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The Revolution is Coming, Friends.

Not this election cycle. Maybe not the next one. But it’s coming.

In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like so long as the bureaucracy obeys and one third plus one of the Senate protects him from impeachment. If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers’ support. These cronies’ shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class’s chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.

It both explains the Trump phenomenon as a manifestation of this regime change, and explains why he is likely not the solution for it. Read the Whole Thing.

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Birther Trump is Not a Birther

So, I was at the gym this morning, and in between sets I tend to gaze up at the TV. The one closest to me always has MSNBC on, which is fine, as it’s good to absorb the framing of the other side (for the record, I’m a declared Gary Johnson supporter, but I’m not very happy about it, which is sort of defeating the purpose. But some rictus in my soul wants not to vote for Trump, and every time I consider doing that, he says or does something that makes me realize that he’s a Democrat in GOP clothing, and I don’t want to vote for the more-tolerable Democrat in the race). And the crew on Morning Joe were discussing Birtherism, and seizing upon it as the way to upend the narrative of the last few weeks. The gist I got from Joe et. al was that The Donald had refused to admit that President Obama was born in the United States, that he was still a birther.

So I get on twitter, and I check on things, and I find this link to the Trump Campaign’s press statment on the issue.

Now, when you read it, you will likely be a) rolling your eyes, b) laughing in admiration, or c) both. Basically, he puts Birtherism on Hillary (which is true, her gang started it in 2008), and credits himself with bringing the issue to a close by forcing Obama to release is birth certificate.

chutzpah

But that’s not what’s important to me. What’s important to me is that the statement, released yesterday, contains these words:

Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.

Now, either the derps at Morning Joe don’t know this, in which case they suck at their jobs, or they do know this and are ignoring it, in which they know what their real jobs are: soulless Outer Party flacks in the business of denying reality for the sake of their Inner Party masters.

I mean, I know they’re a prog network, but this is the willful contradiction of evidence right under their noses relevant to the topic under discussion. How the hell do you even do that?

Of course, I didn’t watch the whole thing, so their may have been one of those “he said it, but he didn’t say it in such a way that satisfies our fine sensibilities” dodges. So I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt as regards the sophistication of their sophistry.

This election…

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Assassination is Not Your Friend

I don’t know if  Glenn Beck is really talking about what he sounds like he’s talking about here. As I read it, he was speaking hypothetically, like “what do we do if?…” The sentiment, however, is common enough to be talked of. Sometimes people feel like killing a President. But it’s been a while since someone killed a president out of patriotic obligation, out of the need to dispatch a tyrant. In fact, I’m pretty sure the last one to do that was acting out of patriotic obligation to an abhorrent rebellion aimed at using the rhetoric of liberty in order to keep men in bondage.

But let’s say that Trump, or Hillary for that matter, becomes the caudillo/caudilla of our worst nightmares. Is assassination the way to deal with him/her?

No. Here is why:

Jean-Léon_Gérôme_-_The_Death_of_Caesar_-_Walters_37884

If classical references are lost on you, this is the Death of Caesar. Julius Caeser was assassinated at the beginning of a public meeting of the Senate by 12 Senators who had decided that Julius Caeser was a threat to the Republic, that his becoming Dictator  Perpetuus was the latest in a string of unconstitutional excesses that would end in Rome becoming an authoritarian state.

In this, they were almost certainly correct.

But in assassinating them, they made that state certain. In assassinating Caesar, they made him a martyr, and themselves – and the cause they espoused – the enemies of good order. Within a few years, the Roman imperium is divided among Caeser’s heirs. Within 20, Octavian has legally obtained from a tame Senate all the authority that matters. And the Roman people stood mum as long peace obtained.

Brutus and Cassius failed. John Wilkes Booth failed. Assassination is not a path to liberty.

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“I Don’t Work for the G-d-Damn GOP”

Jonah Goldberg, explaining why he’s not voting Trump.

This is what I’ve been saying to myself for the last month or so. I don’t owe the GOP my vote. They don’t own my franchise, I do. I not only have the right, I have the duty as a citizen not to give my legal assent to something that displeases me. And if Hillary wins, so goddamn be it. But I live in a state that hasn’t given it’s EC votes to a Republican since I was 8 years old. There is no purpose to me holding my nose for the Great Orange Hope.

And it must be pointed out that for all their gleeful trollery, the alt-right crowd has a point. What the hell has the conservative movement conserved? What the hell has the GOP actually accomplished when they’ve been given the keys? I mean, aside from holding firm on the Second Amendment, which is really the one area of successful pushback we’ve had in the last several decades.

I’m tired of the charade of voting these clowns in, so they can find the most strategic way to only hold the left to half of what it wants, for now. I’m tired of them railroading the actual, committed conservatives so they can elect another Bush scion or sellout. Trump is what they deserve for playing that game too long.

Frankly, the GOP can go screw itself with an endive fork.

Read the whole thing.

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No, Ed Rendell, a Majority of Women are Not Ugly

Derp.

I get what he was trying to say, but even then, his statement isn’t right. Ugliness, like beauty, is comparatively rare.

A definition of terms: Ugliness is not mere unattractivenes; it is repulsiveness. Ugliness means aversion, nausea. Natural selection ensures that only a few people are actually ugly.

We must of course concede that aesthetic statements have an inherent subjectivity. The vast majority of American women will get the chance to reproduce their genes. Someone will find them beautiful, or beautiful enough. A particular shape in the eye or mouth, a certain lilt in the voice, these and other factors will charm some men but not others. One man will fine in one woman the thing he has been longing for, another man will look at the same woman and see nothing at all. The vast majority of women, like the vast majority of men, are merely average.

But knee-weakening, brain-melting, induce-grown-men-to-act-like-schoolgirls-at-a-Beatles-Concert beauty? They are exceedingly rare, and that is probably a good thing.

Of course, it’s lame that Rendell apologized. We really ought to learn to let such obvious brain farts slide.

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Larry Correia Won’t Vote Trump, Either.

Good.

He posted on Facebook that he said so, and reaped the whirlwind of idiot Facebook comments. He re-posts his post on the blog, with edits responding to each genre of protest, and it is a delight.

A few delights:

WHAAA! NO LABELS! You shouldn’t call people Trumpkins!”

Forgive me No Labels Police. Writing out Coalition of Authoritarians And Low Information Voters Motivated By Anger And Fear Who Are Now Fully Invested In A Cult of Personality That Will Allow No Dissent got a little long to keep typing.

This is a good one:

Lots of You Sound Angry. Well, yeah I’m angry. A plurality of half wits picked the most uniquely unsuited candidate in Republican history. Duh. But I’m also perfectly rational writing about it. We might be at the fall of the Roman Empire, but at least I live in Byzantium.

Well. Played. And then there’s this, which defines the bright line that keeps me from his camp.

Then lots of posts from the despondent republicans rationalizing having to vote for an authoritarian clown, because he might be better than the harpy.Truly, I feel for you guys. I get why you’re doing it. Just can’t in good conscience pull that lever myself. Have fun explaining, defending, or owning all of his terrible decisions until November though.

Not just until November. That’s only if he loses. If he wins, you’ve tied yourself to him for the next four years.

And I won’t. I just won’t.

 

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Jeff Goldstein: Let the GOP Go the Way of the Whigs. Time for a New Party.

Share and Enjoy.

So the question becomes, what are Republicans to do with a Republican party that would allow a progressive populist boasting Mondale’s trade policy and McGovern foreign policy — that is, a leftist Democrat that looks for all the world like an angry and retouched Circus Peanut — to carry its flag? And the answer is simple: get the hell out and don’t look back.

The Old Boy’s back. Savor it.