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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
They’d probably find my rates attractive if not my face.
I’ve seen Greta van Susteren. You’d have been fine.
Clinton has more resources to attack with. Trump has money, fame, lawyers, and belligerent supporters (not all of his supporters)… but he lacks Clinton’s decades of political connections. Clinton will always have more power in that regard because her supporters are already entrenched throughout government bureaucracies. But give Trump political authority and there is no reason to doubt he will abuse those powers. He is as contemptuous of legal restraints as he is of his opponents.
In any case, the best defense against censorship is popular defiance. When a handful of individuals defy unjust pressures, they are easily beaten. But if censors regularly fail to silence the people they attack, then the incentives to launch those attacks are weakened.
Buckling under censorship was a problem on the Right long before this election. Political correctness has taught generations of Americans not to speak up at work, school, public forums, or even among friends, lest they be punished.
Maj will be the new eye candy at Fox.
Incidentally, say another prayer for Mark Steyn, whose legal battle against censorship has been prolonged over so many years now that it’s easily forgotten. I would be furious if such a baseless accusation kept me in court for weeks, let alone years.
We already live in a society in which political actors can destroy any person’s life with impunity. Only the power to overtly attack all of us simultaneously is in question.
They can pay me to not sit in the leg chair.
Just don a set of lederhosen. You’ll only have to sit in that chair one time. Then they’ll move you behind a desk.
We tried it your way in 2008 and 2012. How’d that go?
Once I don them I promise not to doff them.
Don’t make promises your contract won’t let you keep. Fox does like its eye candy.
I hope to one day be both as handsome and intelligent as Dr. Krauthammer. Alas, I’m going to probably fall short in both categories…
This is sad. The comment is saying someone doesn’t care if something bad happens because their causes are more important. “If one doesn’t see how terrible my side has it, I won’t take your side seriously.” This is how things never change.
I think the Never Campaigns are childish. I have never seen them before. I think the over the top name calling is brain dead. These are people not the devil incarnate and their supporters are not demons.
You attacked my reaction and I responded. I can’t help that my reaction to a nonstory is “meh”. You seem to imply that something the left is doing is somehow categorically worse than what is happening to people on the other side. I disagree, hence my reaction: this is basically par for the course for people that speak their mind and really nothing to get up in arms about. Until the arm waving hysterics about Adams you didn’t see me lamenting Jonah or any other NeverTrumpers harassment on Ricochet – because they are public figures who took a public stance and let the chips fall where they may. If the actions here are bad then you should condemn them no matter who they are committed by and who they are directed against – you have pointedly refused to do so.
It is you that only cares about bad things happening when they affect your ideology. This says more about the quality of your principles than mine.
Good post.
Comments saying Adams asked for it, “meh,” etc. are revealing.
How so?
Jamie clarified and argued his point further. No need to beat him up over his opening words.
Good point, well stated.
I am not aware of all the posts on this site. I am more apt to comment on a Skipsul post because he is a friend. If he had put up things on those other issues, I would have known about it. It’s Skipsul’s fault.
I don’t like when unfair things happen on either side.
That’s funny: I love it when unfair things happen to the other side.
It must be because they’re bad people.
You are not getting this whole justice thing, Austin.
Bad people get bad things = Fair
Bad people get good things = Unfair
Did the Clintons ever exact revenge on the person who signed off on Obama making a speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention? Before that speech he was a hack politician from Illinois, a nobody, but after it he was Mr. Wonderful and went on to defeat Mrs. W. J. Clinton for the presidential nomination.
Who approved the speech, and (I’m guessing here) under what mysterious circumstances did he or she die?
I don’t know very much about Scott Adams. But Clinton does have hit squads to target her political adversaries. Her familiar David Brock lives to enact revenge on any who cross the Clintons- this has been written about frequently. And he has big money backers. Are you saying that it is ok for her to try to destroy anyone who opposes her?
Third times the charm, eh Michael?
Don’t say this until you see how much they’re offering for you to doff them.
This isn’t the right question. Unless you’re aware of illegal activity* on this front, it’s to be expected. The left responds to political challenges with savage personal attacks. The Clinton’s are more ruthless and effective than others, but they’re not alone. The question is what’s to be done about it? We’ve been complaining about it for 20 years. It’s safe to assume that’s not gonna work. The only thing I can think of is to fight fire with fire. Perhaps if we take down enough outspoken progressives we can drive home the destructiveness of this approach.
*The Obama IRS and Justice Departments have done blatantly illegal things. If we couldn’t get the public to care about those the social destruction of political opponents through legal means isn’t likely to generate widespread outrage.
Exactly. Gary Trudeau has used Doonsebury to openly mock conservative politicians for decades. Just how many times has he been threatened by the government and its proxy goons?
I’m saying that people who have been paying attention for any amount of time know how the Clintons work.
I’m not saying that these surrogates doing the Clintons’ dirty work for them is “OK” I’m saying it’s a reality. Why do you think these people fight so hard and play so dirty? It’s the oldest story in the book: Jobs are on the line. So, anybody who runs against them needs to be pure as the wind driven snow and smart enough to figure out how to deflect the sleaze the Clintons and their cronies dream up. Obama smashed them at this game. Why doesn’t anybody else?
Agree. Why do we act as if no one has ever defeated a Clinton?
Trump is not losing because the Clintons are omnipotent, capable of (ooh!) having their opponents shadow-whatsis’d on Twitter. (Indeed, the fact that Trump is doing as well as he is shows clearly that they aren’t.) Trump is losing because he is the sort of person who thinks it’s a good idea to send out tweets about a fat Miss Universe in the middle of the night.
I’m with Majestyk: I read the essay Skipsul linked to, and thought Scott Adams sounds self-important.
Precisely. Trump isn’t losing because of the vast competence of the Clintons and their immense web of smear tactics. Trump couldn’t be aiming any more carefully at his own foot. The Clintons are lucky to have him as their club-footed dance partner, because an even moderately competent Republican would be close to running away with this.
Back to the OP. The left’s tendency to swarm and destroy anyone who speaks ill of their Kings and Queens is extremely alarming, and they are aided by a sycophantic media and entertainment complex.
Scott Adams has been doing great work this year writing about why Trump succeeded in getting the nomination, explaining how he uses various persuasion tactics to change the conversation, connecting his approach to the ideas in The Art of the Deal, etc. Until his recent endorsement of Trump, he really just stuck to discussing the Trump phenomenon without ever committing.
I noticed that even this was too much for many on the left. So I’m not surprised to find the left fully unleashed on Adams now that he’s endorsed.
Over on the Enemy Message board, the response was immediately how Adams was a hack, a failed cartoonist, not funny, and one person said that the endorsement caused him to throw out all of Adams’ books. (Which I immediately connected to a Nazi-style public book burning of the works of authors who the regime has now considered unacceptable.)
This is the fascistic left in a nutshell. This is what they do. And while it’s clear that the regime isn’t ordering the book burnings, they don’t need to when they’ve managed to get citizens to do it willingly.
The left doesn’t outlaw ideas; they just make those ideas unpalatable to the citizens’ minds. The citizens do the rest.