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.
In praise of authoritarianism
Not from me; I say it’s spinach, and to hell with it. But others find it a good election message:
I don’t know if Ms. Berlinski endorses the particulars of D muthafargery. I don’t know if she just liked the swinging’-Richard coq-of-the-walk posture of muthafargery from an internet videosthat cherrypick moments from charismatic politicians who really said some things, y’all. But she’s on to something; weakness is not an effective message in 2020.
Still, it’s hard not to infer a trill of joy that the Ds are doing this, and hence will win. So.
Is it just me, but when the Ds have embraced every statist “solution” and intrusion into the economy, elevated identity politics to a religion, let cities burn, lost their voice when it came to condemning mobs that spatter every civic structure with obscenities, shrug at Jew-hatred when the popular people say it, promise to make citizens of illegal aliens, and recast the national narrative to conform to the 1619 project – complete with witch trials and struggle sessions for anyone who does not parrot the new history – well, perhaps your enthusiasm for competent, ruthless people might be less than enthusiastic?
Maybe it’s just me! But I’m trying to imagine a scenario in which ruthless statists is a concept that makes conservatives stand up and cheer.
Competent, ruthless people weld people’s doors shut to keep them inside when Covid strikes. Competent, ruthless people billyclub citizens who do not wear masks.
Competent, ruthless people enforce compliance with their ideas with every tool in the arsenal – legal, social, economic – because after all, the personal is the political.
Competent, ruthless people pack the Supreme Court.
Competent, ruthless people gun down protestors.
Sorry, reductio ad absurdum there, utterly unmoored from history. Sorry! It’s different in this context, because “ruthless” in American politics means an unwavering desire to pursue the necessary policies through the established system by whatever means necessary, yet scrupulously adhering to laws, norms, and conventions. That’s all!
Whatever: at least we have a standard. Competency is not enough. The necessity of defeating Trump requires not just the absence of ruth but its abolition. It needs a hard, pitiless heart, and this sentiment is best expressed with Quentin Tarantino dialogue to make sure we get the point. You know people are serious when they use the really bad swears.
Published in General
Having been born in Waco, Steve could update “A Hissy Fit” to describe a California having to fly down to Texas on business and resenting the entire experience, and basically for the exact same reasons. Feelings of moral superiority combined with a belief in cultural superiority makes it easy to ‘other’ places that don’t think and act in the same way, and coastal California’s just as bad about it now as people from New York City ever were.
“NEW YORK CITY?!?!?!”
“Get a rope.”
I think the main thing here is the Port Huron statement and the Students for a Democratic Society started during JFK’s term, though they didn’t really start to make an impact until the LBJ years. While the Kennedy hagiographers want the world to believe if he had lived he would have done a 180 on his political policy and pulled out of Vietnam, that was unlikely after the Soviets’ Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis challenges. SDS would have treated JFK like LBJ, while RFK aligned with the anti-war left because the Kennedys thought that could get the White House back.
Her Twitter feed has been absolutely bonkers lately. I posted a bunch of them on a different thread, here.
This Twitter thread in response to the same person sounds more directly negative towards him. But Claire’s also been negative towards Trump quite a bit in her Twitter feed, so using snark while trying to balance between the two sides makes the snark easy to misconstrue as full support. If you voice at least partial support of websites that employ The Rick Wilson, don’t use sarcasm that sounds like The Rick Wilson to chastise other people there you think have gone too far….
Doug: “Well Claire may have spent too much time in France. The French have sanitized the French Revolution and it’s Reign of Terror.”
How apropos, since our BLM protests are beginning to look like a new Reign of Terror and all it’s horror.
“Polite society in France demands that the slaughter never be mentioned. The slaughter of the peasants, that as one revolutionary said will be treated like cattle if they did not follow the dictates of the planning boards.”
Again kind like here.
Marci: It’s sad and disappointing to see Claire use that kind of crude and violent language.
Sam: “I agree. She certainly loves attention; and must be a bit confused about why a lot of her readership has vanished. “
Granny: Ummmm…is it possible that Claire is being sarcastic?
No, she definitely is not being sarcastic. In her environs, supporting Trump is like the kiss of death so any sarcastic support of Trump is verboten.
Her crude language is the sign of someone who is becoming unhinged, not confused. The present political environment more and more demands a person make a stark choice:
A. Support Trump and the American Way of Life including our Constitutional Republic.
B. Support the destruction of America and the disintegration of the middle and working classes into essentially enslaved poverty stricken serfs barely eking out an existence in a disintegrating social environment run by a Totalitarian Police State.
You must make a choice of A or B. There is no middle ground C choice as much as Claire or Gary or George Will want there to be, and everyone knows it, so what we are seeing is Claire cracking under the pressure of defending the indefensible choice of B which will enslave hundreds of millions of people, kill millions more and usher in a new Dark Age.
She told me directly on Twitter that she has read Friedrich Hayek books. That makes absolutely zero sense to me looking at how she behaves.
Maybe when she finished (assuming she meant that she actually read all the way through), she thought “Wow, that was great science fiction!”
It’s almost enough to make one wish that Claire would follow the sage advice found in the “How to Write A Great Post: 11 Tips” article linked in the footer of every R> page. Specifically:
(Spoiler alert for the irony-impaired … look at who wrote the “…Great Post” article.)
Maybe she should have added “Except for Twitter…”
Ruthless competency came up with the idea of running guns into Mexico and then using the resulting violence as an excuse for more gun control here.
Ruthless competency came up with the idea of using the IRS to thwart the President’s political opponents.
Ruthless competency made sure that everyone, even Catholic nuns, had to participate in government-mandated birth control programs.
Ruthless competency used the FBI to investigate the opposing campaign. It means using any and all means at your disposal, including secret espionage courts, to call a legitimate election into doubt and hamstring an incoming administration.
If this is ruthless competency, I will gladly welcome much, more more foolish incompetency in government.
In fairness to the progressive left, I think what they generally offer is ruthless incompetency. So maybe they’re just trying to up their game.
Amen….since her move full time to France combined with Trump’s election she has almost gone full Jen Rubin unfortunately. I follow her on twitter and that tweet made me cringe….and it wasn’t because of the language.
Ruthless incompetency, OTOH, has its own drawbacks. Mercilessness in any form of government is abhorrent.
I’d prefer humble competency, or blithering incompetency.
Remembering how old Biden and Pelosi especially, are, I’d go with ruthless incontinency.
It’s sad to see @claire Berlinski’s complete change – someone who once wrote a really good book called Menace in Europe – Why the Continent’s Crisis is America’s too. She should go back and re-read it herself, because her insightful book has come to fruition in spades, but she is now taking up for the menaces. Her foul mouth isn’t her biggest blind-sight.
This is great stuff. If Trump would campaign on the problems with the D’s agenda, he would have a good shot at winning. Do you see any evidence that he is capable of articulating the manifest problems or of making the election about anything other than himself and his personal complaints?
People stupid enough to not realize those kinds of things on their own, likely would not be convinced anyway and were probably going to vote D no matter what.
The speech at Mt. Rushmore went there, which is why the media slammed it as “dark” and “divisive,” but the point is well-taken.
BTW, this is an 18th century-level run-on sentence. It should be written on parchment, in calligraphy, with every third or fourth word capitalized.
Hey, I’d frame it and hang it on the wall!
Hah! Everything I publish is “dashed off.” If you work in a daily medium you learn to get it right the first time. Writing is like spontaneous combustion.
Good. Glad to know I’m not the only one who writes like that.
2020, the year of struggle sessions and so much more.
Not everybody is as into politics as we are. Hoping that voters will (1) understand the dangers with the D’s campaign proposals, and (2) believe Trump will effectively work to prevent the proposals from being enacted is probably not a great campaign strategy.
Gah! It takes me ten edits before my stuff is even readable.
Sounds like you just need to up your creativity in the application of the language. Just dropping the bomb won’t work anymore, you have to make it artistic!
I’m like Douglas Adams – I love deadlines, especially the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Was there going to be a link in there somewhere?
If the riots and stuff aren’t sufficient, I don’t know that any campaign ad would make a difference.