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The Hit Squad
Do not make yourself a target for the Clintons. This has been a rule for as long as we’ve known them. If you get in their sights, bad things happen to you. The latest case in point is Scott Adams, writer of the Dilbert comic strip who has turned his thoughts to blogging about the Trump phenomenon. According to Adams, because he has been writing things favorable to Trump (something he would likely contest as he would claim that he was merely describing what he was seeing based on his own experience and training) he has seen his usual schedule of speaking engagements dropped. This is rather similar to the usual practice of late for universities to disinvite conservative speakers. Blogging on the election the way he has, has cost him financially.
As something of a semi-serious running joke, months ago Adams had endorsed Hillary for president for (as he put it) “my own personal safety” – this on the grounds that Hillary and the Democrats were painting Trump as a fascist while stirring race hatred, which all meant that if Trump did win there would be unprecedented post election violence. Endorsing Hillary would therefore both deflect some attacks now, and would hopefully shield him if she lost. Last week he changed his endorsement to Trump, in no small part for financial reasons:
The bottom line is that under Clinton’s plan, estate taxes would be higher for anyone with estates over $5 million(ish). I call this a confiscation tax because income taxes have already been paid on this money. In my case, a dollar I earn today will be taxed at about 50% by various government entities, collectively. With Clinton’s plan, my remaining 50 cents will be taxed again at 50% when I die. So the government would take 75% of my earnings from now on.
Yes, I can do clever things with trusts to avoid estate taxes. But that is just welfare for lawyers. If the impact of the estate tax is nothing but higher fees for my attorney, and hassle for me, that isn’t good news either.
You can argue whether an estate tax is fair or unfair, but fairness is an argument for idiots and children. Fairness isn’t an objective quality of the universe. I oppose the estate tax because I was born to modest means and worked 7-days a week for most of my life to be in my current position. (I’m working today, Sunday, as per usual.) And I don’t want to give 75% of my earnings to the government. (Would you?)
Things have changed for Adams since then. One of Adams’s consistent observations has been that while Clinton has portrayed Trump as a fascist and his supporters as violent racists, especially as there has been a notable trend of violence at the fringes of Trump rallies, the real violence has nearly always been perpetrated by Clinton supporters. Last week Adams asked his Twitter followers to send him examples of such violence, and that was when things escalated against Adams (emphasis mine):
This weekend I got “shadowbanned” on Twitter. It lasted until my followers noticed and protested. Shadowbanning prevents my followers from seeing my tweets and replies, but in a way that is not obvious until you do some digging.
Why did I get shadowbanned?
Beats me.
But it was probably because I asked people to tweet me examples of Clinton supporters being violent against peaceful Trump supporters in public. I got a lot of them. It was chilling.
Late last week my Twitter feed was invaded by an army of Clinton trolls (it’s a real thing) leaving sarcastic insults and not much else on my feed. There was an obvious similarity to them, meaning it was organized.
At around the same time, a bottom-feeder at Slate wrote a hit piece on me that had nothing to do with anything. Except obviously it was politically motivated. It was so lame that I retweeted it myself. The timing of the hit piece might be a coincidence, but I stopped believing in coincidences this year.
I get that Never Trump members here are unpersuaded by arguments against Hillary on things like the Supreme Court. What I do not understand, though, is why they are unpersuaded by the simple observation that the Clintons (and the Democrats) actually do target their critics and work to destroy their careers and their lives.
I see many arguments of one sort or another that argue that Trump must lose now so that Conservatism (a term at this point of which I am increasingly leery) can spend the next 4 years rebuilding, and that Hillary must be so obviously terrible a president that we should be guaranteed a win in 2020. Yet this fact remains – people who cross the Clintons often find their lives made suddenly very difficult. Why is there such confidence that we would be allowed to even make the case against her? Must we have an additional 4 years of an executive inflicting the IRS on political opponents? Must we have an additional 4 years of the administration orchestrating with political activists to smear writers? Why the confidence that in the next 4 years the Republicans will be allowed to rebuild without intimidation?
Finally I often see the Never Trump members here use some variant on the argument “if Trump is the solution, then the Republic is already beyond repair.” It should be realized that in many respects our Republic is indeed damaged beyond repair. A party that organizes national smear campaigns to discredit, humiliate, and ruin the careers of private citizens who dare criticize their operations, that is aided and abetted by tech companies like Twitter, is a party that has already decided the Republic and its governmental limitations do not apply to themselves. Hillary’s embarrassing incompetence on national and international issues is bad enough (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were also terrible), but the willingness to destroy the lives of critics and attempt to silence enemies should terrify us all. Hillary has attempted to brand Trump as a fascist, but it is Hillary and the Democrats who are organizing armies to smash windows, burn cities, and riot. It is they who are running the hit squads. It is they who are the fascists.
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Published in General
This cannot be overstated.
Great post.
Thank you.
I had to take into consideration who we were talking about here. You or I might react in the normal fashion, which you would find below. Adams clearly doesn’t and I should have made that clear from the get-go. Sorry.
OK, thanks for clarifying.
Why should we be so sanguine that it will merely be the IRS targeting political opponents?
Considering how the Justice Department has been run in the current administration with so little push back I see no reason a Clinton administration would hesitate to use the FBI for such purposes.
The 10 Cent Observation
One cannot have a principled discussion when discussing two unprincipled or loosely principled candidates.
We are living in Pox Americana.
I think the reason Trump is so flustered in his public speaking is that he is having a really tough time saying that he actually loves America pretty much the way she is. Some socialism is okay with him. He actually doesn’t want to change things radically.
What he wants to do is roll the film back to a time when we had struck a good balance in taxation and social programs, when the debt was not crushing us the way it is today (and who would better understand the relationship between debt and national strength than a guy who had been driven by debt into bankruptcy four times–and the important takeaway here is that he did survive financially, and that’s what we need to do, survive), and when we had some money left over for a strong military and international presence. What he wants is not radical change to pursue conservatism. This country cannot make sudden moves without causing a lot of damage and turmoil, here and around the world. We would be much better able to move toward conservatism during and after a Trump presidency than we would after a Clinton hysterical the-world-will-end-if-we-don’t-pass-this-tax-hike presidency.
If we keep going financially with Obama’s push toward socialism, it will destroy us. And the Democrats will get on their private Davos jets and fly away, leaving the mess behind them, blaming us as they wave good-bye.
Meh. The same thing has happened to folks like Jonah Goldberg and other public NeverTrumpers – it’s not just liberals that act this way.
I wonder how Gary Trudeau is doing.
Yup. It certainly is interesting. Patrick Frey, whose blog I have read and commented on for years, is a NeverTrumper and the hostility there is such I have withdrawn.
I see some similarity to the Bill Clinton years. The stock market, encouraged by the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 which everyone forgets, led many to ignore his personal corruption (military secrets to China) and his ignoring of terrorist attacks. September 11, 2001 came as a huge surprise to so many who had ignored the African embassy bombings and even the Cole bombing.
We are in a similar time warp. It will be painful when we wake up again.
His incomparable NDAs (ask @peterrobinson) and eagerness to threaten lawsuits. His smearing of other Republican candidates with absurd lies (like the one against Cruz’s dad), rather than honest debate of policies/experience or even clever jabs (Reagan’s “There you go again”). Why did Trump ever question McCain’s courage? Because ad hominem is his preferred method of counter-argument.
I’m not trying to convince anyone to vote against Trump. The Trumpathon (both for and against) has bored me for months. It just struck me as odd to cite Clinton’s threats and abusive habits without mentioning Trump’s.
And now we have come full circle. When the Trumpathon began (a year ago?), I often criticized arguments by NeverTrumpers for making weak claims. Today, I’m critiquing NeverClinton arguments. My reasoning might not be sound, but I am trying to be honest with myself about both Trump and Clinton. They’re both bullies with no respect for truth or justice. They are ends-justify-the-means thinkers.
What right does someone have to be free of the consequences of their speech?
Meh, this is always the reaction. It means nothing. Principles are something to be disregarded for they all do it. Oh wait, they matter when they touch things a person cares about. Somehow then the “Meh” disappears. Funny how that changes.
It was not my intent to write a compare and contrast post, merely to highlight known dangers from crossing the Clintons.
Who decides the consequences? Do your enemies get to decide the consequences for your speech? What do you think freedom of speech means? What do you think censorship is?
No doubt. And this is going to have to change. This is how the battle is being fought, and we’re not engaging. I find it distasteful, but we didn’t pick the fight. Defending yourself often requires getting blood on your hands. There’s not much to be done about it.
If we get president Clinton you won’t see me writing about her completely murderous lack of ethics or fat disgusting legs or hideous face or poor health or her husbands philandering or criminal behavior. Nope, not me.
There are some key differences, though, in scale, organization, and intent. Goldberg is a known entity and a long time commenter. I’m sure he’s regularly trolled, perhaps even (sadly) regularly threatened. However, has he publicly called for people to tweet him evidence of violence by Clinton supporters? (Disclaimer: I do not use Twitter, so this is an honest question) Is he in a position where his friends, colleagues, co-workers, and other connections are in a position to damage Clinton’s campaign? Again, he is a known entity as a political pundit so he is no danger at all. I’d not say this is “the same thing” at all.
It should also be telling that for all of Trump’s questionable ethics, no one is making videos like this about him:
Once you start highlighting the shameful ways NeverTrumpers like Jonah have been treated – including losing speaking gigs, revenue sources on TV and subjected to the vilest commentary including anti-Semitism on Twitter I’ll start taking you seriously about how terrible the other side is, okay?
When you are a public figure, with a public audience, the public.
Freedom of speech means freedom from government interference with your speech. Censorship is the government dictating what is and is not okay for the public sphere.
There are qualitative differences in how they operate. There are not violent riots by Trump supporters at Hillary rallies.
Has Jonah lost any revenue sources on TV or speaking gigs?
Those egomaniacal Tea Party groups to this day still think they were targeted by the IRS as some sort of wacky Left Wing conspiracy to shut down organized political opposition from the Right. (Obama’s hit squad is out to get me!)
I remember in 2008 the Obama campaign organized a mass listener call in to WGN 720 Radio when Milt Rosenberg had Stanley Kurtz as a guest. All the callers would basically berate the mild mannered host and guest, thus making the usual back and forth listener call in conversation impossible, eventually the show abandoned that evenings listener call in portion of the program. Who would have thought that these very same thugs, once in office, would use the IRS to bully people into silence, the notion seemed implausible at the time.
The goal is not a two sided back and forth, the goal is intimidation to get you (but more importantly those observing the process) to shut the EFF up, and let the Left do what they want.
Unfortunately for the Right, this tactic is working very well for the Left.
The issue comes down to who is doing it. Is what Jonah has experienced organized by Trump, or is it the outpouring of dispersed lunatics?
I think you should be paying more attention to the organization behind the campaigns against Jonah et al on Twitter. They all steam from the anti-semitic dungeons of the Alt-Right that many of us have been lamenting about the Trump campaign for almost a year now.
If you think Goldberg hasn’t publically called for evidence of Clinton’s malfeasance then you haven’t been paying attention. He’s been highlighting it his whole career.
Of course, he’s in a position to damage Clinton’s campaign – it’s been his job for two decades now. As for being in “danger” – you should talk to him. He’s lost enormous amounts of revenue, speaking gigs etc because of his stance. I guess only cartoonist suffer when they take a stand.
I have seen no evidence that this is an organized by the Clinton campaign. Only supposition on Adam’s part and yours.
He related as much to me in person. Look at the number of times he used to appear on Fox prior to his NeverTrump position as now. It is a marked drop.
These sorts of bullying tactics carry with them a cost: the cost is that you elevate the target of those tactics. How many people parlayed their scrutiny from the Obama administration into Fox News gigs or breathless interviews with Breitbart or shrieking headlines on Drudge?
In this way, they choose the form of the destructor.
Just who has shut up? Now, I’m not going to defend what seems like the illegal use of the IRS to target people for selective prosecution, but Media Matters and the various other leftist enforcers in the media are well within their rights to do what they do. That’s the consequence of a free and open society.
I think you missed my point. I did not say Jonah wasn’t doing these things, I said he’s no threat to them. As a long time pundit he brings nothing new to the table, that drastically lessens the threat he can pose. If you have not been reading Jonah for years because you considered him a biased partisan, then you still won’t be reading him now.
You met him? Wow. What were the circumstances? I remember when it was his mom you always saw on TV, and then one day her son Jonah started appearing. I feel like I watched him grow up.