Tag: 2016 Election

The Revolution is Coming, Friends.

Andrew

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.

Birther Trump is Not a Birther

Andrew

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…

Assassination is Not Your Friend

Andrew

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.

“I Don’t Work for the G-d-Damn GOP”

Andrew

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.

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

Andrew

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.

Larry Correia Won’t Vote Trump, Either.

Andrew

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.

 

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

Andrew

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.

Observing the Election as a Disinterested Bystander

Andrew

I’m voting for Gary Johnson. That means I don’t care enough about NotHillary to make NotHillary President. That means I’m a bad Republican, a bad patriot, and a dirty cuck.

At least, so speaks the voice from the whirlwind of Twitter, right now.

My thoughts are thus:

spideylol

And I mean that. I’m not playing the game this time, following the polls, watching the back-and-forth between the American equivalent of Cersei Lannister and Mace Tyrell. One of them is going to win. Neither of them represent me.

I’m interested in whether Scott Adams’ persuasion framework about Donald Trump turns out to be right. If it is, then we’ll have found a new way to think about politics. If it isn’t, I can go right back to not paying attention to the thoughts of Scott Adams.

I’m interested in whether Hillary can keep the mask  on long enough to win the White House. If she can persuade enough American voters that she is a responsible leader. Her operating meme, carried over from 2008, is that she’s the adult in the room, the responsible leader. But getting outflanked on the left by Bernie Sanders has made the shrill come out. If and when she sews up the nomination, she will get the chance to pivot to the center, especially against Trump, who has specifically set himself up as a firebrand.

So the question is: can Trump sell “not-crazy” better than Hillary can sell “not-incompetent”?

I don’t claim to know, and in any case I’m giving my vote where I best like it. Everyone else may do as they please. I won’t judge a single #NeverTrumper who caves on Election Day. I’m expecting most of them to do it. They usally do.

 

If You’ve Ever Voted, or Considered Voting, for a Clinton, Then I Don’t Want to Hear You Moan About Trump

If You’ve Ever Voted, or Considered Voting, for a Clinton, Then I Don’t Want to Hear You Moan About Trump

Andrew

“Democracy is the principle that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it  — Good  and hard.”  -H.L. Mencken

Don’t believe the hysterics on Twitter. I predict that fully 70% of the soap-boxers re-tweeting #NeverTrump like they’re changing the world are going to come around. They have to: they care too much. They’ve made the calculation, as many of us have in the past, that there’s a distinction between evils, between half (or a third, or a sixth) of what you want and none. They’ll raise a terrible fuss, and then nobly hoist their cross of voting against Hillary (I just don’t see Bernie stopping her. Sorry).

How many times did I grumble about Romney, the “milquetoast moderate from Massachusetts” in Erick Erickson’s splendid phrase, only to not only vote for him, but be surprised that he lost? It’s embarrassing to recall, and I have no intention of reliving it. So no matter what, my friends, no matter how close the election is, I will not throw my vote away on a sideshow attraction. I will not vote for Trump.

My reasons are simple: I don’t know what Trump actually is. I don’t know if he’s a centrist populist or a preening gasbag who’s going to gild the White House. I don’t know if he’s serious about anything he says, or even if he knows how to do any of the things he says. He could be decent, or he could be dreadful. I’m not voting to find out.

So that means a perhaps-quixotic vote for Cruz when my primary comes up, and a definitely-quixotic vote for the Libertarian candidate (Gary Johnson, probably) in the general. If that puts me in the position of The Naderites of 2000, so be it. But if you vote for Trump, and he loses, don’t come whining to me about it. I will accept no responsibility for electing Hillary. Blame for that belongs solely to the people who vote for Hillary.

And if you think voting for Hillary is a valid act, your opinion of Trump is meaningless to me. Because Hillary Clinton, and her husband, are vile, as repellent and thuggish to me as Trump could ever be to you.

My antipathy to the Clintons is real and ancient. I must have been the only 20-year-old in America who would have rather endured pathetic old Bob Dole (Bob Dole! Bob Dole. Bob Dole…) than pretend that Bill Clinton didn’t make me want to bleach my ears out every time he spoke. As I once wrote:

The man was a liar unto his very soul, a gutless hillbilly gladhandler without principle or piety, a perennial candidate going through the motions of being President of the United States with his face crazy-glued to the camera lens and his master organ up Lady Liberty’s arse.

His wife is as bad or worse, a woman bloated in entitlement, who treats Secret Servicemen with the high-handedness of a Haitian slave-owner, who shuffles through her dowry of a career from failure to failure leaving a trail of offal and shadiness so long and rank it could fertilize the Gobi Desert. She was the chief-enabler of her husband’s frat-boy escapades, the great projector of outrage against those who found Bill’s actions outrageous. And the same cynical voices who announced that true feminists should volunteer to service Bill in 1998 are now the ones caterwauling about “BernieBros” and reaching for their smelling salts every time Trump’s goonish bluntness steals headlines. Or as I wrote, in the parenthesis to the above:

(and all you feminists out there: the fact that you stood mum while he sidestepped that very same law you fell over yourselves applauding in ’94, the fact that you threw every nasty caveman stereotype you claim to abhor at Jones and Lewinsky, that you lined up to protect this Lothario, tells me everything I need to know about you. Like your spiritual mother de Beauvoir, you don’t care what the Power does to others as long as you have a room of your own)

The Clintons were scum, are scum, and will always be scum. They are the Bonnie & Clyde of American politics, self-absorbed and amoral, celebrities to a culture that self-consciously values style over substance. To vote for them is to suspend all your fine-sounding principles about who is oppressor and who is oppressed. To vote for them is to allow him back into the White House, where he will  have nothing to do all day (you don’t really think he’s learned his lesson, or that his misadventures won’t be protected, do you?) A vote for them is the recognition that you’re willing to overlook any manner of corruption in the name of Keeping Up the Side.

And I get it. I’ve been there. We all compromise to engage in politics. But spare me the wide-eyed horror at Trump. He is nothing but the GOP mirroring what the Democrats have been getting away with for decades. Which is itself repellent, and which I have no plan to support.

But if you believed in 1996 that “A Bridge to the 21st Century” actually meant something, or if you swooned over “Hope and Change” in 2008,  you’ve no right to mock “Make America Great Again.” Victor David Hanson covers this argument very nicely in an article that everyone should read, “Time to Calm Down About Trump“. For every piece of racism, sexism, and general loutishness found in Trump, Hanson can find an equally egregious display from one of the Heroes of Progressivism, which was excused or ignored by They Who Set The Narrative.

You didn’t care about Bill Clinton’s rapes, assaults, and sexual harassments, you didn’t care about Obama’s authoritarian  contempt for the Constitution, and you stick your fingers in your ears and hum “LA LA LA LA MANSPLAINING LA  LA LA” to avoid thinking about how many violations of the Espionage Act Hillary is guilty of. Well, the chickens are home now, and they’re tired, and they want to roost in the place you made for them.

Do you ever get tired of it? Does it ever weary the soul to have to swallow every gargantuan  sophistry in defense of these interlopers, lick your plate clean, and ask for seconds? Or has it been going on for so long that you’ve just gotten used to it? Is it really not so bad? What difference does it make? None of my business, I guess.

You don’t like Trump, don’t vote for him. I’ll be there with  you. But don’t hyperventilate about him and expect me to take you seriously. I am no longer shocked by every swine that shuffles across the stage, honking and squealing and crawling through muck. One pig is as another.