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Required Reading
Powerline’s Scott Johnson has this brief, outstanding summary of the greatest political scandal in our nation’s history up today. This is absolutely required reading.
At the time, I thought Fast & Furious was the greatest political scandal in our history. Getting American law enforcement officers killed with weapons that our own government sold to criminal gangs in a foreign country in an effort to change popular opinion sufficiently to demand that we change the 2nd Amendment of our own Constitution. Holy Toledo.
But this scandal, in which officials of our own government attempt to overturn an election by using the power of their unelected offices, with active assistance from the media – my God. When appointed bureaucrats decide that they consent to democracy only when it goes their way, then how far are we from typical third world socialism?
At first, I thought the term “Deep State” was a bit overwrought. I was wrong. This is not hyperbole. This is an immediate threat to freedom and democracy around the world (imagine the world without American democracy). This ends either with one party rule, or it ends with torches and pitchforks. Unless our government successfully excises this “Deep State” cancer, which is now widely metastatic. Regardless, I think this is enormously important, and I don’t see how it can end well. Somebody, please tell me I’m over-reacting. Please?
Published in General
I have gotten all of my relatives to call it that. 100% RINOs and leftists. LOL.
Rush Limbaugh controls my mind and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Bingo.
Ah, of course. @rufusrjones, I apologize. I missed your irony. I’d retract my comment if I knew how. ;)
I’m not an expert on this, but if you subtract Michael Savage and then add in the fact that about half of the things talk radio guys supposedly get in trouble for they make apologies, it’s nonsensical to think of it that way.
I forget his name, but that’s stupid gun grabber kid from Florida– David Hogg?– doesn’t get into UCLA and then he whines about it on Twitter. Then Laura Ingrahm, ridicules him, because the fact is nobody gets into UCLA. It’s idiotic. It’s a hard school and they have tons of applicants. But then the kid starts a boycott. I am not making this up. This actually happened.
So then they let them in the Harvard even though his SATs are garbage. The future ruling class. #vomit
I’m in favor of subtracting Michael Savage.
And yes, I agree with the rest of your comment as well.
First, the government makes a problem. “Please sell long guns to these criminals”
Then the guns are used in crime.
Then the president says, “the majority of guns used in Mexican crime come from the US” as part of his argument for renewed “assault weapons ban” AND the DOiJ* says “see, we need to increase reporting of sales of long guns”
* Department of (in)Justice
I thought that this comment in #5 was your third door.
I thought you were saying speech and discussion and argument was the third door. No, I’m sure you don’t favor violence. None of us do. It would be repellent, damaging to body and soul and culture and probably scarring any government to follow, much like the civil war.
But when I say rebellion, well, what else do you call it when you advocate removing either a few top officials (presumably to jail if what they did was a serious crime — or a cancer on the government) or on a broader scale many or most of the bureaucratic “Resistance”, people who won’t do their jobs as ordered by the Executive but rather do what they want because their ideas and goals and priorities are different and “higher”?
And what can be done short of a massive movement, a statement of revulsion or anger at the loss of the rule of law? Electing a sympathetic president won’t work, we tried it with Trump, and he’s been hamstrung.
What other way is there of saying, “We’re not going to take it anymore?” and actually affecting a significant change such as life-saving surgery?
The third door is either vocal rebellion that the media can’t ignore or spin, or passive decline as sheep corralled and fed and shorn. Who wants that? Some might, but it’s not the best outcome, I don’t think.
Ah, I understand.
I don’t think of speaking, writing, persuading, and educating as “rebellion.” I think of them as being engaged in the civic process. That’s what I think we should do. And I didn’t read rebellion into the call to excise corruption from government. I saw that as just good governance, a legal house-cleaning.
Maybe we’re talking about the same things in different language. I am always wary of any calls to lawbreaking, even in a good cause.
Drew,
You comments are always compelling, perhaps because if I understand you correctly, you believe we are approaching (or have passed) a point of no return. You respect the old relatively placid, peaceful, thoughtful processes that unfortunately got us to this point. You know something has to be done, and soon, or else we will pass this point of no return but you don’t know what to do. If this is a correct view of your thinking, then I completely agree with you. But we want most of all peace, rationality, and honesty — and change to conservative, republican, truly representative and freedom-imbuing principles.
When you were a kid you stood in the middle of a see-saw and tried to balance, but you realized unless you were exceedingly careful the board very quickly tipped one way or the other. It’s the same way now with the various corruptions within the government. If we try to moderate piecemeal, disorganizedly, as various people and groups push against the increasing government corruption and control, there will be a lot of back and forth at the center of the see-saw. And I think this will be both counter-productive, dangerous to people and ultimately unsuccessful, because as it stands one side seems to have all the weight.
My belief as it stands now is that we need a clear, authoritative, right-sided, principled declaration of what is wrong, how to fix it (arguing that the law must be followed) and a plan of action that most people who want freedom can agree upon, to promote a peaceful unity, a rethinking and statement of race, sex, individuality and freedom. Strikes and work stoppages, in my mind, are the best sort of unignorable protest that people can take, along with a single loud understandable, unignorable explanation.
Any president can do this in a five-minute speech. It doesn’t take Kamala or Nancy or Tom Perez to shout angrily to push people out of restaurants and stores and make them uncomfortable coming out of their homes, and whip up anarchistic mobs of vandals, but something better; something emotional to be sure, but inherently rational and right and law abiding.
I think it’s not too late. But it will take something loud and clean and right and unavoidable by the press and the people to get it started. Otherwise we are likely to see back and forth skirmishes and mounting violence as people get fed up. And this is what we don’t want.
But back then all you needed was a press, paper, ink and the money to get there. Today, the press is no longer independent (from a few buying them all up) and the internet is controlled by a few with allegiance to the State.
Notice that if you ever use the word “hatred” the mind immediately asks for a direct object: hate whom?, and how? “Hate” as a noun summons no such thoughts.
I don’t think that any cleaning house will happen on the course that is set. I think if anything, some form of happy Green something or other, and business as usual.
I’m not sympathetic to the idea that the right has been silenced, literally or effectively.
Maybe not silenced so much as shouted down by the media and entertainment. And Kamala and Nancy and Perez and the new breed of harsh, newly-elected, invective spewers.
I have two kids in college who take a different view.
I have a friend who works in journalism (sort of – he’s an accountant for a company that owns newspapers) – he would also take a different view.
The cost of independent thought can be EXTREMELY high in some places. It’s not illegal to come out of the closet as a conservative at a university. But you’d be crazy to do so.
Yes, I understand that there can be social consequences to speaking your mind.
Net worth. As in negative net worth.
Or you can sell out like Joe Scarborough et. al.
It’s easier than keeping your integrity and trying to make it in Hate Radio.
That’s it. Nobody’s afraid of the Right; everybody’s afraid of the Left. Consequences are for conservatives, not progressives. They can literally get away with treason (Hillary selling us out to the highest bidder) and criminal conspiracies to overthrow the duly elected government. Only conservatives have to have bodyguards just to speak their opinions on college campuses. Maybe it’s not “silencing,” but it surely is intimidation.
Yes.
My frustration is with those who call for revolution (to one degree or another) because the left dominates the media and the right is being silenced. The right isn’t being silenced. It’s simply expensive, in the current climate, for some to speak out.
But it’s a whole lot cheaper to speak out than it is to revolt.
(I have a similar frustration with those who think it would be easier to create a new conservative party than reform the one we have.)
if someone here wants to write a post about how talk radio is a problem that would be great, because it isn’t. There really are Republicans that think that.
I watch Scarborough a few minutes every month and I don’t think he consciously sold out. I always wondered how Nancy Reagan turned Ron into a conservative until I saw the effect Mika Brzezinski has had on a formerly sensible guy.
$$$$$$$$$$$$
There sure is a lot of “But of course, we don’t want any violence!” among conservatives.
Problem is. the Left has no such qualms. Not in reality, at least. Perhaps in rhetoric, but that’s like Yasser Arafat saying “We want peace” in English and “We want death!” in Arabic.
I’ll be watching on cable TV as these “true conservatives” get stashed away in prison for violent acts. I won’t be donating to their legal defense funds.
Political violence is a feature of the left. They fight for power and control.
Those who value personal liberty are unlikely to fight to the death in order to gain sufficient political power so that they can leave you the heck alone.
True. But they will at some unpredictable time become, “Mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore.” Apres nous, les deluge.
I do think the proof of malice requirement gives so-called journalists way too much leeway to flat out lie about someone simply because he’s a public figure. It used to be fear of losing credibility kept journalists and newspapers honest, but no longer. Even when caught in a lie, they print a retraction on page 17C days later . . .
I must respectfully disagree. F&F was made to look like a legitimate sting operation. They weren’t after cartel members – they were after garnering support for gun control.
As for discussing the 25th amendement process, that would be somthing for the cabinet to discuss, not the FBI.
My gut feeling is laws were broken in both cases, and we need an independent counsel to look into it.
I will be more sympathetic to those on the right who defend right-wing violence when I stop hearing that people on the right are not free to talk because they’ll lose their jobs, be ostracized, get bad grades, etc.
In other words, I’ll consider endorsing violence when we have demonstrated that we aren’t afraid of non-violent persuasion and have exhausted that option.
When? What would it take? I asked this question in a post a long time ago on Ricochet. What would it take to get you in the streets? It’s a sincere question.
I think we’re the frog in the slowly heating pot. We won’t know when to jump, and it may be too late already.