Posse Incitatus

The "Cold Civil War" gets warmer

I've noted before that societies do not descend into civil war all at once.  Rather it is a gradual, uneven process the moves by fits and starts, sometimes reversing, but never long enough to stop its downward spiral.

The past few weeks have given us a number of examples that future generations might call "milestones to war."

• The savage beating of journalist Andy Ngo in broad daylight in full view of the police.  Liberal apologists for the Antifa Stosstruppen are trying to claim that he's a conservative provocateur, but in fact his politics are firmly on the left - he just likes following a good story.
• Facebook's revised policy on death threats, which forbade them - except in cases where they were issued against people the management didn't like.  This illegal policy was almost immediately rescinded, but one has to wonder what kind of idiots signed off on it in the first place.
• The spectacle of CNN/Playboy "Journalist" Brian Karem taunting attendees at a White House event and then challenging Sebastian Gorka to a fight in full view of the press - and then lying about it afterwards.  It wasn't exactly an attack on the Senate floor, but it was close.  Also indicative - mainstream press lied about what happened, choosing an edited version of the tape with Karem's taunting and challenge omitted.
• The growing public knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's predations, which happened in plain sight of the Ruling Class for years - and the fact that despite his conviction, they continued to party and socialize with him.
• The Democrat Party's full embrace of erasing US borders and it's open preference for non-citizens. 
• The US "National" Women's Soccer Team openly insulting the National Anthem and trampling the flag during one of their tasteless celebrations.

I could go on, but the sum total of each of these events is to destroy the social contract that holds the nation together.  If citizenship is meaningless and the "national team" feels it can insult the nation's symbols with impunity, what's left?

It's clear that the Democrats have no grand design or carefully crafted plan once they gain control, just a series of anti-American impulses to destroy our institutions.  When 50 million Central Americans enter the country, they have no idea how they will govern it and this doesn't seem to bother them.

It's interesting to see how much this insanity is radicalizing the center.  I've watched with great interest as otherwise moderate or non-political entities and publications have changed their tone. 

Sohrab Amadi's famous essay has struck a nerve and I'm noticing a change in both attitude and behavior among Kurt Schlichter's "normals."  No longer is there an easy-going sense that this will all blow over, or that cooler heads on the left will rein in the crazies.  Instead there is a defiance, a stridency on the part of the center that wasn't there a year ago.

It comes from a simple realization:  They really do hate us.

I don't think the left is capable of understanding where this will go, but it won't be pleasant for anyone.

The elites have only themselves to blame for the populist backlash

The weekend blackout on the European elections has lifted, and what a changed landscape now stands before us.

Everywhere the Establishment is in retreat as populist movements rise in the polls.  

The talking heads assure us that these are dangerous "far-right" movements on par with the Nazis.  In fact, they were the predictable consequence of the Ruling Class ignoring the people who elected them.

The UK should not have even been voting.  Outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May insisted more than 80 times that Brexit would happen in March - only to back down at the moment of truth.

The Ruling Class elites no doubt savored their triumph, but the electoral disaster they suffered over the weekend was the direct popular response.  Naturally they are too stupid to understand this and will try to step up their repression, but that will only lead to greater convulsions as the people demand their sacred right to self-rule.

This is why the "nationalists" are working across boundaries and languages to form a common front against the Ruling Class.  These people aren't xenophobes or chauvanists, they simply believe in self-determination and like their national culture as it is.

For more than 50 years, the blame for the wars of the 20th Century has been laid at the foot of "nationalism."  If only people didn't care about their country, no one would have died - or so the theory goes.

But the truth is that the world wars were the result of the Ruling Class, not popular rage.  Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany were monarchies, not participatory democracies.  

There was even less democracy on display in the years before World War II, with left-wing dictators ruling Russia, Germany, Italy and a host of lesser nations.  The EU is merely a transnational version of these movements - a corporatist entity determined to reduce its subject peoples into a faceless, culture-free proletariat ruled from on high.

When Brexit was thwarted, free people everywhere understood the real meaning:  the Ruling Class will no longer accept the results of popular elections.

Thus they are using their vote to send a message that they strongly disagree.  If the Ruling Class continues to ignore them, the next message will be louder - and more violent.

The most important aspect of a functioning democracy is for the loser to accept the result with grace.  Yet the Ruling Classes - for all their sophistication and alleged intelligence - is failing this basic test.  In the process they are destroying the institutions they rule and putting their own pathetic existance in peril.

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 curious media obsession with smearing Trump as an anti-semite

The mad bomber was an object of mirth last week precisely because no one was hurt.  The same cannot be said of the dastardly synagogue shooting yesterday.

It is a sad feature of our world that those places once considered sacred are now looked upon as targets of opportunity by the vicious and evil.

We cannot cure the hearts of men (only the Almighty can do that) but we can take prudent steps for self-defense against known evil.  Taken on its own terms, gun control doesn't work.  The UK has the advantages of having a tiny gun culture (almost entirely in the landed aristocracy) and being an island, which should make gun-running very difficult. 

Yet despite its strict laws, similar outrages happen there, too.  In fact, violent crime is surging there to levels never before seen.

In addition to the usual calls for gun control, however, there are strange arguments that President Trump is somehow responsible for provoking the attack because he is an anti-Semite.

This is nonsense on stilts.  Trump is the most pro-Jewish president in US history.  He has never through word or deed taken an action against Jews.

His daughter is a convert to Judaism and his own grandchildren have been raised in the faith.  The notion that he would somehow harbor hatred against Jews defies logic.

Then there are his stridently pro-Israel policies, which are the strongest in defense of the Jewish State since its foundation.  These raging lunatics are actually arguing that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem somehow provoked this attack because shut up.

Much of the left's argument is guilt by association, which is to say they quote David Duke as saying he likes Trump, therefore Trump is now beholding to everything David Duke has ever said.

Strangely, this test is not used by Democrats in regard to the rabid anti-Semites in their own ranks, like respected media personality Al Sharpton.  We can also recall the media successfully hid a photo of Barack Obama warmly embracing Louis Farrakhan until after he was out of office.  Calypso Louie recently went on a Twitter riff calling Jews "termites" and calling for their eradication.

Twitter decided this was not hate speech, and Democrats did not scramble to denounce him because he's on their side.

This goes beyond hypocrisy and instead has its roots in the core leftist precept that the ends justify the means.  Political violence is always acceptable to the left.  Demonizing opponents in dehumanizing language is not only acceptable but the preferred tactic.

This is not to say that all leftists embrace this viewpoint, but the moderates within their ranks won't take concrete action to stop it.  At best they will cluck their tongues and shake their heads sadly.  "This wouldn't be necessary if the right wasn't so awful."

A number of psychological surveys show that the left literally doesn't understand the right, while the right understands the left perfectly.  This helps explain why even moderate, personally kind leftists can convince themselves that no matter how depraved the extremists are in their own ranks, the ones on the right are ten times worse.

Even though Al Sharpton incited a riot, he's okay because deep in its heart, the left has deluded itself to think Donald Trump is even worse.

Getting back to the dud bomber for a moment, enough details have come out to reinforce my skepticism of the media narrative.  The choice of targets (mostly Dems not running for office and important enough to have layers of security), the pristine van covered with so much right-wing nonsense to be a parody of itself (not to mention illegal to drive) and the fact that the FBI can't give a clear description of the bombs themselves leads me to believe something sketchy is going on.

Regardless of whether the guy was sincere or just a dupe, the left's reaction to make political hay rather than call of a de-escalation rhetoric is both expected and I predict will backfire.

The left's combination of mindless moral certitude and a propensity to violence make it the natural home of angry lunatics.  This dud bombing campaign combined with the synagogue will be seen by these people as an invitation to "retaliation."

This is particularly likely as the GOP looks like it will increase its hold on the Senate and perhaps cling to power in the House.

In imagining civil war, the left is making one happen.

God help us all.

So if you find an actual conspiracy, does that still make you a conspiracy theorist?

From time immemorial, people would try to explain events by conjuring up a cabal of varying extents that supposedly moves the hidden levers of power.

Whether we are talking about the Illuminati or the International Jewish Conspiracy outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, conspiracy theories are the arch-enemy of clear thinking and analysis.

Perhaps the core problem with them is that they explain nothing and cannot be refuted.  No mater what flaw one finds, the true believers can attributed the quirk the the diabolical advanced planning of the masterminds in charge.

"But this makes no sense?"

"Ah, but that's what they want you to think!"

Basically, conspiracy theories are what mentally weak and highly emotional people fall back on.  Which is why they are so prevalent on the left.

But sometimes, we come across an actual conspiracy.  It need not be vast beyond imagining, but it can have moving parts and even be situated in the highest levels of power.

For example, the Clinton Crime Family.  By now it is painfully obvious that there was no RUSSIA collusion, but there was an illicit alliance between various intelligence agencies to monitor the Trump campaign and then to undermine the administration once it took office.

We've already seen multiple examples of how FBI-directed redactions had nothing to do with preserving 'sources and methods' but instead were about hiding the FBI's many abuses of power.

So I really wasn't surprised to see how closely Christine Blasey-Ford is tied to former FBI officials.

Just as one can no longer dispute that the attack on Judge Brett Kavanaugh was the result of deliberate planning on the part of the Dems, so it's not at all surprising to see the same lawyers involved in FBI corruption popping up among her legal counsel.  Gosh, the Deep State is busy.

However, there is another side to the Deep State, which I pointed out last week.

I believe this is why the GOP has dug in and showed unprecedented tenacity in defending Kavanaugh.  Part of this decision was of course that Kavanaugh was innocent, but innocent people accept defeat all the time.  Indeed, given how lop-sided our legal system is, taking a plea deal is often the only way to stave off total ruin even if one avoids conviction on a technical offense.

What's fascinating about the dynamic of the charges is how vague they have to be.  Blasey-Ford can't give specifics because if she does, Kavanaugh might be able to provide definitive proof that he was somewhere else.

Even with the moving-target account of the alleged attack, Blasey-Ford seems to be tying herself in knots.  The second front door actually leads to an apartment; it was built four years before she said it was; she claimed no knowledge of polygraphs but worked on a study of them and a witness says she provided training on it.

The problems go on and on.

So part of my prediction seems to have been borne out.  The extra few days have been disastrous for her credibility.

Yet she hasn't recanted on the time frame I proposed.  That part I got wrong, though in my own defense I assumed that she was largely as she appeared - a motivated but inexperienced political activist exploited by Dem leadership and treated as a fire-and-forget weapon.

It's now clear that her relationship with key figures go back much farther - which is why she's running greater risks. 

It's also possible that her handlers overestimated their residual influence at the FBI - just as Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok overestimated the strength of their position.  Overconfidence and delusions of competence are also common faults among leftists.

The big question is whether the Senate GOP is willing to "go there" and expose this or merely content themselves with a main-force vote.

A telescope with a warped lens

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

The polling data is coming in and it looks bad for the GOP.   Their divisive policies and extreme rhetoric are driving people back to the Democrats who are poised to build a long-lasting progressive ruling coalition.

Yeah, it's drearily familiar because we hear it ever two years.

The interesting thing about polling is that the last few years have demonstrated it has almost no predictive value.

Given the expense of conducting them, one would think that the people paying for them would demand better quality for their work, but one would be wrong.

Polls, like news media and internet searches, are now seen as nothing more than additional weapons in the left's information warfare campaign.   A few polls get it right, but they are regarded as pariahs, "outliers" who lack the sophistication of the always-wrong Washington Post or New York Times.

it's a strange situation.  Polls are supposed to offer a glimpse of the present which leads to a vision of the future.  Like a telescope, they help politicians understand what's coming.

When one warps polls by oversampling or using "push" questions, the accuracy and predictive value of the device is destroyed.  It's like looking through a telescope with a warped lens. 

Sure, the resulting image may provide a close-up of something far away, but it distorts it the point that it can't be trusted.  A mariner using such a device would surely risk collision or running aground, and yet the left swears by them.

Part of this has to do with the fact that the left has basically checked out on reality.  If a man says he is a woman, he is a woman.  Not all women have vaginas and not all men have penises, and if you disagree with that, you are an unredeemable deplorable bigot.

This explains how a trans-female (that is to say a man claiming to be a woman), could be placed in a female-only prison where he freely assaulted his fellow women.  For some people this may be surprising, but everyone else regards it as utterly predictable.

Polls are generally prefaced with:  "if the election were held today," but it isn't being held today.  Especially in today's Deep State-influenced environment, timing is everything.

Hillary Clinton boasted a 20-point lead over Bernie Sanders right before the Michigan Democrat primary and yet she lost.  It was a huge miss, and it presaged the later upset victory.

Back then, the Clinton machine had myriad tools to cement its conquest of the White House, including almost the entire intelligence and investigative apparatus of the United States.  That crutch has been removed.

Instead it is the turn of the Democrats to wonder if the rumored sealed indictments are going to be unsealed come October.

And that's the other problem with the polling telescope - it can only show what is visible now.  For the moment, the course ahead may look clear, but there's a looming freighter moving quickly through the mists.  When it appears, while the distorted lens show its true course?  How will the captain know until it is too late?

The Democrats have always built their politics on a plan of deception, but the difference is that they now believe their own lies.  That's why the collision of 2016 shook them to the core and a similar shipwreck if 2018 might drive them over the edge.

The Dems' dead-end fascination with political violence

What's that line about history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce?

Well, I guess we're about to arrive at the parody send-up of the late 60s Days of Rage.

A lot of people are talking about a second Civil War, but this is vastly overblown.  The left's power is almost entirely based in pixels.  Their street muscle - personified by Antifa LARPers living in the basement - crumbles the instant law enforcement intervenes.

Still, a lot of geriatric Boomers seem to want to repeat the same mistakes.

And let us recall that, from a strategic standpoint, the Days of Rage backfired bigly.

Street violence and terror bombing created the sense that Democrats were simply too unhinged to be trusted with the White House.  As a result the GOP controlled the presidency from 1969 to 1993 with only interregnum being the failed Carter presidency (which we now know was largely the result of  Deep State coup). 

For all his political skills, in 1992 Bill Clinton only won 43 percent of the popular vote in a three-way contest held during the onset of a recession.  He never did break 50 percent of the popular vote.

A lot of Dem strategists are placing their hopes that racial division and changing demographics will give them a national electoral lock.  Here again they have to face the problem that a great many people of all colors came to this country to get away from the socialist hell-holes from which they came.  I know a number of people of Mexican descent who have no wish to make America a mirror image of the Old Country.  This perhaps explains Trump's growing support among Hispanic voters.

The Dems are supposedly the party of youth and idealism, but their ideas are not only old but repeatedly discredited.  The only reason young people support them is that they are too stupid to know better.

Millennials may have a soft spot for socialism but that's only because they've never experienced a roaring economy.  They are now getting that chance and my sense that that given the choice between moving back into the spare room at home and getting a place of their own, they'll choose the latter - even if it meets putting up with the Twitterer-in-Chief's flame threads.

There is of course another difference between then and now:  gun laws.

In 1968, the nation embraced gun control as a way to quell urban violence.  Today the right to self-defense is strongly defended across the fruited plains.  The areas where gun control is strongest are the ones where the primary victims of violence will be fellow Democrats.  The progs can foul their own nests, but outside of them, their attempts at violent intimidation are likely to end in their own hospitalization.

Here again Trunp's modern Anaconda Strategy will come into play.  As he continues to appoint district and appellate judges who will uphold the Bill of Rights, these gun-grabbing enclaves will find themselves increasing overruled.   The left relied on judges to do its heavy lifting for four decades.  The pendulum is about to swing the other way.

I had hoped that the attempted assassination of the GOP Congressional baseball team would have brought the left to its sense.  I now understand that they are incapable of self-control.

Their footsoldiers, however, may be capable of exercising self-preservation.   The decisive moment will be when Antifa goons go over someone they think is an easy target and catch lawfully-dispensed hot lead in reply.

At that point the progressive leadership's chants of "let us go forth and YOU lead the attack" will land on deaf ears.

Google proves Dr. King's dream is dying

A few days ago I remarked that the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been completely abandoned by progressives.  In its place they have created identity politics focused on demonizing and punishing groups their leadership deems undesirable.  Basically Jim Crow has been removed from one race and attached to another.

Our resident troll then challenged me to find examples of a position he claimed was totally not mainstream, all the while refusing to defend the obvious proposition that the "mainstream" itself has abandoned racial reconciliation as a goal.

The class-action lawsuit against Google offers another example of progressives spitting on Dr. King's dream.

I particularly like this quote by a Google employee:  “If there is any harm to the interests of Jews from that work, it is more than made up for by the benefits to everyone as a whole.”

Oh wait, sorry - I got that wrong.  For "Jews" read "white men."

Funny how simply changing the target group changes the meaning, isn't it?  I mean that sentence above could have come from an issue of Der Sturmer, but as long as the targeted group is officially sanctioned, it's okay.  Let's take one more look at it:

“If there is any harm to the interests of black men from that work, it is more than made up for by the benefits to everyone as a whole.”

Oh no!  Someone call the ACLU!

These are not the words of people who desire peaceful coexistence and full integration - they are the words of bigots who want to persecute a specific group and are quite open about the benefits they will get by seizing their jobs and wealth.

The civil rights movement was based on a simple proposition - that racial reconciliation and coexistence was both possible and desirable.

Its implementation came down to a simple bargain: in exchange for whites removing economic and political barriers to blacks, blacks would forgive whites for their past transgressions.

There is no question that blacks held the more high ground in this exchange, but that high ground was conditional on actually offering forgiveness.

For along time, there was amazing progress.  The KKK is nothing but a bugbear used to justify shrill fundraising efforts by the SPLC - which is now nothing more than an offshore piggy-bank for its founder.  America has elected a black president and just about every milestone one can imagine has been achieved in terms of integration.  Vast sums of wealth - eclipsing the costs of all wars we have ever fought - have been spent to eradicate black poverty.

In our fallen, imperfect world, white America has done the best it can to remedy past ills.

And yet all this good will is for nought as far as progressives are concerned, particularly black progressives.

Their new line is that there can be no forgiveness, ever.  White men are irredeemable and their eradication from public life is both desirable and necessary.  This is a considerable escalation from Jim Crow, which only desired separation of the races.  The new "civil rights" movement views extermination of the new Untermenschen as its goal.

I don't believe this is the majority position.  I live in a diverse community and interact with people daily.  No one seems to have a problem with each other.  The elites seem to be the ones driving this project, and that I why I remain optimistic that perhaps Dr. King's dream will prevail.

But I cannot pretend that this movement doesn't exist and that it doesn't pose a threat to society.

To put it another way - there are legitimate concerns about the state abusing its power, and this includes police.  The way to address this is not to make it a racial issue, but to make it a societal one.

If all police, everywhere are using body cameras and stripped of their judicial-imposed immunity from prosecution for misconduct, society as a whole will benefit from greater accountability.

Dems to America: All that stuff we said about violence being bad was bullshit

I've said it before but it bears repeating:  Donald Trump isn't important as an individual, rather he is the searchlight that pierces the shadows and reveals the world as it truly is.

For years the left has prattled on about good government and the importance of Constitutional order.  I remember when the Iran-Contra affair was regarded as super-serious because it undermined Congressional oversight.

But when Obama wiretapped Congress, well, that was different because he's a Democrat.

Similarly, Richard Nixon asking the IRS to audit his enemies was bad, but there was not a "smidgen of corruption" when the Obama IRS actually did it.

Yesterday's post elicited the following point of agreement from our tireless commenter Nurglitch:

I think the cause of gun control is dying a slow death because my fellow leftists and I are coming to realize that we are losing an arms race. The fact is that this will eventually come to violence, and the left needs to catch up in terms of organization, armaments, and most obviously training. If the recent shooting has taught us anything, it's that even a well-armed "lone nut" is relatively harmless unless he's well trained and drilled.

Right, so the baseball assassin's real sin was that he didn't finish the job.  Good to know.

Future generations will look back and marvel at how quickly the left went from "elections matter" to "let's start shooting Republican legislators!"

They will also no doubt marvel that people were willing to form death squads and incite civil war in order to force nuns to buy birth control and demand single-payer health care.

Of course, the left has always believed the ends justified the means.  They even have a group called By Any Means Necessary.

Deep within every leftist, it seems there's a little Stalin struggling to take over.

By giving into student radicals, colleges are sealing their own doom

I have to admit I'm taking a certain amount of pleasure in watching liberal arts colleges destroy themselves.

These schools were often elite, and their alumni rightly took pride in their alma mater.

They venerated the traditions, celebrated their school heritage and often provided lavish donations and bequests to keep things going for the next generation.

They never could have imagined that within the space of a few years all of that would be turned to dust by feckless and incompetent leaders.

Mizzou is still reeling from the damage visited by their useless president.  Alumni donations have cratered and applications are down sharply.  Other schools are feeling similar pressures.

The truth is that today's radical students are a passing thing.  Students may stay on campus for a few years, but the alumni will be there for decades to come.  Throwing out heritage and reputation to try to placate these transients is a classic case of myopic thinking.

It might have had merit in an age where the demands were somewhat reasonable, but as the nonsense at Evergreen College has shown, many of these nutjobs simply want to destroy stuff.  They enjoy making impossible demands and then watching their president scramble to try to meet them.

Of course, the dirty secret is that many of these administrators and college presidents secretly agree with the radicals.  They hate Western Civilization and loathe the very institutions they have been entrusted to protect.  The prospect of violence just gives them a pretext to tear down that which they've always hated.

How else to explain the Ivies suddenly wanting to rename dorms simply because a few blowhards complained?  The truth is that our current elites hate having to go traditional and venerated schools like Harvard and Yale even though they exult in the prestige they gain.

Happily, their malice is turning against itself.  We are reaching a point where an elite education no longer carries any weight.

Colleges and universities are arguably the most left-wing parts of the country.  They are heavily fortified strongholds of the left.  Taking them on using conventional means would take years and cost thousands of lives.

Happily, progressives are blasting apart their fortresses on their own.  It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.