitiless as the sun.

You whine and cavil about a lack of “bipartisanship” and “cooperation” only when you’ve lost an election; the rest of the time, you run roughshod over us without the most cursory and insincere nod towards “working together” with your opposition, and condemn us as “Nazis” when we dare to complain. You ram a foolish government-health-care bill down our throats without a single Republican vote, and then try to blame us when it crashes and burns. You demand “respect” while offering not one whit of it in return.

“Want all the same things you do”? No. No, not hardly. What YOU want is total control over us, to reduce us to an abject state of servility and helplessness under a monstrous tyranny you retain total control over. What WE really want is for you to leave us the fucking hell alone—you, and your hideous Leviathan state too.

Unfortunately, we know by now just how likely THAT is.

But what this also means is that we as progressives need to stop getting so offended by everything and learn to put ourselves in others’ shoes. All of our experiences — conservatives and progressives alike — give us unique perspectives, and it is absolutely unhelpful to say things like “it’s not our job to teach you” when someone comes to us with questions.

Actually, it is our job.

No. No, the fuck it is NOT, you goddamned worthless, pietistic, priggish, arrogant shitheel. Get it through your empty head: WE ARE NOT “COMING TO YOU WITH QUESTIONS.” WE ARE NOT IN ANY NEED OF YET ANOTHER PUKE-INDUCING LECTURE ABOUT OUR MYRIAD SUPPOSED FLAWS. WE ARE NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY INTERESTED IN YOUR GODFUCKINGDAMNED COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY. WE JUST WANT YOU TO—AT LONG, LONG LAST—STOP SLAMMING AND TRYING TO DISMANTLE THE VERY FUCKING NATION THAT FUCKING GUARANTEES YOUR FUCKING FREEDOM TO BE SUCH A FUCKING INSUFFERABLE, IGNORANT FUCKING DIPSHIT, AND LEAVE US THE FUCKING FUCK ALONE.

Period. Full stop. End of story.

But no, the asshole continues. It’s like he can’t help himself. Which, of course—being an oh-so-superior, self-satisfied, narcissistic “liberal”—he can’t.

If we’re waiting for people who hold a different view to change their minds without being guided through that process, we’ll be waiting an awfully long time.

Oh, you’re going to be waiting an awfully long time, all right. AWFULLY long. Common ground, at last.

I think progressives would all agree that time is not something we have to waste. It may not be fair, but progressives must be willing to put aside their anger and hate and take responsibility for creating the change they wish to see in the world. To vilify, shame and condemn only causes those who don’t understand to dig in their heels. If we are the ones who want change, the responsibility is ours to do what it takes to encourage it.

To summarize: Progressives, stop insulting, stop shaming, and stop condescending. Start listening. Start teaching.

“Start listening. Start teaching.” And there, right fucking there, is the whole problem. The arrogant douchebag doesn’t even realize that one of those things is not like the other. If these moralizing putzes were even half as smart as they think they are, they’d know that when they maintain their laser-like focus on “teaching” us poor, benighted knuckleheads, then they’re not really “listening” at all.

The ugly truth is, they’re not interested in “listening,” and they never have been; they’re right, we’re wrong, and they will never even dream of considering they might possibly be in error. Even after decades of failure after failure—a collapsing, moribund economy; foreign-policy train wrecks and humiliations one after another after another; a skyrocketing debt fueled by out of control spending; a nation which rightly views its government as an adversary, despising it, distrusting it, fearing it, and seeking to quietly ignore or circumvent it at every opportunity; a populace that doesn’t believe a word its supposed “representatives” say, and fully comprehends the rot and corruption festering throughout the government while having lost all faith in its own ability to wield even the slightest influence over its direction—these are the toxic fruits of Progressivist governance.

Detroit. Detroit is their model, their ideal; Detroit is what they hope to turn the entire country into. It’s all they can do; it’s all they have.

And THAT is where we take hope; that is our ultimate salvation. These halfwits have nothing whatsoever to offer except more of the same. They have already failed; they have failed again and again and again. Anybody who has searched in vain for a job in recent years, or dropped out of the workforce in despair; been victimized by a domestic Muslim terrorist attack that never would have happened without the Left’s wet-brained insistence on importing hordes of unvetted, unassimilable troglodytes; been forced into an unaffordable Obamacare plan that provides them with no real coverage in exchange for an exorbitant monthly charge; or risked their life savings trying to start a business only to see their dream drown in a Sargasso of idiotic regulation, taxation, and government obstruction, knows exactly where their bullshit leads.

How many of you believe that what those desperate victims of Progressivist perfidy need most is another lecture on how deplorable they are from the likes of this pinheaded, pissant prick? How many of you think that this sort of condescension is going to win a single vote for the agents of American ruin, the Democrat Socialist Party?

They destroy a nation. They scold the people who built it, and claim underserved credit for building it themselves. They blame others for their own manifest failure. They decry true patriots while risibly claiming the mantle of patriotism for themselves. They despise, insult, and spit on the military that provides the blanket of freedom under which they cravenly cower. They arrogantly insist that only they can resolve and repair the damage they themselves so wantonly wrought. They undermine the very foundations of the American republic by refusing to accept an electoral defeat.

They lecture, they hector, they harangue. They dismiss, they denigrate. They condescend and insult. They mislead, misdirect, conceal, and lie outright. But the ultimate takeaway is this: THEY FAIL. Always. Each and every time.

They’re done, people. They. Got. NOTHING. Unless they suddenly and miraculously discover a smidgen of humility, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes legal to actually start openly hunting them, and bringing their stinking pelts down to the bank to exchange for a new toaster oven, a gift certificate, or some other premium.

And then, we can truly begin to Make America Great Again.

Got problems.

It’s easy to blame and ban inanimate objects. And it avoids any discussion of the perpetrators. 

Newham is the London borough with the highest number of acid attacks. It also has the second highest percentage of Muslims in the UK. 398 acid attacks occurred in 5 years in the area named as “the most ethnically diverse district in England and Wales”. 33% of Newham consists of non-UK passport holders. 

But surely that’s some sort of random coincidence.

Except that the place with the third highest number of acid attacks is Tower Hamlets. Tower Hamlets is a Muslim no-go zone. It has one of the smallest native British populations in the country. 35% of the population is Muslim. Most of those are Bangladeshis with a healthy sprinkling of Somalis.

There were 84 acid attacks in what has been dubbed “The Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets”. 

Also, entirely by coincidence, Bangladesh has the highest rate of acid attacks in the world. But if anyone suggests that these two statistics are related, the Met police will investigate them for hate crimes.

Fifth on the acid list is Redbridge where the native British population fell by 40,844 in a decade. The last census showed British and Irish natives fleeing Redbridge while Pakistanis and Bangladeshis stormed in. The Christian and Jewish population fell while the Muslim population rose 11%. So did the acid attacks. 

Pakistan has one of the highest rate of acid attacks in the world. It lags behind Bangladesh. But fortunately Redbridge boasts a diversity of both Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. And acid attacks. 

But surely this is yet another unfathomable coincidence. Like 2 + 2 equaling 4.

London is experiencing a splash of the acid test of diversity. That burning feeling on your face is the thrilling sensation of corrosive multiculturalism eating away at British communities. 

Banning guns, knives, drain cleaner, plungers and ostrich feathers won’t address the problem. The fallacy of gun control, knife control and acid control is that inanimate objects don’t kill people. 

Guns don’t shoot themselves. Knives don’t unsheathe in broad daylight and stab pedestrians. Bottles of acid don’t knock on cars and then splash the occupants when they roll down the window. 

Immigration imported acid attacks to the UK the way that it imported gangs of Muslim men stabbing waitresses in eateries while shouting, “This is for Allah”. 

Allah and acid are both imports from the Muslim world. 

Murders in London, like murders in most major American cities, are driven by gang violence. Behind the shootings, stabbings and acid attacks are gangs. Many of those gangs are made up of first and second generation migrants and settlers from the Muslim world. The UK’s prisons bulge with Muslim convicts. And these criminal gangs naturally feed recruits into Islamic terrorism as they do in Iraq and Syria. 

Banning drain cleaner won’t stop acid attacks. Drain cleaner control is no solution. Migration control is.

“Allah and acid are both imports from the Muslim world”—both having been inflicted on the Western world by its idiot “liberals.” Again: to end the scourge of barbaric Islam in civilized nations, we’ll have to end the scourge of Progressivism first.

This, too, would be part and parcel of draining the swamp.

Trump must eventually fire Robert Mueller, a partisan tool carrying water for his Establishment pals as he oversees an utterly corrupt “investigation” where the only person we actually know committed any wrongdoing is his bestest buddy Jim Comey. But Trump can’t just lash out and do it, though it is well within his political and moral right to do so. No, he’s got to do it cleverly, with cunning, in a way that shows the American people exactly why Mueller’s witch hunt is a flaming dumpster fire of conflicts of interest and contempt for the right of normal Americans to have a say in their own governance.

Trump has to set the stage before he pulls the trigger and puts the coup de grace into the temple of this appalling fiasco. He has to do it so the American people will see and understand why ending this idiocy is so absolutely necessary to preserve our Republic despite the mainstream media’s best effort to hide the truth.

Trump needs to seize the initiative from Leaky Bob. You know, I keep hearing how Mueller was this squared-away Marine officer, but through these incessant leaks his organization demonstrates a complete lack of both integrity and discipline. Mueller seems unwilling or unable to exercise any kind of leadership over his team of Hillary donors, or to instill a culture of seriousness and impartiality. The continuing misconduct of his out-of-control, ever-expanding fiefdom demonstrates that he must be relieved of command. And here’s the letter the president should send to him to set the stage to do it.

Y’know, every time one of these Deep State termites is brought in by the establishment to head an investigation inquiry blue-ribbon panel witch hunt against somebody they dislike or fear, there’s always much blather puked forth from Business As Usual Washington about his “impartiality,” his “integrity,” his fearless determination to grapple honestly with the facts and get at the truth no matter where the chips may fall.

And every time, every single damned time, it ends up being some transparently partisan, obedient Deep State functionary like Comey who cheerfully dances to the Left’s tune and roots around until he can contrive a way to send somebody or other to the slammer, usually somebody who had little or nothing to do with the original “crime”—like, say, Martha Stewart or poor old Scooter Libby.

Sessions should never have allowed this maleficent farce to go forward; it’s a matter of no small curiosity to me why he did. But now it’s down to Trump to send the Left’s latest tapeworm packing. Schlichter is right that it will need to be deftly handled, and his letter would be a great way to lay the groundwork. Such as:

You were appointed to investigate the baseless and politically motivated claims of collusion with Russia. While I am frustrated at the partisan innuendo and improper leaks, I respect this process. Yet these false claims have interfered with my administration’s ability to deliver on the promises I made to the tens of millions of Americans who voted for me last November.

[This is where the President makes clear that he will not let these bogus charges derail the policies the American people voted for. You establishment creeps want to go back to business as usual? Win an election. Your coup fantasies? Not happening.]

3. On June 14, 2017, the news media reported a leak from inside your investigation to the effect that I was personally the subject of an investigation for “obstruction of justice.” This leak was widely perceived as a bureaucratic maneuver designed to prevent me from exercising my prerogative under the Constitution of relieving you, a subordinate executive branch officer, of your duties. Recently, there were leaks about you unilaterally further expanding the probe beyond the bogus Russian collusion claims to my personal financial matters from a decade ago. Fairly or not, these shameful betrayals of your confidence by members of your team (assuming the media is accurate, which is questionable) portray you as using the kind of tactics that resulted in my mandate to “drain the swamp.” And these endless leaks are especially troubling in light of Mr. Comey’s admission that he leaked information to manipulate the special counsel process, while hiding from the American people the fact that I was never under investigation for collusion with Russia.

[Time to remind people that Mueller is not leading a group of dedicated professionals pursuing the truth but a liberal agenda-driven, undisciplined band of Hillary hacks who are just another set of Washington insiders playing the same old political games.]

If these leaks are accurate, please explain the steps you are taking to identify who on your team violated your trust and the trust of the American people. If the leaks are not true, please unequivocally state that fact. Please also explain the steps you are taking to ensure that your staff will act professionally and with integrity in the future in order to regain the American people’s confidence in the impartiality and fairness of your investigation.

[Boom. Put it back on Mr. Integrity™ to explain what he plans to do to restore some professionalism to the circle of jerks that is his team.]

And THAT’S the most repulsive irony of all: so far, the only real crime committed in this whole phony “scandal” has been the multitude of leaks, at least some of which exposed classified information and put clandestine sources of intelligence at very real risk.

Trump needs to fire Mueller. He needs to subject Comey to an investigatory proctoscopy, and prosecute the hell out of him for the games he played with classified information in seeking to get Mueller or some other compliant stalking horse appointed. He needs to go after Hillary too, and see to it that she faces justice at long last for her use of an illegal private server that had more holes in it than the Democrat Socialists’ faltering “Russia collusion” subterfuge.

In the end, it all comes down to the same thing: he needs to drain the damned swamp. Printing out a copy of Schlichter’s excellent letter on White House stationery, signing his name to it, and couriering the thing over to the tapeworm Mueller toot fucking sweet would be a fine step in the right direction.

Don’t piss on ’em, Mr President; kick their asses. Good and hard, until they’re wearing ’em for a hat. Nothing less is going to suffice.

Now here’s an interesting idea.

Trump might recall that “Drain the Swamp” was one of the most effective campaign slogans when he campaigned in Flyover Country.  He now has a taste for just how jaded, how corrupt and how absurd Washington has become over the last half-century.  Trump ought to change the slogan from “Drain the Swamp” to “Leave the Swamp.”

By moving the presidency a thousand miles or so away from Washington into firmly conservative Flyover Country, Trump can tweak the left into madness so obvious that Americans will be appalled, and he can appeal to folks in Missouri and New Mexico and Florida and other places with key Senate races – places he will need if he hopes to win a second term.

President Trump, by telling voters in these swing states he wants to live where they live – and Trump, ideally, could move from state to state every three or four months – can begin to create a narrative that he is for real America, whereas the Democrats (and establishment Republicans) are for the surreal pseudo-America of Washington.

The leftist establishment national media, which do not believe that there is an America outside the Beltway and the Left Coast, would find themselves separated from cozy sources, forced to rub shoulders with hardworking Americans, and exposed to all those imagined yahoos “bitterly clinging to their guns and religion” and living amidst all those “deplorables” Hillary suggested might be one quarter of the nation – the one quarter never seen, never heard, and never noticed by the Washington Establishment.

One can readily see all sorts of practical problems with this, of course. But I love the thought of the “liberal” media being stripped of their perks, pried out of their DC holes, and forced into the Basket of Deplorables to hobnob with us Great Unwashed so much it would be worth making the effort for that alone. Just the looks of horror and revulsion on their faces when they’re told about it would be priceless.

Let’s get on with it. It won’t be easy, it won’t be quick. But it couldn’t be more vital.

Anxious Trump voters have been understandably frustrated by the lack of speed with which President Trump is able to force the MAGA agenda onto an unwilling DC political apparatus. However, if you step back and look at the scope of the challenge, the situation is entirely understandable.

Donald Trump was a 100% pure political outsider, a citizen politician. There was never any underlying organizational apparatus to support victory. There was Dan, Hope, Michael and Corey; later Paul then Kellyanne and Steve. Everything else needed to be constructed from scratch and even the party apparatus didn’t support candidate Trump.

On November 9th 2016 President-elect Trump did not wake up with a staff of 50 political career employees sitting at Trump desks with Rolodexes filled with a network of affiliate political allies, personnel and associates to call upon to create the Trump administration. Consequently President Trump needed to import the entire administrative personnel architecture to support the move to the White House.

President-elect Trump approached that challenge by hiring the Chairman of the RNC, Reince Priebus to fill out the hundreds of empty chairs. Priebus brought a staff mostly from the RNC and his own network of contacts. Many of those people were not self-described deplorables, or MAGA-minded; hence, the leaking etc.

The Heritage Foundation, and a few other late-coming allied political groups were brought on to provide some more legislative-minded bodies to help turn the Trump populist and pragmatic campaign platform into actionable policy and legislation. There simply wasn’t a decades old MAGA think tank as a resource.  Again, sub-contracting needed.

Understanding the dynamic of building out the administrative architecture leads to an understanding of the visible frustration. However, this is exactly what citizen political operations look like absent of career political operatives familiar with all historic national political efforts.

Many people might wonder what took so long. However, when we take time to understand the nature of a complete political outsider winning the office of the Presidency and all that encompasses, we begin to understand the best part of what we voted for is only possible when the architecture to support it is fully in place.

We are nearing that point.

Winter is coming for the intransigent professional political class.

We can only hope. The very idea of a “professional political class,” of such creatures as “career politicians,” was anathema to the Founders, and very rightly so. It’s the source of nearly all our current woes that it hasn’t remained so with us, and until the idea of ordinary citizens doing their term or two of public service and returning to private life becomes the norm again rather than a concept as bizarre and alien to us as…well, as three-headed aliens from Mars walking the streets among us, we will have little hope of putting things right again.

The very notion of an enormous, intrusive, all-powerful central government ruling us via a “professional political class” of supposed “experts” is surely Progressivism’s greatest triumph. But our having allowed ourselves to be trained to humble acceptance of it as simply the natural order of things would have to rank near the top of the list, too.

If he can pull it off, Trump’s most resounding and meaningful achievement will probably be to clear out the DC rat’s nest of every last Obama appointee; thoroughly and entirely fumigate the out-of-control bureaucracies and burn out the deadwood therein; remind the vermin in the executive-branch departments so clearly determined to cripple his agenda a-borning of just who it is they’re supposed to be working for; and bring the Ruling Class firmly to heel at last. I repeat: not easy, not quick. But absolutely vital.

The sky, it turns out, is NOT falling.

For environment ideologues, The Donald has ensured destruction of the world by removing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord. The key for global warming proponents is the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) content in air from 200 parts per million during the ice age to 400 parts per million in 2013. CO2 is a clear harmless odorless tasteless gas expelled by every human and also a product of burning fossil fuels.

In spite of a growing U.S. population, President Barack Obama pledged a reduction in CO2 production of 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, which would have a minuscule effect on global CO2; require draconian enforcement measures; damage the U.S. economic structure; and accelerate the rise of China, the world’s most prolific producer of CO2. China only pledged to peak CO2 production by 2030 with no targeted reductions. It is China’s strategy to overtake the U.S. economically, militarily and politically.

From 1996 through 2015 global temperatures remained essentially flat, despite predictions of a rise by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Forecasts of rising sea levels have also failed to match reality. Melting Arctic sea ice does not increase liquid volume. Melting ice from land masses does increase global sea levels. About 90 percent of the world’s glacial ice is on Antarctica which shows no net decrease in ice cover. In a Kafkaesque setting, the entire world’s economy and standard of living is being threatened by a technically challenged political elite in a global hustle using IPCC models, which are grossly flawed.

The IPCC refutes any scientific findings that suggest that global warming is not exclusively due to increased CO2 production from the burning of fossil fuels. In reality, 99.98 percent of the total energy contribution to the earth’s climate originates from the sun.

Aw, nooooo: more of that logic, rationality, and obvious fucking truth that so unhinges the libtards whenever and wherever they encounter it, poor things. Read on for more; it’s as concise a takedown of the Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) scam as any I’ve seen.

As I keep saying: the Left’s problem isn’t with us. It’s with reality.

Over the past three months in San Francisco (and throughout the entire Bay Area), roving gangs of teens have been robbing and terrorizing passengers on the BART subway trains. Last week, the BART board of directors announced that it is refusing to turn over surveillance video of the attacks because, as the thugs involved are black, releasing the videos would create “racism,” which would lead to terrible consequences for the black community.

Now, to anyone with a decently functioning brain, that heaping plate of nonsense is impossible to digest. If the general public has a fear of black crime, it’s because of black crime, not footage of black crime. I mean, that’s obvious, right? How fucking elementary can something be? Because of the board’s refusal to release the surveillance videos, the marauding hoodlums will most likely not be caught (or they will not be caught as quickly as they would have been if people were given the opportunity to, you know, identify them from the footage). They’ll commit more crimes, thus leading to more people having “negative experiences” with black BART riders, thus leading to more suspicion directed at all young black men on the trains. By helping the criminals avoid capture, BART will only make things worse for law-abiding blacks who ride the subway. So why is BART acting in such an illogical and self-defeating manner? To answer that question, one has to view “racism” through the eyes of a leftist. Leftists see racism as an evil spirit—an otherworldly entity, conjured by whites and made manifest on an earthly plane, a “duppy” that, once brought into existence, flies around the world inflicting harm on black people, like a curse. Should the BART footage be released, it would summon demons, “racisms” that, once manifested, would sow destruction in the black community, causing crime sprees, absentee fatherhood, unemployment, drug use, and school truancy.

Anti-racism, as it’s practiced by modern leftists, is a massive faith-based superstition. And as anyone who’s ever tried to argue with the superstitious knows, you can’t talk sense to someone in the fevered throes of irrationality. Remember “Niggerhead rock”? Back in the 1980s, the family of former Texas governor Rick Perry leased a parcel of land for hunting. On the land, placed there decades before the Perrys ever arrived, was a rock with the word “Niggerhead” written on it. Perry had the ugly epithet painted over, and he turned the rock upside down. End of story, right? Not so fast. During Perry’s 2011 presidential bid, The New York Times declared that painting over the word was not good enough—the rock should have been destroyed. The word had rendered the rock evil, and only reducing it to gravel would free the land from its spell. Of course, imagine if the stone had been marked with a pentagram, or the words “hail Satan,” and Perry, a Christian, had destroyed it because the words or symbols had made the stone malevolent. He would have been ridiculed as a superstitious fool by the same leftists who proclaimed that the “nigger” rock was possessed by wickedness and in need of physical obliteration.

It should be pointed out that a lot of anti-racism voodoo practitioners are white. A few days ago, as I watched the cop-cam footage of talentless irritant Shia LaBeouf’s drunken meltdown, I thought to myself, here’s a prime example of a leftist voodoo priest who thought his magic had made him immortal. LaBeouf screechingly challenged the cop who arrested him, How dare you arrest me, I’m a white man! I can’t be touched! My take on it is, LaBeouf, a far-left social-justice nutcase, has been preaching about “white privilege” for so long, he’s come to believe it’s a real thing. When his superstitious beliefs were proven wrong by cold hard reality, he couldn’t handle it. LaBeouf didn’t just lose it because he was going to jail; he went batshit because his magic amulet didn’t protect him from persecution the way it was supposed to. Literature is filled with stories of witch doctors who become so convinced that their magic is real, they begin to believe they are protected from all harm. The repulsive little weasel in the back of that cop car is a man suffering a crisis of faith. We also saw this a few months ago after the arrest of SJW crusader “Reality Winner,” who stands accused of stealing classified documents from the NSA. Immediately after being tossed into a cell, Winner told her sister not to worry—her privilege as a pretty white woman would soon get her released.

It didn’t. As with the villain at the end of Polanski’s The Ninth Gate, the “magical protection” turned out to be completely illusory.

Anti-racism voodoo hurts everyone, from the black community to those at risk from the crime that emanates from the black community to the voodoo priests themselves, who eventually go mad as they lose themselves in their fantasy world of demons and magic.

Is there a cure for those who believe in “racisms”? Well, logic hasn’t worked.

Nor should we expect it ever to. It’s never worked with (or on) the Left yet. Seems like fending off logic, reason, and rationality is the only thing their “magic” does work on.

Did someone just mention “the increasingly hapless desperation of their strategic skullduggery” just now? Why yes, I believe someone did.

The proposition those damning the president based on this latest revelation are offering involves the fact that Trump Junior is found on an email thread which he voluntarily disclosed on Twitter saying “I love it” in reaction to being told of the information on Clinton, that information having been characterized by its presenter, an English music publicist named Rob Goldstone, as part and parcel of a desire by the Russian government to help his father win.

This, we’re told, is evidence of collusion between Trump père and The Russians, and based on a timeline which included the Wikileaks disclosures of “hacked” Democratic National Committee emails and Trump’s request that The Russians make public the 30,000 emails Clinton had supposedly deleted from her illegal private server, it’s a smoking gun that Trump was the beneficiary of the Putin regime’s intelligence arm “hacking” the 2016 election.

Which is an awful lot of mileage on not quite so much fuel.

Which theory is harder to believe?

That Trump, who had never run for office before and who was panned as a clown by the Democrats and the media right up until Election Night last November, orchestrated a grand coup d’état with the assistance of the Russians to “hack” an American election, and that it was so well hidden that the Don Junior meeting is the only real evidence unearthed so far of the whole thing…

…Or that the Obama administration and the Democratic Party used their immense power to attempt to ensnare the Trumps in a damaging narrative that would either discredit him and the Republican Party as traitors in the event of a Clinton victory or cripple his administration in “scandal” should he pull an upset?

Who had the means, motive, and experience to pull off the deeds in question? Who had the power to let Veselnitskaya into the country, and what purpose would be served for such permission?

We don’t know the half of this story. But frankly, this business with The Russians is all of a sudden a lot more interesting than it’s been the whole time the media has been flogging it.

What’s interesting to me is how suddenly the libtards turned on a dime from decades of pimping and propagandizing for the Soviet Union to fear and loathing of them as America’s Most Dangerous Enemy. Pretty impressive for people who always maintained before that A) America has no true enemies, B) if it did, the enmity was fully merited, earned as it was by its own despicable or inhumane actions, and C) never yet failed to prefer to take the side of said enemies, while disregarding or actively alienating our allies.

This. A thousand times this.

My fellow Americans,

On Monday, I signed a Presidential Proclamation declaring this to be “Made in America Week.”

We believe that our country is stronger, safer, and more prosperous when we make more of our goods and our products right here in the USA.  When we purchase products Made in America, the wealth, revenue and jobs all stay in our country – to be enjoyed by our people.

Since we first won our Independence, our Founders and many of our greatest leaders have promoted that we should afford a special level of protection to the products and goods manufactured within our borders.  They understood that as a nation, we have common bonds with our fellow citizens and common obligations to each other.  Making and buying made in America products brings us closer, and strengthens the ties that link us all together.

For too long, our government’s policies have punished production in America while rewarding and encouraging the movement of production overseas, which is totally ridiculous.  The result has been the loss of numerous industries, the decimation of entire communities, and years of sluggish growth and flat wages.

Throughout American history, our nation’s best leaders have believed in the importance of protecting our domestic industry.  This includes every President on Mount Rushmore.

George Washington encouraged Americans to produce their own goods so that our young nation could become truly independent.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that Americans should choose products made in America whenever possible – and by the way, I’m asking you to do that.

Abraham Lincoln warned that abandoning the policies that protect American industry would “produce want and ruin among our people.”

Theodore Roosevelt stated in his First message to Congress that “Reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of protection.”

James Monroe called on our nation to “cherish and sustain our manufacturers.”

James Garfield said of our nation’s manufacturers: “To them the country owes the splendor of the position it holds before the world.” 

William McKinley believed that when America protects our workers and industries, we “open up a higher and better destiny for our people.”

And Calvin Coolidge stated that protecting American industry “enables our people to live according to a better standard… and receive a better rate of compensation than any people, anytime, anywhere on earth, ever enjoyed.”

We are now, under the Trump Administration, reclaiming our heritage as a manufacturing nation.  We are fighting to provide a level playing field for American Workers and Industries.  Other countries will cease taking advantage of us, believe me.

The usual suspects will wail about another “incoherent,” “ignorant,” or “hateful” Trump speech, but I gotta say I like it.

Free trade is a gauzy fantasy that has never actually existed. Like libertarianism itself, it has never been successfully implemented in the real world, and it never will be. Also like libertarianism, I fervently hewed to it myself for a long time. But in the end, it’s just another mug’s game.

And while we’re talking about Trump hitting ’em out of the park, there’s also this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said Thursday it had withdrawn or removed from active consideration more than 800 proposed regulations that were never finalized during the Obama administration as it works to shrink the federal government’s regulatory footprint.

In a report, the Trump administration said it had withdrawn 469 planned actions that had been part of the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda published last fall. Officials also reconsidered 391 active regulatory proceedings by reclassifying them as long-term or inactive “allowing for further careful review,” the White House said.

Remember when he promised that for every new regulation implemented, two must be removed? Well, uhh, yeah.

Officials said the administration has gone further, eliminating 16 regulations for every new rule proposed.

Bold mine, just in case anybody was still wondering why the Deep State is making open war on him, and both wings of the Uniparty is working so frenetically to thwart him. Codevilla said it long ago: it’s no longer Demican versus Republicrat; it’s the Ruling Class versus the Country Class. Or the Rulers versus the Ruled, if you wish to boil it down even nicer and neater.

I remain a good bit less than sanguine about the prospect of restoring this nation to its former glory. But if it’s to be done, Trump is going about it in exactly the right way. The agonized screaming from the long-entrenched Powers That Be, and the increasingly hapless desperation of their strategic skullduggery, ought to be proof enough of that for just about anybody.

I’m gonna have to go with “both” in answer to that one.

Now consider a second story: A law-abiding unarmed woman makes the mistake of calling 911 and, when the responding officers arrive, they shoot her dead. The American media’s reflex instinct is that this is an out-of-control murderous police-brutality story. To be sure, it’s more helpful if the victim is black or Hispanic, but in this case she is female and an immigrant, albeit from Australia. And certainly Down Under the instinct of the press would also be to play this as an example of a country with a crazy gun culture and the bad things that happen when innocent foreigners make the mistake of going there, even to a peaceable, upscale neighborhood. Or in the shorthand of the Sydney Daily Telegraph front page:

AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

In both Oz and the US, the next stage of the story would be cherchez le cop – lots of reports of a redneck officer with a hair-trigger temper and various personal issues.

But there’s a complicating factor. It’s so complicating that The Washington Post finds itself running a 1,200-word story on the death of Justine Damond without a word about the copper who shot her – nothing about his background, record, habits, behavior. Not even his name.

Because his name is Mohamed Noor. As Tucker Carlson pointed out on Fox News the other night, the reason you know the officer’s identity is significant is because the Post went to all that trouble not to mention it.

Mr Noor was born in Somalia, and these days, aside from being home to the fictional Lake Wobegon, Minnesota is also home to the all too real Little Mogadishu – mainly thanks to generous “family reunification” from a country that keeps no reliable family records.

If you take seriously Sir Robert Peel’s dictum that “the police are the public and the public are the police”, then, if your town turns Somali, you’re going to need some Somali policemen. And, just like Garrison Keillor’s radio tales of old Minnesota, the new Minnesota also requires its heartwarming yarns. In the deft summation of Michele Bachmann (a favorite guest on The Mark Steyn Show) Officer Noor is an “affirmative-action hire by the hijab-wearing mayor of Minneapolis”.

Mayor Hodges doesn’t wear a hijab because she’s Muslim (yet) but to show she’s cool with it – and, if you’re not, you’re a bigot.

So don’t worry, it may look like “complete destruction”, but any moment now we’ll be in full bloom. For her, the recruitment of Mohamed Noor, the ninth Somali officer on the force, is a good-news story, about the glories of “embracing the discomfort of transformation”.

For others, including those on the receiving end of his ministrations, Mohamed Noor is a bad-news story. A few days before he shot Justine Damond, a complaint was filed in federal court by another Minneapolis woman, who also called 911 and claims she was assaulted by Noor. Disinclined to embrace her discomfort, she has instead sued.

Last year, I spoke to many Muslim police officers in France and Belgium. Not all of them were happy to speak back, but a lot of them did. To reprise Sir Robert, the police are the public and the public are the police. So a semi-Muslim public is entitled to a semi-Muslim constabulary. There are potential difficulties here.

And that, folks, would have to be the understatement of the year the decade the century all time. Read all of it; it’s Steyn, which is reason enough all by itself. But he ties together several seemingly disparate threads that tell a story of ongoing Moslem savagery that’s all too familiar to the sane among us by now.

Update! Questions, questions:

First, I am surprised I haven’t seen more questions or comments about a most peculiar aspect of the story—that officer Noor fired at Damond from the passenger seat out the driver’s side window, meaning he shot past his partner. I am no expert in police procedure, let alone handguns, but this strikes me as beyond strange, as well as highly dangerous (to the other officer’s hearing, if nothing else). I would think that police training would discourage this kind of weapons discharge, but perhaps members of law enforcement among our readers can comment more knowledgeably than I can about this detail.

Second and related, a question that I am sure the mainstream media will not ask, and the Minneapolis political class will suppress if asked in any case, is whether officer Noor was qualified to be a police officer as part of an affirmative action push to get a Somali officer on the force. It would be interesting to see his test scores and training evaluations from whatever police academy he went through. Is there evidence of political pressure to qualify Noor for active duty? Normally I wait for more facts to emerge before engaging in speculation on stories like this, except that this is one question that, as I say, is certain to be suppressed.

As with most stories involving mundane Moslem atrocities, expect this one to be flushed most vigorously down the memory hole with a quickness. I’ll append a closing note from Steyn’s post identifying the true root of the problem, which is not so much unassimilable Moslem savages but the politically-correct mania for “diversity” that has brought the barbarian hordes into our very midst in the first place:

The police are the public and the public are the police: civilized policing depends on an instinctive understanding of the rhythms of your community, of its social norms. “Diversity” – particularly the yawning chasm of Minneapolis-style diversity – is an obstacle to that, because “diversity” eliminates the very concept of “norms”. Being an Australian living in a pleasant low-crime neighborhood, Justine Damond saw in the police cruiser the happily prompt and efficient arrival of the friendly local constables, and so went up to the vehicle in her pajamas. Officer Noor fatally shot her in the abdomen, firing from a sitting position in his cruiser across his partner in the adjoining seat and straight through the open car window. The dashcam and bodycams were switched off.

So in this instance the police were not the public and the public were not the police: Justine Damond was not Mohamed Noor and Mohamed Noor was not Justine Damond. Their views of the situation were entirely different, and irreconcilable.

Their views of life on this planet are different, and far more than merely irreconcilable: they are at existential war with one another—a conflict that will never be resolved until one side or the other is utterly, totally defeated. And just because one side is doing most of the fighting while the other remains too effete and squeamish to even name the enemy doesn’t mean an indisputable victor won’t eventually emerge anyway.

About another useless federal program.

ProPublica has been researching why the U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world. One answer, broadly, is waste — some of it buried in practices that the medical establishment and the rest of us take for granted. We’ve documented how hospitals often discard pricey new supplies, how nursing homes trash valuable medications after patients die or move out, and how drug companies create expensive combinations of cheap drugs. Experts estimate such squandering eats up about $765 billion a year — as much as a quarter of all the country’s health care spending.

What if the system is destroying drugs that are technically “expired” but could still be safely used?

In his lab, Gerona ran tests on the decades-old drugs, including some now defunct brands such as the diet pills Obocell (once pitched to doctors with a portly figurine called “Mr. Obocell”) and Bamadex. Overall, the bottles contained 14 different compounds, including antihistamines, pain relievers and stimulants. All the drugs tested were in their original sealed containers.

The findings surprised both researchers: A dozen of the 14 compounds were still as potent as they were when they were manufactured, some at almost 100 percent of their labeled concentrations.

“Lo and behold,” Cantrell says, “The active ingredients are pretty darn stable.”

Naturally, and as is almost always the case, Leviathan exempts itself from the rules it forces the rest of us to labor under. Which amounts to a pretty good working definition of tyranny, if you ask me.

The federal agencies that stockpile drugs — including the military, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — have long realized the savings in revisiting expiration dates.

In 1986, the Air Force, hoping to save on replacement costs, asked the FDA if certain drugs’ expiration dates could be extended. In response, the FDA and Defense Department created the Shelf Life Extension Program.

Each year, drugs from the stockpiles are selected based on their value and pending expiration, and analyzed in batches to determine whether their end dates could be safely extended. For several decades, the program has found that the actual shelf life of many drugs is well beyond the original expiration dates.

A 2006 study of 122 drugs tested by the program showed that two-thirds of the expired medications were stable every time a lot was tested. Each of them had their expiration dates extended, on average, by more than four years, according to research published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Some that failed to hold their potency include the common asthma inhalant albuterol, the topical rash spray diphenhydramine, and a local anesthetic made from lidocaine and epinephrine, the study said. But neither Cantrell nor Dr. Cathleen Clancy, associate medical director of National Capital Poison Center, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the George Washington University Medical Center, had heard of anyone being harmed by any expired drugs. Cantrell says there has been no recorded instance of such harm in medical literature.

And there’s your pretty good working definition of the federal goobermint itself: an all-powerful bureaucracy eternally searching for “solutions” to “problems” that don’t actually exist, mucking things up entirely in the process. See also: “climate change,” just for one obvious example. You can be sure that this same sordid story of overregulation, obsessive control, red tape, and senseless, destructive, costly waste is repeated throughout any federal agency you’d care to examine.

Yes. Yes, we surely must.

The news that Southern-fried rock/rapper Kid Rock will be running for some timeserving Dem hack’s Senate seat in Michigan should make every normal American smile and spill a 40 to his homies. The future Senator Rock deserves your eager support for two critical reasons: First, it will drive the liberals insane. Second, it will make George Will and the rest of Team Fredocon soil themselves.

“Kid Rock? Oh, well I never!” You simpering sissies. I’ll take his nasty stringy mop and torn wife beater over your preferred weasels’ coiffed politician/newscaster hair and Gucci loafers.

No, he didn’t go to some Ivy League snob factory and all he’s got to rely on are attitude, common sense, and a love of actual Americans (especially our troops). But wait – you want “conservatism.” A fat lot of good your version of conservatism’s done us. It’s always waiting up there ahead, just after the next election cycle, and in the meantime, we’ll compromise and make some more excuses.

No, we’re past voting for the ideology. Now we’re ready to vote for the id.

Or, y’know, the Kid.

Yeah, I know; sorry, but I just couldn’t resist that one.

Seriously though, aside from the big fat thumb in the eye it would be to the Uniparty establishment (and just wait till Senator Al Franken starts complaining about the complete lack of “gravitas” a mere entertainer such as the Kid will bring to the stultified halls of Congress), I can state with complete confidence that the danger of Senator Rock suddenly turning up to a floor vote in a dress and declaring his gender to be “mixed or uncertain” is pretty close to nil. That alone is qualification aplenty for me.

This. Exactly, precisely this.

My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”  Here’s my answer:

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship.  Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain? We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?  And the results were always the same.

This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.

I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”

The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ‘60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they’ve fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one – the violent take-over of the universities – till today.

The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety.

With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is America’s first wartime president in the Culture War.

Read all of it. And hope like hell that Trump knows just what sort of war he’s really in here. I repeat, read all of it; his closing quote ought to be familiar and welcome to anyone with any sense of American history at all. I’ve used it here more than once myself, in fact.

Just when you think they’ve reached Peak Lunacy.

I wrote an essay in The Washington Post last year, during the height of the Brock Turner case, about my sons and rape culture. I didn’t think it would be controversial when I wrote it; I was sure most parents grappled with raising sons in the midst of rape culture.

Well, actually, ummm, no. Most parents know that “rape culture” is complete fucking horseshit—the sane ones, that is. Or so I would hope.

One of my sons was hurt by my words, although he’s never told me so. He doesn’t understand why I lumped him and his brother together in my essay. He sees himself as the “good” one, the one who is sensitive and thoughtful, and who listens instead of reacts. He doesn’t understand that even quiet misogyny is misogyny, and that not all sexists sound like Twitter trolls.

If he’s at all intelligent, he understands that not all of what a twisted freak like you calls “misogyny” is actually, y’know, misogyny.

He is angry at me now, although he won’t admit that either, and his anger led him to conservative websites and YouTube channels; places where he can surround himself with righteous indignation against feminists, and tell himself it’s ungrateful women like me who are the problem.

“Ungrateful”? No, not so much that. Demented, hate-filled, obsessive Feminazis like you, yeah.

I teeter frequently between supporting my son and educating him. Is it my job as his mother to ensure he feels safe emotionally, no matter what violence he spews?

What “violence” he “spews”? I’d really have to see an example of such before I’d believe it. As for translating the rest of it: For “supporting my son,” insert “being an actual loving mother.” For “educating him,” substitute “lecturing, hectoring, bullyragging, and intimidating him out of any trace of normal masculinity.” Your “job as a mother”? You haven’t the vaguest fucking clue, you sick bint.

As a single mother, I sometimes wonder whether the real problem is that my sons have no role models for the type of men I hope they become.

Of course they don’t. That’s because the “men” you hope they become aren’t men at all; they’re emasculated, steercotted little pussies, pushed around and bullied out of any truly masculine identity at all. I repeat: sick bint.

I know I’m not supposed to cast an entire sex with a single paint brush — not all men, I’m sure some readers are thinking and preparing to type or tweet. But if it’s impossible for a white person to grow up without adopting racist ideas, simply because of the environment in which they live, how can I expect men not to subconsciously absorb at least some degree of sexism? White people aren’t safe, and men aren’t safe, no matter how much I’d like to assure myself that these things aren’t true.

How very sad for you, you weak, pathetic freak. Every single premise presented in this paragraph is simply fucked beyond redemption. And with that, we draw near to the nut of things.

My sons won’t rape unconscious women behind a dumpster, and neither will most of the progressive men I know.

Neither will most of the men you know, period, de-balled Progressivists or otherwise.

I love my sons, and I love some individual men. It pains me to say that I don’t feel emotionally safe with them, and perhaps never have with a man, but it needs to be said because far too often we are afraid to say it. This is not a reflection of something broken or damaged in me; it is a reflection of the systems we build and our boys absorb.

And there it is: it most certainly IS a reflection of something broken and damaged in you. This whole wretched screed is nothing BUT a public display of just how badly damaged, how completely broken, you are.

This deranged bitch is a perfect exemplar of the dank, twisted hole into which Progressivism drags everything within its reach. Pity the poor boys raised by such a diseased mind; what hope have they of ever leading a normal, sane life after having been endlessly harangued during their formative years by the kind of woman who would put her petty politics ahead of properly nurturing her offspring?

It’s easy enough to mock a sicko like her, sure enough, and it should surely be done every chance we get. But we should never lose sight of an important fact: the damage done by her despicable ilk is real, and most likely irrevocable. Her sons may have the strength to rebel against her, and throw off her malignant influence in the end. But it’s likely going to cost them. And in the end, it will cost all of us.

Schlichter is having too much fun again.

Yeah, yeah, intent. Whatever.

It’s all about liberals retaking power and trying to make sure we normals never get a say in our own governance again. Make no mistake, there are plenty of nominal Republicans who would be happy for that to happen. According to David Brooks, we peasants lack sufficient sandwich savvy for self determination.

None of this is about right and wrong. It’s about power – their power, and ensuring we have none.

Let me break down how this is going to end. Liberals are going to gobble yet another Treason Viagra and the hot chick of success is gonna let them buy her a pricy dinner and then smile and say “Let’s just be friends.”

Again.

Do you think this latest nonsense is going to stop Trump, by which I mean the people who support him? Do you think the normal people in America are thinking “Gosh, a campaign tried to get negative information about its opponent? I’m shocked and stunned and emotionally ruined. I don’t know where to turn or what to do. I guess I better support a bunch of liberal fascists who want to take my money and my power and my guns and who boo God.”

Whatever.

The liberals are losing and they’re going to keep losing. They’re going to lose in 2018, despite the Republicans’ best efforts to fail. And in 2020 we’ll get four more years of Donald Trump and I’m going to laugh during every minute of it. Let all those latter-day converts to McCarthyism working as associate sociology professors at Gumbo State and who drive old Corollas with fading bumperstickers that read “Nuclear Freeze Now” keep tweeting “TREASON” in all caps. You go, girls.

You could apply that last statement to hapless NeverTrumpTards like Miss Lindsey Graham, too. But you probably shouldn’t; it would be mean, you know.

Another epic fail. Or…perhaps not.

Donald Trump Jr. took a meeting from someone claiming evidence of foreign corruption by Hillary Clinton. The meeting proved useless. Donald Trump Jr. released the emails leading to the meeting. It is clear from the documents and statements of all involved that Donald Trump Jr. did nothing wrong. He broke no law. This isn’t like Hillary Clinton’s husband soliciting donations disguised as speech payments, travel costs, and charity work, while Hillary was Secretary of State. Based solely on the fact the source of the information was a Yeltsin-era prosecutor from Russia, a few anti-Trump lawyers falsely accuse Trump Jr. of a crime.

The Code of Federal Regulations makes the law immunizing Trump Jr.’s actions precisely clear: any foreign national individual may volunteer personal services to a federal candidate or federal political committee without making a contribution. The law provides this volunteer “exemption” as long as the individual performing the service is not compensated by anyone on the campaign. See 11 CFR 100.74. For example, as the Federal Election Commission advises all, “an individual can provide volunteer services to a candidate or party without considering the value of those service a contribution to the candidate or party.” Section 30121 of Title 52 does not apply to voluntary activity or services. The thing “of value” must be actual money, or its transferable equivalent, not a volunteer of services or information. Otherwise, if volunteering information in coordination with a campaign constituted donations, everyone from John Harwood to Chuck Todd (and maybe all of CNN) made millions in donations to the Hillary campaign, as WikiLeaks emails disclosed.

Hence, legally, Donald Trump Jr. taking a meeting at the request of a family friend, to hear someone wanting to volunteer information about your Dad’s adversary, can legally be no crime. He did what a loyal son, honorable friend, and smart advocate would do — hear them out. Anyone who thinks that’s a crime is the one who needs to have their values checked.

Ahh, but there’s the rub: the Treasonous Left doesn’t care whether it’s a crime or not. It’s something they can throw out there, hoping it will finally, FINALLY stick. Ace takes it a little further:

Consider: To them, those who voted with all their girlish might for Hillary and who cried when Pennsylvania’s votes were counted, of course Trump Jr. must have been acting on behalf of Russia. Their Narrative is that Russia wanted Hillary to lose; ergo, if Trump Jr. is willing to hear information about Hillary that the media would itself cover up, his only motive would be to help Russia.

The “aid” that he would be rendering Russia is only that of beating Hillary, which they assert is Russia’s whole Nefarious Scheme.

It doesn’t seem to dawn on them that Trump Jr. would have reasons to want to beat Hillary that have noting at all to do with wishing to “help Russia in its scheming.”

Jake Tapper plainly wished Hillary would win — and so did Iran, knowing that Hillary would carry on Obama’s pro-Iran-nuke legacy.
Does that mean all the negative stories that Jake Tapper has run on behalf of Hillary means that he was in “collusion with Iran” — agreeing to cooperate with Iran for a corrupt purpose?

Did he refuse to even mention the Ben Rhodes “Echo Chamber” story so as to further his collusion with Iran?

No, of course not. Iran had an interest in helping Hillary, and Jake Tapper had his own independent interest in helping Hillary. Jake Tapper refused to run the Echo Chamber story, which had the effect of being an “in-kind donation” to Iran, for his own partisan political goals, not specifically to “aid Iran.”

This fixation on seeing things only in terms of whether they help or hurt Hillary — and not, as Trump would see it, whether they help or hurt him — is the basic psychological defect they have of seeing Donald Trump Junior’s mere willingness to receive oppo against his opponent as “collusion with Russia’s schemes,” rather than rather basic campaign 101 stuff.

He goes on to reveal some truly dirty stuff on Felonia McPantsuit’s campaign, which is worth a look. But meanwhile, here we all are again, playing defense, bogged down in a bunch of truly arrant horseshit once more…JUST LIKE THE DEMOCRAT SOCIALISTS WANT US TO BE. After spending a great deal of time whacking the tar baby the Lyin’ Left has presented us, Rush finally saw the light:

Now, after a year, not a single one of them has panned out, from the golden showers dossier on down, not a single one of them has panned out. And how do we know this? Because of the way this little email chain and meeting between Donald J. Trump and a Russian honey pot is being portrayed. This is it. The bottom line is, this is all they’ve got. Everything that came before is obviously inoperative. It has been forgotten.

None of it is being linked, none of this Trump Jr. stuff is being linked to anything that’s happened in the past. Michael Flynn’s name does not appear in this story. Michael Flynn, which was the focus of the original bout of these stories, is long gone by now. The proof is wide open here, that they’ve got nothing. After a year they are going bananas over this. And they’re going bananas because after a year of nothing, they think this is it.

This is the story that’s gonna get Trump thrown out of office. This is the story that’s gonna cause an uprising among the American people. Except they have done that practically every day for the last year, and certainly for the last six months. Every day for the last six months we have been treated to a version of what we have gotten the past two days. And in every instance prior, it has led to what? Absolutely zilch, zero, nada. And the proof that it is zilch, zero, nada is how much they have invested in this latest.

They’ve got nothing. They never have had anything, on this collusion business, on the Russians working with Trump to steal the election from Hillary. They’re not taking this story and adding it to all these previous stories and trying to sell a cumulative pile of evidence. This is a standalone. Some stories I’ve seen have featured the terminology, “Finally we have the evidence we’ve been looking for,” admitting that they haven’t had any evidence they’ve been looking for prior to this iteration of the story.

You know what this whole thing reminds me of? The way the dossier was pitched. You may not remember, but the dossier — the golden showers dossier — was pitched to the media in an email-type message. It was reviewed and it was highlighted, what it contained — and it was designed to be seductive. And this has much the same ring to it. This babe calls Trump Jr. under a false premise, claiming she’s got dope on Hillary Clinton, and they take the meeting ’cause who wouldn’t want to get oppo research on your opponent?

That’s standard operating procedure in political campaigns. And then the woman shows up. “No, no, no, no. You misunderstood! I’ve got this Magnitsky Act or something I want you to do something about.” The whole thing smacks of a setup.

It surely does. But I’ve now come to believe that the Treasonous Left’s real target with all this ceaseless shitflinging isn’t really Trump at all. It’s US. Rush comes around to it as well:

Now, if Trump was colluding with the Russians, I don’t think this would have mattered much because it would have already been known. If Trump was colluding with Putin — let’s just put it out there — if Putin and Trump were working together to steal the election from Hillary and all of a sudden Trump Jr. gets an email saying somebody has high-level information from the Russian government, a lawyer nobody knows and is requesting a meeting to talk about it, what would the Trump campaign’s reaction be?

A lawyer we don’t know has information, we’re already colluding, what could this woman have? We don’t need to take this meeting. We’re already colluding in my hypothetical. Does that have no impact on you? I mean, seriously. If Trump and Putin are colluding and Junior — you know what’s going on here, don’t you? Folks, don’t you know what’s going on here? Don’t make me have to say this stuff.

So we have, again, nothing, like the golden showers dossier is nothing. But I’m well aware, folks, I’m well aware there are all kinds of people that are Trump supporters who think this is it, it’s over, Junior stepped in it, Junior just buried himself, Junior is shoveling the dirt on his own grave here by publishing this email timeline. It’s over. It shows you, I think, the power of this never-ending narrative to which there has never been a shred of evidence or substance.

People just have an inability to say this is BS and then treat everything that comes after it as BS because they always have a little part of their brain reserved for the possibility that it could be true. And once there’s the slightest morsel, “Oh, my God, it’s over, Rush, it’s over. I’m surprised you don’t see it. Oh, they got him.” I know that’s what many people think. I’m not there yet.

Okay. I have made a decision. This is it for today. No more of this garbage the rest of the day. There’s other stuff in the Stack here, and some of it, interestingly, is about how well Trump is doing, the implementation of his agenda. Now, half the sound bites are about this crap — pardon the use of the word, but that’s what it is to me, but I’m gonna find some diamonds in the rough out there.

And that’s what it all comes down to now, I think. The Left’s target isn’t Trump now; maybe it never was. The target is Trump’s supporters. They hope to demoralize us, to make us disengage, to inspire us to resignation and defeatism and acceptance of the eternal status quo. They want us to believe that the Swamp can never be drained, to believe that Trump is a fraud who never had any intention of draining it in the first place. They want us to throw up our hands and walk away.

And knowing that, I now believe it is absolutely vital that Trump continues to get out there among the people and do the occasional huge rally—to ditch the Swamp dwellers, to spite and disdain them, and get out among We the People and inspire them anew. I think it’s vital for him, and it’s vital for us too. It’s all too easy to be dismayed when all you get is a steady diet of the sort of stinking swill fed us by the establishment media propagandists; hell, I myself talked to three friends of mine today who were completely convinced that with this latest nothingburger, they finally had Trump nailed at last. They were really worried about it; Old Media had gotten to them at last.

No, I told ’em. Just hang on and wait; this is going to wind up being more of the same empty, gossamer-thin tripe they’ve been peddling all along.

Truth is, at this point, it doesn’t really matter to me if they DO nail Trump or his family on something or other. Short of actual treason, of doing the sort of harm to this nation that Hillary and Obama did with utter impunity and not a whisper of complaint from their partners in Establishment Media, I’ll still support him anyway. Because he’s our last and only hope; he loves his country, wants to see it strong and prosperous, and is cantankerous enough to relish the fight he’s in. He doesn’t believe that this nation is a blight on the entire world, responsible for all its ills and deserving of a serious comeuppance. His speech in Poland demonstrates that well enough, and the “liberal” horror and revulsion at the simple, honest truth laid out therein tells you all you should ever need to know about them.

Don’t let ’em stampede you, folks. Don’t believe a word out of their filthy, lying yaps. You can be assured that anything, anything at all, that makes them smile is going to be very bad indeed for you, and for your country. Remember: these are people who, when they even hear the phrase “Make America Great Again,” are reduced to paroxysms of spluttering outrage and disgust. They are horrified by the very idea of American greatness, or any attempted restoration thereof.

Can any reasonable person think for a moment that such as they could ever have America’s best interests at heart? Ever, for even a moment?

If so, may I ask just what the fuck you’re smoking?

No more posting from me this week; I’m gonna be out of town, taking my daughter to the computer camp I mentioned here a few weeks ago, and have no intention of trying to thumb-type any of my famous extended, wordy screeds on my phone, thank you very much. We’ll be back for the weekend, so I’ll check back in with you folks then. Meanwhile, happy, uhh, Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday, y’all. Ahem.

Mea maxima culpa update! Well, I lied. Or not lied, exactly; the schedule got adjusted so that I don’t have to be in Durham until tomorrow. Plus, I remembered that Madeleine has a laptop (donated by one of you incredibly generous readers several years back), so it may actually be possible for me to do a little posting over the next few days, against all odds. AND…I have another big announcement to make concerning a new writing gig I’m gonna be starting on as soon as I can muster the energy. I’ll be putting up links to those articles here, possibly some excerpts, although it won’t be anything remotely like the sort of impassioned, hate-filled, murderous bigotry you folks have become accustomed to here. I hope to find a way to keep it interesting just the same, or amusing, at least. Be all that as it may…on with the show, people!

Will not stop. CANNOT stop.

On Friday, President Donald Trump caused a storm by tweeting that “everyone” at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany was “talking about… John Podesta.” Podesta served as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and like Clinton herself he has inconvenient ties to Russia.

“Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!” the president tweeted.

While based in current events, Trump’s statement was nonetheless problematic.

Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), shot back with an acerbic Twitter response. She ran through three points: “Podesta never ran the DNC,” “DNC worked with FBI to kick out Russians. Worked with DHS,” and “Putin make you tweet this before mtg?”

Uhh, yeah, right. Just one leetle problem:

While Podesta never ran the DNC, The Washington Times reported that federal officials have not acquired the DNC’s hacked computer server — only cybersecurity specialists from CrowdStrike, which the DNC hired to investigate the hack, have done so.

In other words, the DNC didn’t in any way work to “kick out Russians,” with the FBI or anydamnedbody else; Trump has already done more to scold Russia over their feeble and old-news election meddling—a historical constant, as anybody with half a brain knows already—than Obama ever did, or ever would have. And they didn’t in any way cooperate with either the DHS or the FBI on Clinton’s illegal e-mail server, either.

But that stuff almost doesn’t matter at all, and I’m gonna explain why. Earlier today, I heard Limbaugh talking yet again about the Russia “collusion” hoax being run on the entire country by the Democrat Socialist/establishment media complex. To wit:

If the Russians really want a president they can dominate and control — and if they’ve got Hillary’s emails, and if they’ve done that — why not have somebody in there who they already have shown they can make a full of. That silly Russian reset move that she made and how she bungled Libya and any other number of foreign policy ventures that she took. My problem with this whole thing is that it’s gone so far out of proportion now that it’s become a joke. It’s become ridiculous, the idea that the Russians determine the winner of our election and were trying to.

I think this has been so overstated. This is something made up out of whole cloth! Do you realize this is something that would have never been of concern to anybody if Hillary Clinton had won. Nobody would have been bothered by it, and that is the truth. Why wouldn’t anybody have been bothered by it? Because it happens all the time. What they’ve done with this is to try to make it look… They want people to believe that the Russians had success in this election like they’ve never had before and that the Russians actually determined the outcome of our election. That’s what they want people to believe.

And they want people to believe that it was never, ever in the past happening to this degree. On the other hand, if Hillary Clinton had won, you would not have heard of this. There would not have been a single story about this. The Russian collusion in the election would have died. As it was during the campaign, it was being used for entirely different purposes. They all expected Hillary to win, and so they were tamping it down. They were trying… I’m gonna tell you something. The Washington Post, I will wager you, is regretting they ever ran that 8,000-word story that had the headline (summarized): Obama’s Brave Struggle to Punish or Deal with the Russians After Tampering with the Election.

Because that story after so much time, after the media had exhausted every possible angle here and had still failed to persuade anywhere near half the country that there was something to this. They’d gotten so deep into it that the Washington Post ends up publishing a story which — while they’re trying to give Obama credit for bravery and courage — actually blamed him! He knew it was happening, and he didn’t do anything to stop it. That’s the bottom line of that long story.

Now, all this is well and good; there’s some merit in pointing out to the nation just what these shitweasels are attempting, and the truth always come with its own value attached.

But in the long run, how much good is it really doing? The snake-in-the-grass libtard-socialists have demonstrated over and over that the truth is not something that means anything at all to them; the truth is something they either conceal, deny, distort, or just run right over in pursuit of their broader agenda. You can hurl it in their teeth all you like, but all it will ever do is just make them shriek louder.

And there’s an additional disadvantage to trying to argue with them this way: it allows them to bog us down in exactly the kind of minutiae they’ve been using as a distraction for years now. An honest argument on the merits, based on facts and logic, has never gotten anybody anywhere with them. It assumes a good faith they don’t possess, and in fact don’t give a shit about to begin with. It plays right into their hands, and amounts to a good bit less than shouting into a hurricane in the end. It’s worse than a waste of time.

Given the depth and crystal-clarity of the division in the country now, I don’t think it’s all that useful for persuading people whose minds aren’t already made up, either. Those few who don’t recognize that the dispute is between those who wish to rule and those who would prefer to be governed instead—the precious few who don’t know already which side they’re on—don’t really care, and aren’t paying attention.

No, I think by now it’s time to abandon arguing with them. If they call us racists or homophobes or fascists or whatthehellever—and they’re going to, no matter how forcefully, convincingly, and repeatedly we argue calmly and rationally that we’re no such thing—fine, let them. No response we can make will ever be adequate; they’ll just move on to the next epithet and carry on, then double back to the previous specious allegation when it suits them to do so.

You can’t win a gentlemen’s argument with dirty scoundrels. It’s a mug’s game; even if you win the argument, you still wind up losing the larger struggle.

Which is exactly what we’ve been doing for lo, these many years. It’s time to let them sling all the mud they like; instead of merely responding, we need to finally start taking the initiative, getting in the faces and punching back twice as hard first, instead of waiting for them to bloody our noses before we take a swing. Our side needs to stop being content with staying perpetually on defense and start going out of our way to attack them instead. Ignore their ridiculous assertions, run right over them, and start getting down and dirty with them preemptively. Don’t wait for them to attack; as every little boy’s dad told him at some point, the guy who gets in the first punch usually wins the fight.

See what I mean update! You milquetoast, business-as-usual Republicans beginning to get it yet?

A bizarre Washington Post article that ran over the weekend (“In Alexandria shooter’s hometown, rage-filled radio host channels middle America’s inner frustration”)  has readers shaking their heads in disbelief.

The article strongly suggests, without evidence, that left-wing terrorist James T. Hodgkinson was influenced by a right-wing radio host in his hometown.

Right-wing shock jock Bob Romanik is described by Peter Holley, the author of the piece, as “a surly 68-year-old former East St. Louis street cop” who habitually uses the “N” word.

Romanik is the type of uncouth, racist caricature lefties think every conservative white male is like. “He hates Black Lives Matter and talks proudly about his Caucasian heritage to anyone who will listen,” Holley writes with apparent disdain.

Absolutely none of which makes the guy an actual racist, mind you. Which won’t stop some fools—including the writer of this article, who trips over herself trying to assure the Left that “every conservative” are nothing like this horrible, horrible person, persuading precisely NO ONE—from engaging with the Left on the Left’s terms anyway, and actually letting the outrageous lie behind this propaganda assault run halfway around the world while they’re still struggling to get their boots on.

They’re gunning them down in the streets in broad daylight, and making plain, brazen statements explaining the reason why. They’re going to do it again. And still, some “conservatives” can’t seem to perceive the Lefty strings that make them jump and dance. Idiots.

Forgive my gloating, but it’s working out just as I said all along: Trump is on track to go down in history as one of our greatest Presidents.

President Trump’s speech in Warsaw was a remarkable statement from a western leader in the 21st century – which is why the enforcers of our public discourse have gone bananas over it and denounced it as “blood and soil” “nativism” (The New Republic), “racial and religious paranoia” (The Atlantic), and “tinpot dictator sh*t” (some comedian having a meltdown on Twitter). Much of the speech was just the usual boosterish boilerplate that one foreign leader sloughs off while visiting the capital of another. But that wasn’t what caused the mass pearl-clutching. This was the offending passage:

There is nothing like our community of nations. The world has never known anything like our community of nations.

We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.

We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.

And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.

I’m not certain we do put “faith and family” ahead of “government and bureaucracy”, not in Germany or even Ireland, but we did once upon a time. Nor am I sure we still “write symphonies”, or at any rate good ones. But Trump’s right: “The world has never known anything like our community of nations” – and great symphonies are a part of that. I’m not sure what’s “nativist” or “racial” about such a statement of the obvious, but I note it’s confirmed by the traffic, which is all one way: There are plenty of Somalis who’ve moved to Minnesota, but you can count on one hand Minnesotans who’ve moved to Somalia. As an old-school imperialist, I make exceptions for sundry places from Barbados to Singapore, which I regard as part of the community of the greater west, and for India, which is somewhat more ambiguously so, but let’s face it, 90 per cent of everything in the country that works derives from England.

As Steyn says, our beloved God-Emperor knocked it right out of the damned park with this one. But there’s a caveat:

As I said, a remarkable speech. Of course, at the press conference afterwards, the A-list hacks, like CNN’s drama queen Jim Acosta, were all obsessed with the “Russia investigation”, but in fairness The New York Times at least reported the story under the headline “Trump, in Poland, Asks if West Has the ‘Will to Survive'”.

That’s the question – the one that matters. Angela Merkel won’t ask it, nor M Macron or Mrs May or M Trudeau. But Donald Trump did – and then answered it…

I am nowhere near as confident of that answer. But he raised the question at a time when no other western leader will. It is a measure of our decay and decadence that the question is necessary, but in an age of cultural relativism a statement of the obvious is daring and courageous: Ours is the civilization that built the modern world – as even the west’s cultural relativists implicitly accept, if only because they have no desire to emigrate and try to make a living as a cultural relativist in Yemen or Niger. We built it, and, if we do not maintain it, and defend it, then, as Donald Trump says, it will never come again.

Even as purblind and prissy a NeverTrumpTard as Rod Dreher perceives it, if only through a glass, darkly:

I’m sorry, duckies, but how is this all that controversial? An American president, standing in the capital of a nation that suffered in the last century the domination of two tyrannies — Nazi and Communist — that tried to eradicate its culture, a nation whose Catholic faith kept its spirit alive and led to its rebirth — proclaims that there are things unique and valuable about Western civilization, and that we should remember those things, affirm them, and defend them.

The shocking thing here is that this is controversial at all. It shows how decadent we have become.

“We”? Say rather: Western “liberals.” They, not we, are the ones who, brainwashed from childhood to hold Western Civ in contempt, can’t seem to comprehend that the Western values they despise and denigrate are the foundation upon which their privileged lives depend. Without the protection of the defensive wall built around them by Western culture behind which they cower, bluster, and threaten, they would find their lives to be very nasty, very brutish, and very short indeed.

Yes, that last would be an adaptation of a quote from another one of those Western thinkers they so abhor, hilariously enough.

At any rate, as Steyn says, those values are NOT universal. Nor are they eternal or somehow magically immutable; they’re transferable down the generations only for so long as we will them to be. Without continuous vigorous defense, they will assuredly be destroyed and lost. Make no mistake: “defense” means against enemies both external AND internal—”enemies foreign and domestic,” as some other great Western thinkers now despised by those domestic enemies once said.

Du Toit tries to explain it all to PJ O’Rourke who, regrettably, just doesn’t get it.

I’ve always liked P.J.’s writing, by the way, because he uses just enough humor to make a political point insightful without being boring or snarky. But after reading this, his latest political work, I got the feeling that P.J., always something of a journalistic outsider but possessing a keen political sense, was almost in the same boat as the liberal mainstream media when it came to the 2016 results — he was caught between his distaste for Donald Trump as a person and his knowledge of our political system. The only thing that set him apart from the rest was his intense dislike of Hillary Clinton and most things Democratic, but in the end, he was betrayed because like our hapless sportscaster above, he only knew one game.

And if there’s a better analogy of last year’s election than Calvinball (for both political parties), I can’t think of one. The only difference between the parties was that on the Democrat side, the party bigwigs changed the rules as they went along (the Clinton campaign essentially cheating Bernie Sanders out of fully participating in the nomination process), whereas on the Republican side, the rules were constantly being changed by the voters — and as Trump was the only one who caught the “toss ’em all out” mood of the electorate, he was able to play it all the way to the White House. Nothing says “Change” like “Drain the swamp”, after all.

So all the way through P.J.’s book, I could see his complete inability to understand what was going on — why was Trump winning, how could voters not vote for Rubio / Bush / whoever wasn’t Trump, and so on. The fact that NJGov Chris Christie and OHGov John Kasich — mere distractions both — merited more than a few lines in the book was, I think, symptomatic of the media’s problem in general: they got caught up in personalities when what was really happening was a sea change in voter attitudes towards the whole political structure.

And that pretty much says it all. I’ve always liked PJ too, going all the way back to his old NatLamp days. He’s made much razor-sharp sport over the years of DC dysfunction; it kind of amazes me sometimes how anyone, much less somebody as perceptive and skeptical of the federal government as O’Rourke always was, could look at the mess professional politicians have made of things and think for a moment that the best way to come to grips with it was to elect yet another professional politician, instead of a cantankerous, brash outsider who relishes a good scrap, is accustomed to success without being paralyzed by the occasional setback, and is immune to agonizing over what his enemies might say about him.

It’s us.

Left unaddressed: How is it possible to hate a man like this and not hate those he represents? Issue advocacy voters elected Donald Trump because what he pledged in his campaign resonated with their values and the direction they’re determined to see the country move in.

The hatred is not just reserved for the president, as demonstrated after the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and others during practice for a charity baseball game by an (“alleged”) leftist loon and Bernie Sanders supporter. And the excuse-making, finger-pointing and outright rejoicing by (“confirmed”) leftist loons drives home the point that the “suspect” is not alone in his malevolent hatred of all things not “progressive.”

“[I]t is clear that we have a divide, a major divide in America that does not seem surmountable,” talk radio host Rush Limbaugh observed. “It does not seem reparable. It does not seem like it is possible or even likely to find any common ground, when many Americans think that their number one enemy is the other political party, which is a fact on the left. Scary times.”

Ah, but the REAL question is: is it desirable to find “common ground” with those who seek to rob us of our birthright of freedom and enslave us? As I’ve said so many times here: if you wish to compromise with the Left, which of your basic rights and liberties are you willing to give up? Free speech? The 2A? Trial by jury of your peers? The Ninth and Tenth both are already dead letters, and the Progtards want ’em all.

Compromise? Been way too much of that already, if you ask me. Especially if by “compromise” you mean “rolling over and giving the Left what it wants, and getting absolutely NOTHING in return,” that is. Which, up till now, is what it ALWAYS means.

“Draining the swamp means not only ejecting Trump from the presidency, but also bringing himself and everyone assisting in his agenda up on charges of treason,” Huffington Post commentator Jason Fuller declared, confirming that assessment. “They must be convicted (there is little room to doubt their guilt). And then—upon receiving guilty verdicts—they must all be executed under the law.

“Anything less than capital punishment—or at least life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security detention facility—would send yet another message to the world that America has lost its moral compass,” he elaborated in a lunatic screed that was approved by the editors and only pulled down after they were embarrassed by the outraged backlash.

If you were a Trump supporter, that’s you Fuller is talking about. That’s what he and those like him really want for you, for any family members who agree with you, for your friends and neighbors, and essentially for all in “red state/flyover” America. They want it for everyone who has committed the heresy of rejecting “progressivism” and instead chosen to support a Constitution delegating limited powers and declaring rights off limits from government encroachment.

This type of Killing Fields precursor is the kind of “thought” put out on a leading “progressive” opinion website, one with millions of regular readers, and one that garnered all kinds of supportive comments. The answer to Los Angeles Riots catalyst Rodney King’s plaintive “Can we all get along?” plea becomes clear.

What do you think? Is getting along possible with people who want you tried for treason or simply killed outright?

And I repeat: forget “possible”—is it even desirable? Did anybody ever think to ask the Jews in the middle of the Holocaust if a way might not be found to “get along” with Hitler?

When some “entertainer” symbolically executes Donald Trump, or some “pundit” makes excuses for it and reverses the blame, we need to ask ourselves what it is about the man they hate so much. The answer is the policies he says he stands for. That means they hate those who agree with those policies. He’s the symbol, an avatar of sorts, for all those who chose the vision of America he articulated over what Hillary Clinton offered.

Precisely so. It is by no means all about Trump; that’s what frustrates them so, it’s what has driven them over the edge. It’s US: those of us who voted for Trump, who want to see the swamp drained and the Deep State dismantled, who want to see the status quo upended for real this time. Those of us who still support him and ignore every successive manufactured scandal and conjured-up misstep or gaffe, no matter how loud they scream about it. WE’RE the real target of the Hater Left; Trump is merely a figurehead in a way, an icon. Ultimately, it’s US they really intend to destroy.

We are not now and will never be onboard with the Progressivist program of top-down tyranny, of unyielding central control not just of the economy, but of our very lives, down to the most infinitesimal detail. Our rejection of that control is (correctly) seen by them as not just a repudiation of their politics, but a denial of their assumed right and fitness to rule over us; since, as they’ve always said, the personal is political for them, it amounts to a direct denial of their supposedly superior intellect, a dire insult hurled right at their sense of self.

These aren’t people who can agree to disagree, make their case as best they can, and should they lose, walk away to fight another day with respect and tolerance granted to their opposition. It simply is not in ’em; unlike those of us who don’t grant politics a central role in our very self-identity and have no wish to, politics is who they are. For them, the personal is political, sure enough…but the political is also personal, too. How could it be otherwise, for people whose most intense desire is for an all-powerful State directing our every move? Maybe Mussolini said it best: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

And if you think it’s a coincidence that they cleave so entirely to a phrase coined by a long-dead, raddled old fascist dictator, well, you don’t know them well enough, bub.

Given all that, who could be surprised that they truly, sincerely want to kill us? Far from being a transgression, it would have to seem almost like a moral imperative to them.

I need to throw in a quote from the Coulter column mentioned above, too:

After a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to commit mass murder last week — the second homicidal Bernie supporter so far this year — the media blamed President Trump for lowering the bar on heated political rhetoric by calling his campaign opponents cruel names like “Crooked Hillary” and “Lyin’ Ted.” 

As soon as any conservative responds to Trump’s belittling names for his rivals by erupting in a murderous rage, that will be a fantastically good point. But until then, it’s idiotic. Unlike liberals, conservatives aren’t easily incited to violence by words. 

What we’re seeing is the following: Prominent liberals repeatedly tell us, with deadly seriousness, that Trump and his supporters are: “Hitler,” “fascists,” “bigots,” “haters,” “racists,” “terrorists,” “criminals” and “white supremacists,” which is then followed by liberals physically attacking conservatives. 

To talk about “both sides” being guilty of provocative rhetoric is like talking about “both genders” being guilty of rape. 

Nearly every op-ed writer at The New York Times has compared Trump to Hitler. (The conservative on the op-ed page merely called him a “proto-fascist.”) If Trump is Hitler and his supporters Nazis, then the rational course of action for any civilized person is to kill them. 

That’s not just a theory, it’s the result. 

Liberals know damn well that their audience includes a not-insignificant portion of foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics, prepared, at the slightest provocation, to smash windows, burn down neighborhoods, physically attack and even murder conservatives. But instead of toning down the rhetoric, the respectable left keeps throwing matches on the bone-dry tinder, and then indignantly asks, “Are you saying conservatives don’t do it, too?” 

No, actually. We don’t.

Not yet, we don’t. But I expect that to change before a whole lot longer; there would seem to be no other way of stopping them. And even the most timorous of curs will take being beaten for only so long before he decides to bite back.

They’re fascists, plain and simple. They’re filled with hate; they recognize no ethical or practical limits on their behavior, and they are undeniably prone to violence when they are hindered, thwarted, or even verbally contradicted. They intend to rule us, and they are not bothered in the least by the prospect of killing us in job lots if they have to. They assume that if they dispense with the most recalcitrant among us, the more meek of us will then be cowed into going along at last. If not, well, the meek can all join us in the Killing Fields.

We’re going to find out if that assumption is correct. It is NOT going to be pretty.

Hey, it’s not as if their ideological brethren haven’t done it before, you know.

Yeah, I am REALLY gonna be all broke up when one of these miserable crawly things finally gets his worthless ass shot.

It turns out that the person behind the animated gif used by Trump is a Reddit user completely unconnected to Trump or the White House. He goes by the name “HanAssholeSolo.”

Needless to say, the witch hunt was on to find the heretic.

CNN, the target of Trump’s original tweet, tasked Andrew Kaczynski to hunt down the Reddit user and dox him.

In Kaczynski’s story, he outright threatens to out the Reddit user if he doesn’t comply:

CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

Many quickly observed that this threat amounted to ideological blackmail.

Because that’s, y’know, PRECISELY WHAT IT IS.

Just think about this for a sec: CNN, world’s foremost purveyors of completely, demonstrably, and incontrovertibly Fake News, is now in the business of threatening private citizens and blackmailing them into apologizing for daring to hold an opinion they don’t approve of. Worse, they seem smugly pleased about it, if that next to last line above is any indication. And it is.

We’re so far from true journalism by now you can’t even see it from where we are. Or remember what it looked like.

But CNN’s arrogant, self-serving bluster gets worse from there—all of it in the PJM piece linked above and posted in Tweet form, unfortunately, making it even more annoying to read than the original subject matter itself, which is saying something. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

At any rate, it’s somewhat comforting to know that CNN is at least as inept at blackmail as the hapless moron they incited to shoot up the Republican baseball practice was at mass murder.

According to an analysis by BuzzFeed, the CNN–WWE GIF that President Donald Trump tweeted last week was not the same as the one created by HanAssholeSolo, which means CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski outed the wrong guy…

Figures. As Glenn quips: “This is the point where the Wilford Brimley character turns and says ‘Mr. Trump, I seem to want to ask if you set all this up. But if I do, you ain’t gonna tell me, are you?’ The follow-on quote from Brimley works pretty well too, if you turn it around and make the CNN slimewads the object of it: “You’re a smart man, Mr. Gallagher. I’m pretty smart myself. Don’t get too smart.”

And now that I think of it, Absence Of Malice, one of my all-time favorite movies since I saw it in its original theatrical release, is chock-full of quotes that apply almost alarmingly well to the present-day state of Establishment Media. They’re dishonest, they’re manipulative, they’re arrogant, they’re insufferably smug. They’re being left behind on the ash-heap of history, and they seem almost incredibly incapable of recognizing their steadily growing irrelevance, and of grasping that their own disgraceful betrayal of the very definition of journalism is at the root of their fall. An entire nation once relied on them for information and useful analysis, and now that same nation barely bothers paying any attention to them at all.

And with very good reason, too. Perhaps the most fitting quote from Brimley’s character is this one:

I think I know where we’re headed here. Before we get there, I want to say something to you. You know and I know that we can’t tell you what to print or what not to. We hope the press will act responsibly, but when you don’t, there ain’t a lot we can do about it. We can’t have people go around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain’t legal. And worse than that, by God it ain’t right.

Most of what they do nowadays “by God ain’t right.” And now they’ve stooped to extorting groveling apologies from private citizens—private citizens who have done nothing whatsoever illegal, nothing wrong, nothing in any way legally actionable, nothing even particularly objectionable to any sane person—via threats and blackmail…and gloating openly over their successful strong-arming of the guy, to boot.

“CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.” And there you have it: an open threat, and nothing but—against a person they should have no ability whatsoever to do any harm at all. For the “crime” of disagreeing with them, and daring to express his opinion publicly. Knowing as we all do the Left’s penchant for obscene, witless violence—knowing the likelihood of hordes of angry, violent morons showing up on his doorstep, hounding him out of his job, and generally ruining his life forevermore, as they’ve already done with so many others—he did the only sensible thing and capitulated to them.

The American media establishment has gone from being a vital bulwark of freedom, a check on government abuse and overreach, to being an outright cancer on the body politic. Trump is absolutely right to name them as an enemy—not just of him and his Presidency, but of We the People, and of freedom and proper Constitutional governance itself. He should strip them of any right to White House access or privilege. He should refuse to give them any opportunity whatever to lie about, misquote, or otherwise do him and his administration harm. He should henceforth treat them as the maggots they are, with revulsion and contempt. I realize that politically speaking he has to step somewhat lightly, move somewhat slowly. But a beginning should most certainly be made, and that right soon. Shutting down the White House press room for good would be a fine start.

For the rest of us, well, y’know: rope, lamppost, “journalist”; some assembly most definitely required. And, if they keep it up, probably imminent. They’ve sown the wind. Reaping time is coming. As Don Surber says:

The biggest threat to a free press is the press itself. Pissing away credibility built over the past century is not only irresponsible but not something today’s managers should be allowed to do.

Trump is the victim here — not the liars who make up Fake News.

Precisely so. I pray they wake up at last. I’m damned near certain they won’t. So be it.

I’ve had this one sitting in an open tab for a couple days now, waiting for me to get around to posting on it. This is actually the one that got me poking around Eric’s place again after a longish absence, leading to the post below this ‘un. Can’t remember where I saw it linked, unfortunately.

…the Soviet espionage apparat actually ran two different kinds of network: one of spies, and one of agents of influence. The agents of influence had the minor function of recruiting spies (as, for example, when Kim Philby was brought in by one of his tutors at Cambridge), but their major function was to spread dezinformatsiya, to launch memetic weapons that would damage and weaken the West.

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

• There is no truth, only competing agendas.
• All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
• There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
• The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
• Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
• The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
• For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
• When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system” thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives” (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.

The Soviets consciously followed the Gramscian prescription; they pursued a war of position, subverting the “leading elements” of society through their agents of influence. (See, for example, Stephen Koch’s Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals; summary by Koch here) This worked exactly as expected; their memes seeped into Western popular culture and are repeated endlessly in (for example) the products of Hollywood.

Indeed, the index of Soviet success is that most of us no longer think of these memes as Communist propaganda. It takes a significant amount of digging and rethinking and remembering, even for a lifelong anti-Communist like myself, to realize that there was a time (within the lifetime of my parents) when all of these ideas would have seemed alien, absurd, and repulsive to most people — at best, the beliefs of a nutty left-wing fringe, and at worst instruments of deliberate subversion intended to destroy the American way of life.

Koch shows us that the worst-case scenario was, as it turns out now, the correct one; these ideas, like the “race bomb” rumor, really were instruments deliberately designed to destroy the American way of life. Another index of their success is that most members of the bicoastal elite can no longer speak of “the American way of life” without deprecation, irony, or an automatic and half-conscious genuflection towards the altar of political correctness. In this and other ways, the corrosive effects of Stalin’s meme war have come to utterly pervade our culture.

The most paranoid and xenophobic conservatives of the Cold War were, painful though this is to admit, the closest to the truth in estimating the magnitude and subtlety of Soviet subversion. Liberal anticommunists (like myself in the 1970s) thought we were being judicious and fair-minded when we dismissed half of the Right’s complaint as crude blather. We were wrong; the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss really were guilty, the Hollywood Ten really were Stalinist tools, and all of Joseph McCarthy’s rants about “Communists in the State Department” were essentially true. The Venona transcripts and other new material leave no room for reasonable doubt on this score.

This post is from 2006; I may even have excerpted it here back then, I dunno. Regardless, Raymond’s clear-eyed analysis—particularly in the way he ties this in with the West’s seemingly eternal struggle with predatory Islam—is almost shockingly prescient. His conclusion, too, seems even more perceptive now than it did then:

The U.S., fortunately, is still on a demographic expansion wave and will be till at least 2050. But if the Islamists achieve their dream of nuking “crusader” cities, they’ll make crusaders out of the U.S., too. And this time, a West with a chauvinized America at its head would smite the Saracen with weapons that would destroy entire populations and fuse Mecca into glass. The horror of our victory would echo for a thousand years.

I remain more optimistic than this. I think there is still an excellent chance that the West can recover from suicidalism without going through a fevered fascist episode and waging a genocidal war. But to do so, we have to do more than recognize Stalin’s memes; we have to reject them. We have to eject postmodern leftism from our universities, transnational progressivism from our politics, and volk-Marxism from our media.

I don’t know that I can share Eric’s optimism, frankly. His fear of a hard Right willing and able to wreak total destruction on the Muslim world seems almost quaint now. From all the evidence I can see, it looks far more likely that we lack the national will to do what’s necessary to vanquish the jihadis and adequately defend our own culture and way of life, and are far more willing to go along with “absorbing” the routine bimonthly terrorist attack, having another of our teary, bleary “memorial” get-togethers that so dishonor our dead afterwards, and then plodding timidly on as before. Until the next time.

The Gramscian rot might well prove to be too deeply ingrained to allow for the vigorous, deadly response required of us; we would rather fence off entire cities behind concrete barriers, resign ourselves to constant and total surveillance, and endure an annoying and degrading mockery of “security” at our airports, it seems. Certainly it’s now obvious that the Muslim world’s unrelenting determination to subjugate us will require at least some of the brutal hard-war fighting at which Eric expresses his horror above if we’re to save ourselves from a fate too ignominious to contemplate. That’s a direct consequence of our squeamishness at facing certain truths unflinchingly, sure enough. But it hardly matters now.

All that aside, I have to say that Eric has had a larger and longer-lived impact on my own thinking than I realized until just now; the above passage is clearly where my oft-repeated statement that “before we defeat Islam, we will first have to defeat the Left” had its origins, for example. I used to correspond with him a good bit back in those days, to my great benefit; I really have to see to it that I don’t let so much time pass before looking in on him again.