Robert Mugabe dead at 95

The New Neo Posted on by

Robert Mugabe, decades-long dictator of Zimbabwe who was finally deposed in 2017, has died at the age of 95.

I refer you to many previous posts I’ve written about him. And I’ll just add a quote from this one:

Mugabe’s trajectory was (sadly) not unusual for countries in Africa, or other third-world countries around the globe. A hero of independence turns into a tyrant, and a long-lived, well-ensconsed tyrant at that. Almost forty years of it for Mugabe and Zimbabwe…

A tragic trajectory for Zimbabwe.

I’m curious what a news outlet such as the BBC has to say about him today, but even they are critical. For example:

A self-confessed Marxist, Mugabe’s victory initially had many white people packing their bags ready to leave Rhodesia, while his supporters danced in the streets.

However, the moderate, conciliatory tone of his early statements reassured many of his opponents. He promised a broad-based government, with no victimisation and no nationalisation of private property. His theme, he told them, would be reconciliation.

Promises, promises.

…[I]n 1992 [Mugabe] introduced the Land Acquisition Act, permitting the confiscation of land without appeal.

The plan was to redistribute land at the expense of more than 4,500 white farmers, who still owned the bulk of the country’s best land.

In early 2000, with his presidency under serious threat from the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by former trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe lashed out against the farmers, seen as MDC backers.

His supporters, the so-called “war veterans”, occupied white-owned farms and a number of farmers and their black workers were killed.

The action served to undermine the already battered economy as Zimbabwe’s once valuable agricultural industry fell into ruin. Mugabe’s critics accused him of distributing farms to his cronies, rather than the intended rural poor.

So he wasn’t even a good Marxist in Marxist terms. Which is typical of Marxists, anyway. More:

In May 2005, Mugabe presided over Operation Restore Order, a crackdown on the black market and what was said to be “general lawlessness”.

Some 30,000 street vendors were arrested and whole shanty towns demolished, eventually leaving an estimated 700,000 Zimbabweans homeless.

It goes on and on and on, a vale of tears. And remember, this is the BBC talking. The truth is probably worse.

[In 2008] Zimbabwe’s economic decline accelerated, with inflation rates reaching stratospheric levels.

…to allay any doubt remaining among possible successors, he announced in February 2016 that he would remain in power “until God says ‘come'”.

In the event it wasn’t God but units of the Zimbabwe National Army which came for Robert Mugabe. On 15 November 2017 he was placed under house arrest and, four days later, replaced as the leader of Zanu-PF by his former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Defiant to the end Mugabe refused to resign, But, on 21 November, as a motion to impeach him was being debated in the Zimbabwean parliament, the speaker of the House of Assembly announced that Robert Mugabe had finally resigned.

Mugabe negotiated a deal which protected him and his family from the risk of future prosecution and enabled him to retain his various business interests. He was also granted a house, servants, vehicles and full diplomatic status.

The BBC article concludes this way:

The man who had been hailed as the hero of Africa’s struggle to throw off colonialism had turned into a tyrant, trampling over human rights and turning a once prosperous country into an economic basket case.

His legacy is likely to haunt Zimbabwe for years.

What a sad and terrible story.

Curiosity and the blogger

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I was explaining to someone what it is that I do as a blogger, and I said, “I write a couple of term papers a day.”

Strange, isn’t it, considering that I hated writing term papers in school and would do almost anything to procrastinate while writing them? And yet these term papers that I’ve been writing daily for close to 15 years (yikes!) are self-inflicted.

What drives me? Probably a lot of things (some of which I’m sure I’ve written about before, but I’m too lazy at the moment to find the old posts and link to them). One is that I’ve always had a lot of opinions and very few people to listen. Another is that over the years I’ve built up a readership and don’t want to disappoint. Still another is the force of habit; it’s become a bit like brushing my teeth, although I hope more interesting.

But perhaps most of all there’s curiosity. I have a stable of what’s known as evergreens, posts I’ve never published but which I save for a rainy or an especially busy or a vacation day. And sometimes I trot one out and publish it. But most of the time I make it hard for myself and I write something fresh.

Like this post I’m writing right now. It was sparked by my finishing my most recent post, a rather lengthy slog through the history of British referendums. That in turn was generated by my feeling that I don’t understand British politics and probably never will understand British politics, but I wanted to know what’s up with this referendum thing? In other words, why did the British decide to use a UK-wide referendum to decide on something such as whether to remain in or leave the EU, when in this country we never have made national decisions based on that more supposedly “democratic” process?

Thus, this post. Much of the time I am driven by the need to better understand something I really don’t understand. I suppose that’s very different from holding myself out as an authority, as many pundits do. Of course, I am a bit of an authority on certain things, ballet among them. And perhaps poetry, to a certain extent. But usually what drives me is the learning process. If I’m to write a couple of term papers a day, the very least I can do is to assign myself topics that interest me.

And hope that somehow they’ll interest you, too.

[NOTE: On the number of unpublished posts I have in draft form, please see this.]

Brexit, Britain, referendums*, and democracy

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t even pretend to understand the maneuverings going on in Britain right now over Brexit. And the more articles I read, the more convinced I am that no one else really does, either.

Although I hope Boris Johnson understands them.

But right now I’m interested in discussing a larger issue: democracy vs. representative republican (small “r”) government.

Recall that Brexit (which I happen to favor, although I don’t get a vote) was voted on and approved by the British people in a referendum. Britain has a representative parliamentary system in which the people elect members of Parliament who are the ones who make the laws, and the head of the party having a parliamentary majority (or the main party in a coalition government that adds up to a majority) becomes the Prime Minister, the chief of the executive branch.

I hope that’s correct. As I said, the British system is somewhat opaque to me, but those are at least the broad outlines as I understand them. (I’m sure someone in the comments will ever-so-helpfully correct me if I’m wrong).

So why was a referendum held to decide an issue such as whether to leave the EU? In the US, we don’t hold national referendums on issues such as this. We conduct public opinion polls, but they decide nothing, although we elect a president by a nationwide vote—plus the Electoral College, which makes even that process a less-than-purely-Democratic one. Members of Congress are decided by state totals and/or district totals in regular nationwide elections (or special election under certain circumstances). But once those people are in office, they are free to do whatever they want that is not prohibited by the Constitution or the courts. That’s a representative republican system.

Even in Britain, which allows them, UK-wide referendums are highly unusual. Interestingly enough, almost all of them have had to do with membership in the European community organizations:

Referendums in the United Kingdom are occasionally held at a national, regional or local level. National referendums can be permitted by an Act of Parliament and regulated through the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, but they are by tradition extremely rare due to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty meaning that they cannot be constitutionally binding on either the Government or Parliament, although they usually have a persuasive political effect.

Until the latter half of the twentieth century the concept of a referendum was widely seen in British politics as “unconstitutional” and an “alien device”. As of 2018, only three national referendums have ever been held across the whole of the United Kingdom: in 1975, 2011 and most recently in 2016.

Two of these referendums were held on the issue of the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe with the first held on the issue of continued membership of what was known at the time as the European Communities (EC), which was the collective term for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC), and was also referred to by many at that time as the “Common Market”. This was the 1975 European Communities membership referendum which was held two and a half years after the United Kingdom became a member on 1 January 1973 and was the first national referendum ever to be held within the United Kingdom. The second took place forty-one years later by which time the various European organisations (with the exception of EAEC) had been integrated by subsequent treaty ratifications into the European Union (EU) when the electorate was asked to vote again on the issue of continued membership in the 2016 European Union membership referendum.

The 2011 AV referendum on the proposal to use the alternative vote system in parliamentary elections is the only UK-wide referendum that has been held on a domestic issue.

So although British referendums are extremely rare, there is somewhat of a tradition for them to be held in connection with EU-type issues. As far as the 2016 vote that resulted in Brexit being approved, here’s how it went down:

The referendum was legislated for under the provisions of the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which legally required HM Government to hold the referendum no later than 31 December 2017 and also the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000…

The “Leave” option was voted by 52% of voters, as opposed to 48% of voters who wished to “Remain”. Of the 382 voting areas, 263 returned majority votes in favour of “Leave” whereas 119 returned majority votes in favour of “Remain” which included every Scottish council area and all but five of the London boroughs. The vote revealed divisions among the constituent nations of the United Kingdom, with England and Wales voting to leave, but Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain. The national turnout was 72% which was eight percentage points higher than the turnout back in 1975, although the majority was 12 percentage points lower. It was the first time a UK-wide referendum result had gone against the preferred choice of HM Government who had officially recommended a “Remain” vote and it led to a period of political turmoil.

So you see two things operating here. The first is that the politicians who called for the vote were surprised by the results. I doubt they would have asked for a referendum if they had thought the people would approve of Brexit.

That’s probably why they’re been fighting it ever since. Referendum remorse.

The other thing operating is that, similar to divisions in the US, in the UK there is a significant split between the big urban center of London and the rest of England, and another split between England/Wales on one side and Scotland/Northern Ireland on the other, with England and Wales wanting Brexit and Scotland and northern Ireland wanting to remain part of the EU. I don’t know, but I imagine that these same divisions persist to the present.

This was also important:

After the vote there was frequent public discussion whether the result of the referendum was advisory or mandatory, but the High Court stated on 3 November 2016 that, in the absence of specific provision in the enabling legislation (such as in this case there was not), ‘a referendum on any topic can only be advisory for the lawmakers in Parliament”

So there’s a paradox here. The leftist forces that usually champion “democracy, democracy!” lost the referendum, whereas the forces more on the right won. What’s more, after they lost the referendum, those leftist forces have been going against the democracy represented by the results of that referendum and insisting that they are representatives in Parliament and can vote against the will of the people. What’s more, Boris Johnson would apparently like still another vote to occur—not another referendum, but another election—because he thinks the pro-Brexit forces would win it.

So there’s been a back-and-forth, back-and-forth, tactical pendulum swing on who’s the democrat (small “d”) and who’s the republican (small “f”).

[* NOTE: I checked to see what the plural of “referendum” would be, and it seems that just adding an “s” is the right way to go.]

Boris Johnson on the choice facing British voters

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: “Ann.”]

Johnson is fortunate that his opponent is the execrable Corbyn. If Corbyn became PM, it would be one of the worst days in the political history of Britain. The stakes here are very very high.

The left-wing Guardian thinks that, if it comes to an election, Corbyn could win. But even the Guardian thinks that outcome “unlikely but not impossible.”

Republican college students…

The New Neo Posted on by

…keep their views quiet at times due to fear of lowered grades.

No surprise there.

I was thinking recently about an incident that happened to me around 2005. I was having dinner with a guy who was—ahem—interested in me. He didn’t know anything about my politics, however, and when the subject came up (I think he brought it up) and I voiced some very mild opinions that could roughly be interpreted as being to the right of center, he physically recoiled.

It was interesting to watch his body language. One minute he was leaning forward, smiling, and the next moment he was way back in his chair, arms crossed, face in an expression of surprised revulsion.

I had no intention of leaving, because I was extremely hungry and had just ordered dinner. I really didn’t care if he left, however; I was certain I wasn’t especially interested in him. So I stayed quite calm as he said, lip curling, “You’re not, you’re not—a Republican, are you?”

Actually, I’m not a member of the party, except that I sometimes register that way for the primaries. But by 2005 I had already committed the sin of voting for Bush in 2004 (my first GOP vote ever), and so I understand what he meant and I said that yes, I was.

He stayed and talked to me, mostly about politics. I got quite a few words in edgewise, and somewhere along the line he said, in a tone of shocked bewilderment, “I don’t understand. You’re so smart; how can you be a Republican?”

To me that sums up at least part of what’s happening to the rank-and-file Democrat, especially those who live in blue states as this particular person did. He was no leftist, just a garden-variety liberal as they were defined back in 2005. But he honestly and truly believed that all smart people were Democrats and that Republicans were by definition dumb.

College campuses are strongholds of that position. But in the nearly fifteen years since the conversation I’ve described occurred, the basic position has changed dramatically from “Republicans are stupid” to “Republicans are stupid and evil.”

Now, you might say that plenty of people used to think that, even in 2005 and earlier. And that’s certainly true. But it is my observation that it has become more and more mainstream and widespread as well as more and more extreme and vicious. Puzzlement and contempt has turned more and more to contempt and hatred.

If you’re going to San Francisco…be sure to brush up on your Newspeak

The New Neo Posted on by

San Francisco believes in the power of language to change the world, or at least people’s perceptions of the world.

There’s something to that. Just think about how “illegal aliens” morphed into “illegal immigrants” which morphed into “undocumented migrants” which morphed into “migrants” which morphed into “if you don’t love them and welcome every single one to your shores you’re an evil Fascist.”

Or something like that.

So now that enemy of the Left otherwise known as the NRA is being labeled a terrorist organization by the Board of Supervisors of that city by the bay where we all left our hearts:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution declaring the National Rifle Association a “domestic terrorist organization” and urged the federal government to do the same…

“All countries have violent and hateful people, but only in America do we give them ready access to assault weapons and large-capacity magazines thanks, in large part, to the National Rifle Association’s influence,” the resolution says.

The document resolves to assess the relationships that those who do business with the city have with the group and says “the City and County of San Francisco should take every reasonable step to limit those entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business with this domestic terrorist organization.”

At this point there’s no chance the federal government will follow suit, but the SF Board of Supervisors is well aware of that. This is a combination of virtue-signaling and a call for economic repercussions—probably part of the same trends that caused Walmart to make a change in its gun policies recently.

The NRA has replied thusly:

This ludicrous stunt by the Board of Supervisors is an effort to distract from the real problems facing San Francisco, such as rampant homelessness, drug abuse and skyrocketing petty crime, to name a few,” the statement said, according to KTVU. “The NRA will continue working to protect the constitutional rights of all freedom-loving Americans.”

The San Francisco stunt underlines just how badly the NRA is needed. And the Democratic candidates are falling all over themselves in an attempt to advocate more and more stringent curbs on gun ownership, including extreme positions such as that of Beto O’Rourke. That’s why I wrote “At this point there’s no chance the federal government will follow suit.” At this point. But after 2020, all bets are off.

Right now the San Francisco powers-that-be aren’t just intent on hardening the language describing those organizations they hate. They are continuing to soften the language used to describe those they want to absolve of any wrongdoing. It used to be illegal immigrants (that is, illegal aliens), but I think they believe their work is complete in that arena. Now it’s criminals.

Excuse me, justice-involved persons, which makes criminals sound like people crusading like Superman for truth, justice, and the American way. This happened in July:

Crime-ridden San Francisco has introduced new sanitized language for criminals, getting rid of words such as “offender” and “addict” while changing “convicted felon” to “justice-involved person.”

The Board of Supervisors adopted the changes last month even as the city reels from one of the highest crime rates in the country and staggering inequality exemplified by pervasive homelessness alongside Silicon Valley wealth.

The local officials say the new language will help change people’s views about those who commit crimes.

That’s what’s so interesting. Will it change their views? Does it change their views? In other words, can you piss on someone’s leg and call it rain, and have that person believe you?

I don’t think most people are that gullible—at least, not right away. Jargon like this becomes something of a joke—at first. But social pressure and habit can get people to use the new language, and the city’s agencies have already adopted it:

The words “felon,” “offender,” “convict,” “addict” and “juvenile delinquent” would be part of the past in official San Francisco parlance under new “person first” language guidelines adopted by the Board of Supervisors.

Going forward, what was once called a convicted felon or an offender released from jail will be a “formerly incarcerated person,” or a “justice-involved” person or simply a “returning resident.”

Maybe soon they’ll greet the “returning resident” with Welcome Wagon baskets.

Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t calling prisoners “returning residents” make it sound as though prison is their natural, rightful home? Is that really what the city of San Francisco wants to convey to its convicted and incarcerated criminals?

More:

According to the resolution, 1 of 5 California residents has a criminal record, and words like “prisoner,” “convict,” “inmate” or “felon” “only serve to obstruct and separate people from society and make the institutionalization of racism and supremacy appear normal,” the resolution states.

This seems to me to be an admission that a disproportionate number of the people in prison in San Francisco are members of racial minorities. That fact cannot be wished away, but perhaps it can be languaged away by making it clear that these people are not at fault.

San Francisco is already a city so dominantly leftist and the population of that city so steeped in leftist groupthink that one would hardly think they need further linguistic coaxing. But you never can tell. And as San Francisco goes, so go many other blue cities, perhaps, until a critical mass is reached and the Overton Window has been shifted ever and ever leftward.

The left never rests: they’ve been coming for your DAs

The New Neo Posted on by

There have been a number of articles about the left’s campaign to get a bunch of leftist DAs-in-name-only (DAINOs?) into office, in order to stop prosecuting a lot of people. Rather Orwellian, don’t you think?

Here’s a NY Times article from last October:

“In the first 90 days, I’m going to give you a plan to end mass incarceration,” said John Creuzot, a former judge who hopes to unseat Ms. Johnson in November [as Dallas DA].

In the past, candidates running to be district attorney — if they were challenged at all — touted their toughness on crime. But now district attorneys’ races have become more competitive, attracting large donations and challengers running on pledges to transform the criminal justice system.

Usually their pledges have to do with drug offenses, and this attracts some conservatives as well, who aren’t interested in prosecuting what is considered “minor” drug offenses (what should be classified that way is another issue, one I won’t deal with in this post). But the new DAs—and Creuzot won the election, so he’s one of them—often go far beyond that.

Which is part of the original plan—going far beyond that, although the more popular drug sentencing reform is often what’s emphasized. Here’s an article about more recent doings by Ceuzot in his new job:

“When I ran to become your district attorney, I promised you that I would bring changes to our criminal justice system,” Creuzot wrote in an open letter about the new policy. “The changes that I promised will be a step forward in ending mass incarceration in Dallas County, and will make our community safer by ensuring that our limited resources are spent where they can do the most good.”

In response, Creuzot is taking heat from police organizations, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott.

“Reform is one thing,” Abbott and Paxton said in a joint letter to Creuzot. “Actions that abandon the rule of law and that could promote lawlessness are altogether different.”

How was Creuzot elected? The effort was very organized and well-funded:

The Texas Organizing Project estimates that organizers had 75,,000 “conversations” with voters to advance the cause of criminal justice reform. The group knocked on 6,000 doors a day, paying workers $15 an hour and giving them paid sick time. The effort produced 115,000 new midterm voters, Brown said.

“Brown” is Brianna Brown, deputy director of the Texas Organizing Project, “a progressive group pushing to end mass incarceration in America.”

What is this phrase, “mass incarceration”? It conjures up the idea of a group of people—a la Jews during World War II, for example—being put in camps, which is a favored leftist image these days to use against the right.

And here’s an even more recent editorial about Dallas (June, 2019) in the Dallas Morning News:

The district attorney, John Creuzot, is passionate about criminal justice reform and about reducing the numbers of incarcerated people in the county jail.

He has drawn headlines for his assurance that he won’t prosecute minor marijuana crimes or thefts of less than $750 for what he called items of necessity.

We appreciate Creuzot’s passion for seeing fewer people incarcerated. But we are concerned with reforms that place less burden for a crime on the person responsible than they do on society at large.

That is what was so disturbing about Police Chief U. Renee Hall’s misstatement during a news conference Monday about the increase in murders in the city.

Hall said, people in Dallas “who have returned from prison who can’t find a job, who are not educated so in those instances” have been “forced to commit violent crimes.”

The chief quickly clarified her comment and promised justice for the killers. And she shouldn’t be condemned for a single extemporaneous statement under the camera lights.

But she also emphasized that the city “can’t arrest its way out of crime.”

This is a common phrase in criminal justice reform that has some validity insofar as a society has to build up opportunity for all people.

But the phrase also risks becoming a warped cliche that excuses law enforcement from its most important role. People who do bad things need to be held accountable, both as justice for society and victims and as a deterrence to potential criminals.

Another article on the subject can be found here.

But I don’t want to focus on Creuzot or Dallas, because he is by no means the most extreme case. To go back to that Times article, which sheds some light on how the Texas Organizing Project (note the neutral-sounding name) and other “progressive” groups pushing that “end mass incarceration!” theme get their financial backing. Three guesses, and the first two don’t count:

The push to overhaul prosecutors’ offices was pioneered by the billionaire George Soros, who in recent years has backed more than 20 candidates, including Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, vowing to upend the way prosecutors have traditionally approached their jobs.

In Dallas, Mr. Soros has given more than $46,000 worth of polling to Mr. Creuzot’s campaign through the Texas Justice & Public Safety PAC. And the Texas Organizing Project, a grass-roots economic and racial justice organization that Mr. Soros also funds, has donated more than $190,000 worth of canvassing.
The effort aims to achieve a single overarching goal, said Whitney Tymas, who heads Mr. Soros’s prosecutor initiative, which is separate from his philanthropic work.

“We want to end mass incarceration. That’s our North Star,” she said. “We’ve won twice as many races as we’ve lost. We’re not going to win them all. But we’re really trying to, because that’s the difference between people unjustly sitting in jail or not.”

This is one of those things that’s happening under the radar of most people.

[NOTE: Ace describes how it’s been operating in Boston recently.]

China gives in (a little bit) to Hong Kong protestors

The New Neo Posted on by

But it may be too little too late to quell the anger and the desire for more liberty.

Remember? The Hong Kong protests were originally (seemingly) about extradition:

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said Wednesday that the government would withdraw a contentious extradition bill that ignited months of protests in the city, moving to quell the worst political crisis since the former British colony returned to Chinese control 22 years ago.

The move eliminates a major objection among protesters, but it was unclear if it would be enough to bring an end to intensifying demonstrations, which are now driven by multiple grievances with the government.

I’m fairly sure they were always “driven by multiple grievances with the government.”

Lam and others might do well to study American history, although of course Hong Kong and China represent a very different culture and tradition from that of the US. But I seem to recall that the American Revolution—our own war of independence from Britain–was sparked originally by protests over a tax law. However, it was probably also “driven by multiple grievances with the government.”

What’s more, some of the Hong Kong protestors have been explicitly evoking comparisons to the US:

The protests that have engulfed Hong Kong have morphed into cries for full democracy, something that has to be Beijing’s worst nightmare. As Austin Bay, citing the reporting of Michael Yon on the ground in Hong Kong, has noted., the protests have moved well into the realm of civil unrest. Anecdotally, the whole world has seen how they have featured American flags, the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner, and signs calling for a Second Amendment…

There’s a feeling a Rubicon has been crossed, a bridge has been burned.

It really depends on two things: how ruthless China is willing to be, and how far and deep the feeling of rebellion and the desire for more liberty goes. The feeling may be spreading—at least a little—to mainland China:

Chinese citizens have been caught sneaking over the border into Hong Kong for no other reason than to join the protests. The impact of the protests has already spread — far into the Chinese interior and into Taiwan…

In that Twitter thread, however, several participants point out that Lam merely made a motion to withdraw the bill and that it hasn’t been withdrawn yet. They think this is just a bluff to calm the protestors. For example, see “Eric” below:

I am not optimistic for the people of Hong Kong, and even less so for the people of China. But I hope I’m wrong.

Rufuspetasumphobia

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a sufferer from this malady:

It’s easy to mock a tweet like that. But I’m going to take it seriously, for what it represents. Makkai is not alone; there are tons of people who believe—or want you to think they believe—that MAGA hats are signs of such bigotry and such evil that even red caps of any type and any message “trigger” them into fear and loathing.

Here’s another tweet from Makkai, later in the thread:

Makkai is symptomatic of a lot of recent trends, including (of course) the use of Twitter to drum up responses by expressing an emotional reaction or a political point of view—or, in this case, an emotional reaction to a political point of view. Makkai may be describing an extreme reaction to MAGA hats and by extension to any red cap, but she’s certainly not alone. And she seems quite proud of her reaction, as well.

That’s the most interesting thing about it. I looked Makkai up to find out who she is, and discovered that she’s a 41-year-old novelist and a mother of two. Somewhat older than what one might expect for such a reaction, which echoes the current generation of college students and their seeming fragility at the hint of the display of any political position they deem threatening.

When did it become a virtue to be so frightened of a political point of view held by half of Americans, and to label it as abnormal and actually hateful? It’s been building for decades, and it focuses mostly on the perception and careful cultivation by the press and the Democratic Party (especially its leftist wing, which has grown so large as to seem like the main body at this point) of the idea that the opponents are not mainstream but are vile haters who must be opposed with any and every tool possible.

In Makkai’s tweet, that idea is a given: MAGA-hat wearers are racist haters. They should strike fear and loathing into the heart of every “normal” person. So you normal people out there, who don’t want to give offense, think twice before you wear even a red cap that might trigger the likes of Makkai and other kind, good, loving people like her.

That this makes perfect sense to a lot of people is the result of major, decades-long effort. One of the clearest manifestations of this campaign—and it occurred long before Trump’s 2016 candidacy—was the labeling of the Tea Party as racist. This was successful and the perception persists to this day. It was also a subset of something candidate—and then President—Obama encouraged: the labeling of opposition to him as motivated by racism rather than being a mere political disagreement (a tactic I documented when I first heard him use it; see this, for example).

And it actually predated Obama, although he made it an almost kneejerk response for criticism of the right. The tactic has been remarkably successful, and Makkai seems convinced that its assertions are so obviously true they need no proving. The trajectory is clear, and it goes like this:

(1) People who wear MAGA hats are evil bigots.
(2) I am a sensitive person, one of the most sensitive around.
(3) MAGA hats trigger me, as they might you if you’re a kind, unbigoted, sensitive person as well.
(4) I am so very sensitive that even innocuous, non-MAGA red caps trigger me.
(5) So please don’t wear a red cap, in order to prove your own kindness, sensitivity, normalcy, and lack of bigotry.

Is Makkai sincere and is she really triggered by something as mild as a red cap at this point? Maybe. Some (not all) of the liberals I know seem to have a constant need to assert their Trump-hatred at regular intervals and inject anti-Trump remarks of various kinds into ordinary non-political conversations.

It’s a cliche to say we have become increasingly polarized in recent decades. But it’s crystal clear that we have, and that much of it has been promoted on the left as a tactic for winning elections. Fear is contagious, as well. Is the fear real, or is it fake and just a way to prove who’s the wokest of them all? I don’t know, and it hardly matters, because the poison is out there, eating away at the fabric of our society.

Will anyone behind Russiagate be prosecuted?

The New Neo Posted on by

I have to say right upfront that I doubt it.

It just seems to go that way. The state agencies are reluctant to charge their own bureaucrats, no matter what the violation, and the higher up the person is the less likely that person is to be prosecuted, no matter how shocking and blatant the violation. Lois Lerner and Hillary Clinton, cases in point.

And yes, it seems to be mostly Democrats who skate. The two-tiered system of justice described by Andrew C. McCarthy here is very real.

However, some people feel that Comey and company will ultimately be indicted (for example, see this). I hope they are right, because if it is possible to get away with what they tried to do, then we are far far far down the road to banana republicdom.

And this should be the position of every American no matter what the party being targeted. But of course it is not.

Just to take one small point from that article I just linked:

The Steele dossier was uncorroborated, unverified, and false. That didn’t stop Comey and other political operatives at the FBI from turning it into evidence to support FISA warrants permitting them to spy on the Trump campaign.

Obviously, politicians should never, ever, ever be allowed to use their bought and paid for political opposition research to get their opponent investigated using clandestine measures.

Well, of course. This is basic stuff. And yet, all over the country, we see the MSM, the left, and most of the Democratic Party having no problem whatsoever with all of this.

That’s the real problem.