The spread of leftism
It seems to me that it wasn’t all that long ago when the vast majority of Americans believed that the sort of behavior seen on the streets of Minneapolis by “demonstrators” “protesting” the Trump rally would be completely unacceptable, and that those blocking egress and/or throwing excrement at people should be arrested:
They battled police officers. They attacked Republicans leaving Target Center. They set bonfires and burned patriotic regalia. They carried the flag of the defunct Soviet Union.
They spat on peaceful Trump supporters. They assaulted an uncounted number of normal citizens leaving the Target Center. They struck a woman across the head with a piece of lumber. They waved a sign that said, “Blue Lives Don’t F@$king Matter.” The Minneapolis Chief of Police reported, “Objects containing liquid believed to be urine were hurled at some of my officers along with bottles and rocks. Police horses were also assaulted by protesters striking them with sticks.”
Flying the Soviet flag? Fine; that’s a protest (also an abomination, but acceptable as free speech). And as long as the fires aren’t against city ordinances, it’s okay to burn “patriotic regalia.” But attacks and all the rest? Arrests for some and dispersal for others should have been the order of the day, and all but the fringiest fringe groups should be agreeing on that, no matter which political side was “protesting” and which side being attacked.
But no [emphasis mine]:
A sitting Democratic State Representative, Aisha Gomez (DFL-Minneapolis), was seen among the fascists, dressed in black like an Antifa hoodlum. And Minneapolis’s boy Mayor, Jacob Frey, who expressed regret that he could not legally prevent President Trump from visiting Minneapolis, and then tried to do it anyway, issued an order to the Minneapolis Police Department not to use chemical irritants on the mob of criminal Democrats. [UPDATE: We have a disagreement between Boy Mayor Frey and the mob: Frey denies issuing such an order, putting him at odds with fellow Democrat Gomez.] And not a single local Democrat has condemned the violence and disorder that took place last night.
Therefore it is likely to continue and probably spread. One of the main goals is to discourage attendance at Trump rallies. We’ll see if that happens; perhaps not.
Another goal (as was true during the melee at the 1968 Democratic Convention) is to try to provoke the police into an overreaction and violence against protestors. Failing that, the idea would be to provoke the Trump supporters into violence in self-defense, which the MSM would then frame as instigation and thuggery on the part of the Trump supporters, justifying a more violent reaction on the part of the leftists.
Way back in 2006 I wrote about the violence connected with the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. In that post, I quoted a piece by David Horowitz but the link to it is now broken, unfortunately. Here is part of what Horowitz (a leftist in 1968 who later converted to being on the right) wrote about the event in retrospect:
In fact the predictable reaction of the Chicago police was an essential part of Hayden’s calculation in choosing Chicago as the site of the demonstration in the first place…
In a year when any national “action” would attract 100,000 protestors, only about 10,000 (and probably closer to 3,000) actually showed up for the Chicago blood-fest. That was because most of us realized there was going to be bloodshed and didn’t see the point. Our ideology argued otherwise as well. The two-party system was a sham; the revolution was in the streets. Why demonstrate at a political convention? In retrospect, Hayden was more cynical and shrewder than we were. By destroying the presidential aspirations of Hubert Humphrey, he dealt a fatal blow to the anti-Communist liberals in the Democratic Party and paved the way for a takeover of its apparatus by the forces of the political left, a trauma from which the party has yet to recover.
I don’t know when Horowitz wrote that, but it was not after 2006, when I wrote my post that quoted him. At the time it seemed as though the Democrats were still influenced by the left; that’s what the “has yet to recover” was referring to. But since then, as we all know, the left has surged in the Democratic Party – or revealed itself – to be influential to such a degree that it would be folly to deny that they are in the driver’s seat and now constitute the majority of the Party. And by “Party,” I include almost the entire MSM, the educational system, entertainment, sports, and many religious groups as well.
And I mean leftists, not liberals. Liberals still exist in the Party and I know quite a few, but for the most part they are not alarmed at what has happened and is happening and/or don’t even recognize what it is.
The difficulty with your assessment is that you assume that there are ‘liberals’ and a ‘left’. Whatever ordinary voters might be thinking, among the active core in the Democratic Party, there is no distinction in attitudes (or ideology, if you want to dignify it). There is a distinction in roles. The relationship between Mayor Frey and the petty antifa hoodlums is a pantomime.
Jerilyn Merritt is 71, Alan Dershowitz is 81, and Mark Shields is 82. They’re survivors of an era when the Democratic Party’s apex and center consisted of people with a programmatic disposition. Today’s Democratic Party is a hate group, and it’s programs are a series of measures to steal from, humiliate, and injure social segments they despise. Elizabeth Warren and Mayor Frey are no different in this respect from antifa. They just use a different idiom.
This will not end well.
Art Deco:
I think you fail to understand my point.
There are liberals and the left. That’s a personal distinction, a difference that at this point doesn’t and won’t make a difference in the political sense rather than the personal sense. The left is in charge, and the liberals (who do tend to be the older ones) are for the most part clueless about what has happened, and quite powerless to change things even if they were aware and wanted to.
Yes, Neo. I read the Powerline piece earlier today and my first thought was about Kent State and Chicago-1968.
Either all the P.D.’s country-wide are told not to so much as look cross-eyed at anybody no matter what — and all the cops comply with that (not bloody likely!), or sooner or later we will see reprises of the foregoing.
. . .
ETA: Neo, re your comment above, do you think Dersh sees what’s going on?
The antifa and other goons must be put down and put down hard. Sooner or later these thugs will cross paths with someone who will use lethal force to stop their attackers. And yes, this will not end well.
The tactic of provoking the other side to attack you relies on the assumption there’s a significant number of moderate/unaffiliated people out there who will feel sympathy for the “victims.” Does that dynamic still apply? If there’s an incident where Trump supporters beat the snot out of Antifa, I don’t see that affecting the public all that much.
Mike
Related (H/T Powerline):
https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/11/crazy-and-woke-on-the-western-front-of-progressive-insanity/
Julie near Chicago:
I think Dershowitz sees it to some extent, but not enough in that he still thinks the Democratic Party might listen to him.
Last night I saw an interview with him (unfortunately I lost track of where it appeared; maybe I’ll search for it in my history) in which he said, to my surprise, that the only reason he stays in the Democratic Party any more is to try to influence them to change their ways.
Good luck with that. But it indicates to me how far he’s come towards seeing the depth of the problem, without understanding that perhaps there is no turning back for the Democrats.
” If there’s an incident where Trump supporters beat the snot out of Antifa, I don’t see that affecting the public all that much.”
I have to disagree here. When that incident occurs you can count on the MSM to run it 24/7 until they have convinced every LIV how evil those Trump supporters are. Notice how the attacks on Trump supporters in MN got no play at all from the MSM. All fine and good in their view.
Thank you, Neo. I hope you are right.
Sometime in the past year (quite awhile after he’d threatened to leave the Party) I remember his mentioning that he wasn’t leaving them. I wondered then what it would take.
Meanwhile, my Proud Progressive Bernie-luvving close relative in an e-mail to me trashed Dersh good & proper. 😥 , but what else is new.
.
ETA: Meanwhile, the Kochs have thrown in with Soros over I-forget-exactly-what. I daresay they’re NeverTrumpers, but I sure wish they’d put their big bucks behind getting the message about the Rally out there.
Liberalism is divergent (e.g. generational). Progressivism is monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. Leftism is structured (e.g. authoritarian). Rightism is dynamic (e.g. libertarian). Principles matter.
A feel the bern fanboy attempted to murder the GOP softball team and almost succeeded with Steve Scalise. The democrats condemnation was lukewarm at best. The msm-dnc considers antifa as their own brown shirts using violence to intimidate the deplorables. Again, this will not end well.
As recently as this past June, Dershowitz was all in for Biden:
As far as the local Democrats, doesn’t “tacendo consentire” apply? Silence gives consent. They agree with the actions of Antifa so won’t condemn them.
“Liberals still exist in the Party and I know quite a few, but for the most part they are not alarmed at what has happened and is happening and/or don’t even recognize what it is.”
Well then if things get spicy they’ll just have to go to the wall as well, won’t they? That’s generally what happens during spicy time. A shame they are too mild or clueless to have the ghost of a hint of a clue as to what can happen. Then again they weren’t around for Bolshevism or Pinochetism. From where this is tending today I don’t think we’ll be able to vote our way out.
True, Gerard, but at 81 Dershowitz is more than old enough to know what was what on the Bolshevik front.
Well I hope you’re all happy now. Especially you, Neo, for running this here pub. Y’all forced me to the cyberstacks yet again, this time to see where Zell Miller ended up (he died only last year, I see, of Parkinson’s, and would be about 4 years older than Dersh). So then I had to see the Real Skinny on Dershowitz, and I am truly sadly disillusioned. Of course it’s no secret that he’s probably America’s strongest supporter of Israel (not a problem for me, as long as he’s clear-sighted about it), which is already enough to make the current Dems revile him. (He did say he’d never have campaigned for OBummer if he’d seen the photo of the latter with Farrakhan “earlier. But, gad, how could anybody with half a brain go for BHO given the REV J. Wright?)
But see for yourselves at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dershowitz
All assuming the G.F. has the straight of it, of course.
Neo, you said a few months back that you thought that aside from — I forget what, the Kavanaugh mess? — he still has his head in the clouds (paraphrase). The G.F. would certainly confirm that idea.
.
But to Gerard’s point, of course any Believing Dem these days, even the young ‘uns who’ve barely heard of him, would take Stalin and Fidel a thousand times over the far-less-dastardly, but anti-Communist, Pinochet.
(Also over Trump, but we’ve already established that about 4 1/2 years ago. *sour expression*)
And over the past 10-15 years, most of the time was spent trying to convince yourself or decide.. not productively opposing them or learning that, or anything other than, is this real…
Nice you quote Horowitz
He pointed to the army that was doing this all
when you write your list of things that the left has taken over
remember that it wasn’t leftist men that took them over, was it?
it wasn’t leftist men who threw the others out, was it?
list out each of the key things then look what force did it…
unless you have a row of ducks named trump to take a few more elections
what person other than him in the middle already would even contemplate serving as president without being a figure head to avoid what we have been watching?
who would want the job after this?
You have certainly come a long way baby…
the demographic event horizon was passed already…
there is no changing the destination of this train, and it has no brakes…
NEWSFLASH: El dgr doth not liketh the Gyno-Americans.
A day or two ago Attorney General Barr gave what was, from the short excerpts that have been reported so far, an extraordinarily hard hitting 45 minute “private” speech on religious liberty at Notre Dame, and Leftists/ the MSM are screeching about what he said, with one outlet calling his speech “bizarre.”
Here is the most extensive coverage I’ve found:
See https://heisenbergreport.com/2019/10/12/bill-barr-delivers-bizarre-speech-at-notre-dame-says-militant-teachers-progressives-are-out-to-get-jesus/comment-page-1/
I must say that Barr’s evident sense of how we got to where we are now, what the current state of play is, and what he said about these developments, has given me some reason for hope that at least some in the Trump Administration are not Deep State actors, saboteurs, or resisters but, instead, see things very clearly and for what they are, and are actually trying to defend traditional civilization and its values against the leftist Tsunami that is seeking to overwhelm these things and to wash them away, and along with them our Republic and our Freedom.
A while back, a Russian in the USSR was trying to defect to America. The idiot who answered the phone at the consulate could not be bothered to check credentials, run the story down, pass it one to appropriate staff.
Years later the Russian got out and came to America.
When asked how this fail could happen, he shrugged and said “Prosperity makes people stupid.”
True.
Hard people succeed. Do well. Their progeny are born into plenty, grow soft.
Fail. Time become difficult, breed hard people. Who do well.
Repeat.
Let us pray we survive the next round.
Neo: “the liberals (who do tend to be the older ones) are for the most part clueless about what has happened, and quite powerless to change things even if they were aware and wanted to.”
They are NOT powerless — each and every current Dem voter has the power to…
WalkAway.
So far they don’t want to, and they DO want to remain “clueless”. Actively closing eyes, not hearing things, not connecting dots about the story. Not wanting to believe their “superior” Democratic Party has actually become leftist and unprincipled.
The rot starts in colleges, where the Dem intelligentsia has long been discriminating against Reps, “idea cleansing” just like the Arab Muslims have been doing ethnic cleansing of Jews & Christians, who are almost all gone from Arab Muslim countries, after being about 20% of the people around 1900.
It is necessary to name the colleges as the cause of the problem, in order to either fix them, or at least stop gov’t support of their anti-Rep discrimination.
For an anaysis of poll data on the diff between liberals and Leftists, see https://Quillette.com/2019/09/16/understanding-americas-cultural-and-political-realignment/ .
The author puts the strength of the “Postmodern Left” at 36% of the electorate, and the Modern Left (liberals) at 13%, and describes them as follows:
“The Modern Left is best represented by Pew’s “Opportunity Democrats,” who are optimistic and pro-business. They believe “most people can get ahead, if they are willing to work hard” to achieve the American Dream. Almost half of them say “most corporations make a fair and reasonable amount of profit.” They are primarily white, financially well off, and describe themselves as moderate. They are socially inclusive, liberal on immigration, and supportive of gay rights. They are also less likely to believe that blacks and women face structural barriers to advancement. Until recently, this group defined what it meant to be a Democrat, but they have lost their center of power.”
Tom Grey:
Well of course they would have the power if they had the numbers.
What I meant by “powerless” was that they are now decidedly outnumbered in the Democratic Party, and that for that reason they are powerless.
Maybe people should have taken me more seriously when I said that they needed to purge the internal traitors, amongst them the Leftist alliance, in the USA, instead of continuing to bomb foreigners and celebrate Victory.
That’s because if you don’t do that via a civil war… they are just going to be become another political faction, backed by Congress and Authorities. Then it gets nasty. Then you can’t purge them. It’s too late.
This stuff has been chair simulated via many novels, fictional stories, and war assessments.
It is also why the more perceptive amongst us, started practicing our melee range weapons first. The violence usually doesn’t start or end with guns. It starts with melee and unarmed range, and ends in mass executions usually. Guess what, in both scenarios you are unarmed, haha, so why not learn how to use the body your god created for you for something useful.
From where this is tending today I don’t think we’ll be able to vote our way out.
Well, how is Satan’s work helping to ALinsky people out to salvation now?
Snow on Pine on October 12, 2019 at 10:24 pm said:
A day or two ago Attorney General Barr gave what was, from the short excerpts that have been reported so far, an extraordinarily hard hitting 45 minute “private” speech on religious liberty at Notre Dame, and Leftists/ the MSM are screeching about what he said, with one outlet calling his speech “bizarre.”
* * *
It tells us a good deal about the Left (& the Heisenberg Report) that mentioning religion at a Catholic* University is something they consider bizarre.
*Nominally and historically, anyway; the administration lately has raised some doubts about the level of their commitment.
aNanyMouse on October 12, 2019 at 11:05 pm said:
For an anaysis of poll data on the diff between liberals and Leftists, see https://Quillette.com/2019/09/16/understanding-americas-cultural-and-political-realignment/ .
The author puts the strength of the “Postmodern Left” at 36% of the electorate, and the Modern Left (liberals) at 13%, and describes them as follows:
* * *
Very interesting article; thanks for the link.
A somewhat more positive view of AG Barr’s speech to Notre Dame Law School and the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/ag-barr-calls-schools-ground-zero-for-attacks-on-religious-liberty-in-speech-that-drew-protest-at-notre-dame/
Liberal Democrats today don’t call Stalin ‘Uncle Joe’ like liberals eighty years ago; they’re far more friendly and familiar.
There does seem to have been a change in the spread of leftism of late. Not so long ago I’d have said it was Nutella, but nowadays it looks to be more like avocado. Nominally greening, with prominent streaks of yellow.
I must say that the impression I get is that those who President Trump has picked to try to implement the President’s agenda within our Federal government are vastly outnumbered by the members of what is apparently our pretty overwhelmingly leftist (if you judge that bureaucracy by how it’s members contribute to each Party) Federal government, federal employees who are hostile to, and who disagree with that Agenda, and who are trying–in every way they can–to put impediments in the way of, to sabotage, and to block the implementation of that Agenda.
Thus, while there may well be other things in play, this is probably one major reason for the rapid turnover of Trump’s appointees.
I can imagine the frustration of supposedly “being in charge” of a Department or Agency, and trying to implement the President’s Agenda, and seeing that his and your orders are “resisted”–slow-walked, watered down, only partially implemented, or even just plain ol’ ignored–at every turn and, meanwhile, you are being attacked by the MSM, by people on the Internet and on social media, and, perhaps, even by protestors who are dogging you and your family’s every step, and may even show up in front of your house, to harass you and them.
You are vastly outnumbered, surrounded, and it must be a very frustrating and lonely position to be in. It takes a very strong person to keep on going under those circumstances.
What was over Auschwitz was a sick joke that is remembered cause people get it
What was over Buchenwald was a sick joke that is not remembered because until now, or soon, they would not realize what it meant to the public and others passing under it in terms of who did what – or who didn’t do
So I guess the reward for awareness is to watch the faces of the ladies who made the world better, realize they will get what they deserve for rebelling against the only home they had on this planet.
Sooner or later we all end up dining at a table laden and piled high with the fruits of our actions and inaction…
and in case you didn’t realize, they are still chugging along with even more money and furor and surety of making a future
[censored]
[it was a interesting repeat that the leaders they went for mostly were more effete, as Herr Austrian fruit-bat pointed out in his (instructive) comments]
Comment all ya want… but the hand that rocks the cradle..
From Horowitz pointing out Naomi Goldstein’s (Betty Friedan) duplicity
and even Erin Pizzey warning people, till she fled her country to avoid being killed
If anyone paid attention to the rhetoric that was used to do this for nearly a century
was as old as the bible itself…
Temptation spiced with vanity, glazed with a false cloak of personal power…
[and lightly spiced with a desire to tear down your only home in the universe
not to mention no longer care that a couple of billion year unbroken line of life matters]
irresistibly scrumptious…
outnumbered by the members of what is apparently our pretty overwhelmingly leftist (if you judge that bureaucracy by how it’s members contribute to each Party) Federal government, federal employees who are hostile to, and who disagree with that Agenda, and who are trying–in every way they can–to put impediments in the way of, to sabotage, and to block the implementation of that Agenda.
Well, didn’t 98% in DC vote for Hussein?
Pretty obvious majority don’t you think.
I have a connection and a long history with Minnesota. I do not watch Trump rallies in full, but I did watch the one in Minnesota. He is going to win Minnesota. I feel very confident about this. He almost won it in 2016. 2020 looks very good.
Here’s why;
1000 skinny kids that do not know how to fight are no competition with politically active, hard working, strong men and women from the iron range, who have struggled for work these past 40 years. In MN, the Democratic Party is called the DFL (Democrat Farmer Labor Party). Trump covered their issues perfectly and he likes blue collar Americans.
Minneapolis is not Saint Paul. Saint Paul is more conservative. I visit Saint Paul once a year and avoid Minneapolis like the plague. I use to like the City, but it has really lost it’s soul. It has fringes of appeal, that is all.
Greater Minnesota has been turning away from the DFL for decades. The party has changed too much. It is not the party of Mondale anymore or Kloubachar for that matter.
Minnesotan’s are friendly, reserve people who repel from ideas there too right or too left. The current ‘winds’ are way too left.
Also, this is the State that voted for an Independent (Jesse Ventura) for Governor. He won against a Humphrey, who was a well liked Mn AG.