Good morning “Rufio”. ( Why do I when seeing the name Rufus, always think of the Miles Gloriosus fellow, and the song from “A Funny Thing…”)

Anyway, I still look in on Neo’s blog. But in general, like Hubert, I basically came to the realization that having zero interest in political persons per se, I had shot my bolt, and said everything, and repeatedly, that interested me, and was tolerable to, Neo’s regulars.

Breaking the habit, or having it broken for me, did me some good.

Nonetheless, Sam Harris and philosophy and logic? And as a bonus I’m not the one who brought it up …

Funny how foundational philosophy will intrude its head into current affairs whether welcomed by the socially vigilant gatekeepers of acceptable topics or not.

Next thing you know Neo will offend by delving into the interesting implications which the philosophical attack on logocentrism has had on our society and its core ( or agrred upon) ontology; and the curious relation which that doctrine of the Logos developed from its various original manifestations; Greek, Hellenistic-Jewish, and ultimately Christian, has had for our understanding of the world, of mankind, of social relations, morals, and even the possibility of Science™.

Sdffer ( Sp?) and a few others could no doubt offer some insights.

Be well, all. No Sandhill Cranes roaming the fields today. But some turkeys were about, and the deer are avidly gobbling up the feral apple trees’ windfall. The radii from the trunks to the drip line look as though they have been mowed in a circle, so trampled is the grass beneath the limbs.

Enjoy what’s left of your summer. I have a tractor tire to work on. That damned calcium.chloride ballast rotted the valve stem and may have ruined the rim too …

https://amac.us/no-laughing-matter-bidens-speech-is-neither-honest-nor-normal/
By David P. Deavel

The makers of jokes, memes, and cartoons were given a lifetime supply of material in Joe Biden’s Thursday night speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
…
Biden’s trademark unhinged yelling and Hitlerian shaking of both fists. The claim that the Biden Administration was working to cure cancer. His giving “my word as a Biden.” It was all there, all real, and all spectacularly funny in the abstract.

But frankly, though we can laugh at it, this speech was a kind of stand-in for the joke that is the Biden presidency. A joke that is increasingly no laughing matter.

Biden said that Donald Trump is “not normal” and “extreme,” that he has endangered the “guardrails” of “our democracy.” But it is both Biden’s policies and Biden’s speech that have been extreme, the latter nowhere more so than in this Philadelphia speech. It is Joe Biden who has been slamming hard into the guardrails of democracy. Joe Biden is Not Normal.

The unfunny joke begins, of course, with the sales pitch that this speech was about healing “The Soul of the Nation,” as Biden’s speechwriters titled this. It’s part of the bigger joke that was played on a significant part of the Democratic Party and the American people in 2020: that Joe Biden was a moderate who would bring us back to normal and bid divisions cease. All the lines Barack Obama used about there not being a red or blue America were trotted out, but this speech, as Biden’s presidency has been, was about fanning the flames of hatred toward those who disagree with the Democrats. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” Biden said, “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

…[Biden’s accusations]

What other conclusion can be drawn from such a speech than that these MAGA Republicans are an enemy of the state, an enemy of America, a group that ought to be hounded out of society or fought with military power. What other conclusion can be drawn than that Joe Biden’s point of view is that MAGA Republicans are not just deplorable but unredeemable, not just mistaken but evil, not just political opponents but mortal enemies.

This is not normal. This is not sane. This is not easing tensions or reducing polarization. This is a call to war.

And though Joe Biden attempted to sort of walk back this horrific speech the next day, his call was heard. How could it not have been heard? The week before, Biden had held a “unity rally” where he tried out all the phrases in the Philadelphia speech and then told donors afterward that the MAGA (or “Ultra-MAGA,” as he said) Republican philosophy is “semi-fascism.” Though he didn’t repeat the “semi-fascism” line in Philadelphia, the material was there. How could it not be heard?
…
While most people understand politics ain’t beanbag, they also don’t expect to hear their elected leaders call them fascists. Nor to hear “mainstream” media sources hold two-minutes-of-hate sessions in which half the country are said to be at war with the country.

This is not normal. And it cannot lead to anything good.

But apart from the awful, norm-breaking, fist-shaking quality of Biden’s speech, there is the jaw-droppingly obvious problem that his accusations against MAGA Republicans are either projections of views, attitudes, and actions actually found on the Democratic Party’s side or ones that are bipartisan affairs. Let’s start with the projections:

Deavel gives excellent answers to each of Biden’s accusations.
Most of the stories I’ve read only quote Biden without addressing his claims.

Democrats believe political violence is the answer for them, but not for you.

But let’s go to the point that might be true but does not distinguish MAGA Republicans from any kind of Democrats.

[Claim] MAGA Republicans don’t accept election results.
[Answer] Joe Biden’s accusations of lawlessness and Constitution-and-Democracy hating really had no examples except for January 6 and the refusal of many Republicans to believe the 2020 elections were fairly decided. His own election’s legitimacy is pretty much all he has. Yet Democrats have been denying elections for years without having war declared on them. Steve Guest compiled ten minutes of video clips of prominent Democrats including Hilary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein, Jimmy Carter, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and yes, even Joe Biden claiming Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate. They include Democratic objectors in Congress to votes in both George W. Bush’s 2000 election and Donald Trump’s 2016 election victories, as well as numerous other figures in state and national elections claiming the illegitimacy of elections they had lost.

But Democrats did not just say elections were illegitimate. They acted. Fred Lucas detailed the various maneuvers tried by Democrats to reverse the 2016 election of Donald Trump, including an Electoral College coup attempt led by one Christine Pelosi. One of the details in the article is that most of the electors involved in this did not “believe” in the Electoral College. That is a funny thing, I think we can say, but again it’s a joke that’s no laughing matter. If there is anybody who hates the Constitution, I think it’s the people in this camp.

And that’s the problem. We can laugh at the hypocrisy and the stupidity of Joe Biden, his speech, and the words and actions of a lot of people in public life. Such things are indeed normal. But hypocrisy is usually a tool by which politics can get away with bad behavior. This is hypocrisy being used to justify making one half of the country permanent enemies.

That is not normal and, in the end, it is no joke.

Well…not exactly.
FIRST, your opponent MUST be UTTERLY DEMONIZED. SEMI-FASCISTIZED. SEMI-NAZIFIED. CONSTANTLY VILLIFIED. CARICATURIZED. DEHUMANIZED. LIED ABOUT UNCEASINGLY…with all the tools that the STATE has at its disposal, together with the eager assistance of a COLLUDING MEDIA and INFO-TECH.

Once that step is successfully accomplished, THEN, you can do with that opponent whatever you wish—and you will be VIRTUOUS. ABSOLUTELY MORAL. Whatever you do will be A BLESSING. A GOOD DEED.

Whatever you do, you will be DOING GOOD, PURSUING JUSTICE, SAVING DEMOCRACY and THE COUNTRY.

The process of demonization—of Donald Trump and then of his supporters—begun by Hillary Clinton, continued by the state apparatus under the twisted leadership of Obama, Biden, “By-the-Book” Susan Rice, Brennan, Clapper, Comey and the entire slate of alphabet agencies under their control—and ALL deliriously and hysterically supported and magnified by a viciously corrupt media—has accelerated from that starting point—let’s call it “GROUND ZERO”—such that Trump was—AND IS—cast, as essentially a “semi-Fascist” (read “semi-Nazi”)

And so are his supporters, i.e., half the country.

Such that those doing the demonizing—those demonizing “semi-Nazis”—MUST BE, BY DEFINITION, PEOPLE OF VIRTUE!!!

Which is precisely WHY Trump et al. MUST be demonized. (Rather circular, ain’t it?!)

Once Trump et al. are thus branded, “open season” may be declared on all of them without shame, without any hesitation, quite openly, respectably—and MORALLY. They can all be targeted; and those doing the targeting are THE MORALLY UPRIGHT; THE CUTTING EDGE OF ETHICS.

Remember the old question:
“What would you have done if you could have killed Hitler in, say the 20s or early 30s…before he came to power?”

America must be “cleansed” of “her enemies”….

And so here we are…as the huge number of people who call themselves LIBERAL and view themselves as good, decent people, virtuous exemplars—the cream of the country, the elite, the intelligent, caring, wonderful—have been TRANSFORMED into a foaming-at-the-mouth, hateful, hate-filled, seething posse of vigilantes bent on PURSUING JUSTICE, drunk on saving America by destroying those who they perceive as America’s enemies.

And they are justified because they MUST STAMP OUT THE EVIL THAT TRUMP represents—the EVIL that THEY HAVE BEEN TOLD, and continue to be told, 24/7 that Trump represents.

Yes, that message has been driven home…and continues to be DRIVEN HOME.

The 24/7/52 HATE by the VIRTUOUS, the CARING, the LOVING, the DECENT, the BEST and the BRIGHTEST….

To save the country….

All this courtesy of the political party that brought you Russiagate, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the COVID-19 debacle, Nov. 2020, Jan. 6, hyperinflation, the border crisis, the recent MAL raid, and all those other extraordinary achievements….

Ed Driscoll compares it to an earlier classic response to the murder & mayhem sponsored by the Democrat Party and embeds both the current and older ads.
https://instapundit.com/540796/

It’s Nixon’s 1968 “Law and Order” ad updated for 2022. As Charles Glasser wrote here in August of 2020, “[I] cannot stress enough how powerful and resonant this ad was in 1968. Ben Rhodes was right: The young reporters in the MSM don’t know anything, and I’d add neither do their readers. This ad could run today and still be effective. If you support Trump, you should be demanding that they start producing ads like this.”

Politico has registered the White House line on the speech in a story that is nauseating in its servility, stupidity and credulity. It takes three reporters to prepare and serve up the slop. They want us to know that the speech reflected the months-long forethought of the man with half a mind to be president.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/biden-brings-the-war-on-terror-home

He looked shaky as he hobbled onstage Thursday night, but at the podium the drugs kicked in and Joe Biden delivered a commanding speech, by his standards. He handled an early bout of hoarseness like a pro, matched affect to content most of the way, and fumbled few words and none seriously.

But something was off from the start. Biden’s handlers had the otherwise inspiring setting of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall bathed in so much blood-red light, he looked like an opening act for Queensrÿche or Rammstein. Trying to create a setting for judgment and warning, they overshot the staging and made the white-haired ex-Senator look like a vampire sat up from a crypt.

The rest is behind his Paywall, but you can see more excerpts here.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/09/04/is-biden-preparing-to-criminalize-trumpism-n1626866
(quoting Taibbi)

Biden went out of his way to quote federal judge Michael Luttig in calling the MAGA enemy a “clear and present danger.” The loaded term traces to a 1919 Supreme Court case in which Oliver Wendell Holmes created a test for judging if speech and/or other political activities may be suppressed. “The question,” Holmes wrote, “is whether the words… create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” This “balancing test” was invoked to justify restrictions ranging from a ban on passing out antiwar leaflets to bars of membership in communist organizations. The “substantive evil” in such cases often involved a judgment that groups or individuals posed an active threat to overthrow the state — not so different from arguing that a political movement threatens “democracy itself.”

Odd choice of photos by Politico, IMO.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/09/04/these-networks-refused-to-air-bidens-hateful-speech-because-it-was-too-political-n2612646?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky3

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/03/biden-speech-democracy-trump-maga-00054764