WHEN “NICENESS” BECOMES AN UPPER CLASS COP-OUT:

Niceness is paradoxically more selfish than undisguised selfishness to Lawler, because an openly selfish person at least signals to others what his intentions are. Niceness, however, means, “I let you do—and even affirm—whatever you do, because I don’t care what you do . . . Niceness, as Allan Bloom noticed, is the quality connected with flatness of soul.” Lawler goes on to remark that in an increasingly nice world, in which faking niceness becomes an important job skill, soldiers and police officers become part of the counterculture. Men, especially white men, especially working-class white men, are the ones who do the not-nice jobs in our country, are comfortable with brutishness, and see the global economy as a fierce struggle between “them” (the Chinese who are stealing our jobs, the Mexicans who are undercutting us on wages) and us.

The nice people, cocooned in wealthy coastal zip codes and doing service work that doesn’t require getting your hands dirty, don’t see any of this, but they’re happy to leave the struggling classes to their fates. For the upper echelons of society, this wasn’t always so; not long ago, in Britain for instance, the well-heeled felt a duty to lead, to provide cultural guidance. These were the aristocrats, and they ran the institutions—the church, the BBC—that were beacons for the aspirational. The bourgeoisie worked as one strongly to discourage socially destructive behavior such as raising children outside wedlock, drug or alcohol abuse, or idleness. Those who couldn’t speak proper English were encouraged to do so.

Today, in Britain as in America, the nice-ocracy simply shrugs as the struggling classes make terrible decisions… Today’s elites, as Charles Murray has noted in his book, Coming Apart, a prescient study of the white working class from 2012, refuse to preach what they practice. They are well aware of the pro-social behavior that leads to success, but are too nice to encourage others to follow their lead. Indeed, they recoil in horror from the prospect of being thought “judgmental” toward others.

Monty Python had it wrong – for civilization to remain standing*, it’s far more important that elites have confidence in what they’re building (and the civilization they’ve inherited) than the tenants.

* Sometimes, literally so.

WELL, GOOD, BECAUSE THAT WAS A BIG MISTAKE: White House Official, in Reversal, Says Green Card Holders Won’t Be Barred.

8 YEARS OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Russia’s Arctic Military Buildup in One Map.

HEY, REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATS WERE PUSHING FOR NO-FLY LISTS WITHOUT DUE PROCESS?

JOEL KOTKIN ON IMMIGRATION: “In often needlessly harsh ways, President Donald Trump is forcing Americans to face issues that have been festering for decades, but effectively swept under the rug by the ruling party duopoly. Nowhere is this more evident than with immigration, an issue that helped to spark Trump’s quixotic, but ultimately successful, campaign. Many Americans are clearly upset about an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, and many also fear the arrival of more refugees from Islamic countries. Perhaps no issue identified by Trump has been more divisive. Not surprisingly, Trump’s rhetoric has stirred bitter anger among the country’s polite establishment, right and left, as well as the progressive grievance industry. . . . Politically, the open borders rhetoric helps Trump. Even in California, three-quarters of the population, according to a recent UC Berkeley survey, oppose sanctuary cities. Overall, more Americans favor less immigration than more. Most, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, also want tougher border controls and increased deportations. They also want newcomers to come legally and adopt the prevailing cultural norms, including English.”

Honestly, I think Trump’s encouraging the freakoutrage on purpose here. The more the Democrats shriek about not “normalizing” President Trump, the more they de-normalize themselves. This piece is circulating among some of the smarter lefties at the moment, and makes that point, although I don’t think Trump is Hugo Chavez or even close. If he were, all those lefty celebrities would be supporting him. . . .

UPDATE: Howie Carr:

Matthew Denice was a 23-year-old taxpaying U.S. citizen when he was run over and dragged to his death by a drunken illegal immigrant on welfare back in 2011.

It was not an isolated incident. Denice was the third American killed by illegal immigrants in two years in just one small central Massachusetts community.

The former governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, could never remember Matthew Denice’s name. A Democrat candidate for governor in 2014 (Don Berwick) breezily dismissed the horrific crime as an “anecdote.” And just last week, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told a radio audience he had no idea who Matthew Denice was.

Do you know who does know Matthew Denice’s name? The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

And that is yet another reason why he is president, and these shameless Democrats are wandering in the political wilderness.

The immigration debate hurts the Dems most because it makes clear that they don’t really care about American citizens. That goes with the cultural contempt for “deplorables” in a very toxic way.

Related: Don Surber: Media In A Fact-Free Fall Over Immigration.

SALENA ZITO ON THE DEMOCRATS’ DIVERSITY CHALLENGE:

Today the Blue Dogs are decimated, there are only 17 left, only two of them women. And every year they face expensive, heated primary battles from progressives, and are about to face the same onslaught next year from the 2018 Bernie Sanders purists who want them out of “their” party.

Legendary Democratic strategist Dane Strother thinks that is a very bad idea.

“If the Blue Dogs do not have a seat at the table, and if they do not rebuild, the Democrats will never hold the majority again,” he said bluntly.

Strother added that if there is a progressive purity test, “Then we will be in the wilderness for the next forty years,” he said.

“I think the Blue Dogs have to be revived and respected this cycle. There will be a test. If the party does not back the incumbent Democrat Blue Dog in the primary then the Democrats will have a big problem for a long time.”

“We can’t become so ideologically pure that we push moderates into the GOP … because that is what we are doing right now,” he said, adding that the party that holds onto the middle is the party that will govern.

Strother believes that the DCCC must back the incumbent Blue Dogs overtly during the primaries to send a message that the party does want a bigger tent.

Since the “Blue Dogs” lied about their moderate stance once – having posed as moderates in 2006, only to serve as what one pundit accurately described as “Nancy Pelosi’s Crash Test Dummies” in order to ram Obamacare through in 2009 – why should voters trust them again?

ROGER SIMON ON MY ISLAM PROBLEM AND YOURS:

No, ladies and gentleman, pretend though it’s otherwise, we do have an Islam problem, all of us.  Europe as we knew it growing up is practically gone and our society has been badly infected. When a massive march of American women is led by a Muslim woman who insists she wants to “take the vagina away” of one of the great freedom fighters of our time, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman who herself has suffered from genital mutilation, we know things have come to a drastic pass.

But go on, blame Donald Trump.  It’s all his fault.  Islam doesn’t need a reformation.  It’s just the same as all other religions… as long as you don’t study it.  Or get in its path.

Read the whole thing.

YOU’RE INSIDE MY OODA LOOP! STOP IT! Margaret Carlson: Slow Down, Mr. President.

Trump is a man of action and it’s working for him, in a way. Call a meeting with CEOs, visit key cabinet agencies, hold signing ceremonies, watch yourself being discussed on cable TV late into the night, legislate by fiat, and tweet your heart out. By no means stop to read a briefing book or study what’s gone before. Make moves based on instinct and impulse. . . .

The media shouldn’t let the last outrage go. But news by definition is what is happening now. Who remembers the 12 women who accused Trump of sexual assault, or all the vendors stiffed by him? It’s so yesterday. Trump has put up a photo of his inauguration in the White House taken at an angle that avoids the vast empty spaces. By his standards, he’s won. The dishonest media, Metro statistics and our own eyes have lost.

To say this is a strategy is to ascribe a master plan to an ever-flitting hummingbird. Trump’s actions are more a reaction to external stimuli and his roiling inner metabolism, both at odds with his colleagues on the Hill and some in his own cabinet.

Oh, I’m not so sure about that. But I think the political class is unused to the speed at which businesspeople make decisions. Flit like a hummingbird, sting like a bee!

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WAPO FACT CHECKER ADMITS THE MEDIA DOESN’T INVESTIGATE DEMOCRATS: Whoops! WaPo’s Glenn Kessler explains difference between Obama & Trump bans, accidentally indicts MSM. (Bumped, by Glenn.)

PROF. JACOBSON: Most claims about Trump’s visa Executive Order are false or misleading.

There is a postponement of entry from 7 countries (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen) previously identified by the Obama administration as posing extraordinary risks. That they are 7 majority Muslim countries does not mean there is a Muslim ban, as most of the countries with the largest Muslim populations are not on the list (e.g., Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Nigeria and more).

Thus, the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world is not affected.

Moreover, the “ban” is only for four months while procedures are reviewed, with the exception of Syria for which there is no time limit.

There is a logic to the 7 countries. Six are failed states known to have large ISIS activity, and one, Iran, is a sworn enemy of the U.S. and worldwide sponsor of terrorism.

And, the 7 countries on the list were not even so-designated by Trump. Rather, they were selected last year by the Obama administration as posing special risks for visa entry, as even CNN concedes in passing. . . . The problem, of course, is that Trump worked off of the Obama administration’s list of particularly risky countries for visa entry. To lay the blame on Trump’s business interests is a lie, or as Frantzman puts it, fake news.

Read the whole thing.

MELTDOWN:

Watching the news these days is to stare at a screen, confused, as the TV anchor shouts at the viewer, “Aren’t you mad about this tweet?!”

In the short time since President Trump was elected, and in the even shorter time since he was sworn into office, the public has been made to endure a parade of media obsessions that barely qualify as news and certainly aren’t scandals.

Since Election Day, Trump has saved hundreds of jobs in Indiana, convinced business CEOs to commit to new investments in the economy, started negotiations with foreign countries and signed a raft of executive orders to undo Barack Obama’s legacy.

There’s plenty to scrutinize there, but it’s Trump’s side gig as a culture commentator on Twitter that preoccupies journalists, who swear his murmurings about ratings for the new “Apprentice” are a looming threat to the republic.

After Meryl Streep wept over the election results at the Golden Globes this month, Trump on Twitter called her “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.”

Leaving aside that that’s objectively true, undermining an actress’s talent isn’t particularly consequential, even if it’s coming from the then-president elect.

But cable news was stacked with segment after segment analyzing why Trump would tweet that, what it meant and is this okay?!

They’re used to controlling the narrative.

RESPONSE: COME AT ME THEN, IF YOU THINK YOU’RE HARD ENOUGH: Email Threatens to Release Names of CU-Boulder Students Attending Milo Speech.

Ticketholders to a Milo Yiannopoulos speech at the University of Colorado-Boulder received an anonymous message Wednesday afternoon, just hours before the event.

“We know who you are, tonight we will know your faces,” the email threatened those who planned to hear the controversial alt-right provocateur. “The identities of attendees will be released to the public on a list of known Neo-Nazi sympathizers. We do not tolerate fascists.”

No, you are fascists. But failures:

Before Wednesday, a petition calling for CU-Boulder administrators to cancel Yiannopoulos’s speech gained more than 1,800 signatures.

Chancellor Phillip DiStefano said in a news release that while the university does not endorse the viewpoints of all public speakers on campus, “we must support the free exchange of ideas.”

The event drew more than 420 students and filling the room to capacity, Reinhart said.

And got more publicity because of the threats. Nice work, guys!

A SAD STORY OF CLOSED BORDERS:

Natasha Joseph’s almond-shaped eyes brim with tears as she cradles her pregnant belly and recounts the horror of her journey to the United States. There were the dust-choked buses, the corrupt cops, and the thieving coyotes. Some stretches of Central America were so perilous that walking in the dead of night was the only option.

But after four months of brutal risk, the worst came at the Arizona border, which the 31-year-old crossed in early September. That’s where her husband John was later detained. He’s still behind bars with little hope he’ll witness the birth of his child.

“When I ask him when I’ll see him again,” says Joseph, speaking in hushed Kreyol, “he just sounds resigned that he will be there for a long time.”

Thousands of South Florida families are living similarly devastating stories today thanks to a little-noticed move by the Obama administration. This past September 22, just weeks before the election, Homeland Security abruptly ramped up deportation of Haitians for the first time since the island’s massive 2010 earthquake. . . .

The results have been shocking: In all, 4,681 Haitian migrants are being detained across the United States, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Immigration facilities have been so overrun that hundreds of immigrants have been moved to criminal jails, in violation of international norms. Meanwhile, conditions in Haiti are the worst since the earthquake. The south is still in shambles after Hurricane Matthew, and violent postelection unrest is rocking Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien.

When Obama does it, it’s okay. Because he’s a Lightworker.

FAST AND FURIOUS: Trump signs three more executive actions.

President Trump signed three executive actions on Saturday afternoon focusing on lobbying, a reorganization of the National Security Council and a plan to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The executive action caps off a busy first week as Trump issued a flurry of orders on ObamaCare repeal, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and a ban on many refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

(Sorry, took off embedded video because it just wouldn’t play for some reason.)

PARTLY BECAUSE YOU SPENT EIGHT YEARS KICKING SAND IN OUR FACES, THAT’S WHY: Why we won’t “help” you?  We won’t help you because of Obamacare passed on a procedural trick; we won’t help because of Fast and Furious; we won’t help you because of Benghazi; we won’t help you because of the IRS harassing conservatives; we won’t help you because of Hillary’s unsecured server; we won’t help you because of a gazillion (give or take) executive orders; we won’t help you because of your side’s blatant dislike of anyone who loves America.

But most of all we won’t help you because the great enterprise you wish us to help you with is making idiots of yourselves by shrieking at the top of your lungs at things Trump is doing which you admired when Obama did them; or shrieking at the top of your lungs because you didn’t get the candidate you wanted in; or shrieking at the top of your lungs because that great progressive future you were so sure was around the corner took an inexplicable detour.

In other words, what you want help with is beclowning yourselves.  And we think you’re doing a fine job of it all on your own.  Besides, we need both hands for this big a popcorn bowl.

THEY BUILT THEMSELVES A BUBBLE, AND NOW THEY’RE REINFORCING THE WALLS: The National Elite Nervous Breakdown.

 THE UPPER CLASS BOASTS OF WINNING THROUGH THEIR OWN MERITS AND ACCUSE OTHERS OF PRIVILEGE. IN FACT THESE WORDS DON’T MEAN WHAT THEY THINK THEY MEAN:  Why We Need a Revival of Humility.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE: ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ Gave Us a Feminine, Not a Feminist, Icon.

THEY’RE ON THE OTHER SIDE: Our Political Opponents’: Notorious Traitor Declares ‘Progressive’ Loyalty.

THERE BUT FOR A TRUMP CARD GO WE: UK Socialized Medicine Meltdown

IS ‘NICENESS’ ROOTED IN A DEEP INDIFFERENCE TO THE WELL BEING OF OTHERS? The Real Motivation Behind the Left’s “Niceness”.

IF YOU’RE A FANTASY READER, THIS WILL NOT FAIL TO DISTURB YOU: Obama in Unsong.