Posse Incitatus

Deathwatch for the Weekly Standard

I'm a bit late to the story, but for the last few days, ominous reports have been circulating that the formerly conservative magazine turned Quisling Never Trumper broadsheet is in the brink of collapse.

For those needing a heavy dose of Schadenfreude, look no further.

The larger lesson, though, is that the market is saturated with anti-Trump propaganda.  The novelty of True! Conservatives! trashing him has gotten old.

Of course, the left loves to host traitors on their panel discussions, but serving as the Democrats' trained seals, barking at Trump on command, doesn't cover the payroll.

Back in the day, political magazines covered the ideological spectrum.  On the solid left one had Mother Jones and the The Nation.  The center-left was held by The New Republic with The Atlantic straddling the line.  These were balanced by The Weekly Standard and National Review, with Reason representing the libertarian fringe.

In recent years, everyone drifted left.  Reason (and its libertarian backers) clearly decided that drugs trumped everything else and went all-in on Obama.  Similarly, The New Republic and The Atlantic abandoned their old pragmatic roots and become nothing more than print versions of The Huffington Post.

This should have been an opportunity for the remaining righty publications, but they squandered it.  Kristol began pushing "big government conservatism," which translated into endless war and unlimited immigration combined with outsourced jobs.

This left National Review, which at least made a show of opposing immigration and defending traditional marriage, but even there they ultimately caved in.  In fact, they not only caved in, but fired their most interesting writers in their desire to curry favor with progressives.

It's not clear what either nominally conservative magazine was thinking (assuming they were), but the end result was that they were marketing themselves as the "diet" versions of hard-left magazines.  Given the choice, the core progressive readership chose to go with the full-strength version of Trump-hate, not the low-calorie variety.

At the same time, the uniqueness of the publications was lost.  They became yet another source of anti-Trump screeds, which can be had for free.  So why bother to subscribe?

The failure of The Weekly Standard is proof that the people in charge don't always know what they are doing.  The right has invested the free market with almost mystical powers, but in fact the people who make decisions there are just as prone to mistakes as anyone else. 

In fact, they're more prone, because so many of them are legacy holdovers from a bygone era.

There are rumblings that other leftist outlets like Vox and The Huffington Post are also facing a financial pinch, making it even less likely TWS will survive.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of people.

The globalist gods that failed

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

After Donald Trump's election, the leftwing media was positively falling over itself in admiration for Angela Merkel, Theresa May and their ultimate hero, Emmanuel Macron.

Yet one by one these towering figures have stumbled over the fruit of the seeds they sowed in hubris.

Merkel's migrant policy has crippled her party, forcing her resignation.  She continues on as a zombie chancellor, free to deliver empty broadsides but lacking any real power over the international scene.

Theresa May's government also has become a shambling, undead husk, waiting only for the final convulsion before it collapses in a heap.  Given that her minority government depends on Ulster loyalists to remain in power, it staggers the mind to understand why should would try to push a Brexit agreement that slices off Northern Ireland and binds it in the EU in perpetuity.

Finally, there is the great Macron, Savior of the West and Hero of Globalism.  His bizarre obsession with global warming - and resultant effort to impose crippling energy taxes on the French people - has led to a prolonged popular revolt that refuses to dissipate.  The latest development is that the police union has declared themselves to be in solidarity with the "yellow jacket" protesters and plans to go on strike in support of them.

We must note that like everything French, there are detailed regulations about how one gets permission and who actually can strike, but still, this is significant.  For now, the French riot police are playing by the rules, but a public statement of this sort is often the precursor to not playing by the rules, which is common in French history.

The Sixth Republic may only be a few weeks away.

These are the globalist gods that failed, each in their own way embodying the transnational elite pushing ever less accountability and ever more fluid movement of people.  They won over their electorates and then set out remake them. 

They tried to use the rules to stymie their people, creating "all party-alliances" to lock out the will of the majority, but the outraged populace is determined to have its revenge.

The funny thing is that we've seen this play before, during the initial spread of Marxism.   Attempts to create "class solidarity" across borders collapsed when it became clear that "foreigners" would gain from lost jobs and wages at home.

The left responded by imagining "national socialism," and we all know how that worked out.

The Global Warming racket falls into the same category.  Everyone wants to feel good about the environment, but it's telling how little even the elites are willing to do to stop it.

Instead of taxing automobile fuel, why didn't Macron but a surtax on private jets?  Perhaps a landing fee on all aircraft with fewer than 20 passengers. 

Ah, but that would harm the elites, and our current crop can't tolerate the slightest inconvenience, which is why Hollywood celebrities preach environmentalism while consuming more carbon than an entire midwestern suburb.

This transparent greed and hypocrisy would be bad enough, but it is the gross incompetence that renders it a lethal combination.  The globalists are losing not just because they are wrong, but because they are stupid.

 

 

George H. W. Bush and the collapse of conservative intellectuals

When I heard George H.W. Bush had died, I wasn't surprised.  His wife had passed earlier this year and couples who have spent a lifetime together literally can't live without each other. 

My esteemed co-blogger has offered a first-rate consideration of the man's life and legacy.  I have nothing to add to the topic, save to note the absolute collapse of the conservative movement's intellectual wing.

During the 1980s there were vibrant and spirited debates with a number of keen intellects arguing about the future of conservatism.  Most of those voices have passed on, and publications like National Review and The Weekly Standard have since become pale imitations of the Huffington Post.

I've noted before how the current crop of senior thought-leaders are not only incapable of an intellectual argument, but demonstrably incompetent. 

Someone like Max Boot howling about RUSSIA would literally have been thrown of the stage by William F. Buckley.  Henry Kissinger would dismiss him with a wave of his hand.  Thomas Sowell could crush him in less than a minute.

I haven't been paying attention to the news much, but I see over the weekend, NPR ran an article that collapsed almost immediately, yet the Quisling Never Trumpers fastened on it like a lamprey on a lake trout.    Jonah Goldberg in particular was on it.

This is remarkable given that Goldberg's parent publication has been calling for the abolition of public radio for decades.  The bias of public broadcasting has been a recurring theme of years, and yet here was a National Review stalwart now citing in his bizarre jihad against another Republican.

Of course, having been exposed as dupe of the left, Goldberg expressed zero remorse because he does what he's paid to do and he loathes his readers.

Thirty years ago, that wasn't the case, and the fact of the matter is that Bush the Elder was far more savvy and capable than his son - just as the previous generation of establishment conservatives could run rings around the legacy hires filling their seats today.

Hillary's latest idea: Maybe open borders doesn't work

 

In a functional democratic political system, ideology necessarily yields to the will of the majority.

This is how parties change their platform over time as new issues rise and old issues fade.  Unlimited silver coinage doesn't have much of a following these days, but little over a century ago it was a hot topic.

One of the signs that the US political system was breaking down was the fact that neither political party seemed willing to address the issues that actually mattered to the electorate - specifically outsourcing and immigration.

Donald Trump won the GOP primary and then the general election because he was the only one of 18 candidates to take on these issues.  His personal popularity was always secondary to the popularity of his issues.  It was a mark of how thoroughly dominated both parties are by business interests and ideologues that so few politicians were willing to co-opt his positions.

Yet that may finally be changing.  Via the Belmont Club we learn that Hillary is suddenly reconsidering her loyalty to open borders dogma:

Plagiarism is the sincerest form of imitation. Clinton's realization that mass immigration must be adapted to suit the actual conditions is a sign that the populist revolution, though it may be checked or superseded, has left an indelible mark. Trump may be impeached, though probably not convicted, in the coming months; certainly he will, like all mortal flesh, eventually fade away. But there's no denying time has moved the needle and there is no way back to the global world paradigm of 2016.

One would be tempted to cite this as proof that Hillary has no moral core, but that was never in doubt.  The fact that a major Democrat figure is now considering reversing what was a core tenet of the faith shows that America's political system may yet have hope.

The situation is Europe is not nearly so rosy.  In the UK, the establishment seems determined to fight to the death rather than implement Brexit.  Similarly, Angela Merkel has decided that she can finally sound off on the evils of nationalism since she's no longer accountable to voters. 

While the New York Times may run with these salacious Trump-bashing quotes, they are in fact the last whines of political has-beens.  Merkel was forced to resign as party head.  France's Macron may have gotten in "sick burns" over the Armistice Day observance, but his nation is consumed with riots against his policies.  Again and again, we see establishment figures cited as sources of wisdom at exactly the moment when their political careers are headed down the toilet.

Is it any wonder that the Clinton Machine might finally recognize the obvious?

To be sure, Hillary may yet be planning the classic double-cross of running on one issue and then doing the opposite.  This is, after all, a major part of the Democrats' strategy for many years.

The problem is that this will now open up a new fissure in the Democrat coalition and shift the political debate closer to Trump.  It's hard to see how this hurts him.  Indeed, the Clinton Machine endorsing less restrictive immigration might actually get that wall funded.

In any event, it will be amusing to watch the paid shills of the leftist press and their Quisling Never Trumper allies have to reverse themselves yet again. 

So much for "no one wants to take away your guns"

Blogging has been a bit light around here as we prepare the early onset of winter has left us behind the curve on preparations at the ranch.  Thus, I'm a bit late to the party on Democrat Eric Swalwell declaring his intent to go all-in on gun confiscation.

Swalwell is interesting because when challenged by the usual "cold dead hands" stance that gun owners routinely offer, he actually snarked that the the US government could use nuclear weapons to put down any rebellion.  (Realizing that he might have gone to far, he retreated into the usual "let's find a compromise" bullshit.)

There are a bunch of things to unpack here.  The most obvious is the breezy way this guy dismisses the potential of civil disobedience.  "Why we'll just use overwhelming force!"

Sure, great idea.  Because the US military always beats insurgencies and there are no doubt millions of people just waiting to join police and military forces to carry out a radical Democrat agenda.

The other is that he's completely unconcerned with the fact that the narrow Democrat majority in the House depends entirely on swing districts that could easily return to the GOP with a strong economy and better candidates on the ticket.  Trying to push the caucus all the way over to full-on gun confiscation isn't likely to help hold those seats.

Basically, it's completely unrealistic because prohibiting a popular item (like alcohol, or marijuana) simply doesn't work.

I can remember a time when politicians actually had serious debates about crime and how to do reduce it.  Those days are long over.  We're now in the virtue-signally phase where the actual utility of the proposal is less important that its hyperbolic sweep.

"We need universal background check!"

"No, we need total gun confiscation!"

"No, we need a magic want to make them all just disappear!  I've introduced legislation to fund scientific research on gun-vanishing magic wands!"

It's mark of how unserious our politics have become that I expect that last item to be announced fairly soon.

The interest contrast here is that while Donald Trump is constantly criticized for being "unpresidential," his policies are always rooted in what is possible.  They are utterly realistic.

His embrace of criminal justice reform has the potential to transform the debate about race and crime in the country, break open the growing fissure between blacks and Democrats, and transform the electoral landscape.

And yet the Dems still think it's 1968.  I'm sure The Donald saw these remarks and smiled at the thought of going out on the stump and pointing out that he wants to let black men out of prison, integrate them into their communities and help them get jobs while the Democrats want to think of new reasons for locking them back up.

 

Confirmed: Bill Kristol is funded by deep-pocketed leftists

As I previously surmised, Quisling Never Trumper Bill Kristol is in fact on the payroll of a deep-pocketed leftist.

It's worth reading the full article at American Greatness, which is rapidly filling up the intellectual space on the right formerly occupied by The Weekly Standard and National Review.

I don't have much to add to this "see I told you so" post, other than to note that Kristol has apparently copped to taking the dirty leftist money, which causes me to wonder if one of the main boosters of the RUSSIA hoax would have any objections to taking actual RUSSIAN money if he felt it furthered his cause.

 

More great moments in male feminism

I don't watch much television, so stories about various media personalities usually take a while to reach me.

Thus, the story of how Tucker Carlson's daughter was called a "cunt" and a "whore" at some ritzy country club completely passed me by.  I've seen some of Carlson's videos on youtube, but never watch him live (and I've now 'cut the cord' so I can't even if i want to).

Still, the news that the vulgarian who crudely insulted a young woman is in fact a board member for The Women's Initiative surprises me not at all.

By now it should be painfully obvious to all but the most deluded leftists that all male feminists are actually sexual predators and/or hard-core misogynists. 

Do I need to bring up Joss Whedon?  Harvey Weinstein?  Bill Clinton?  The entire staff at NBC News?

Male feminism is a means to an end.  A man who has issues with women can find easy acceptance as a male feminist ally.  In this role, he gains access to vulnerable women who are unable to process his actions or offer firm resistance.  If he's powerful enough, they will rationalize tolerating his behavior for "the cause," fearing that exposing him might hurt "the movement."

One of the reasons why the infamous "n-word" has become so toxic to white folks is the understanding that people don't blurt out bigoted words in the heat of passion unless they are accustomed to using them.

So it's telling that such a paragon of womanhood would immediately launch into what the Cool Kids call "slut-shaming" when seeking for ways to insult Carlson's daughter. 

It's not unusual, of course, for leftists to project their bigoted attitudes on their conservative opponents.  In fact, it's pretty much par for the course.  If you're a leftist in good standing, you can use whatever racial or sexist slurs you want, so long as the target is on the approved list.

Michael Savage has argued that liberalism is a mental illness, but I think he gets it backwards - mentally ill people are inherently attracted to liberalism because it allows them to freely project all of their problems onto conservatives.  If one is violent, racist, sexist or homophobic, one can use every single slur against conservatives with zero pushback.  Oh, and violence against women professors is totally allowed if they allow the wrong speaker on campus.

If you're crazy, what's not to like?

Of course, this gives the lie to the "it's never okay to -" line of reasoning, but the left has always been obsessed with the classic "who, whom?" context.

The funny thing about this is that if the Dems achieve their dream and the GOP is reduced to minority status, the number of "male ally" feminists will only multiply, until they once more find themselves being beaten and abused.  And they will have brought in it onto themselves.

That which cannot be controlled must be destroyed - a new theory of Never Trumpism

UPDATE:  I'm dubbing this the "war elephant theory" of Never Trumpism.

 

The ongoing ballot shenanigans in Florida, Georgia and Arizona are all too familiar.  What is new is the endorsement of this practice by people who nominally consider themselves conservatives.

These are the ones who keep chanting “rule of law” like a magic incantation, but they seem curiously aloof when Democrats blatantly steal elections.

I am referring of course to the Quisling Never Trumpers.

Long-time readers have seen me address these vile beings at length, but something occurred to me today that makes me think I had their motivation somewhat wrong.  To be sure, they are motivated in large part by grift, but upon reflection, they are also motivated by conviction, it’s just not the conviction they speak of openly.

That conviction is that the masses are superstitious, violent, bigoted and in need of constant control and supervision.  Essentially, they think the same thing about conservatives that progressives do, but instead of seeking the outright defeat or elimination of the GOP base, they see themselves as keepers of the beast.

Many of them are atheists, though they have kept this quiet until recently.  Moreover, they are the kind of atheist who feels utter contempt on those who take religion seriously.  This is why so many of them hector evangelical voters as being hypocrites for voting for Trump.  The vitriol comes from a place of hatred, not a desire to educate or persuade.  George Will is in this camp, as is the dolt still calling himself Allahpundit.

The religious wing actually shares the same loathing, but for different reasons.  They consider themselves more pure than the louts who soil the pews around them, and they believe that by constantly turning the other cheek (and thereby losing every political battle) they are demonstrating their superior piety and virtue.

The Protestants can point to their prominence and prosperity as evidence that they are in the Elect, while the Catholic and Orthodox liken themselves the martyrs of old.  This is why Ed Morrissey is all about selfless surrender on every issue.  Rod Dreher is even more extreme, pitching his ludicrous “Benedict Option” of simply ceding the world to leftist extremists and hiding out in the hills until someone else gets the moral strength to stop them.

One could write an entire essay on the Jewish faction, but David Horowitz pretty much nailed it when he described William Kristol as a “renegade Jew.”  Many of these ‘neocons’ are legacy members of the conservative establishment and never experienced the personal revelation that turned their fathers from the left.  Having been born on third base, they harbor a brooding contempt for those stuck on first.

All of these groups actually agree that “red America” is populated with hot-heads, who at any moment could launch themselves into violence on a regional scale.  This is why George W. Bush was so insistent on not mentioning militant Islam as an enemy.  He truly feared the overnight appearance of Klan militias.

It is also why these people  were always lukewarm of the right to life.  In fact, they are closer to Margaret Sanger than they’d like to admit.  Kevin Williamson gave the game away when he went on his infamous rant about rural white communities needing to die.

Ironically, Williamson has stridently defended the right to life, which cost him his gig at The Atlantic, but he clearly doesn’t like the people he’s supposed to be defending.  He’s also done nothing constructive for the cause he claims to hold dear.

Their deep dislike of the rural whites who make up their following is why they are so infatuated with immigration.  They long for the day that they, too can have a “diverse” following.  Even though it may be a permanent political minority, at least they won’t have to pretend to like NASCAR and guns.

Speaking of guns, there are few establishment conservatives who actually own them, let alone think anyone else should have them.  The Never Trumpers are almost uniformly in favor of sharp restrictions on gun ownership, precisely because they think their base is mentally unstable and could snap at a moment’s notice.

Some years ago when “The Walking Dead” was a new thing, a robust debate took place on National Review’s blog and a number of military members pointed out how a zombie outbreak would likely be contained quickly once the military got involved.

Combat Lawyer David French strongly disagreed, and his argument revealed he had nothing but contempt for the people he served with, regarding them as undisciplined, selfish and brutal.

All of these people see conservatives as essentially a monster to be tamed and controlled.  The propensity of conservatives to have religious faith, to own firearms and even to serve in the military are all reasons they need to be constantly policed and watched. 

To do that, they often affect a laid-back, devil-may care persona, such as the one crafted by Jonah Goldberg in the 1990s.  We should relate to him because he likes Star Wars and makes Simpsons jokes.  He likes to play the everyman who plays with his dog, savors spiced meats and drinks beer while watching movies.  He’s a true mench.

Except that he isn’t, and he’s always known that.  His job was to throw just enough snark at the left to keep his charges under control, and when they stopped listening to him in 2016, the mask fell away.  His true personality – insecure, status-conscious, arrogant – has come out at last.  The guy who wrote self-deprecating columns about sitting on a semi-sentient couch now wants everyone to know he’s a serious scholar and holds an endowed chair.

Ask yourself:  what happens when an animal disobeys its trainer?  Does the trainer use reason and persuasion, or does it impose sharp discipline and reassert dominance?

The Never Trumpers thought of the base as a pack of dogs for so long, they don’t understand why smacking us with newspapers and ordering us to heel isn’t working.

It’s also why their arguments are so devoid of any kind of persuasion.  After all, why waste logic on an animal?

The core belief in the propensity of conservatives toward mindless violence unless controlled explains a lot of the neocon obsession with starting wars abroad, doesn’t it?  Max Boot is probably convinced that absent some desert to fight and die in, the rednecks who make up the bulk of the Army may well turn on him.  Better to keep them busy chasing around the Hindu Kush.  Permanent war is a necessary safety valve to keep America’s Cossacks from descending on the Jews.

And yes, they do believe their base is both racist and anti-Semitic and when we stopped responding to the crack of their whip, they came out and said so.

In light of all this, it makes sense that these tools would parrot liberal talking points that voter fraud is a myth.  As part of their worldview, they believe that it’s more important that the masses be deluded and restrained than that system actually work.

Because once people stop believing that the elections are accurate, they might take matters into their own hands.  Again, the beast has to be kept sedated.  They can’t understand how their arguments are actually making rebellion more likely since the left is now so blatant in its cheating no serious-minded person can doubt that it’s going on.

Thus we come to the final step of their play, which is an overt, actual alliance with the left.  The monster they thought they controlled has slipped its chain and they will work with anyone they can find to bring about its destruction. 

And so, like a trainer who was watched their beast rampage into the circus crowd, they are willing to shed a tear as they try to put down the beast, but they have no doubt in their heart that the beast must die.

The Judicial arena

Two incidents today illustrate why Donald Trump is so happy with his expanded and more conservative Senate majority.

The first is the incomprehensible decision by the Ninth Circuit Court that a sitting president is not allowed to cancel a predecessor's executive order.   This is utterly absurd, but the leftist radicals in black robes have been increasingly brazen in their desire to establish a judicial dictatorship.

The decision will naturally be appealed to the Supreme Court where it must certainly die a swift death.  Indeed, the highest court may take further action to limit the ability of district judges to usurp powers well outside of their sphere. 

This leads us to the second event - the revelation that aging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has in the recent past fallen and broken three ribs.  Despite the injury, she shows no sign of retiring and seems determined to be carried from the bench in a coffin.

Trump's broadening of his Senate majority presents an existential threat to the liberal/progressive project.  The left's most enduring victories have come not through elections but judicial decrees.  A 6-3 conservative majority combined with another wave of constitutional lower-court judges would being the slow unwinding of the judicial construct - and limit any attempt the Dems make at trying to restore it for decades to come.

This is why Trump concentrated his efforts on key Senate races, choosing to go with cementing gains rather than expanding the map as he did in 2016. 

The Democrats' true center of gravity is the courts, and just as Trump attacked the Democrat electoral strongholds in the upper midwest, he's now digging them out of their bunkers.  In this sense, he may actually exceed Ronald Reagan as a transformative president.

This is also why the Quisling Never Trumpers have made it clear that they aren't anti-Trump but rather anti-conservative.  Their whole schtick was a lie.  They are quite comfortable with judicial rule so long as it leaves them alone.

Indeed, given how eager they were to embrace gay marriage, how reluctant they are to do anything meaningful in curbing abortion or how much they aggressively dislike "gun culture," it should be clear that these people were never more than play-acting grifters.  Now that the policies that they've long half-heartedly advocated might actually come to pass, their sullen resentment is utterly incriminating.

The coming economic reckoning will cripple political correctness

For people of a certain age, the political behavior of businesses these days is utterly nonsensical.  Once upon a time it was understood that the point of a business was to make money.

To do this, businesses were usually utterly apolitical and insofar as their officers or owners took political positions, they were purely based on what was good for their business.

The notion of purposely striking a controversial position was simply absurd.  Whenever anti-capitalist extremists threatened a boycott, the company public relations department would usually offer a tepid response and reiterate that they sell to everyone.

All that's gone away.  Now you have major retailers falling over themselves to piss off core customers.  The whole "get woke, go broke" syndrome is an actual thing.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in entertainment. 

Hollywood has always leaned to the left, but it had enough common sense to also produce products for middle America.  For every "Murphy Brown," there were two or three detective shows, or apolitical sitcoms.

The same was true of movies.  Hollywood has always had a fetish for "niche" or "prestige" films that raked in awards and got praise from the wine and croissants crowd, but the understanding was that these were diversions.  The studios knew that they still needed mass-appeal movies to pay the bills.

No longer.  The television industry recently witnessed two otherwise inexplicable acts: the cancellation of Last Man Standing and the resurrection and immediate execution of the rebooted Roseanne.

Both of these shows performed well.  That is to say, they found an audience and made money.

And in both cases, the network executives decided they didn't want that money.

Better to take a financial loss that make a show that icky people might like.

The situation in the movie industry is even worse.  Disney paid something like four billion dollars for Star Wars and they are systematically dismantling both the franchise and its fan base.

Who does that?  Who makes a major investment and then blows it up?  It's like Gomez Addams trying (and failing) to lose money in the stock market.

Apparently the shareholders are starting to notice and while Disney and the other megacorps still have a lot of cash to burn, they're reaching the point where the bottom line is starting to be affected.

The key thing to remember in dealing with progressives is that they will never sacrifice the slightest convenience for their beliefs.  The richer they are, the more this holds true.  The saps in the aspiring middle class will put up with composting, but not the elites.  Even the fixation on fair trade, organic or whatever food is based on the fact that they can afford it.  It's just another form of conspicuous consumption.

Star Wars as a franchise is dead in the water and the executives that killed it are completely unrepentant.  It's the money men who will force the changes.

Never forget that Harvey Weinstein was above all things a guy who made money.  Hollywood is famously tolerant of pervs, but they're not going to whore their daughters out for pennies.