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Who Will Be Crushed When the Arc of the Moral Universe Bends?
Dear, dear Leftist Friends, remember: There are no principles. Only situations. And if you believe that the situations are only going to be the ones that pit good Democrats against wicked Republicans…you haven’t read nearly enough history.
Scenario #1:
The righteous, totally noble, completely non-corrupt, and un-self-interested Democrats succeed in indicting Donald Trump and sending him to the hoosegow. Hurrah! Problem solved.
Except that the Republican base, now really fired up, elects a Republican — say, Ron DeSantis — as president.
What will that Republican president do?
Remember back in 2015, when attendants at Trump’s rallies would chant “Lock Her Up” about Hillary, and the mainstream media fretted that Trump would, if elected, actually do it? That is, that he would weaponize the law enforcement resources of the Federal Government against his political rivals?
As it turned out, he never did this—The Donald never sent van-loads of FBI agents to Chappaqua to toss the belongings of Hill and Bill. He was, it seems, constrained by the Constitution and by the precedent that has held in the United States for over two centuries regarding the treatment of political adversaries, especially former presidents and their (im)moral myrmidons. Imagine!
That precedent ensured that, no matter how bitter the campaign, or even what dodgy or corrupt behavior the preceding president and his minions were suspected of, they would be left unmolested after leaving office. In order to ensure a peaceful transition, speeches would instead be made about “moving on” and “looking to the future.”
Well, no longer! There are no principles. Only situations.
And so, on the first day of President DeSantis’ first term, look for buses filled with FBI agents to roll into the driveway of the Biden’s house in Delaware, while the IRS—those 87,000 brand new agents!—takes a look-see into the Biden family finances.
Oh, and since Hilary Clinton’s possible crimes (That’s what FBI Director Comey admitted they were, by the way) are still within the statute of limitations, the DOJ will send agents belatedly to Chappaqua too. Who knows what they’ll find, if they just start opening drawers and breaking into safes? Since it’s extraordinarily unlikely that the Secretary of State could’ve had an unauthorized and non-secured server without her boss, the president, knowing about it, the Obamas, too, can look forward to having armed federal agents dispatched to any one (or, what the heck, all three!) of their mansions.
Scenario #2:
The machinations of the elderly but still surprisingly spry leadership of the Democratic Party succeeds in completely crushing not just Trump but the whole Republican party. The Orange Monster is wearing an orange jumpsuit, his 77 million Deplorables have been squashed, their fields salted, the air ringing with the lamentations of their women. The dreams of Bette Midler and Don Lemon have come true.
The next president (and the next and the next) will be Democrats. (Planet saved!)
There art thou happy?
Or …not so much?
As I write this, uber-leftists are indignantly Tweeting that the Build-Back-A-Little-Less-Better bill that passed last week was completely inadequate since it contained no provision for actually ending capitalism. They’re furious.
We human beings are an indignant, fury-prone, competitive, and fractious bunch. External enemies tend to unite us (hence the constant drumbeat TrumpTrumpTrump from the Democratic party, and hence —this week—-the increased unity among Republicans apres Mar-A-Lago).
Remove the external threat, and frictions inevitably erupt within the tribe. These often prove at least as lethally divisive.
Let’s take the obvious: The Democratic Party, having purged itself of actual moderates, is now divided between the far left, the far, far left, and the far, far-far (Antifa) left.
The far far left — the Democratic-Socialist-Bernie-Bro faction — is at odds with the Supposedly-Moderate, far-left, Hillary-ite establishment.
Who remembers what happened in 2015? The Bernie Bros do.
Bernie wuz robbed.
Bernie should’ve gotten the nomination, but Team Hillary maneuvered him out of first place. Lucky for Hillary, Bernie is essentially an establishment guy who (really) only talks the talk. And besides, there was TrumpTrumpTrump to consider.
Fast forward to 2023. No more Trump to Trumpet about, and when the Dems finally admit that Ol’ Joe is doo-lally, Hillary hears America calling, begging her to bring her youthful vim, experience and that trademark mod-Dem unifying normalcy to the White House.
Democratic Socialist true believers, not inclined to embrace four more years of Botoxed ersatz leftism and still yearning for the real deal, field a primary candidate, one younger, browner, female-er and much more charismatic (not that this is difficult). AOC from the DSA naively threatens not only to get rid of all the farting cows but also to sic those 87,000 IRS agents on the actual rich. This is a popular campaign promise. AOC is looking pretty good in the polls, and even manages to win a few early state primaries.
Yeah, well: Not to worry. Team Hillary “wins” the election. Of course, she does.
What does the New York Times do with AOC’s outraged claims of election irregularities now that everyone knows that an election won by an establishment Democrat is free, fair, and squeaky-clean by definition? How will it regard the street protests when these erupt (as they will?) at Hillary’s inauguration?
Will the presence of some far-far-far left ANTIFA protesters among the street protesters be tactfully overlooked…or this time, will the smashed-in Starbucks windows and Molotov cocktails be highlighted, analyzed, outed as indicators of the real intentions of AOC and the not-so-mostly-peaceful character of her opposition to Hillary?
What would prevent the new president from using the power of the federal government to go after AOC and other political rivals within the left with as much ferocity as was deployed against Trump? What (other than the high moral character of Hillary herself, of course) prevents the DSA from being subjected to electronic surveillance on the basis of a secret FISA Court warrant, censorship by the multi-billionaires of Twitter, Google, and Facebook, an attorney general who simply refuses to enforce laws against harassing and threatening DSA-friendly judges and justices at their homes, dawn raids by armed G-men, or the conjuring of an unanswerable charge of long-ago sexual assault while professional feminists dutifully chant Believe All Women?
It is worth recalling that, having taken power, Hitler’s first victims were other German gentiles—first the Communists and the social democrats but soon enough, other Nazis. Remember the Night of the Long Knives? Hitler eliminated 200 members of his own party—people who thought of themselves as loyal friends of the regime. And of course, the same thing happened, again and again, in God knows how many of Stalin’s Commie-on-Commie purges.
Never imagine that you and yours have a permanent place on the Right Side of History…
Published in General
I don’t think the left can imagine that other leftists can be corrupt. Somehow Venezuela and Russia weren’t really leftist because leftism is good.
Exactly. The Bernie Bros believe that Hillary stole the nomination from their guy, and this means that she isn’t really a leftist.
Which, of course, she isn’t: Just a nasty, power-hungry opportunist, but then, so is AOC, and Bernie himself for that matter. No principles, only situations.
Saddam Hussein did the same thing, only he did it up-front to his allies. I remember reading that, in the chamber where his ascendancy was announced, some of his closest allies were seized and taken outside and shot, just like that. It was a clear message to any dissenters: if he’s willing to do that to his friends, just imagine what he’s willing to do to you.
This is what lefties never seem to understand — when you concentrate power in government, the most ruthless will eventually rise to the top. This is why I’ll forever be grateful that Trump spared us from Hillary. She’s exactly the kind of ruthless monster you don’t want taking the reins of Leviathan, although Leviathan will have its way with us eventually no matter which ruthless a-hole ends up on top.
It’s amusing. They really think they’ll be favored and elevated above us when the revolution comes.
I must vociferously disagree. At least about Bernie Sanders. He really believes in Communism from what I can gather. I rather wish he was charlatan. As always, we will go back to C.S. Lewis. Because a third of Ricochet should be made up of Thomas Sowell, C.S. Lewis and old testament quotes.
Bernie Sanders really believes that if the American left takes power everything will be great. The poor whites and blacks who take heroin will stop taking heroin because the taxes are fair. The reason poor folks bother with drugs is always because of corrupt rich people anyway. (I am accurately describing their ideology.)
They always think they’re going to be the ones in the Politburo, not the ones sent to work in the camps (or put up against a wall).
I read that he got tossed out of a commune in his younger days for not doing his share of the work.
There’s also that beach house…
I might agree with your assessment were it not for Bernie’s three homes. From what I have learned of him, he’s just another grifter, in it for whatever he personally can get.
Takes two to tango. No?
And, when the weight of new taxes collapses the economy for everyone, even the Left will have trouble buying their champagne and caviar. The Left idolizes Social Security and Medicare, and expanding those two programs is a big part of their agenda. Unfortunately, they also believe in population control, so there will never be enough workers (especially in that collapsed economy) to support all the retirees, so those taxes will rise very high. Who will be left to do any work? What will all those 87,000 IRS employees do, when no one has any income?
Which two have tangoed recently? Hilary? Please.
Embrace the power of “and.” Bernie is a true-hearted Communist. And a completely self-interested grifter and sponger, with a real phobia of productive work. And a liar and charlatan.
Bernie Sanders is a sociopath.
Not a deep bench, I’ll grant you…
That’s such a dishonest phrase, and always has been. It doesn’t take two to tango to be robbed, lied to, run over by a car, or to deal with a predator.
It was a response to a specific statement – quoted for your convenience.
Oh, I thought it had to do with peaceful transitions. Trump isn’t raiding anybody’s homes, or waving guns at the staff, or making lawyers wait out in the heat, and rummaging through people’s wives closets. Or trumping up false charges on anybody, at risk of decades of imprisonment.
Hillary has spent six years saying she won the election and when the shoe was on the other foot, she never got locked up, and Trump never raided her home in Chappaqua. Trump’s DOJ never got search warrants out on her, or investigated her for crimes for which she would spend potentially decades in jail.
No, it doesn’t take two to tango. It takes one bad actor.
In a televised debate long ago, William F. Buckley had an opponent who declared that the U.S. invasion of Grenada was the moral equivalent of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Bill instantly replied: “That is like saying that the man who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus is morally equivalent to the man who pushes her out of its path, because they both push little old ladies around.” The opponent’s position dissolved in the laughter.
What else did she do differently?
I am (surprisingly?) appalled that it’s degenerated to the FBI raiding the former president’s home, but did Hillary really do the equivalent of Trump in terms of the peaceful transition of power?
How? I think the Soviets were invited into Afghanistan by the elected Govt there – however dicey. There was no such fig leaf for the three day invasion of Grenada. What an odd comparison.
What do you think? I’m just saying.
No, she didn’t. She may have wanted to (who knows? this is not a Hillary character reference) but she didn’t.
Well there was a lot less rape with the invasion of Grenada. Additionally, after defeating the Marxist Dictatorship, elections happened in 1984. So one country rapes brutalizes a country for years and years and another country gets rid of a dictatorship and allows for elections. William F. Buckley is pretty apt I’d say.
She refused to concede defeat even though she most certainly lost. Trump at least has some significant voter shenanigans going on. Not sure it justifies Trump’s behavior though but Hillary really doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
The salient difference, imho, is that Grenada was easy and Afghanistan was hard. When the West invaded Afghanistan we didn’t really achieve that great an outcome, we failed, just like the Soviets did before us (with our help, let’s not forget). There is no way we pushed Afghanistan out of the path of an oncoming bus. jmho.
The Grenada invasion was to the benefit of humanity and the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan was not. That’s the most salient point. Also, who is this we Kemosabe? You consider yourself a Westerner? All you do on this website is complain about Western Civilization and try to say that the non-Western countries are comparable to Western ones?
Nobody’s invasion of Afghanistan was to the benefit of humanity. That’s a meaningful difference.
Of course I’m a Westerner. That’s where I live, that’s where I vote, that’s where I pay my taxes.
You don’t own the West, and I don’t have to flatter you to belong.
This ain’t about me Zafar.
If you believe in the elections of Soviet client states, I have a car trunk full of Al Franken ballots to sell you. Never been used.
Honest.
Keep that in mind.
Do you believe in the elections of US client states like Egypt?
I don’t need to. The Egyptians need to.