Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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.
[Editors’ Note: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Interested in becoming part of the best conservative community on the web, and post your ideas where they might get Instalanched? Ricochet is just $5/month and the first one is on us. As our Founders say, join the conversation.]
Published in General
So, a disorganized bunch of cranks. Again, qualitatively different.
Crash Rob Long’s party and Jonah will be there. Worked for me.
Can you tell us where to find details about the loss of revenue or speaking gigs because of Jonah’s NeverTrump stance?
I’m genuinely curious about this, as aside from perhaps Liberty University I’m not sure where he would have spoken as a conservative and is now not welcome due to his NeverTrump stance.
Despite Roger Ailes obvious bias for Trump he’s still welcome at FoxNews, he’s still at the AEI, he’s still (obviously) at NRO and National Review, he still is on GLoP, he still has a column at USA Today and Town Hall. I have no doubt the current book he’s writing will do well.
Jonah has been the focus of some vicious anti-Semitic attacks and I’ll take his word that they’ve increased dramatically during this campaign season since so many prominent Jewish conservatives have reported the same thing and I don’t see what Jonah would get out of lying (frankly I don’t care to peruse the filth I presume clogs any conservative commentator’s Twitter feed, NeverTrump or otherwise).
But this is the first I’ve heard that he’s lost out on enormous amounts of revenue due to being a NeverTrump advocate, which is concerning because as our nominee says Jonah can’t even afford to buy a pair of pants.
EDIT: Just saw your response, still curious about the details though. And I wouldn’t know about how often he’s on FoxNews now vs. then because I find FoxNews obnoxious.
Shame to hear that, though I wonder how much of that is due to the usual pressures of these commentariat shows. If Jonah was deemed as having nothing new to add, or they had an overabundance of disaffected conservatives, then I could see why he would be dropped.
Personally I never could stand such shows so never have watched them (haven’t had cable in 8 years now anyway) and have no idea who is up and who is down on them.
So how does that have any bearing on how he has been affected by his NeverTrump stance by his alleged allies on the right?
Where is the evidence of organization against Adams other than supposition?
The alt-right seems fairly well organized to me.
Bret Baier’s show is the best pure news show on TV bar none. Whenever I can catch it I do. Brit Hume of course is just as good now that he’s taken over for the lamentable Greta Van Susteren. Jonah used to be a regular on Baier’s show. Now he’s on once in a blue moon. His absence and the reasons behind it are noteworthy.
You clearly don’t watch Fox News much.
It’s not just Jonah, although he is the most visible, many other National Review writers have seen their appearances nosedive since Trump won the nomination. The right is just as vindictive as the left when it comes to breaking ranks. See: every anti-NeverTrump post on Ricochet ever.
So the difference is that Trump will loudly and ineptly call you names and threaten you to your face, within the bounds of the law, while Hillary will quietly stab you in the back, using the full force & weight of the federal government.
Why the interest in turning this post from looking at Hillary into scrutiny for the alt-right? If you would like to deconstruct them, feel free to do so in your own post.
I intended no compare / contrast essay on the fringes. If I had I would have written it that way. If I was attempting to play moral equivalence games then I would have done so. I am not.
I am under exactly zero obligation to counter balance the evils of Hillary with anything else.
I do not watch TV.
Maj has gone on FoxNews, under his real name no less, about one of his posts here. He actually appeared live and in person about Marco Rubio having a chance to win the primaries.
That was pretty damn courageous given the way the primaries were going and did go.
Any person who wants to find my real name can do so. I’ve shared it on national TV with a pretty provocative thesis.
This chickenhawk-style accusation is beneath Ricochet.
[Dons moderator hat]
Edison – please edit this remark to remove this statement. This is personally attacking Magestyk, and moreover questioning his integrity. The former is against the Code of Conduct, the latter is attacking a friend of mine.
Indeed.
Another big issue is that Adams was Shadowbanned. This is a issue with a lot of social media platforms. Twitter blocks content and people, so does Facebook.
Youtube is slightly better but they just started demonotizing some videos due to “content” but it isn’t clear exactly which content is worth demonotizing and what isn’t.
I’m not disputing the existence of vindictiveness. I am disputing the scale, the methods, and the organization.
It should be noted as well that if a person visited the comments section beneath that video on the Fox News website that various alt-right style wackos assailed me. How droll. Not that I care about those basement-dwelling anime fappers – it’s merely instructive to see what happens when you violate a certain type of person’s orthodoxy.
My point, as it has been from the beginning, is that speech has consequences and people should bear the responsibility of those consequences. I was simply pointing out that it’s not just leftists that engage in these reprehensible tactics and the tactics are not limited just to the alt-right (unless you consider Fox News and Ricochet part of the Alt-Right). You have presented no evidence that the Hillary campaign is involved in anything regarding what is happening to Adams. Adams is a public figure by virtue of his profession and his fans probably include a large number of liberals. That they take exception to his current stances is in no way surprising.
You will not find a smoking gun, except when you do (ask Debbie Wasserman-Schultz about that). There are tells, though, in the vocabulary and phrasing used.
Maj, just…just don’t do this.
This is why we got Trump in the first place.
And take shots at NeverTrumps. The ongoing obsession continues to amuse.
BTW this sounds like a perfect argument for NeverTrump!
This behavior is not unique to the Clintons; it has been standard operating procedure for the Democrats for a long time.
Case in point: In 2009 I was in a government relations role for a health care supply chain company. There was an upcoming confab for the Pharma industries and the leader of our Pharmacy team had a role coordinating speakers.
All the big Democrat House Committee chairs were going to be there (Waxman, Stark, Pallone, Levin, etc.). I think even Pelosi was supposed to show up. This was in the early stages of the health care reform effort.
Lo and behold, one of the speakers invited to the confab wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal broadly critical of the ideas being pitched for health care reform.
What followed was an effort to dis-invite this lone speaker lest her words of criticism reach the ears of our Lofty Lords on the Hill. In the end, I think everyone calmed down, but the initial response was close to panic for fear of offending Democrat leaders.
Bullying and intimidation have been the norm for the Democrats for years. What makes it more effective is that the people (i.e., the media) who should be standing up for the little guys being put to the squeeze are willing participants and enablers.
Ah so supposition and innuendo. Got it.
I think Andrew Klavan and Ben Shapiro and a lot of other outspoken anti-Trump conservatives might argue that point. The despicable nature of both candidates in this election simply reinforces the bad choices both parties have made in selecting their candidates. Whether the origin of the Trolls is the candidates themselves or simply groups of their supporters who believe that their behavior is justified, what it demonstrates is a disgusting devolution of political thought in this country which has been nurtured by the current president and his administration. Neither candidate, however, has done anything to censure the behaviors of their supporters. They are, as stated so often, both vile people, unfit to hold office at any level of government.
True. Feel free to borrow the line.
Not innuendo, and remember that DWS was rather unceremoniously exposed in the doc leak.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.