And here we are. A thread for discussing it. Hoping for the best but very nervous.
I think I’ll wait for later today and/or tonight to post more. Going out now – to vote!
Victor Davis Hanson on Trump the Counterrevolutionary
Until Donald Trump’s arrival, the globalist revolution was almost solidified and institutionalized—with the United States increasingly its greatest and most “woke” advocate. We know its bipartisan establishment contours.
China would inherit the world in 20 or 30 years. The self-appointed task of American elites—many of whom had already been enriched and compromised by Chinese partners and joint ventures—was to facilitate this all-in-the-family transition in the manner of the imperial British hand-off of hegemony to the United States in the late 1940s…
What tools did Donald Trump have to wage these many counterrevolutions?
The media? America’s Fortune 400? Academia? The great foundations? The nation’s think tanks? The bipartisan government establishment? The international community? The banks? Wall Street? Corporate CEOs? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The entertainment industry? Hollywood? The intelligence community? The current and retired top military brass?
In fact, none of them. All had joined or enabled the revolution, on the theory either that their wealth and influence would shield them and their own from its excesses, or like naïve Kerenskyites their status would impress and win over even those who targeted them, or they were inner revolutionaries themselves all along, just waiting to be freed at last by BLM and Antifa.
Against all that money and clout, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people. He had solely the under-polled and the written-off. They came out to his rallies in the tens of thousands, deluded the pollsters, and told the media less than nothing, but voted and will vote in waves to save America from what it was becoming.
Well, they will vote again. And I have no idea whether the waves will be enough.
Glenn Greenwald’s uncensored article…
…is very good. It’s the piece that made him quit the site he founded, the Intercept, because the editors apparently wanted him to go easy on good old Joe.
But nobody claimed that any such deals [as Bobulinski and the emails describe] had been consummated — so the conclusion that one had not been does not negate the story. Moreover, some texts and emails whose authenticity has not been disputed state that Hunter was adamant that any discussions about the involvement of the Vice President be held only verbally and never put in writing…
These documents also demonstrate, reported the Times, “that the countries that Hunter Biden, James Biden and their associates planned to target for deals overlapped with nations where Joe Biden had previously been involved as vice president.” Strassel noted that “a May 2017 ‘expectations’ document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for ‘the big guy’—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.” And the independent journalist Matt Taibbi published an article on Sunday with ample documentation suggesting that Biden’s attempt to replace a Ukrainian prosecutor in 2015 benefited Burisma.
That Taibbi piece is here, but it’s behind a paywall. I believe Taibbi’s claims probably rest on the fact that the prosecutor who replaced Shokin – and who was Obama/Biden approved – had a history that was more corrupt than Shokin’s, and also let Burisma off the hook in fairly short order.
The MSM must think that Americans are very very dumb indeed. I hope they’re not correct in that assumption. Why on earth would anyone think that Russian disinformation (the laptop, supposedly) would be launched in order to hurt the Biden campaign? Perhaps the thought that the Russians preferred Trump was more believable in 2016 – although I never for a moment thought it was – but at this point, isn’t it obvious that Trump is far harder on Russia than Biden (or surrogate Harris or whichever Obama holdover becomes Secretary of State – Kerry, anyone?) ever would be?
Socialism is doubleplusgood
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it:
This year’s study showed increased favorability of the term ‘socialism’ (49%) among Gen Z compared to 2019 (40%). Opinions of capitalism declined slightly from 2019 to 2020 among all Americans (58% to 55%), with Gen Z (ages 16-23) slightly up (49% to 52%) and Millennials (ages 24-39) down (50% to 43%). 35% of Millennials and 31% of Gen Z support the gradual elimination of the capitalist system in favor of a more socialist system.
It also showed growing concern for Donald Trump as president, especially among younger generations of Americans, with 34% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials seeing him as the greatest threat to world peace, up 8% and 7% from 2019, respectively. This sentiment held true regarding his handling of the pandemic as well, with 39% of Gen Z and 32% of Millennials believing Trump is more responsible for COVID-19 becoming a pandemic than Xi Jinping of China. Opinions of America’s inequality grew markedly from 2019 with 68% of Americans thinking that America’s highest earners don’t pay their fair share. Among these Americans, 57% of Gen Z and 60% of Millennials favor a complete change of our economic system away from capitalism — a 14% and 8% increase from 2019, respectively.
“It shocks the conscience that more Americans today believe the U.S. President is a bigger threat to world peace than the most brutal dictators in the world, and that four-in-ten Americans believe that their country is a ‘racist’ nation,” says Marion Smith, Executive Director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “This represents a total failure of our education system, not just in schools but also a basic dishonesty in our media and popular culture. When one-in-four Americans want to eliminate capitalism and embrace socialism, we know that we have failed to educate about the historical and moral failings of these ideologies.”
A few reminders:
Election 2020: those who think they are above the fray
I noticed a comment on another blog to this effect: “I can understand not voting if you don’t think either candidate should be president.”
That’s one of those statements that looks logical on its face but really is not, because (barring some very bizarre circumstances) one of these candidates will be president whatever you think. Of course, in the case of Joe Biden, Kamala might be president, but you’re voting or not voting for the ticket not the candidate. It’s a twofer.
If you choose not to vote, or vote third-party for someone with no chance, it should be because you honestly and sincerely feel you cannot decide which of the two main candidates would be better and which worse. Although that was a position that had some validity in 2016, I just don’t see how anyone can argue that today. So I view abstaining from voting this year as an exercise in virtue-signaling, a way to say “I won’t dirty my hands to vote for either of these extremely flawed humans. I am morally above it all.” And by taking such a stance in the real world rather than the ideal world of your imagination, you are in fact dirtying your hands by allowing others to possibly choose the worse candidate of the two.
People who live in deep deep red or deep deep blue states have a bit more of an excuse not to vote for either candidate, because they know (or think they know) how their state’s electoral votes will be alloted. But I still don’t think it’s a good excuse, because although the general popular vote doesn’t matter in the legal political sense it matters in the psychological political sense – as we’ve seen since 2016.
Hunter’s laptop and Joe’s judgment: what could possibly go wrong?
Hunter Biden’s unencrypted laptop (password “Hunter02”) was loaded with some goodies we’re just hearing about via the British press. The American press (other than the NY Post and a few other isolated examples) would rather not touch it with a ten-foot pole.
In one message on the laptop to his estranged wife, Hunter asked the following poignant question: “Do you have any idea of the level of degradation?” He knew he was a lost man, in the grip of vices that were propelling him ever deeper into a dark pit.
But this isn’t about Hunter Biden’s depravity – at least, that’s not my concern. It’s about the security risk he (and his laptop) presented. It’s about the fact that, even though Hunter was known to be living a high-risk existence, his father didn’t seem to be interested in either finding out just how bad it was or in reining him in, or at least telling him forcefully to stop doing business in countries where Joe was heavily involved as vice president. Instead, all Joe has said publicly about the matter is that he protected himself from involvement by never speaking to Hunter at all about Hunter’s business dealings.
That’s no protection at all in terms of what Hunter may have promised the people he was dealing with, or his exposure to blackmail. Joe should have known that. The press should have called him on it, too, way back when, long before the laptop.
The laptop and Bobulinski indicate that Joe did in fact speak to at least some of Hunter’s business partners. But even if it were true that Hunter never breathed a word to Joe about such things, why would Joe not realize that it was a great great risk to allow Hunter to go anywhere near these countries for business? Hunter was a walking security risk, as well as a person of low morals, and in a corrupt country such as Ukraine the golden opportunities for more flagrant corruption were everywhere. So how could anyone think that Joe Biden showed good judgment, or even marginally acceptable judgment, in not making sure Hunter stayed in line and far away from any matter in which Joe had any involvement?
Joe is either fool or knave, probably both. Whether or not Joe got a cut of the money Hunter made, Joe’s judgment was obviously horrendous. And the MSM in this country has been covering for both of them for a long long time.
Here’s Joe Biden speaking publicly on the subject of Hunter:
…After Hunter publicly acknowledged his battle with alcohol and drugs in April 2019 – the same month in which he visited the Mac Store – Mr Biden said: ‘Beau was my soul. Hunter is my heart.’
Even last week, the man strongly tipped to become America’s 46th President described his son as ‘the smartest guy I know’.
The smartest guy Joe knows.
[NOTE: In the auto accident that killed his mother when he was two years old, Hunter Biden sustained a serious head injury. I wonder whether that’s a factor in his behavior.]
Late autumn, New England
Photos taken recently by me. Enjoy.
Hermit crabs: line up in size places, please!
Maybe you already knew all about this phenomenon, but I had no idea till I saw this the other day.
There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
“The Plot Against the President”
Here’s the trailer for the documentary “The Plot Against the President” about Russiagate:
And here’s the movie’s Amazon page. It seems that you can get it free if you’re a Prime member, if I read that right.
I watched the film the other night. It’s good, although it’s a reminder of how deeply awful the whole Russiagate episode was. However, one problem is that in an hour and a half it’s basically impossible to cover the events with complete thoroughness – although I’m aware that if the film were any longer and more thorough, it probably wouldn’t be watched by more than a handful of viewers.
So you might want to watch it and recommend it to any persuadable people you know, because the fact that this happened in America is horrific. And yet enormous numbers of voters are unaware of how it went down, or even still believe that Trump is a Russian tool. That latter group may be unreachable, or they may simply be low information voters propagandized by the general drift of MSM reporting on this. So I think it’s worth a try, anyway.
And now for a word about polls – and about election terror
Here’s a good article on the subject of polls and how difficult it is to do them or to analyze what they mean.
I have stopped even trying. And yet I still read articles on the subject, some giving hope, some taking it away, and I try to maintain a semblance of equanimity. I try – but I intermittently fail, big time, because this is the first election about which I’ve ever felt a fair amount of what I’d call terror.
I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve never missed voting in a presidential election since my first one in 1972. Until 2004 I always voted for the Democrat, and I always took a calm approach to losing. I preferred that the Democrat would win, but I was never afraid of the opponent.
Maybe that was because the opponent was a Republican – always a patriot and certainly never a leftist (even back then I was for the first and against the second). But I also think it was because all the candidates were people who were competent at the very least, and who really weren’t all that ideologically apart – not compared to today, that is.
In 2004 there were three new factors operating for me. The first was that I was on the right. The second is that I was more politically active and aware than before. And the third was the candidacy of John Kerry, whom I detested and had detested from the time he came on the political scene in the early 70s, when I was still a Democrat. That’s how much I detested him – it predated my political change.
So I wasn’t calm in 2004. I was nervous, anxious, frightened, and then relieved when Kerry lost and Bush won. And then in 2008 my level of fear was high, as well, because I recognized Obama as a very smooth and yet hidden leftist, and I sensed that his promised fundamental transformation of America (details largely unspecified when he was campaigning) would be a lot more fundamental and leftist than he was letting on.
2012 was similar. I feared Obama would be re-elected, and sure enough he was. Then in 2016, my fear shifted to the primaries, when I watched with growing alarm as Donald Trump, of all people, became the nominee, and I thought that meant that Hillary Clinton would become the next president. I feared the election of either of them, although for very different reasons. I probably don’t have to explain why I feared Hillary becoming president, but my fear of Trump was predicated on the sense that electing him would be a plunge into the unknown and that he would be a dangerously loose cannon in way over his head.
So on Election Night in 2016 I was resigned to a bad outcome. Either outcome would be bad, the known bad versus the unknown bad. That was my assessment, and I’m pleased to say that I was wrong about Trump and later pleasantly surprised.
But that only ups the fear quotient this time around, because I see this battle as the most important one of my lifetime, and the most bizarre as well. So that’s why I now use the word “terror” for the feeling that washes over me from time to time, and which I try to beat off.
Joe Biden, like John Kerry, happens to be another politician I’ve always disliked, starting when I was a Democrat. Even back then Biden seemed mendacious, corrupt, and on the wrong side of most issues. But Biden has now turned a cognitive corner and is not even up to his previous level of functioning, so that makes it even worse – and Harris is a leftist hack and laughing loon.
So that’s one factor. Another is that I have grown to think Trump does know what he’s doing and I like a great deal of what he’s done. But both of those things pale beside my conviction that this is far more than a battle between these two men, or between the Democrat and Republican parties of old. The Democrats have gone off the far left deep end, and they are deadly serious about it, and way too much of the populace seems either ignorant of this fact or approving of it. In addition, the MSM and most other cultural and even financial institutions are completely onboard. That is disturbing beyond my powers to describe.
It’s a lonely fight for Trump and the Republicans. But even if Trump wins, that’s just a finger in the dike. We’d better figure out what to do about the threatening floods.
Caroline Glick: the foreign policy elites hate the Abraham Accords…
…because they have proven them wrong about Israel, Palestine, the Arab World, and the path to peace.
Have you noticed a pattern here? For decades, leftist experts who presented themselves as caring about achieving a certain outcome – whether it be increased economic prosperity for black people, or peace in the Middle East – were really only interested in that outcome if it was achieved by the efforts of the right people (themselves) in the right way and not the wrong people in the wrong way.
The Arab-Israel conflict isn’t supposed to end this way. For 50 years, the “experts” have all agreed that the road to peace goes through Ramallah. So long as Israel doesn’t make peace with the Palestinians, it cannot make peace with the Arabs…
…But even if Trump and Netanyahu are forced off the stage, the Abraham Accords will not go away. The peace that is bursting out from all quarters is real. It reflects the real desires of the people who live in the region. And it turns out their desires are far different from the sacrosanct anti-Israel catechisms taught and internalized by the peace processors of the West.
And this brings us to the real “Netanyahu Dilemma.” The real dilemma embittering the lives of the foreign policy elites is not whether to give the Nobel Peace Prize to men they hate. It is how to react to the peace these men have achieved.
Please read the whole thing.
Trump the Omertà Buster
Here’s an essay that says some things similar to what I’ve been thinking lately. I can’t say I was especially familiar with the term “Omertà,” but I’m familiar with the idea that Orwellian lies and inversions of truth have become incredibly common.
An excerpt:
…President Trump is hated and feared even by many in his own party. He is not of that ilk. He is much more than a “Public Servant”. He is an authentic individual who has no need to rig his position for “Self Service”. He has promised to exposed the racket that public service has become and he has made a fair start at it. He is not pretending to be bland and folksy while making out like a bandit as Joe Biden has done. He is not, like Kamala, a pampered daughter of College professors pretending to be a “down-with-it” African American who erupts in hollow laughter at nothing funny. Everything he says is open and sincere and thereby dangerous to the phony “servants” around him and their confected personae. He is the Omertà Buster.
He explodes media pretense with every thing he does. His advisors have been consistently wrong in advising him to change his style. He doesn’t care if you see the real Donald Trump because he is real- not servile.
At the beginning I thought a lot of politicians hated Trump mostly because he was advocating conservative policies they didn’t like, and because of his abrasive personality. I knew they also hated him because he might stop the enormous gravy train they had set up for many decades, and after a while I began to perceive that motive as paramount. It’s recently been highlighted by the overwhelming protection and promotion they are giving Joe Biden, the totally naked emperor who is as deeply or much more deeply into the DC corruption as they are.
So Trump’s promise to drain the swamp may indeed be the most potent motivator of all for their hatred and the strength of their desire to take him down at all costs, including the destruction of the republic – a republic about which many of them are not all that keen, anyway.
Please read the essay.