Something’s going on in Europe
Actually, a great many things are going on in Europe, but I’m referring to one particular thing that I’m going to call Trump-envy.
Brexit was part of it. I think that the yellow vests of France are at least somewhat connected with it:
Back in 2014, geographer Christopher Guilluy’s study of la France périphérique (peripheral France) caused a media sensation. It drew attention to the economic, cultural and political exclusion of the working classes, most of whom now live outside the major cities. It highlighted the conditions that would later give rise to the yellow-vest phenomenon…
[Guilluy]: Technically, our globalised economic model performs well. It produces a lot of wealth. But it doesn’t need the majority of the population to function. It has no real need for the manual workers, labourers and even small-business owners outside of the big cities. Paris creates enough wealth for the whole of France, and London does the same in Britain. But you cannot build a society around this. The gilets jaunes is a revolt of the working classes who live in these places…
What they all have in common is that they live in areas where there is hardly any work left. They know that even if they have a job today, they could lose it tomorrow and they won’t find anything else…
The cities themselves have become very unequal, too. The Parisian economy needs executives and qualified professionals. It also needs workers, predominantly immigrants, for the construction industry and catering et cetera. Business relies on this very specific demographic mix. The problem is that ‘the people’ outside of this still exist. In fact, ‘Peripheral France’ actually encompasses the majority of French people.
That urban combination of executives, professionals, and immigrants or others in the construction or service industries (plus the urban non-working poor) constitutes much of the liberal vote in the US. The second (peripheral) group contains many of the people who in this country voted for Trump. That’s an immense simplification and not entirely accurate, but it’s a summary that I think contains some general truth.
Here’s a related article about what’s going on in Europe:
…[W]hile the Western European political class and its allies love to sneer at Donald Trump, millions of ordinary citizens across the continent wish dearly that they had a Trump of their own.
Only last week, for example, a caller to Nigel Farage’s radio show in Britain expressed the desire that Trump, and not Theresa May, had negotiated Britain’s exit deal with the EU. Farage shared her sentiments. Then there’s the up-and-coming Dutch political leader Lennard van Mil, known in his country as a “gayservative” (short for “gay conservative”), who can be seen in many photographs online wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap.
Trump’s allure is potent even in Scandinavia. In November 2016, on the day before the election in the U.S., the Norwegian alternative-news website Document.no ran a piece by Magne Reigstad headlined “Why We Need a Trump.” Reigstad spelled out the reasons. America isn’t the only Western country in which too much power accrues to self-seeking bureaucrats and lobbyists who don’t give a damn what ordinary citizens think or want or need. America’s not alone in being run by politicians who, preoccupied with short-term personal gains and political prospects at the expense of the long-term national interest, pursue disastrous policies that threaten to bring down Western civilization. And America isn’t the only country whose mainstream news media spread “fake news” about all the above, whitewashing dangerous alien cultures while showing insufficient concern for our own.
How far this will go in Europe, and what the ultimate result will be, I do not know.
The elites need to get their food and gas from somewhere. I wonder what would happen if the French farmers did a “foodcot” of Paris. For that matter one of NY or Chicago or LA would be interesting. Maybe no more gas since there is an effort to stop production of oil. Questions questions.
There is a preference cascade forming in Europe, too.
“This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. (Click here for a more complex analysis of this and related
issues). Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it – but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.
Peggy Noonan has written about it several times.
But in my experience any nonpolitical person on the street, when asked who will win, not only knows but gets a look as if you’re teasing him. Trump, they say.
I had such a conversation again Tuesday with a friend who repairs shoes in a shop on Lexington Avenue. Jimmy asked me, conversationally, what was going to happen. I deflected and asked who he thinks is going to win. “Troomp!” He’s a very nice man, an elderly, old-school Italian-American, but I saw impatience flick across his face: Aren’t you supposed to know these things?
In America now only normal people are capable of seeing the obvious.
Even Peggy Noonan saw it then.
I wrote that post in February 2016. I still did not believe he could win.
Interestingly, the commenter I mentioned in that post, is now a big Trump fan.
As long as the ballot box continued to exist, this was the predictable outcome. More & more who are disenfranchised, fewer & fewer to pull the media puppet-strings … the buggers are going to be voted out, and blame the ‘populaists’.
So now Macron glowers at the Yellow Vests and issues vague threats. That should help … bwahaha.
===
In racing-cars, you can:
1.) make them cheaper
2.) make them faster
3.) make them durable
Pick any 2.
In world, we can have:
1.) Sovereignty
2.) Democracy
3.) Globalism
Pick any 2.
The old European Commonwealth was reasonable, but there is nothing reasonable about the EU.
I have grave fears for Europe. The Elites are becoming more and more scared. E.g., I read this morning that a German “somebody” said that AfD supporters should not be allowed to vote. Now, I strongly suspect that will go nowhere, but someone had to believe the statement was worth putting out…
People, as far as I can glean, are PISSED at migration, and being told they’re racist for protesting, and told they are greedy for not wanting to be bled dry by taxes, that they should be ashamed of their culture, race, identity, etc.
As Peter Grant said, nobody goes from zero to jackboot like the Europeans. We’re in for dire times I fear.
Read a report that the French police are now using semi-automatic weapons with live ammo against the yellow vests.
True?
Again: One of the observations the formerly bow-tied, still youngish, but much more serious Tucker Carlson has repeatedly made, is as to how deeply contemptuous, and even hostile in a fundamental and existential sense, the bureau dwelling and financial sector so-called “elites” are toward what once was the productive and moral center of the population.
If you don’t need them, you ignore them, figuring it’s a big world.
If they don’t need you, they slate you for culling: as the world can never be big enough to encompass both you and their self-regard.
Although many of us had surmised, and even stated for some time now, that the bureau dwellers seemed determined to wreck the middle class and import a replacement population of tractable foreigners as peons, it was had to process it as a fact, even as one confronted what looked to be an inescapable conclusion.
The obvious question is “Why?” Why, do the string-pullers hate middle America so much that they use every legal stratagem they can access within the very system which has given them all they have – including a safe space to operate in – in order to tear that system down?
What do these little godlets find so delicious, that they would gnaw away at the very branch on which they are perched? The best Carlson can come up with, and I can do no better, is their egotism, and its drive for power and control over everyone and everything.
Anyway, this phenomenon of the self-regarding, inhibition free “elites” using the laws of the republic and the free market in order to undermine both it and its historic beneficiaries, is why indignant, impotent, sputtering, born to lose and “at-least-ill-die-with-my-self-respect-intact conservatives have become such a worldwide effen joke.
Britain is now in the midst of the dilemma left us by Democrats. Manufacturing has left Britain and all that is left is the financial sector from Europe BREXIT would harm that remaining remnant of an economy. We may have averted that disaster by electing Trump.
Meanwhile, the SJWs are after Steve King for saying what we all think .
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans voted Monday night to strip Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, of all committee assignments after he appeared to wonder when “white supremacist” and “white nationalist” became offensive terms.
The Iowa Republican is slated to lose his post on the House Judiciary Committee, including his expected spot as the top Republican on the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice. He was also set to lose his spots on the House Agriculture Committee, a key position given the importance of farming to his home state, and on the Small Business Committee.
“We will not be seating Steve King on any committees in the 116th Congress,” McCarthy, a Republican from California, told reporters after meeting with the House GOP steering committee. “It was a unanimous decision by steering in light of the comments. These are not the first time we’ve heard these comments.”
An old statement of Voltaire is that “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
It is rather simple, the peasants are woke 🙂 and realize the globalists do not care if they live or die, and that they die is a feature, not a bug. It is merely a question if the peasants swing hard left or hard right.
Richard:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6586991/French-riot-police-using-semi-automatic-weapons-against-Yellow-Vest-protestors.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
That Hideous Strength by C S Lewis is not well wrote for people as “educated” as us in the early twenty first century. The setting though is chilling when looking at the globalists agenda(s).
Granted that this situation is as described, the other development–running in parallel with this one–the situation that will make things even worse, will have even more impact, more dire consequence, is the fact that quite a few of the nations of Western Europe have just invited in way too many, often hostile, un-assimilable Muslims into their countries.
In effect–and often with much jubilation–they’ve pulled the Trojan Horse past the city gates, and into the heart of the city and, I fear that, by this incredibly ignorant, stupid, short-sighted, suicidal act, they have sealed their fates.
It is very tempting to make the comparison of the Roman’s fatal error of enlisting large numbers of barbarians in the Roman army and, then, allowing them to settle in Roman territory.
One can argue about whether this was the major cause for the fall of Rome, but it certainly didn’t help, and was likely a major factor in enabling that Fall to happen.
The historical rule-of-thumb is that it takes two 36-year generations (72 years) to effect major socio-cultural change in any large-scale political structure. For example, Russia’s Soviet satellite regimes lasted from 1917 – 1989, the end of the Berlin Wall, while Europe’s post-WWII agglomeration persisted 1946 – 2018.
Details vary, but in generational terms this phenomenon extends indefinitely backwards: From 1788, 36-year U.S. eras comprise 1824, 1860, 1896; 1932, 1968, and currently 2004 – 2040.
Extending such inflection-points to socio-cultural realms, epochs have been diminishing by 25-year periods from time immemorial; specifically, from a baseline point of AD 1600, eras have progressively foreshortened from 125 years (1725) to 100 years (1825), 75 years (1900), then 50 and 25 years (1950, 1975). From that last inflection-point, info-tech epochs expand rather than contract, to AD 2000 (25 years), 2050 (50 years), 2125 (75 years), and so on indefinitely.
On this basis, Europe –and the world’s– post-1945 period of anti-populist collectivist/Statist expansion is encountering its historic end. Quite likely, as Planet Earth enters a 70+ year Grand Solar Minimum on heels of a 140-year rebound from the 500-year Little Ice Age (c. AD 1350 – 1850/1890), the next 102-kiloyear Ice Age will commence full-force by AD 2350, a cyclical climatic phenomenon due primarily to plate tectonic dispositions traceable to late Pliocene times some 3.6 million YBP.
In any case, we expect that from c. AD 2050 – ’75 cybernetic “evolution” will have superseded organic, driving crypto-symbiontic entities off-Earth to giant intra-solar refugia drifting ever-outward to the stars.
Somewhat germane to this topic – the disenfranchisement of the non-city dwellers and the concentration of power (political, economic) within the confined enclaves of the uber liberal big cities – is that of the Electoral College here in the USA.
The geniuses (and they were) that wrote the US Constitution realized how easily the concentration of power within just a few big population centers could, for all intents and purposes, deny any ability of those residing outside of the population centers to have a voice in government.
And a voting system in which those selected to govern is based solely upon the popular vote would surely produce a govt. of, by and for the big city dwellers.
It is no coincidence that the democrats here are considering a Constitutional Amendment to abolish the Electoral College. After all, their contempt for and disgust of the “deplorable’s,” the gun and bible toting ignorant masses, the Walmart crowd, knows no bounds and if the efforts of the democrats are successful, any future candidate for President need merely campaign in at most 6 or 10 states and safely ignore the rest of the nation.
And one need not look only at national elections to see how the majority can impose their will upon a not so small minority.
Consider the State of New York; where the greater NYC region literally controls how the ENTIRE state is to be governed .
What about the wishes of those living in Upstate NY?
Why should NYC region dwellers (most of whom are totally clueless about the problems facing Up State New Yorkers and most likely have never, even ventured 50 miles north of NYC) have any say at all about the policies Up Staters wish to pursue?
Imagine if Up State NY residents had a say in NYC subway/bus schedules or how/when/if Rockaway Beach should operate. How would NYC dwellers like that?
Illinois, Calif, Pa, Oregon, Washington, also have this problem; big city domination of state policies that mostly ignore (or harm) non-city residents.
At least at the state level, changes must be made to allow states to split-up; this is the only way those presently lacking real representation will have an adequate voice in government. It will also dilute the power at the national level concentrated within the major big city population centers.
Easiest single-point solution for France and most of Western Europe: send the immigrants home who have not become citizens of their host country. And then require all citizens to obey the laws of their host country.
This eliminates the majority of the claims made by the outsiders against the insiders, and reduces the threat of Islam on the West. Suddenly native-born workers are an important resource and come out of the suburbs and back into French life in the big cities, racial justice is possible, and the no-go areas shrink and disappear.
On the comment at 10:02 last night: “White supremacist” and “white nationalist” are emphatically NOT what “Make America Great Again” are about. The concepts are just as offensive as the garbage coming from Louis Farrakhan.
Richard, the reports are true.
AFAIK nobody’s been shot yet as far as I know but they have been issued semi automatic weapons and ammo for them.
In the Netherlands and probably elsewhere there are random arrests of people wearing yellow reflective clothing under the excuse that these people are “threatening public order” or some such nonsense merely by walking around with it on their bodies.
JohnTyler,
Your analysis is spot on.
Our founders were worried about the urbanites having more power than the agrarians. Which was/is a proxie for centralized vs. diffused power. Perhaps what some call the Rural-Urban conflict.
Hamilton favored strong, central government aided by a central bank. Jefferson did not.
Guess which one the elites worship via popular culture?
Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!
E. Stratton…
Years back Sci Amer had a great mathematical analysis and modeling of various election landscapes focusing on how the electoral college really was the best… MY opinion is that its the best for the same reason we think its the worst. every one hates it!!! the worst of course is hated and that is easy to understand, but the best is also hated, for reasons that a good system that gives none advantage, peeves off those who wish a system that had some favors to exploit… [same thing with the exceptionally gifted once they grow up, the fantasy people use to fuel their damage of others and justification, means that the bottom hates cause they cant keep up, and the top hates cause they are kings of the hill and you not only are a potential threat, but get residence in their heads where you shouldn’t be.. you do not excel…]
3 world wars in the last century came boiling out of Europe.
Europe is wonderful to visit,
but politically they seem to embrace
suicidal crazy things like assimilisable immigration
and economically disastrous green scams.
The hoi polloi in the UK rose up against the EU, but their movement doesn’t have a leader. Maybe they will have one by the end of the day.
The hoi polloi in France are rising up against Macron, but their movement doesn’t have a leader. But the government might change that with one errant rifle round.
In the US, the hoi polloi, a/k/a the deplorables, are rising up against the elites. We have a leader.
Leftism/institutional rot always results in a government by the government and for the government, which invariably strips the resources of the serfs to support its pampered aristocracy.
Kate:
On the comment at 10:02 last night: “White supremacist” and “white nationalist” are emphatically NOT what “Make America Great Again” are about. The concepts are just as offensive as the garbage coming from Louis Farrakhan.
You might read what he said. If you are young enough, you might get to learn what a country run by nonwhites is like.
Concomitantly with the rise of the yellow jacket protests in Paris, I began reading “The Days of the French Revolution” by Christopher Hibbert. “It was like deja vu all over again.” (h/t Yogi)
ISTM that what we are seeing in France (and other EU countries) is a redux of the conditions that led to France’s original Revolution – a bifurcation of society into incompatible camps that had only one way to resolve their differences.
And, Yes, Macron is a “Fop” who, if he’s lucky, will “keep” his head.
Reading material for Kate.
In attacking Schumer, ostensibly a fellow progressive, Sarsour is claiming an intersectional bond forged in mutual victimization by whites — and thus older liberal Jews apparently either cannot conceive of such victimization or in fact are party to it. With a brief tweet, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez dismissed former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman’s worry over the current leftward drift of the new Democratic party. “New party, who dis?” she mocked, apparently suggesting that the 76-year-old former Democratic vice-presidential candidate was irrelevant to the point of nonexistence for the new progressive generation.
I read this morning that a federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s “right” to include a citizenship question in the census. In addition to the many excellent points made here about elites of business and politics who feel no allegiance to the majority of the populace, what is to be done with a judicial elite that seems determined to govern by decree, or at least to decree who may govern?
In answer to DNW–google “hatred of the good for being the good.” Emotionally, if not intellectually, they know that they are capable only of string-pulling, never of string-making. Their loud self-regard is meant to evade an internalized self-loathing.
“They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself.”
“I read this morning that a federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s “right” to include a citizenship question in the census.”
This is critically important to the left. Even if not a single illegal actually casts a vote in a federal election, the count of them skews the House of Representatives toward states full of illegals.
I just heard Daniel Hannan, former U.K. member to the EU Parliament, comment on the current Brexit turmoil. He stated that if the gov. forces another Brexit popular vote, it will almost certainly be rigged, “They’ll allow 16 year olds, and/or foreign nationals the vote; anything to guarantee a reversal of the original vote.”
My take on the Trump envy in Europe is that electing a Euro-Trump is a virtual impossibility. It was/is almost that here in the U.S. I suspect that the left can generate at least a couple million fraud votes here in the U.S. in a national election.
Like the other commenters, I think the electoral college is a major virtue of our system. Where is most of the fraud? CA, Chicago, and Philly are major areas. Those states can only be won once; extra fraud is wasted.
Here is a biased but seemingly knowledgeable account on how bad things are in Sweden.
Mike K, that’s a good article. I can’t imagine how you could have gotten the idea that I support Sarsour in any way. What I said was that I do not believe “America” is a necessarily “white” construct, whatever “white” means these days. Americans today are from all over the world. Americans of non-European ancestry are my neighbors, my fellow worshippers on Sunday, and members of my extended family. What we share is not ancestry or appearance but a common commitment to the American system of government, based on British notions of fundamental individual rights, property rights, and due process as refined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Britain. Whoever comes here, works hard, believes in self-reliance, and accepts our system of governance becomes part of us. This is not “white supremacy” and I cannot agree with the concept or the use of the term.
As to the color of the rulers and the quality of the government, as I recall the German administration under Hitler was awfully “white,” as were Lenin, Stalin, & Co. A fair number of the lousy African governments you may be thinking of are tribal and socialist, both of which lead to the plague of corruption these places suffer from.
I’m nearly 70, for what it’s worth.
Richard says/asks: “Read a report that the French police are now using semi-automatic weapons with live ammo against the yellow vests.
True?”
False. If police were “using” such options, it would not be “a” report, but 1,000s. Police have firearms, they have not been used.
=====
JTW contributes: “In the Netherlands and probably elsewhere there are random arrests of people wearing yellow reflective clothing under the excuse that these people are “threatening public order” or some such nonsense merely by walking around with it on their bodies.
Anybody, anything can put on a Yellow Vest. Including say undercover officers … not to mention an array of terrorists, immigrant & domestic gangs, and garden-variety normal people acting outside the normal bounds.
I’ve seen plenty of pictures of protester-behavior that has gone well-past the point of warranting an arrest.
And there are also actors out there, for whom under the right circumstances, firearms will be the proper response.
I daresay, this is all to the benefit & support of the legitimate Yellow Vest protests. Keeping the real bad-guys at bay, allows the protests to continue. Allows normal Parisians to continue supporting them (as they disrupt their city & home, which not fun for them). Thugs and assassins and worse are out there, and it would be derelict not to be prepared, and to send the appropriate message.
There’s a lot to be said about that, from numerous perspectives. I’ll try to limit it.
I might mention for example that in debates with leftists I have been accused of being a “Randian” myself, though I don’t think I am; and Rand was most definitely not covered in any of the many courses in philosophy I took in school.
Or, I might say how well this comports with Stephen Hicks’ analysis of postmodernism as being driven, or at least underlain by a psychology of “ressentiment”.
And then there is the equally disturbing fact which we secularists might discover just as I did while perusing an old 1950’s copy of the Baltimore Catechism (which had been provided to my non-practicing Protestant father when he married a Catholic) and wherein the sin of “envy” was defined just as the links in your Google suggestion did: Not merely as a jealous impulse, or a wish to have the same thing as the successful and possibly virtuous one does, but a desire that the one having or doing, suffer comparative damage and loss.
We might also reflect on the paradox that a strictly secular philosophical anthropology which views men as:
1. essentially characterized as ambulatory bags of pain and pleasure-motivated appetites,
2. driven ultimately by unconscious and amoral genetic programs,
3. seeking status or “acceptance” or dominance in the collective or the “pool”,
… leads, amazingly to the same ultimate dynamic you and others describe: A mindless, submoral (from a classical perspective) drive toward inclusion, unconditional acceptance and accommodation, and eventually the opportunity for dominance; all accompanied by a hatred” (in classical terms) of any other being which is taking its own non intersecting path. That, apart from their conceit of possessing special creative powers by which they generate new social and physical realities, is pretty much the baseline if not sum of the progressive’s moral anthropology.
I think that the average utilitarian secular collectivist, may not have worked out or faced all the details of his program explicitly, but it is evident by their language that their view of what it means to be alive and immersed in “the human condition” is wholly conditioned by the notion of acceptance in and the approbation of some secular collective or another; which, in a Godless world, functions as the only entity capable of recognizing the skin-bag’s existence, of knowing its name, of granting it favors or emotional support, and providing that ultimate nirvana into which it may merge, become part of the world-god, and escape from the terror of its being an alienated self.
Ted Clayton:
For what it’s worth*.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6593807/Shocking-video-shows-fireman-Yellow-Vest-protestor-shot-head-French-police.html
* Also a protest song in the 60’s by The Buffalo Springfield, with the refrain “Something’s happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there; telling me, I got to beware.”
Ray Van Dune on January 15, 2019 at 12:01 pm at 12:01 pm said:
…what is to be done with a judicial elite that seems determined to govern by decree, or at least to decree who may govern?
* * *
Nice phraseolgy; quite accurately decides the situation.
See this on the ramifications.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/supreme_court_have_democrats_salted_the_earth_for_a_ginsburg_replacement.html
CapnRusty,
Thanks for the link & input. The article says the fireman Yellow Vest protester who has been injured, was struck by a “flash ball gun”, which is not a firearm.
This flash ball is presumably a type of non-lethal crowd/riot-control device. Rubber bullets and bean-bags are also capable of injuring people. I don’t know at the moment what a flash ball is, but I do know that even tear-gas dispersal cannisters that ‘pop’ amount to low-grade explosives … nothing you want in your hand or pocket when it goes off … much less up against the back of the head.
I can barely download a partial page of the Daily Mail, before it locks up my browser. I live in remote, rough country and am still on copper wire, and cannot stream video. I did copy the text of the article, and read it. On occasion, I can find copies of a video that are available for download; once on my box, I can then play it. Much media-video, though, is only available embedded.
So no, as far we know, thus far, knock-on-wood, there remains no reported use of firearms.
Like I say, I could not view this video, to see how egregious the action of the policeman was (or wasn’t). It’s possible, it does happen, that charges could be laid against him. Cops, and soldiers, sometimes ‘lose it’, and should be brought before justice.
It’s risky, Cap’n & all, to be in crowds that are ‘pushing it’. There is a point at which authorities are justified in ‘pushing back’, and once that happens, very commonly, mayhem & panic ensue and there is suddenly a drastically reduced ability to care for your own person or loved ones.
I support the protesters and protests, but we still live under Laws (thankfully) and I also support lawful policing of the streets, protesting crowds, etc.
Kate on January 15, 2019 at 7:50 am at 7:50 am said:
On the comment at 10:02 last night: “White supremacist” and “white nationalist” are emphatically NOT what “Make America Great Again” are about. The concepts are just as offensive as the garbage coming from Louis Farrakhan.
* * *
Steve King answers back, with the construction that stood out to me at the beginning of the brouhaha. He wasn’t promoting “white nationalist” & “white supremacist” but objecting to the left equating them with Western civilization.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/rep-steve-king-releases-statement-debunks-new-york-times-report-and-outrageous-accusations-of-racism/
“One of my quotes in a New York Times story has been completely mischaracterized. Here’s the context I believe accurately reflects my statement.
In a 56 minute interview, we discussed the changing use of language in political discourse. We discussed the worn out label “racist” and my observation that other slanderous labels have been increasingly assigned to Conservatives by the Left, who injected into our current political dialog such terms as Nazi, Fascist, “ White Nationalist, White Supremacist,— Western Civilization, how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”…just to watch Western Civilization become a derogatory term in political discourse today. Clearly, I was only referencing Western Civilization classes. No one ever sat in a class listening to the merits of white nationalism and white supremacy.
When I used the word “THAT” it was in reference ONLY to Western Civilization and NOT to any previously stated evil ideology ALL of which I have denounced.
My record as a vocal advocate for Western Civilization is nearly as full as my record in defense of Freedom of Speech.”
However, any conservative / Republican who doesn’t go to great pains to parse every statement he makes, including the words “and” and “the,” will have (and always has had) the problem of misconstrued sound-bites.
No one on the right gets the kind of pass that Obama and Democrats routinely have handed to them by the press.
Ted:
The projectile which hit the protester (reported to be a fireman) was a “controversial flash ball” and the newspaper said he suffered severe brain injury and is now in an induced coma. The pictures accompanying the article showed a lot of blood (but head wounds are always bloody).
Macron is playing this quite badly. He seems quite “out of touch” with the ordinary Frenchman, but I expect that’s the case with most graduates of the École nationale d’administration.
KyndyllG on January 15, 2019 at 12:48 pm at 12:48 pm said:
…Even if not a single illegal actually casts a vote in a federal election, the count of them skews the House of Representatives toward states full of illegals.
* *
This has been true since we repealed the old 3/5ths-of-a-person counting rule after the Civil War. We changed it to 5/5ths of all persons, fudging the tax aspects.
Wikipedia: Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) later superseded Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and explicitly repealed the compromise. It provides that “representatives shall be apportioned … counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
Pro and cons of the original debate: the North wanted slaves counted for tax purposes, but not for representation, and the South lobbyed for the opposites. The compromise lumped taxes & representation into one bucket.
Back in the day of both original and repeal, however, there was no welfare magnet and illegal immigration (once that was determined by US statues) was very low, so most persons were legal residents or citizens.
Now funds flowing TO the states based on residents, rather than FROM the states, has changed the debate, because it actually makes a state’s priorities complementary instead of conflicting: the Blue states want high counts for increased funds AND for representation.
Red states are still conflicted: wanting federal funds to pay for the illegals among them, but not wanting the increased Blue representation to drive the policy debate in Congress.
https://www.thoughtco.com/should-us-census-count-illegal-immigrants-3320973
Different pros and cons here.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/19/603629576/skipping-the-2020-census-citizenship-question-youll-still-be-counted
FWIW Snopes waffles again on the true-false question of including the question in the past.
Ted Clayton on January 14, 2019 at 7:36 pm at 7:36 pm said:
…
In world, we can have:
1.) Sovereignty
2.) Democracy
3.) Globalism
Pick any 2.
* * *
I’m not entirely sure that Globalism as currently practiced can be compatible with either of the others. Maybe it depends on who, exactly, is included in the voting Demos.
CapnRusty,
Yeah, ‘head-wounds’ … the canvas made more boxers punch-drunk than right-hooks. Person goes blank and keels over head-first, it’s bad. When it’s a brick-paved street, with little gaps between them exposing the sharp corners … yeah, that would do it.
The other thing is objects (bricks?) thrown by protesters, intended for cops. This is a much more common source of serious head-injury in protesters … than protesters like to fess.
That said, if clear video does show the cop going bonkers and misusing his crowd-control device, then investigate & prosecute.
=====
Macron has watched the basis for his program go flying out the window. If he’s really as good as Brigitte has always thought he is, he’ll find a way to get out in front of about a million of those Yellow Vests slowly flowing up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe.
Although he is handicapped by the École … she isn’t.
AesopFan notes,
…In world, we can have:
1.) Sovereignty
2.) Democracy
3.) Globalism
Pick any 2.
* * *
I’m not entirely sure that Globalism as currently practiced can be compatible with either of the others. Maybe it depends on who, exactly, is included in the voting Demos.
=====
China might accept 2 + 3.
Russia might go for 1 + 3.
But of course, those are the two big caveats to any global system.
No, it doesn’t compute for me either. It’s all a high-level shell-game, and there is no pea.
In Europe all establishment parties are bleeding voters to either far-left or far-right new contenders. Europe is on fast track to Weimar Germany, where Communists and Nazi were fighting on the streets for political dominance. Now in different countries the outcomes can be different: Eastern and Central Europe lean to far-right, Spain, Greece and Italy to far-left. The most obvious result would be the dissolution of EU and its breaking into opposing blocks. Germany could go both ways, so it is the key to the whole charade.