Archive for 2017

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

In the wake of the shooting, Giffords’ father identified “the whole Tea Party” as enemies of her daughter and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik warned that Arizona has become a “Mecca for prejudice and bigotry” and that anti-government “vitriol” may have played a role in the attack. A number of Democratic lawmakers called on politicians to tone down their rhetoric in response to the tragedy, including civil-rights icon Rep. John Lewis, who cited an “atmosphere and climate that makes it almost impossible for us as Americans to reason together.”

—“After Giffords Shooting, Tea Party Under Siege,” the Daily Beast, January 9, 2011.

— “DEMOCRAT ADVOCATES VIOLENCE? John Lewis encourages ‘necessary trouble’ against injustice in America.” Instapundit.com, today.

As Kurt Schlichter tweeted in January, around the time Lewis was caught lying about Trump being the first presidential inauguration he protested (Lewis skipped Bush #43’s inauguration as well because apparently he believes all Republican presidents aren’t legitimately elected), “So, because 50 years ago some Democrats beat up John Lewis means that we have to ignore how he lies about Republicans today?”

Related: What happened to Paul Krugman’s concern about town hall civility?

Earlier: The American Left Is Talking Itself Into Violence.

AS THE ORCS WERE MADE IN PARODY OF ELVES, SO THE “MAN UP” MOVEMENT IS MADE IN PARODY OF ACTUAL MASCULINITY. “One of the defining characteristics of the man up/step up program is an over the top cartoonish appeal to the virtues of courage and valor. This comes across as cringeworthy not only because it is so childish and over the top, but because the point of the program is to avoid doing what is difficult and terrifying. It is false bravado used to mask paralyzing fear.”

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME — SO BAD BUZZFEED’S POINTING IT OUT: Why Is A Top Harvard Law Professor Sharing Anti-Trump Conspiracy Theories? “Among the prominent anti-Trumpers spreading unconfirmed information are famed constitutional scholars, Pulitzer Prize winners, and US senators.”

One of the things Trump has accomplished is to make clear that our best and brightest and most responsible are none of these things.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON OUR FRAGILE CIVILIZATION:

One of the weaknesses of the anti-Trump resistance is their inability to address the factors which brought the current administration into existence.  Too many think it’s all about one man.  This may explain why the Resistance to the Resistance has been surprisingly hard to push off the Hill and why Bernie Sanders is the most popular Democratic politician in America.  The key insight into the problem is that people didn’t vote for Trump but against Hillary, PC, and the ending of their world. Charles Sykes in New York Times noted this element of sheer reaction. “Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters don’t have to defend his specific actions as long as they make liberal heads explode”.*

A hundred years ago the liberal project seemed easily attainable. “I have seen the future and it works,” wrote Lincoln Steffens, yet it’s proved surprisingly hard to close the sale. The reason why the masses should reject such a brilliant vision were hard to explain.  Despite Leftist fears their foes were never more than a coalition of amateurs with no particular ideology.  The alt-right didn’t even know it was alt-right until they were properly analyzed and labeled.

So why can’t such a stupid, ignorant and incompetent bunch be seen off?  That must be what troubles the Resistance. The scariest possibility is they are up against complexity itself, fighting a reality that refuses subordination to a narrative.  The world is hard to control, even when you dominate all the media outlets.  Jurassic Park was Michael Crichton’s parable warning against trying to linearly control complex systems. In history Marx may be friction’s equivalent of John Hammond.  “God creates dinosaurs, God kills dinosaurs, God creates man, man kills God, man brings back dinosaurs,” might explain the banging on globalism’s door when there should be nobody there.

The liberal project wanted the global world.  Maybe they didn’t understand what came with it.

Read the whole thing; though I rarely disagree with any of Richard’s analyses, they’re not liberals in the classical sense, they’re leftists; which is why they bring a whole lot of bad luck, to coin an Insta-phrase, when they’re running things entirely.

* It’s also better for us all that the left is largely unified in waging war against Trump, than say, an Indiana pizza shop owner or Washington state florist.

(Via SDA.)

TODAY, THE ROLE OF PAULINE KAEL WILL BE PLAYED BY MICHAEL KINSLEY in the New York Times, who asks, “Is It Possible There Is Nothing Nice to Say?”

Donald Trump is a hated figure — more hated than any political figure in America. In Washington you can just assume that any random person you talk with agrees with you about that. The only comparable person in American politics is Richard Nixon, who my mother told me was despicable when I was about 6, long before Watergate — and she was right!

47 million Americans voted for Nixon in 1972, giving him nearly 20 million more votes than George McGovern. And Nixon, a big government-loving Republican, has had an increasing amount of strange new respect from the left in recent decades — including Timesmen such as Paul Krugman and the late Tom Wicker.

Kinsley probably doesn’t know any actual Trump or Nixon voters — I wonder though, if he can feel their presence in a darkened theater?

UGH: Doctors Warn of Painful Parasite Hiding in Your Sushi. “Anisakiasis is common in Japan due to the prevalence of raw fish in the diet, with between 2,000 and 3,000 cases diagnosed per year. But cases are starting to pop up in the US and elsewhere in the West.”

PEOPLE WHO ARE SURPRISED THAT AMY SCHUMER’S NEW MOVIE IS TERRIBLE should perhaps reflect that Amy Schumer is terrible, making it unsurprising when various Amy Schumer vehicles, like this movie, or her dreadful Netflix special, share that terribleness.

A ROCKET NAMED TRUMP: “When students from Charlotte’s Victory Christian Center School decided to revive a rocketry team tradition of naming their rockets, one of the groups christened their rocket Trump. . . . ‘How did you come up with the name Trump?’ the president asked. ‘Simply because it conquers all,’ one student replied, drawing a handshake from the president and cheers from his classmates. ‘They’re never going to put that on television,’ Trump said.”

Quite a diverse crowd of Trump-admiring rocketeers. You probably won’t see that on television, either. . . .