Somewhere I saw a comment to the effect that the more people see of something like that looting book, the more they realize that the left is batsh*t crazy.

I have actually seen someone declare that such topics should be discussed, though to be sure, some should be past the pale. Like slavery.

As if looting were not slavery: the forcible confiscation of the labor of another.

I’m sure Gov. Whitman is charming over lunch, or at golf, or over a game of bridge. She’s not improving the civic culture at all.

They didn’t do anything of the sort. Pelosi has no history of shepherding consequential legislation through Congress and some of Biden’s projects are embarrassments. The most notable thing the two have in common is that they had little in the way of an adult work life ‘ere getting involved in politics. They differ in that Biden put together his network of retainers himself, while Pelosi inherited that of her patron, Sala Burton.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/29/new-book-provides-a-terrifying-glimpse-into-how-antifa-justifies-looting-and-rioting-n864754

https://twitter.com/OrwellNGoode/status/1297921550226804737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1297921550226804737%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redstate.com%2Fnick-arama%2F2020%2F08%2F24%2Fthe-mayhem-and-aftermath-in-kenosha-heres-more-evidence-of-peaceful-protesting-mr.-barack-obama%2F

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8675799/McConnell-campaign-hires-student-viral-DC-encounter.html

Mitch McConnell’s campaign has hired Nick Sandmann as the grassroots director for the senator’s re-election campaign in Kentucky

Andrew Sullivan’s take on the danger posed to Dems by chaos in the streets is worth a read. I don’t agree with all of it but Sullivan seems to be making a genuine attempt to not be guided by talking points from either side of the aisle and it’s interesting to watch even if it’s not a completely successful effort. Frankly, some of what he says seems to at least partly contradict other things he’s saying but I guess that’s what happens sometimes when you’re reacting honestly and not just picking sides. Mostly what comes through is his disgust at the rioting which Democrats have only belatedly realized could be a problem.
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One place where I disagree with Sullivan is the idea that it would be easy to separate the extremists and expel them as he suggests. As I wrote here, these aren’t just an easily rebuked group of identifiable extremists. This is a woke mindset which is gradually seeping in to the entire party.
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Many of us on the right saw this coming back when it was just conservatives being shouted down on college campuses. Now some of these same attitudes are out there in the streets and it’s not going to be easy to put the genie back in the bottle. Frankly, I don’t think most Democrats realize just how far down this road they’ve gone already.

Update: Not surprisingly, people on the left are calling Sullivan a fascist over this piece.

From Sullivan’s own post:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-trap-the-democrats-walked-right
The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into

If law and order are what this election is about, they will lose it.
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But here’s one thing I have absolutely no conflict about. Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. This comes first. If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does.
In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue. Disorder always and everywhere begets more disorder; the minute the authorities appear to permit such violence, it is destined to grow. And if liberals do not defend order, fascists will.

Well, he’s still a little confused about which label belongs on which Party.

…when I watched the Democratic Convention and heard close to nothing about ending this lawlessness, I noted the silence.

I don’t think I’m the only one, as even the Democrats seem now to realize. And this massive blindspot is not hard to understand. When a political party finds itself so wedded to a new and potent ideology it cannot call out violence when it sees it, then it is walking straight into a trap.

Sooo…the GOP tricked Antifa into burning down cities when they didn’t really want to?

One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: “Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?” A cheap shot, yes. But in the current context, a political bullseye.

Got that right.

These despicable fanatics, like it or not, are now in part the face of the Democrats: a snarling bunch of self-righteous, entitled bigots, chanting slogans rooted in pseudo-Marxist claptrap, erecting guillotines — guillotines! — in the streets as emblems of their agenda. They are not arguing; they are attempting to coerce. And liberals, from the Biden campaign to the New York Times, are too cowardly and intimidated to call out these bullies and expel them from the ranks.

Democrats today aren’t liberals, and the majority have not been for some time, even if some of them were once upon a time.

Remember the pivotal moment earlier this summer when the New York Times caved to its activist staff and fired James Bennet? It’s no accident this was over an op-ed that argued that if New York City would not stop the rioting in the streets, the feds should step in to restore order. For the far left activists who now control that paper, the imposition of order was seen not as an indispensable baseline for restoring democratic debate, but as a potential physical attack on black staffers.

Which was nonsense, of course — it would only have harmed people out rioting in the streets and burning down buildings and — oh, well — never mind — I get it now.

They saw restoring order within the prism of their own critical race ideology, which stipulates that the police are enforcers of white supremacy, and not enforcers of the rule of law in a liberal society. It was a sign that the establishment left were willing to tolerate disorder and chaos if they were directed toward the ideologically correct ends — which is how Democratic establishments in Minneapolis and Seattle and Portland responded. The NYT, CNN and the rest tried to ignore the inexcusable, and find increasingly pathetic ways to dismiss it. This week, their staggering bias was exposed as absurd.
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As the far left has indiscriminately smeared the police, and promised to abolish or defund them, they have helped Trump co-opt them in a terrifying dynamic. As Trump was eulogizing a murdered policeman, the leftist mob outside was in the midst of a “F* The Police” demonstration. If the Dems want to fight an election on that choice — and some do — they’re engaged on a suicide mission.

And let’s be frank about this and call this by its name: this is very Weimar. The center has collapsed. Armed street gangs of far right and far left are at war on the streets. Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much.
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What most people want in that kind of nerve-wracking instability is a figure who will come in and stamp it out. In Trump, we have someone who would happily trample any liberal democratic norm to do it. And the left seems to be all but begging him to do it — if only to prove them right.

A long time ago, I was mocked for saying that I believed that the election of Donald Trump was an extinction-level event for liberal democracy. But this is where we are.

The sad thing is that Andrew does not see that the extinction of liberal democracy is occurring through the opposition to Trump, not through his own actions. In fact, he has been very scrupulous about following legal guidelines (even if the Democrats don’t like the results), and the only norms he has trampled are not liberal but solely Democrat: the norm being always whatever suits their agenda at the time.