More on Flynn. And still more.
I know there’s other news today, too, besides the Flynn case. But it’s the Flynn case that’s on my mind.
It seems to me it illustrates the fact that, step by slow step over the last couple of decades (maybe longer), but particularly since the Obama years, this nation has lost its way. And by “this nation” I don’t just mean the Deep State or the government, I mean the people as well. Maybe that’s even mostly what I mean.
I spend a lot of time on this blog blaming the MSM. And they are most definitely very much to blame, although they are not solely to blame. Long ago, and with increasing boldness, they dropped any objectivity they might have once had and have become purely partisan actors, convinced of their own rightness as well as their own righteousness, and willing to spread any lie and to cover up any politically inconvenient truth in the process.
Paradoxically, even as their lies become more blatant and more easily disproved, and public polls indicate that the vast majority of the public has lost faith in the press’s veracity, the MSM’s enormous influence continues. The fact that their propaganda works as well as it does is in turn a reflection of other collapses in our society in the realms of education, morality, religion, the family, entertainment, literature, and art.
A seamless whole, working together.
The vicious campaign that’s been going on among Democrats, the left, and the MSM (but I repeat myself) during Trump’s term as president to get the American people to not just disagree with him but to hate him has – and I know this from personal observation – caused many otherwise (seemingly) sane and kindly people to wish him dead. And if he can’t be made dead, then at the very least any method of getting him out of office is completely okay and even laudable. The accomplishment doesn’t have to be consistent with any previous rule of law or procedure put in place to protect us all. The ends fully justify the means, although the people who support that are probably loathe to admit it in quite those terms. But if Trump is a figure of supposedly Hitlerian evil, then anything is justified in order to take him out.
And anything is justified in order to take out anyone who has had anything to do with him. Which brings us round once again to Flynn.
As terrible as the Deep State’s actions against Flynn (and Trump) have been, I have come to a point of cynicism so deep that I believe the majority of Americans (or at least a very large number) who hear about them will either ignore them, applaud them, justify them, or excuse them, and we will slide further and further down this terrible path.
I’m sorry to be so pessimistic. I hope I’m being too pessimistic.
Now that I’ve aired my gloom, I’m going to add more details on the Flynn case. Sean Davis at The Federalist writes this:
New evidence released Thursday shows that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), closed its criminal counterintelligence investigation of retired Gen. Mike Flynn on January 4, 2017, only to have it reopened by Peter Strzok…
“No derogatory information was identified in FBI holdings,” the memo stated.
According to the FBI document, the federal law enforcement agency also asked a redacted agency, likely the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to conduct a similar search of its own records for derogatory information against Flynn, who at the the time was the incoming National Security Adviser for then-President-elect Donald Trump.
“No derogatory information was reported back to the FBI,” the memo concluded.
The case was about to be closed because after an enormous amount of digging and hunting, there was nothing. Nada. You’d think that would be the end of it.
But no:
“Hey if you haven’t closed RAZOR, don’t do so yet,” Strzok texted at 2:14 p.m. on January 4, 2017.
“Razor still open,” Strzok immediately texted to Lisa Page, a former assistant to fired former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. Strzok and Page reportedly had an adulterous affair that was captured by their text messages to each other.
Additional texts from Strzok on February 10 also confirm suspicions that Strzok personally rewrote the official FBI account of his and FBI agent Joe Pientka’s interview of Flynn on January 24, 2017.
I will note, for what it’s worth, that January 4, 2017, the day Strzok wrote to make sure the Flynn case would stay open, was one day after Schumer’s statement made on Jan 3, 2017:
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
This re-opening occurred about 20 minutes after a draft of the document closing the case was circulated around the FBI.
I don’t think the American people in general are blameless but it’s awfully hard for the average person to do the right thing when all the Very Important People are telling them to do the wrong thing. This is a rot that starts at the top.
Mike
Yes, “a very large number… will slide further and further down this terrible path”, unless DJT wins in Nov., and Barr/ Durham (and their allies in the legislatures) massively clean house, first vs. the D.S., and then vs. the MSM, and in the realms of education, entertainment, literature, and art.
I’m guessing that it is still possible, for the truth about the degeneracy of the current Left, to wake up more of the saner Elites (e.g. those Dems/ Lefties who retain some respect for Dersh/ Greenwald).
Book it, the (anti-Dersh) D.S., and the (anti-Greenwald) Left, see the stakes here, and thus will move heaven and earth to beat DJT.
These next 6 months will be a drama, unlike anything the Western world has seen, since the Nazi’s and Commies were Duking it out on the streets of Berlin etc., c. 1931-32.
Another (long shot) road to major change may be, a blowback result from TPTB imposing the lockdown on the whole country.
Archdruid J.M. Greer sees a crumbling of support for Big Ed (as well as of, support for the idea that the two-income household should the let the money economy take over everything), see
https://www.Ecosophia.net/on-the-far-side-of-Silence/ .
The biggest problem is that most of ’em (if not all of ’em) are beyond shame.
Way beyond.
Nor do they feel any guilt.
There’s no OODA loop there.
OK, the ONLY question is, how are we gonna cover this, um, thing up.
(Hey, let’s take a chapter out of the Chinese recipe book!)
Yep, they’re patriots all.
The cream of the crop.
The best and the brightest (TM).
The cutting edge of morality.
The epitome of virtue.
The people everyone should surely trust to run the country….
Barry, of course, the Lefty brats are beyond shame.
I’m talking about disgusted players in the ranks of the D.S., and Wall St., and academia etc., to whom folks like Dersh have appeal, and to whom it must be ever more clear, that these brats are killing the goose that’s been laying the golden eggs.
Had no such players existed, the brats would’ve long ago succeeded, in stopping DJT’s 2016 win, or in driving him from office.
Somewhere, somehow, major players stuck wrenches into the Left’s schemes, and may continue to be ever-more emboldened,
by his success in thwarting these schemes.
The more emboldened they get, the more likely they’ll get the stones, to give these brats (and, crucially, their liberal sycophants) the earfuls they deserve.
The more these sycophants suspect that DJT’s pals are getting the upper hand, the more the former will move to bug-out, and leave the brats to their fate.
A big tell will be, how many D.S. folks flip toward Barr/ Durham, vs. how many dare those two to take the Conspiracy etc. charges to trial.
Of course, if those two dare not bring such charges, then, indeed, the Republic is indeed due for its Last Rites.
let durham interrogate skunks like Nikole Wallace and bankrupt them with legal fees
If Durham does such things, quite a few of these liberals, who are really shallow people, will (when more Righties get the stones to stand up to them) flee to the tall grass (and sing on their rivals for status among the Beautiful People?).
Doesnt matter what happened here..
Judge in michigan just set the blueprint for our loss of rights.
you see… your rights are secondary to the public interest..
and the courts have no ability to 2nd guess what the leaders say is that interest.
https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/04/judge-rules-michigan-stay-at-home-order-doesnt-infringe-on-constitutional-rights.html
A Michigan judge on Wednesday found that while Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order does “temporary harm” to the constitutional rights of Michigan residents, the harm doesn’t outweigh the public health risk posed by the coronavirus outbreak.
-==-=-=-
“Monday morning quarterbacking is the role of sports fans, not courts reviewing the factual basis supporting executive action to protect the public health,” Murray said. “Instead, it is the role of the executive and legislative branches to determine what steps are necessary when faced with a public health crisis.”
game, set, match..
the way its worded out circularly, you have no rights if they have an excuse they think is good enough in the public interest to deny you your rights.
game, set, match..
our rights this past 24 hours have been nullified..
Peter Strzok is rather like the Lois Lerner of the FBI. While Lerner may have had a bigger overall impact in terms of throwing the outcomes of elections, Strzok clearly had more power to directly hurt individuals. And weirdly, Strzok was like Forest Gump in that he always and seemingly accidently ended up in a controlling middle man position for whatever politically important thing that was happening at the FBI.
James Comey and IRS Director Koskinen are two peas in a pod. Koskinen oversaw an enormous destruction of evidence that could have been used to prosecute Lerner.
Bankrupt with legal fees all the MSM enablers of the plotters. Interrogate the skunk Nikole Wallace and her staff on how much she colluded with Comey et al. If Gestapo Chief Müllers Stormtroopers can bankrupt or severely hurt McFarland, Hicks, Flynn and Caputo the MSM deserves the same.
“our rights this past 24 hours have been nullified….”, until Barr keeps his vow, to bring DoJ into the appeals which will ensue.
Rep. Devin Nunes was ON FIRE on Lou Dobbs tonight!
This man knows IT ALL. He is worthy of being our next President after Donald J, Trump. Were he not squeaky-clean he could not have survived the aggressive smear campaign against him for the last 3 years.
” Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said f[our] three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether”
ONLY BY FIRE IS FASCISM FINISHED
Year upon year in this world’s dark forests,
Heaped at the foot of the trees,
The tangles and bundles of dead brush increase
Which sunlight shall never seize.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
The ash that descends in the clearest of skies?
The leapers that swam down the stones?
Best answered by bombs from mid-heaven at prayer
With the fire that hollows the bones.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
If their god decrees war, God’s war shall prevail.
His lessons are seared in the stone.
?No dreams shall defer, nor wishes erase,
The answer that’s burned in the bone.
The vampire by sunlight or stake.
The wolfman by silver in bone.
The demon by book, chant, and pentagram.
The fascist by fire alone.
Only by fire is fascism finished.
This sin is demanded that your line may live.
Only through fire is freedom reborn.
Each generation pulls the sword from the stone.
Tucker Carlson asked a key question of Andrew McCarthy on his show tonight.
Why such early, strenuous, and elaborate efforts by the operatives of the Obama Administration and the DOJ/FBI to get rid of Gen. Michael Flynn?
Answer—In the very early days of the Trump administration—the fateful set up interview of Flynn was held just four days after the Inauguration—both President Trump and the few staffers around him then were essentially novices in Washington, in many situations still flailing around, and getting their bearings, while Flynn was a seasoned and battle-tested professional who had vast knowledge and experience in intelligence, military and foreign policy, in spycraft, and in other essential matters.
General Flynn knew all the key players, and he knew about them, how they operated, and what their agendas and objectives were.
Flynn knew how things were done in Washington, and I would guess, where quite a few of the bodies were buried; he would have been an invaluable ally, guide, and protector.
General Flynn would have been a key and essential source of informed and canny advice for the new President Trump and aware of, and likely able to effectively foresee and counter, all the things that Obama’s operatives and the Democrats would try to throw at President Trump and his new Administration.
So, that Knight had to be swept off the board, so as to leave the new President and his staff much more vulnerable, much less powerful and effective than they could have been with the advice, insights, and help of Gen. Flynn, and, thus, much less organized, much more easily lied to and manipulated than they would have been if General Flynn had still been the National Security Advisor, and on guard.
Old saying, from somewhere – people have access to the soap box, the ballot box, the jury, and the cartridge box to seek redress of grievances.
The soap box has been rendered moot by increasingly omnipresent censorship by the left, everywhere from the so-called mainstream media to facebook to youtube. I expect before the upcoming election the media will decline to run any ad by the Trump campaign or GOP if it has any chance of being effective.
The ballot box has been almost mooted by such policies as “settling” mass numbers of “refugees” in red-state areas, mail-in voting, same-day registration, provisional ballots, the motor-voter law, ballot harvesting, and simple fraud. Occasionally surprises still happen, but changes to the made since 2018 have made surprises much less likely.
The jury box- I note the curious case of General Flynn. The is no excuse, none at all, for the treatment he has received by the government, presuming the government respects the Rule of Law. If they can do that to him, they can do that to anyone. And this has been going on for years. Hence, I conclude the jury box is a sham, not least because I know democrats charged with corruption in democrat-ruled areas will skate, while Republicans will get the Flynn treatment.
What does that leave us?
neo,
It pains me to read such open cynicism from you. I agree with all you wrote. I do not think your cynicism is misplaced, but I am sorry for all American patriots who are awake and witnessing what is being done to the Constitution. I try to keep a positive, optimistic spirit and to not lose hope, but it does seem we are running out of time.
Attorney General Barr seems like a diligent, smart and honest man, but I’ve been disappointed so many times before when evidence was overwhelming.
I’ve always been pretty cynical and having spent most of my career in the Federal government (Census Bureau), I’ve learned not to expect too much from government agencies. But these last four years have been truly shocking to me. I just didn’t think it was possible that the FBI and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies would actually plot to overthrow a democratically elected president. I’m also very pessimistic that any of the people responsible (Brennan, Comey, Clapper etc.) will ever face any consequences.
I agree that something has gone very wrong in this country in the last few decades (or maybe it was always this way and I’m just naive). Maybe the tipping point was when everybody knew that Clinton was a sexual predator but we decided to look the other way because the economy was good. I don’t know. But it seems this country is just hanging together by a thread. I look at the Corona virus threat as a sort of stress test for the country and its institutions. So far we’re not handling it very well. I’m retired now and my life is mostly over but I do fear that my children may be destined to live in “interesting times”.
Xennady on April 30, 2020 at 10:22 pm said:
Old saying, from somewhere – people have access to the soap box, the ballot box, the jury, and the cartridge box to seek redress of grievances.
* * *
I looked that up last night, after reading through the comments on yesterday’s posts.
https://www.johnlocke.org/update/liberties-dependent-upon-the-ballot-box-the-jury-box-and-the-cartridge-box/
As usual, people keep adding pieces to the original three.
https://www.nolanchart.com/article5030-the-five-boxes-of-liberty-html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
AesopFan,
Thanks for that info. I remember where I originally saw that idea, and that I have since seen it elsewhere online, but I had no idea where it originated.
This is why fighting the Deep State is not about a stupid human war, using your lawyers to interpret the law (because they don’t take orders from you), or electing a Hero King Trum to drain the swamp.
It’s a lot more WORK. If you do too much work you’ll end up like Breitbart, Clinton people, Epstein, or John F Kennedy.
But wait — there’s more!
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/04/30/dan-bongino-identifies-several-overlooked-details-it-was-worse-than-we-thought/
Bongino covers a lot of territory, so best to RTWT, but here is the highlights reel.
The points are:
Leaking the Flynn-Kislyak call to the media (a felony by whoever did it);
Planting a story in the WaPo to induce Flynn to relax his guard when the FBI came by;
The Bob Mueller Special Counsel team may have already had the documents the DOJ just turned over to Flynn;
Review of the motives for getting rid of Flynn – there were several reasons;
Matthew M on April 30, 2020 at 7:03 pm said:
… What were members of the Obama administration up to that compelled them to break the law —and rule-of-law norms— to stop Trump and Flynn from undoing or uncovering?
There’s also a more general condition in the zeitgeist that worries me: if the mainstream media does not report something, then it did not happen in the minds of society as a collective. If something untrue is trumpeted, then it did happen. Propaganda, repression and framing the debate are successfully applied by a corrupt class who accrue prestige and riches in ways that can only be described as fraud, theft and oppression if described honestly. T
* * *
A very apt summation of the danger from the MSM, which has been discussed quite often by Neo and others here.
As to the question about the danger to Obama & Co. from Flynn: check out the link to Bongino’s report which I just posted.
aNanyMouse on April 30, 2020 at 7:04 pm said:
Another (long shot) road to major change may be, a blowback result from TPTB imposing the lockdown on the whole country.
Archdruid J.M. Greer sees a crumbling of support for Big Ed (as well as of, support for the idea that the two-income household should the let the money economy take over everything), see
https://www.Ecosophia.net/on-the-far-side-of-Silence/ .
* * *
Excellent post – thanks for the link.
The final graf is inspirational, but maybe a little grandiose for us deplorable clingers, who just want to live better than we’ve been doing for a long time.
I initially took issue with one thing Greer posited, but have since reconsidered:
Judging from who is fighting to extend the lockdowns, and who is trying to get free, I thought first that TPTB – SJW/Left/Democrats – who have been exposed and interrupted by the changes Greer describes are trying frantically to figure out how to get the liberated people back on the treadmill, and need time to get something planned. (Or they could just be socialists doing what socialists do: destroying lives and economies.)
On further consideration, though, I think he could be speaking of the people who have bought into the premises of the old society – SJW/Left/Democrats – and don’t know how to go forward in the way he describes, because those solutions are the ones they have been taught to look on as, well, deplorable.
J. E. Dyer connects all the dots — and I mean ALL — to answer the real question of why it was so important to the Establishment aka Deep State, or whatever you want to call it, to take down Trump by any means possible. She answers the question that has cropped up in different forms throughout the exposure of the perfidy underlying, and propelling, the Russia-Impeachment stories.
There is a long, long preface before this quote, and all of it is “required reading” — even though the detail is mind-boggling, most of you have read it all somewhere before.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/04/30/beyond-the-deep-state-motive-for-sedition/
I won’t spoil the plot by disclosing the twist at the end.
Here are some people who probably didn’t read Greer’s article, but are validating his assertions.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/04/30/nyc-lifers-now-fleeing-coronavirus-say-theyll-never-go-back/
By Jonathan Turley, who is not exactly a MAGA stalwart.
But who is one of the few remaining honest Democrats.
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/495405-michael-flynn-case-should-be-dismissed-to-preserve-justice
Excellently crafted statement of what we’ve learned over the last few days.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/30/jim-jordan-discusses-newly-release-fbi-documents-in-case-against-michael-flynn/
The only “whistle-blower” in DC was the one who tried to frame President Trump.
Holy cow, Aesop, that is one extraordinary article.
Actually, “extraordinary” isn’t quite the word.
It’s practically the magnum opus…
…of tangled threads.
Looks like we are more screwed than ever we thought.
Would be “funny” if Trump’s the one to cut the Gordian knot.
So…, does Emmet Sullivan toss this case ?
Got some friends and relations who have. . what would you call it? Gone nuts on Trump. Not politically or esthetically opposed. Just freaking nuts. Said to one recently….collusion obstruction was going to do it, by golly. Fade. Ukraine….fade but we got a good look at the Biden family business. Something something was going to do it this time. Fade. Now its Kung Flu. Fade.”Orangemanbad took you down some strange alleys.”
Meantime, the most unhinged, unconnected from reality, howls about Trump’s way of speaking. Use of insulting adjectives as if they’re objective facts (nouns) no matter how obviously false they are.
Trump promoted HCL….they hated it, were all over it. Unsafe. Untried. No studies….. (Just for grins, I invited them to find a nifty drug advertised on television which had fewer negative side effecfs–stated in the ad–than HCL. Nothing, but they kept on.)
They’re never wrong. At worst, something fades and they’re on to the next. The C19 death toll….Viet Nam. The VN casualties are on the high end of seasonal flu deaths which happen every year. EVERY YEAR. But, no, Trump! Asian flu, by population ratio, would have killed 211k Americans. Ike’s fault?
This is strange. It’s as if there had been an immense build up of some kind of pressure based on….something and passing all rational thought. Just waiting to be unleashed. It had nothing to do with Trump. Waiting…..and then it’s assigned to Trump and the folks I refer to lose their rationality.. But the funny thing is…they never note they’re wrong. Over and over. it would be one thing if the operatives and manipulators and the HOA school grads who’d gotten into government kept being wrong and lying and lying. The people to whom I refer all have actual lives. Long, in the case of my peers, with experiences from civil rights to Viet Nam. From struggles with health and bereavement. Success in work, in second careers.
And Trump just exploded in their heads.
A younger one says he will never forgive those who voted for Trump. He ignores, cannot be brought to address Cuomo sending the infected elderly to senior facilities. This is the odd thing. Ask the question. Make the point. It’s like shooting BBs at a bowling ball. MASSIVE DEATHS IN NURSING HOMES? TRUMP!
Like a lot of retirees, my wife and I spend a few hours a week in service activities. Meals on Wheels, Feeding America, some personal help with folks who need it. Nothing to brag about. There are lots who are more active than we. But in this crowd, those who get out and do for others…we don’t see this level of Trump hysteria. The SPEW (Self Professed Exceptionally Wonderful) do not report for duty.
At this point, I wouldn’t trust them to baby sit my Pet Rock. They’re entirely irrational.
Trump wasn’t trailing this with him when he came along. It, whatever it is, was just waiting. I can see strong political feelings, but this is people deliberately avoiding learning not to step on that rake. Again and again
AesopFan,
Thanks for those links. I would note that Dan Bongino has been doing great work for years on this. More importantly, he does it in a way that is accessible to people outside our ‘inside baseball’ bubble.
Bongino’s podcast is my daily listen, before I start reading for the day.
Artfldgr,
Here’s an idea for you:
https://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/2020/04/products-that-are-not-made-in-china.html?m=1
So, I know I’m not cynical enough. Or when I think I am, some new piece of info comes along and forces me to reevaluate.
But I am still very much bothered by AG Barr.
Where I live and work, if an Assistant District Attorney we’re found to be prosecuting a case based on lies and political entrapment, our District Attorney (who was an Eagle Scout and has a sparkling reputation in terms of honesty and integrity*) would do two things:
1) He would order that ADA to withdraw.
2) He would fire that ADA.
At the least, why hasn’t AG Barr pulled the prosecution? I get why Trump’s hands are tied, at least politically.
For Barr, it can’t only be the way it would look politically. A decent man would not allow a man to be railroaded. And we are continuously told Barr is a decent man. So what is AG Barr’s angle? He has to have an angle. And I can’t quite bring myself to believe the “4D Chess” theory that it’s Flynn who is entrapping the corrupt Federal Prosecutors and the FBI. I’ve read that. It would be amazing if true, and might even explain Barr’s lack of action. But I just don’t see it.
*This actually happened two years ago. Two men, a father and son, were indicted for first degree murder of their neighbor. The ADA who brought the case in front of the Grand Jury was familiar with both families. And was friends with the murdered neighbor’s daughter. It later came to light that the ADA manipulated evidence brought before the Grand Jury, hiding exculpatory evidence. And this came out during trial, where the same ADA was prosecuting. He was still hiding it. But a secretary in the DA’s office found the evidence accidentally and, not knowing about the ADA’s shenanigans, automatically sent it to the defendant’s attorney as per procedure.
When it all came to light, the DA entered the courtroom with the ADA the next morning. The ADA made a motion to withdraw, which the defense did not oppose, of course. And then the DA fired the ADA on the record in court. It was quite a day! There’s a reason why our DA is held in high esteem though. The two defendants actually shook his hand after.
The ADA in question is used to a different regimen. Never caught. Or, if caught, can depend on a sympathy card from the local bar association. “Better luck next time”.
I might, next time I talk to an attorney, ask about why they don’t disbar crooked prosecutors.
Richard Aubrey,
I’ve seen one crooked prosecutor get disbarred.
In this case, I don’t know if the ADA in question was disbarred but I know he eventually moved out of state because no local firms would hire him.
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.”
Basically, this is an assertion that the officials of the American government at any moment hold their offices only by sufferance of the “intelligence community”, just as in many 3rd-world countries, the officials hold their offices only by sufferance of the country’s military.
Schumer didn’t seem at all alarmed at all by his conclusion that this is the situation; just something like the sun rising in the east.
Richard Aubrey…”This is strange. It’s as if there had been an immense build up of some kind of pressure based on….something and passing all rational thought. Just waiting to be unleashed. It had nothing to do with Trump. Waiting…..and then it’s assigned to Trump and the folks I refer to lose their rationality..”
Interesting observation. I think this behavior has much to do with the pleasure some people find in being part of an in-group who can righteously denounce members of the out-group. It is what the Czech writer Milan Kundera referred to as “circle dancing”…I believe Neo quoted the relevant passage here a while back.
There is some evidence that oxytocin, the so-called “cuddle hormone”, can promote hostility toward the out-group as well as bonding among the in-group:
https://www.livescience.com/6570-love-hormone-lead-war.html
David Foster.
I think you’re right. But. My question is how this thing got going from nothing to full on insanity. It’s zero to a hundred in about a second and a half. To make some metaphors, it’s an overpressurized tank whose valve fails. A huge weight whose support fails.
IOW, it didn’t get started with Trump. It was waiting. And why?
For example, one of my friends earlier referred to was in big pharma PR all his working life. And he tells me HCL is not tested for safety. Of all the people I know, he’s the most likely to know it’s a lie. HCL has been used for half a century as an anti-malarial. For years against lupus and RA. HE KNOWS IT. And after I objected…he kept it up.
Another college friend insists…against the transcript or video…that Trump told people to drink bleach. He knows better and he must know everybody knows better.
This is not like BDS. This is not the smug, superior laughter when somebody makes a mildly snarky remark about Bush.
Kundera’s circle dancing explains a lot. But this….people make themselves look like fools and liars, and they must know they do. It’s not that they act like fools and liars. It’s that they must know it’s obvious and….
Mustn’t they?
For example, how do they not know what they look like when, living in NYC, they blame Trump for putting infected seniors into senior facilities? I keep wanting to put in font 18, bold, italics, all-caps that everybody including they know better.
Richard Aubrey,
What you’re describing sounds like people who have given themselves up to the Orwellian nightmare willing.
“The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened” – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.”
-George Orwell
Fractal. I know. But the People weren’t under threat of death or torture in this case.
It’s one thing not to object to the Leader’s statements, to keep your mouth shut and your head down.
It’s another to willingly, with no requirement, to speak known falsehoods to people whom you must know, know you’re lying.
Talked to a guy in Michigan who was sneering at the demonstrators in Lansing. He’s been locked up for, he says, fifty-three days. No problem. I told him he demonstrates there are two Americas, one which desperately needs a paycheck and one which doesn’t. He’s in the second group–as am I–but has no clue about the first. No idea what’s wrong with them.
Not to brag; He’s done nothing for anybody in those fifty-three days. While I go to Feeding America sites to pick up food for a family in a tough spot and see three dozen volunteers standing in the damp, organizing traffic, arranging the food, loading. All masked. Used to be the folks would walk past the tables being told, “two per family, hon” and load their carts. Now, you idle past and a pre-filled box is stuck into your trunk. I could damn’ well cry, watching this. Meals on Wheels is still delivering. Guy in our church needed a ride for two plus hours to a cancer treatment. Coordinator put it out…somebody shows up. Neighbor has a tree down, couple of guys with chainsaws arrive. My wife shops for and delivers for an elderly woman. Point is, wherever we go on such rounds….there are a lot of people doing the same thing.
If the subject arises….Trump is not the horrendous villain the other side insists is the case. That seems to be left mostly to those who have their fifty three days and countng
One thing I have noticed: people who have never before shown much interest in politics or political philosophy and who are now obsessive Progs, posting Prog stuff on FB multiple times per day.
Historian Friedrich Meinecke, in his book The German Catastrophe, wrote about previously non-political Germans who became politically-obsessed in the years before the Nazi takeover:
“It often happens nowadays…that young technicians, engineers, and so forth, who have enjoyed an excellent university training as specialists, will completely devote themselves to their calling for ten or fifteen years and without looking either to the right or to the left will try only to be first-rate specialists. But then, in their middle or late thirties, something they have never felt before awakens in them, something that was never really brought to their attention in their education–something that we would call a suppressed metaphysical desire. Then they rashly seize upon any sort of ideas and activities, anything that is fashionable at the moment and seems to them important for the welfare of individuals–whether it be anti-alcoholism, agricultural reform, eugenics, or the occult sciences. The former first-rate specialist changes into a kind of prophet, into an enthusiast, perhaps even into a fanatic and monomaniac. Thus arises the type of man who wants to reform the world.”
Richard Aubrey,
The worst slavery is the slavery people accept willingly.
About your friend in Big Pharma PR: I have an ex-close friend who cut ties with me back in 2016 because of the election. We used to be able to disagree amiably but that all stopped after Trump was elected.
My wife still talks to him from time to time through her job through group email (He’s a hospital IT guy). And she says that the knots he’s tied himself into, regarding his political beliefs is nuts. In one breath he talks about the president using the virus hoax as a means to usher in his police state. In the next he talks about his fears of going outside and catching the virus that the president has ignored. In another breath, he talks vaccine and HCL conspiracy, in the next rails against science and Big Pharma for doing nothing. And then there’s the fact that he is allowed to voice his opinions through group work emails but my wife isn’t…
Is he accepting the lies willingly? Does he know they are lies? I don’t know anymore. I can’t look at him and see rational behavior.
It breaks my heart because at one time, he was such a good friend. He came to the hospital when my kids were in the NICU, brought us 5 Guys burgers while stayed at the Ronald McDonald House an hour and a half away. I helped him moved twice after he injured his back and his wife left him.
It was a good friendship. But one day, politics came up and we obviously disagreed. And then he cut me out of his life. I’m not going to claim some of it isn’t me. I’m a pisser in real life and I get that I can rub people the wrong way. But we had always taken our differences in stride before.
Like I said before, it breaks my heart. I’ve reached out to him twice since the shutdown to check on him but he hasn’t responded to me.
Neo, what would you realistically like to see done by those who’ve not given up on the notion of objective truth, and morality?
Do you think the preservation of social and political relations is important above almost all else? If so, for whom is it important, and why?
I read an anti Trump, anti “heartland” screed in the Atlantic the other day which remarked that back on 9/11 all America saw an attack on NYC as an attack on everyone. And that is probably true. It went on to claim, probably with somewhat less truth, that nowadays the rest of the benighted country had devolved to the point of cheering the corona virus on. Yes, we all need to find common ground it concluded, but it is those demented bible thumpers especially who need to be retaught a proper sense of place and appreciation for the social vanguard.
Thus in the very act of framing a problem, and suggesting a remedy, the author provides reason enough for the undecided to conclude that the destruction of New York and the progressive vainglorious part of its population, might not be an ultimately bad thing when compared to some predictable and more unpalatable (serfdom like) alternatives.
You seem genuinely alarmed that we may be on the verge of a real social break; one in which the rule of law will not even be accorded lip service, and where ordinary seeming folks such as your Trunp despising friends, become willing to embrace a no-limits program of political coercion and social reconfiguration; essentially becoming witting participants in a kind of low grade civil war which does real and programmatic violence to people therefore considered, and qualified as, law abiding.
Now you personally have invested a great deal of effort to changing minds at a distance in the public space.
But, you have Ialso informed us that you have no power to change the minds or influence the behavior of those closest to you, and about whom you care a great deal. How do you suggest that people not so invested in them emotionally, react to them?
Can you see your friends as ever turning on you if they thought that, say, reactionary bloggers were a threat to the realization of progressive ends? Can you see them as arguing that the first amendment only applies to newspapers, just like the second only applies [As the kind habitually argues] to muskets and state militia arsenals ÷ and therefore you don’t qualify?
What could you do Neo, other than yield? And if these people cannot be reasoned with, even by someone so affectionately devoted to their welfare as you are, how would you suggest the rest of us respond if, per hypothesis, they made themselves active enemies of our liberty, property rights, and free market economic interests?
Maybe it’s time we start asking people who we think love us, and with whom we have attempted to reason to no avail, why they are so little interested in or considerate of our points of view.
I’d bet even money that the answer is that they don’t really respect, much less love us or what we love, to the degree we hoped or imagined.
And, Barry, quite a few of these liberals are really shallow people, who, when more Righties get the stones to stand up to them, may well flee to tall grass.
“But one day, politics came up and we obviously disagreed. And then he cut me out of his life.”
That reminds me of Tara Reade saying she cried when pols like Stacey Abrams and Kirstin Gillibrand dismissed her claims, people she’s never met and who have never done ANYTHING to actually deserve Reade’s regard.
A lot of people on the Left have made politics their substitute for religion. And that would be bad enough but what makes it worse is they’re completely oblivious that they’ve done it.
Mike
DNW,
“To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
– Charles Krauhammer
DNW;
First of all, most of my friends are not progressives and are not especially political. They are kneejerk, habitual Democrats (much as I used to be, only less interested in politics or abstractions about political philosophy and the rule of law). They follow the news in a cursory manner through the MSM. They are mostly misinformed or incompletely informed. They think Democrats are nice people who mean well and Republicans are not. They don’t understand why I’m on the right since they know I’m a nice person, but they mostly don’t care and are not interested in hearing my arguments or changing. They don’t read my blog and are uninterested in doing so.
A few, though, are interested in talking and thinking about such issues. That group has different reactions. Some concede points but don’t change their general point of view. Some are very well informed and bring up relevant points of argument and argue in good faith. Many years ago I did change the minds of a couple of people.
I have also noticed that most of my friends are more interested in security than liberty. I think that attitude is key. I don’t think they are interested in challenging their own beliefs, either.
So about your hypothetical, I don’t think most of my friends would even be interested in discussing the first amendment and to what group it applies. They’re more interested in other things – their families, for example. They’re not stupid, and they are mostly fairly well-educated, but discussing these things just isn’t of interest to them.
Obviously, it’s of great interest to me. And don’t give me the old “get new friends” response. I’ve dealt with that many times on this blog.
To answer your question: I have no idea what should be done.
“Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
Hence, if and when these folks get around to mass murder in America they will feel virtuous because they are merely cleansing the world of evil people who deserve to be made dead.
I don’t see how to reason these people out of their murderous insanity and- having spent a good amount of time arguing with these sort of folks online- I’ve lost interest in trying.
I suspect this will ultimately be resolved violently, one way or another.
Alas.
Neo–Old as I am at 75–and looking backward and looking forward–I view today’s America as likely at it’s apogee, and, trying to divine the future, I believe that–absent some “game changer,” some major countervailing force (say, the U.S. opening up the Solar system to major exploration, industry, and settlement)–I fear I see only increasingly “interesting times” for my descendants here in the U.S.
Basically, this is an assertion that the officials of the American government at any moment hold their offices only by sufferance of the “intelligence community”, just as in many 3rd-world countries, the officials hold their offices only by sufferance of the country’s military.
All over the globe, the military have largely abstained from attempting to run governments for the last 25 years or more. There have been some exceptions, but not many.
Hi Neo.
I do know better than to suggest to you that you get new friends. I’ve seen you hit with that question repeatedly, and you answered it long ago. That was not my intended question. But the rambling stream of consciousness manner in which I posed my questions was probably hard to follow and sort out.
You have said, and clearly, that you have no idea what to do about the future. Apart, I assume, from the considerable labors you are already engaged in.
So that aside, let me repeat the thrust of two questions; only one of which involves you personally.
1. “Do you think as a matter of principle or practice that the preservation of our present social and political relations is important above almost all else? If so, for whom is it important, and why?”
Now, you obviously have an emotional tie to these friends, and for the sake of your friendship, which I assume is reciprocal in benefit, you make allowances.
But what’s the benefit to an American targeted by Lois Lerner, in making such allowances for them, or in sustaining a self-sacrificial commitment to a shared political space with those who either applaud Lerner’s actions, or just don’t give a damn?
Where is the benefit in a principled, and tolerant civil “solidarity” with such people, if you are not emotionally committed to them already?
2. And this is the one that does involve you: Are you confident that you would yourself be immune to the measures your preoccupied kneejerk liberal friends might approve of in the case of those larger fish they might disapprove of? If, say, you were told to shut up by some governing authority, and you relayed that information to them, would they then become interested in the issues that have historically driven and occupied the moral efforts of American citizens? Would you expect to see them in court with you, standing by your side?
“Neo–Old as I am at 75–and looking backward and looking forward …”
Hahaha I pegged you at about 48. As someone who had become acutely interested in these matters in the last decade or so, and was understandably exuberant at achieving a relative mastery of the issues, and their philosophical implications.
Damn. Was I wrong. LOL
Lots of sharp and systematic thinkers here among the “old codgers”.
In a post at 11:48 AM, I seemingly wrote the following nonsense: …”essentially becoming witting participants in a kind of low grade civil war which does real and programmatic violence to people therefore considered, and qualified as, law abiding.”
It was intended to be “theretofore”. Apparently my lousy tablet, ‘corrected’ it for me. An appreciable amount of the time I spend using that device, consists in fighting with it.
DNW:
Well, I’ll consider your 4:46 comment a compliment.
I am told I look younger than my years, but I doubt anyone would take me for a spring chicken of 48. My years are considerably more numerous than that.
Hint – I write a lot about Vietnam.
DNW:
As far as your questions go – I’m not sure what you mean by “above all else.” Obviously, if my friends (and relatives, by the way, and some of the latter are probably at least or more important than many of the friends) started deciding to round people like you and me up in concentration camps, that wouldn’t be okay. What I personally would do to stop them I don’t know, but of course there’s a point where a huge line is crossed. I’m also unsure what the line is.
As for how many would take my side, I don’t know. I would say that maybe a quarter of them would. But that’s just a guess. There are some liberals to whom liberty is important, but not the majority I think.
I wrote about that issue many times. I don’t know if this one is the most relevant, but it’s the best one I’ve found in a quick search.
I guess I am asking politically, or sociopolitically: If liberty and conscience are ultimately more important than maintaining the formal shell of what was once America.
As for any personal aspect it is probably not an easy question for those in a position comparable to yours, and it is not my main interest.
But we need not go so far as positing that your friends would try to round you or me up and send us to a concentration camp. That would be a nonstarter in this country in any event.
What is more likely to relate to them – though still not likely – is that you be slapped with something like an open ended cease and desist, or a restraining order, predicated on some supposed national emergency, and a supposedly acceptable suspension of the bill of rights in the name of some “constitutionally” higher predicate (a “general welfare” phrase/excuse warped to fit, for example) and how they would rally, or not, in your support.
You mention that among your acquaintances, you detect a greater interest in security, than liberty. This could mean a number of things of course. It might mean that they would endorse some form of mild prior restraint locally in order to keep the downtown shop windows from being busted out through mob action.
On the other hand it might broadly mean that they have all the liberty they need, having accrued and accumulated what they wanted, and as such have no further interest in these liberties as a matter of distributive principle.
Having seen the progressive elites – though not your friends – in action, I tend to believe that it is the second description that most often applies.
I hope I’m making a case that things are different now than earlier. Neo’s mind started changing long ago and her experiences therefrom have been going on at least that long.
The same is true for other changers, whenever it happened, or for those of us who were always on the Dark Side.
In my experience–I’m seventy five and have been on this side of the fence for half a century plus–this is different.
The instantaneous reaction….nowhere near gradual…and the depth/power/extremism of it is, in my view, completely unprecedented. Yes, there was BDS. But BDSers didn’t go nearly as far. Among other things, they did not make themselves look obviously and publicly completely irrational. Nuts. Liars and fools. They did not make statements..very much…which were immediately self-impeaching. They did not, metaphorically speaking, stand next to a transcript of Trump saying something and hysterically insist he said the opposite. And, presumably, expect to be believed when they said something so obviously untrue that they must have known it and known everybody else knew it.
Not. Getting. It.
Mike Doran, @Doranimated: For the first time, @ekimalptekin, the Turkish businessman who hired General Mike Flynn, tells his story. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to hear Part 1 of the interview, which begins broadcasting tomorrow (Sat. May 2) at 9am. https://youtube.com/channel/UCR5fj9ov6Wk6pjmCzne16HQ
https://mobile.twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1256345749459214336
“send us to a concentration camp. That would be a *nonstarter* in this country….”
A nonstarter among *today’s* Lefties? To the contrary, while that trust would apply to Dersh-type liberals, many of today’s Woke Leftists would see such a policy as, not a nonstarter, but rather a dream-come-true.
@aNanyMouse,
No, not an emotional or ideological nonstarter for today’s lefties. It might be as much a dream come true for them, as for their Maoist progenitors in the US 40 years ago.
And I think that one could probably also round up a substantial minority of Americans without much protest, especially Democrat client class voters, for transport to “safe spaces” if you first subtly primed the psychologial pump with a flow of manufactured crises and fear, and then sprang the act on them at 3 AM, with official looking emergency vehicles in the street and self assured personnel directing them to board awaiting conveyances for their own good.
But that would not be the target population of the progressive bureaucrat.
Depending on how cautiously the frog was boiled, you might get away with rounding up gun owners as well. Once, that is, they were either gradually disarmed , or you began killing the families of any resisting. That latter, is probably a half step beyond even Gretchen Whitmer … for the moment.
DNW. Cops know the odds. And their families don’t live in fortified compounds. Most wouldn’t cooperate in the first place and any of their colleagues who would…wouldn’t get much cooperation from the rest of the folks.
DNW, I didn’t mean to imply, that Whitmer-style tactics would be an emotional or ideological nonstarter for today’s lefties.
Richard, my guess is that retired FBI will have a large impact, about the outcome of our current Cold Civil War.
ANanymouse says,
Right. I was repeating/ agreeing with your core assertion in confirmation of your point, not disputing your observation.
By nonstarter, I meant only to refer to the expectation of violence such a program would be likely to incite, and the inhibiting effect – for the present – it would have on the actions of those whom we both agree would not balk at such actions if …. they had their druthers.