Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

HOW IT STARTED: In his 1980 non-fiction anthology In Our Time, Tom Wolfe wrote, “In the fifties there was the martini. In the sixties there was vodka on ice. In the early seventies there was the glass of white wine. In the late seventies there was the bottle of Perrier, a French soda water. The fashionable American expense-account lunch drink became lighter and lighter, but not cheaper and cheaper. The soda water sold for $2.50 a glass in Manhattan restaurants.”

How it’s going:

Earlier, from Roger Simon: Living Forever: Putin, Xi and Djokovic.

WHAT KILLED CHARLIE KIRK: And, more importantly, can we stop it?

The list of iniquities, sadly, goes on and on. In the name of “criminal justice reform,” for example, hordes of violent criminals were let loose, backed up by progressive attorneys general and activist judges and local legislators who robbed law enforcement officials of any means of meting out justice. Bail, we were told, was modern day Jim Crow. Prison was slavery in other forms. Policing was racist. And when savages like Decarlos Brown Jr., with 14 prior violent convictions to his record, were set loose, it was only a matter of time before they produced a knife and slaughtered Iryna Zarutska, a young Ukrainian refugee, on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina. When brave men like Daniel Penny, who successfully neutralized a deranged violent criminal threatening to harm fellow commuters on the New York subway, intervened, they were dragged through the coals in court and on TV. When a police officer detained a repeated violent felon high on fentanyl and methamphetamines, leading to his death, American cities burned for days, with Democrat politicians taking a knee and corporations paying vast fortunes to a group, Black Lives Matter, that vowed to dismantle the nuclear family and failed to report what it was doing with its vast funds. Put bluntly, then, we have angry, violent, and hopeless people because many of our societal institutions worked assiduously to produce them since at least 2008.

All of this should be entirely coherent to any serious student of politics. What we have here is a group of people assembling an entirely coherent construction for the purpose of holding and maintaining power. And to keep this charade going even when it got patently ridiculous—arguing, say, that there were 57 genders, or that houses of worship had to be closed during COVID but liquor store and nail salons were welcome to do business as usual, or that the race riot that torched up your town was a mostly peaceful protest—the left applied its most trusted weapon, that of the permission structure. When every academic and every late night talk show host and every newspaper editorial told you that Trump was Hitler, good luck wearing your MAGA hat to the neighborhood picnic and not facing severe consequences.

At the NRO Corner, Jeffrey Blehar has a breezy look at Kamala’s campaign memoir, 107 Days, headlined, “America’s Most Famous Female Fredo Speaks,” in which he concludes:

And in the end, I am overwhelmed with the pathetic meaninglessness of it all. Reading the excerpt from 107 Days is like listening to the complaints of America’s most famous female Fredo: a washed-up loser complaining that she failed because she was given only low-stakes assignments and a lack of support from the Biden “family.” With every word, I hear her voice whining that she’s smart — not stupid, not like everyone says. (See what I mean when I say we may be in the presence of a genius ghostwriter?)

She has failed to convince anyone. In fact, she would be wise to observe the opposite of her own sage advice from above: Kamala Harris was given much; she should feel free to give us all a little bit less from now on.

But it’s worth noting that, likely with terrible internal polling data coming in, by the end of her campaign, she too willingly went along with being part of the aforementioned “permission structure” that led to Kirk’s assassination:

JOHN PODHORETZ: Here’s the danger of social media.

It allows people to publish their internal monologues. Our internal monologues and fantasies are often incredibly ugly. People go to therapists because they feel so guilty about them, and one of the tasks of a therapist is to explain that thoughts are not actions.

Read the whole thing.

Podhoretz ends with a Seinfeld reference, but we’re also deep into the “Monsters from the Id” territory of Forbidden Planet

“WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE IF IT’S TRUE?” The Oral History of Wag the Dog. After I linked to clips from Wag the Dog last night in response to the news of Albania’s AI-powered “minister for public procurement,” I googled around to see if I could find a “making of” article. This 2022 Vanity Fair article is a lot of fun, until of course, the last few paragraphs when the Bad Orange Man inevitably begins to be referenced:

[William H.] Macy: Dave somehow sees into the future. I think the danger—and I think Wag the Dog gets this—is not that we will be manipulated, because ever since Homo sapiens first organized themselves, there’s been manipulation of the events and the message, and there always will be. I think the big danger is if we lose faith in any information, that all the news is fake. That’s a horseshit proposition.

[Dustin] Hoffman: It’s one of those movies that, whether I’m in it or not, I like it more each time I see it. I’ve often said that if a movie makes you cry, it usually makes you cry every time you see it, and if it makes you laugh, it makes you laugh every time you see it. This made me laugh as if it was the first time. Barry called it a satire, and it certainly is. But I also think it’s a farce, which I guess means you go as far as you can and get away with it.

[Co-Producer Jane] Rosenthal: Certainly, talking about it in 2022—we had the same kind of skepticism then, but just so much has come true that it’s not to even be believed. You just sort of wonder sometimes, Is satire dead? Would you ever be able to do a political satire again?

As the title card at the beginning of the movie asks, “Why does the dog wag its tail? Because a dog is smarter than its tail. If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.” There’s a tremendous Death of Stalin-level satire that would print money just dying to be made, but there’s no way that anyone in Hollywood would admit their complicity in propping up the self-described Politburo who spent every day in power wagging the dog while occasionally sending out the desiccated husk of Joe Biden to read off the teleprompters. And everyone quoted in the above article knew it at the time of being interviewed.

Exit quote: “Through his attorney, David Mamet declined an interview for this story.”

REPORT: Tyler Robinson ‘full of hate’ before Charlie Kirk shooting, says family friends — while ‘Hey fascist! Catch!’ found written on bullets.

Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson was “full of hate” in the days before the shooting, according to a family friend, as authorities revealed the 22-year-old had confessed to the assassination and had been turned in by a relative.

Bullets found in the chamber of the rifle reportedly used by Robinson included apparent left-wing slogans such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” and another referencing “Oh, Bella Ciao!” a popular Italian anti-fascist song.

Andy Ngo adds: Charlie Kirk Assassin Suspect Appears to Have Killed for Antifa, Confirmed Rifle Cartridge Messages Show.

According to [Utah Gov. Spencer Cox], one cartridge was inscribed with: “Hey fascist! Catch!” Another read: “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao.”

The latter is are lyrics from the World War II-era Italian resistance song that has been adopted by Antifa as an unofficial anthem. It is frequently sung at their rallies and the song’s titled featured on their signs and slogans. In 2019, Washington state Antifa gunman Willem van Spronsen closed his manifesto with “Bella ciao” before attacking an ICE facility in Tacoma with a rifle and incendiary devices. He was shot dead while trying to ignite a propane tank close to the building and has since been glorified by Antifa as a hero and martyr.

Gov. Cox also verbally described (and did not show) arrow inscriptions: up arrow, right arrow, and three down arrow symbols. The three down arrows may be the Antifa “Iron Front” symbol, though this cannot be confirmed until images are released.

Lastly, the governor noted that one casing read: “If you read this you are gay lmao.”

Cox’s clarification narrows the speculation: the casings bear clear Antifa references but, at this stage, do not appear to contain any direct mention of trans ideology.

Stephen Miller tweets that “ANTIFA has enjoyed the luxurious protection of one political party in this country, and has been defended by the mainstream of media, and I suspect those days are coming to an end. Forcefully.”

But alas, don’t expect much introspection from the DNC-MSM for creating the atmosphere that radicalized the alleged suspect:

JIM TREACHER: Murder Is Wrong, Even If You’re Angry About Losing a Debate.

Charlie Kirk was murdered during a debate.

Here were his last words:

Questioner: Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?
Charlie Kirk: Too many.
Questioner: Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?
Charlie Kirk: Counting or not counting gang violence?

Then he was shot and killed. And the feds say the ammo the shooter left behind was engraved with “transgender ideology.” Quite a coincidence, huh?

As of this writing, we don’t know who did it or exactly why. But a lot of Kirk’s self-styled enemies sure are happy about it.

And zombie Wired magazine is quite cross that the right are calling out the people who went on a virtual wilding spree yesterday on social media:

The creator of Wired magazine, before he cashed in his chips and sold the magazine to the establishment left Conde Nast in 1998, was libertarian-leaning Louis Rossetto. As the late P.J. O’Rourke, an even more famous libertarian, said in a speech to the Cato Institute in 1993, “There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”

Did the people who went on a social media wilding spree last night not expect any consequences for their hateful rhetoric? Or as Varad Mehta tweeted today:

Earlier: “They wouldn’t be rushing to film themselves saying this if they didn’t believe there was a wide audience applauding them and cultural cachet to be had. That is the culture Democrats have fostered. Now they have to take responsibility and un-foster it. Not both sides. Them.”

Or as Mark Hemingway writes: The Left Has Never Been Held Accountable For Political Violence — And That Must Change.

UPDATE: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery:

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Albania appoints world’s first AI-made minister.

Albania has become the first country in the world to have an AI minister — not a minister for AI, but a virtual minister made of pixels and code and powered by artificial intelligence.

Her name is Diella, meaning sunshine in Albanian, and she will be responsible for all public procurement, Prime Minister Edi Rama said Thursday.

How many Mercs will “she” procure?

Still though, if things go really pear-shaped, we can always deploy the B-3 bombers:

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: The View Once Erroneously Claimed Kirk Palled With Nazis, Now Mourn.

Behar chimed in again to note that she lived through the 1960s, during a very fraught period of American history filled with political assassinations. “You know, I’d like to be positive about it. I think we did get out of it. The country survived it. We got better. I think we will again. We’re having a traumatic period right now,” she tried to give comfort.

Following their 9/11 segment, moderator Whoopi Goldberg attempted to marry the two subjects by pushing for America to show the same kind of post-9/11 unity for Kirk’s assassination.

“[I]t goes to show that when we put our minds to it, we did figure out what to do. We can figure out what to do…These things are not outside of our reach. And we have to get back to that,” [Whoopi] pleaded. “These are things we cannot forget that we actually have the ability to do. If we do forget it, I don’t know what will become of the country. My fingers are crossed. I’m betting on human beings.”

But The View’s niceties rang a little hollow. In July 2022, Goldberg erroneously claimed Kirk “invited” neo-Nazis into a TurningPoint USA event in Florida. Two days later, The View had to issue a formal on-air apology after Kirk’s organization threatened to file a defamation suit against them.

Shades of the classic Babylon Bee headline from last November: Sunny Hostin Forced To Read Legal Notice Acknowledging Nothing Said On ‘The View’ In Its Entire History Has Ever Been Remotely True.

JUST IN: Paramount Skydance Preparing to Buy CNN Parent Company In Major Media Consolidation, Report.

Paramount Skydance is planning to make a majority cash bid for CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery in an effort to consolidate the media giants, according to reporting in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

“The bid will be for the entire company, including its cable networks and movie studio,” people familiar with the situation told WSJ.

Skydance is run by David Ellison, son of multi-billionaire Larry Ellison who co-founded Oracle Corporation.

Earlier: CBS Taps Conservative Policy Veteran for New Ombudsman Role. “The new ownership of CBS News on Monday selected Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former chief executive of the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning policy think tank, to review complaints about its coverage in a new post as ombudsman at the network…Skydance’s founder, David Ellison, has pledged to revamp CBS News, which regularly lags ABC and NBC in the Nielsen ratings and recently endured a standoff with President Trump over accusations of editorial bias. Mr. Ellison is in talks to acquire The Free Press, an independent news outlet, and install its co-founder Bari Weiss in a senior editorial role at CBS News; last week, the network changed its rules for handling some political interviews after pressure from the Trump administration.”

UPDATE: Perhaps a conservative ombudsman would stop CBS from trying to run the same playbook they used to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in 2011:

BRENDAN O’NEILL: Charlie Kirk was a better anti-fascist than most of the left.

Kirk was enraged by the pogrom of 7 October. In that clash at Cambridge, with the student so well trained in the moral relativism of the modern campus that he couldn’t even draw a moral distinction between a neo-fascist army and the democratic state it attacked, he reminded his overeducated jeerers of what happened that day. This war started, he said, ‘because 1,300 Jews were killed and 200 were taken hostage’. Hamas ‘recklessly’ went to ‘music concerts, to homes, to kibbutzes’, knowing well there would be a ‘firestorm’ in Gaza as a result. The ‘only entity to blame’ for this war, he told the lost souls of Cambridge, is ‘the leadership of Hamas’.

The ‘moral truth’, he said, is that ‘there is a good guy and there is a bad guy’. That’s the ‘morality of a child’, barked his critic, to effusive applause from the assembly of plummy Israelophobes. Then came Kirk’s killer line: ‘A child who knows that Israel is the good guy and Hamas is bad has a lot more wisdom than a student like yourself at Cambridge University.’ He schooled them. It was moral clarity in action. It should not have taken a visiting firebrand from the US to tell some of Britain’s most privileged, well-read youths that the Islamofascists who raped and then murdered Jewish women are the bad guys – but it did.

Related:

In sharp contrast: Oxford Union president who debated Charlie Kirk appears to celebrate his killing.

JERRY SEINFELD COMPARES FREE PALESTINE MOVEMENT TO THE KU KLUX KLAN:

Jerry Seinfeld on Tuesday said he holds the Ku Klux Klan in higher regard than supporters of the Free Palestine movement while at an event to honor people being held hostage in Gaza.

The comic-actor, 71, made the controversial remarks at a Chabad event at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, according to the college’s student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle.

Seinfeld broached the uncomfortable topic as he introduced Omer Shem Tov, a one-time Israeli hostage. He said of Free Palestine supporters, ‘Just say you don’t like Jews.’

The Brooklyn, New York native explained his point of view at the event, according to the student paper.

‘By saying Free Palestine, you’re not admitting what you really think,’ Seinfeld said. ‘So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, “We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews” — OK, that’s honest.’

Normally at this time, I’d link to this History Channel clip:

But after yesterday, “the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party” seems like it has quite an enormous airfoil span.

INVERTING THE CLAUSEWITZ CLAUSE:

Yes, why would “far right podcasters” think that?

 

As I wrote in June of 2009, “President Obama has demonstrated that he’s always eager to view American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip Von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head.”

And Joe Biden (and/or whoever was writing his teleprompter speeches) carried on that tradition, particularly during this infamous moment, right around this time three years ago:

Eugene Robinson, then still with the WaPo, dubbed Biden’s rantings a great “wartime address.” As Ed Morrissey asked, “Question: With whom is the United States currently at war?”

CAROLINA PANTHERS FIRE EMPLOYEE AFTER SOCIAL MEDIA POST ABOUT CHARLIE KIRK’S FATAL SHOOTING:

The Carolina Panthers have fired an employee in the team’s communications department due to an insensitive social media post about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah, a source familiar with the team’s decision said Thursday.

Charlie Rock, a football communications coordinator for the Panthers, posted on his personal Instagram account Wednesday, a few hours after the 31-year-old Kirk was shot and killed while speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University. The post read: “Why are yall sad? Your man said it was worth it …” and included a photo of Kirk. Rock also included a reference to the Wu-Tang Clan song “Protect Ya Neck” in the post.

There’s quite a bit of that going on today:

But how did we get here?

As a result, for those who have some prominence on social media, they must have assumed there would be widespread approval for their hateful rhetoric:

Otherwise, we’re in the territory mined daily for years by Libs of Tiktok. Do lefties on social media believe they’re shouting into the void? Creating Voice Memos on their iPhones that only they would have access to?

SLATE BOLDLY GOES WHERE NORM MACDONALD HAS GONE BEFORE:

Evergreen (doubly so, today):

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Who Will Stop America’s Slide Into the Abyss?

To the ghouls celebrating online, Kirk and his supporters represented something else entirely: fascism, Nazism, Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale. How does one succumb to such delusion? Whatever the mix of ideology, grievance, envy, contempt, or pure nihilism, the hatred is spreading. Every year brings forth downwardly mobile graduates with debt, no prospects, a sense of entitlement, and mounds of resentment. Combine radical individualism with a culture without restraint, and you have the social equivalent of a Molotov cocktail.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last weekend, author Cynthia Ozick said, “This is a good country. It’s a great country. And now, it’s disintegrating.” That is why Kirk’s death feels like a watershed. It is the most stunning evidence we have to date that America is becoming two nations, divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology. Weak institutions, corrupted data, rampant distrust, political enmity, and an apparent inability to control criminality and the dangerously mentally ill tear us apart like a centrifugal force.

Exit question: “Is there a way back?”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Ammunition in Charlie Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology: Sources.

Investigators found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, according to an internal law-enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.

The older-model .30 caliber hunting rifle was discovered in the woods near the scene of Wednesday’s shooting at Utah Valley University, wrapped in a towel with a spent cartridge still in the chamber, the sources said. There were also three unspent rounds in the magazine, all with wording on them.

Or as CNN puts it:

CNN’s anti-journalism also appeared on-air via one of their Chyrons:

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

Evergreen:

“WHEN PEOPLE STOP TALKING, THAT’S WHEN YOU GET VIOLENCE, THAT’S WHEN CIVIL WAR HAPPENS:”

GUTFELD DROPS F-BOMB AFTER CHARLIE KIRK’S MURDER, ISSUES WARNING TO THE LEFT:

“Yeah, I know that it’s somewhat a object of mockery to say ‘thoughts and prayers,’ but… thoughts and prayers for his family, um, they need it from all of us,” Gutfeld said.

For all the political implications, he reminded viewers that at the center of this horrific act is a young family mourning an unspeakable loss.

From there, Gutfeld turned to the bigger picture: “And Jesse’s right, if they can do this, they are capable of anything. I think that was the message, I believe that was the message.”

Make no mistake about it, the assassination of Kirk was not simply an attack on one man. It was a warning shot to every conservative willing to stand up to the left’s cultural and political assault on our country. Gutfeld’s words reflected what many instinctively know: This was meant to terrify, to silence, and to end the momentum that Kirk helped build through Turning Point USA and his unapologetically conservative media presence.

But if those responsible thought violence would shut conservatives down, Gutfeld argued, they’ve made a grave mistake. “Um, it’s really hard to radicalize Republicans,” he noted.

“You know, it’s like we’re not the radical type. But if you thought that you were gonna shut a movement down, you’re gonna get a rude awakening. You woke us the f**k up.”

If Glenn’s X feed is any indication, I don’t think the left realizes what the last decade has the potential for unleashing:

 

THE LONDON TELEGRAPH: Charlie Kirk: The Maga ally committed to speaking across the divide.

Charlie Kirk leaned into his reputation as a deeply polarising figure, taking his conservative message to the most hostile places he could imagine: America’s college campuses.

This helped him build his Turning Point USA movement into a fundraising giant and catapulted him into the highest echelons of Trump world.

On Wednesday he took his rapier wit and his “Prove Me Wrong” roadshow to Utah Valley University. It proved to be his final appearance.

He was cut down by a gunman’s bullet as he answered questions about mass shootings in America.

President Donald Trump announced his death, illustrating the power of the 31-year-old’s reach.

“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Kirk exemplified the confrontational, populist conservatism that brought Mr Trump to power.

Other than being a skilled debater, there was nothing “confrontational” about Kirk’s style. I very much hope I’m wrong, but that may not be true of those who replace him.

While we’re on the subject of London, Two-Tier Keir is utterly shameless:

NEW YORK YANKEES HOLD MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR CHARLIE KIRK:

Related: President Trump Orders Flags to Half-Staff in Honor of Charlie Kirk.