JOHN JUDIS: It’s not about left or right: populism is a style of politics that pits ‘the people’ against ‘the establishment’. Its rise is a warning sign that the status quo is failing.

Yes. Trump is a symptom; our political class is the disease.

Related: America’s Decadent Leadership Class:

The big fact of the week, however, has to do with these words: They don’t like us. The Democrats, progressives and left-liberals who have been embarrassed by the latest WikiLeaks dump really hate conservatives, or nonleftists. They don’t like half the people of the country they seek to control! They look at that half with disdain and disrespect. Their disdain is not new—“bitter clingers,” “basket of deplorables.” But here it’s so unashamed and eager to express itself.

A stupid man from a leftist think tank claimed the most “powerful elements” in the conservative movement are Catholic. “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations,” he wrote. Mrs. Clinton’s press aide Jennifer Palmieri responded: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelicals.”

When I read that I imagined a conversation with my grandmother, an immigrant who was a bathroom attendant at the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn. Me: “Grandma, being Catholic is now a step up. It means you’re an aristocrat! A stupid one, but still.” Grandma, blinking: “America truly is a country of miracles.”

Here’s what you see in the emails: the writers are the worst kind of snobs, snobs with nothing to recommend them. In their expression and thoughts they are common, banal, dumb, uninformed, parochial.

I don’t know about you but when people look down on me I want them to be distinguished or outstanding in some way—towering minds, people of exquisite sensibility or learning. Not these grubbly poseurs, these people who’ve never had a thought but only a sensation: Christians are backward, I saw it in a movie!

It’s the big fact of American life now, isn’t it? That we are patronized by our inferiors.

Yep.

TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: Why Did the Media Wait So Long to Go After Trump?

Just think of the MSM as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

RAND SIMBERG: TO RESTORE ARTICLE II, ELECT TRUMP. “Regardless of the electoral outcome, we are about to elect one of the worst presidents in American history. But only one choice will offer us a potential opportunity to rectify that situation.”

CLINTON CAMP EMAIL 2008: HOW TO ATTACK OBAMA FOR MUSLIM BACKGROUND, COKE USE.

THAT’S WHY THE SPHERE OF POLITICS SHOULD BE SHRUNK, NOT EXPANDED: Politics Is Poison to the Human Spirit.

QUESTION ASKED: What exactly is Sid Blumenthal’s relationship with the Clintons today?

PEGGY NOONAN ON AMERICA’S DECADENT LEADERSHIP CLASS:

A stupid man from a leftist think tank claimed the most “powerful elements” in the conservative movement are Catholic. “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations,” he wrote. Mrs. Clinton’s press aide Jennifer Palmieri responded: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelicals.”

When I read that I imagined a conversation with my grandmother, an immigrant who was a bathroom attendant at the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn. Me: “Grandma, being Catholic is now a step up. It means you’re an aristocrat! A stupid one, but still.” Grandma, blinking: “America truly is a country of miracles.”

Here’s what you see in the emails: the writers are the worst kind of snobs, snobs with nothing to recommend them. In their expression and thoughts they are common, banal, dumb, uninformed, parochial.

I don’t know about you but when people look down on me I want them to be distinguished or outstanding in some way—towering minds, people of exquisite sensibility or learning. Not these grubbly poseurs, these people who’ve never had a thought but only a sensation: Christians are backward, I saw it in a movie!

It’s the big fact of American life now, isn’t it? That we are patronized by our inferiors.

But those grubbly poseurs can be awfully hypnotic at times.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Comey Lied And The Email Scandal Died. “Corruption: When FBI Director James Comey dismissed the case against Hillary Clinton he said it was because no reasonable attorney would take the case. Now we learn that there were plenty who would have done so. . . . Career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.'”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans.

The thing is, the “media elite” is disproportionately made up of people who are addicted to smugness, and hold deep psychological issues going back to high school. That leads to this particularly toxic form of oikophobia.

INDULGENT SHOWDOWN: Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’ vs. The Clash’s ‘Sandinista!’

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

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HMM: British man says Trump accuser is lying about their encounter in first class.

Gilberthorpe, 54, said he was sitting across the first class aisle from the couple and saw nothing inappropriate. Leeds was wearing a white pantsuit, he said, while Trump was wearing a suit and cuff-links, which he gave to his British flight companion.

Indeed, Gilberthorpe claimed, Leeds was “trying too hard” in her attempt to win Trump over.

“She wanted to marry him,” Gilberthorpe said of Leeds, who apparently made the confession when Trump excused himself and went to the bathroom.

Sigh. “What to make of all this is hard to say.”

YEAH, THAT SEEMS TO BE HOW IT WORKS: The Hill: Believe The Victims — Unless They’re Bill’s.

REMEMBER THIS WHEN THEY START WITH ALL THE HAVE-YOU-NO-DECENCY STUFF: Dem PAC poll-tested attacks on Obama over father’s Muslim heritage.

A Democratic super PAC poll tested several personal attacks against then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in 2008, including his cocaine use as a teenager and his father’s Muslim heritage, according to emails released by WikiLeaks.

The Jan. 9, 2008, email exchange is between Paul Begala, a longtime ally of Hillary Clinton, and her current campaign chairman, John Podesta. In it, Podesta provides a list of attack lines the strategists discussed putting into a survey.

You know, news like this might hurt Hillary, if the press ever reported it.

DONALD TRUMP WEIGHS IN on Higher Education.

VERY VERY VERY FAST GLOBAL WARMING: Horrors. The PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). (Aside to chemists and combat engineers: PETM, not PETN. Got to keep the acronyms straight.) During the PETM “The planet was essentially ice free, and sea levels drastically higher than now.” Golly. Was George W. Bush alive then, too? Would that Barack Obama had arrived and the rise of sea levels ceased and…According to the article, the consensus “cause d’warming” theory is volcanoes. Yeah, the unregulated lava and pumice polluters pumped hazardous awful junk into the atmosphere and over thousands of years they were almost as bad as capitalists. Over time increased CO2 levels (from the unregulated volcanoes) led to global warming. However. But…According to the article, magnetized clay particles (microtektites) indicate another environment destroying criminal did the dirty deed — a comet! Did the comet bring its own carbon? Was the comet a Republican? Until Hillary is elected, Team Hillary propagandists John Podesta and Robby Mook will swear it was. The theoretical comet strike’s theoretical result: fast carbon dioxide release, faster global warming. A lot faster than the lava and pumice polluter theory…But…but consensus!

WELL, GOOD: The Navy Is Quietly Arming Its Supercarriers With Anti-Torpedo Torpedoes.

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IMPROVING SOUTH KOREA’S MISSILE DEFENSES: The US and South Korea use the term “tailored deterrence.” This is my definition of the term: South Korea and Japan are tired of North Korea’s threats and are going to invest in improved defensive systems and offensive systems. From the linked article: “In 2016 alone, the reclusive country conducted two nuclear tests and launched more than 20 ballistic missiles despite warnings by the international community.” North Korea is “the reclusive country.”

RAND SIMBERG: To Restore Article II, Elect Trump.

CLIFF MALONEY: Colleges Have No Right to Limit Students’ Free Speech.

University campuses are now home to a plethora of speech restrictions. From sidewalk-sized “free-speech zones” to the criminalization of microaggressions, America’s college campuses look and feel a lot more like an authoritarian dictatorship than they do the academic hubs of the modern free world. When rolling an inflated free-speech ball around campus, students at the University of Delaware were halted by campus police for their activities. A Young Americans for Liberty leader at Fairmont State University in West Virginia was confronted by security when he was attempting to speak with other students about the ideas he believes in. A man at Clemson University was barred from praying on campus because he was outside of the free-speech zone. And a student at Blinn College in Texas abolished her campus’ free-speech zone in a lawsuit after administrators demanded she seek special permission to advocate for self-defense.

How have we let this happen in America, the land of the free?

It’s because of what our universities have taught a generation of Americans: If you don’t agree with someone, are uncomfortable with an idea, or don’t find a joke funny, then their speech must be suppressed. Especially if they don’t politically agree with you.

Instead of actually debating ideas that span topics from the conventional to the taboo, a generation of American students don’t engage, they just get enraged. In doing so, many students believe that they have a right to literally shut other people up. This is not only a threat to the First Amendment, but also to American democracy.

Yes.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

The Saudis and Russians made a big discovery after the fall of the Soviet Union: that you couldn’t beat the United States the country, but you could corrupt American politicians for what amounted, in their world, to chump change. You could spent a billion dollars on some useless piece of Soviet military junk, or you could spend on a junket. The junket was more effective.

Read the whole thing.

6 REASONS FOR TRUMP’S RISE that no one talks about. “Step outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly collapsed. . . . If you don’t live in one of these small towns, you can’t understand the hopelessness. The vast majority of possible careers involve moving to the city, and around every city is now a hundred-foot wall called ‘Cost of Living.’ . . . And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. . . . It really does feel like the worst of both worlds: all the ravages of poverty, but none of the sympathy. . . . The rural folk with the Trump signs in their yards say their way of life is dying, and you smirk and say what they really mean is that blacks and gays are finally getting equal rights and they hate it. But I’m telling you, they say their way of life is dying because their way of life is dying. It’s not their imagination. No movie about the future portrays it as being full of traditional families, hunters, and coal mines. Well, except for Hunger Games, and that was depicted as an apocalypse.”

Try to guess where this article appears without mousing over the link.

BUT OF COURSE SHE DID. Bombshell: Clinton Sent Intelligence Info To Podesta’s Hacked Email Account.

WELL, THAT LEFTWING FLIP-FLOP DIDN’T TAKE LONG AT ALL: Ruth Bader Ginsburg walks back anti-Kaepernick comments.