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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
In the 18th century they didn’t write for people with short attention spans.
One of my sisters is severely ADHD. She’s also a biologist. One of the most interesting things she learned about ADHD brains is that they do exceptionally well at last-minute work because the pressures of the moment provide the right stimulation to provide focus, and aid the mind in tuning out the sorts of distractions that cripple such people when there are too many competing priorities. A looming deadline, sufficiently looming, drowns out those other priorities.
This is tremendous comfort for those of us who write best under pressure, dashing off in order to get something to press – contrary to Berlinski’s assertion, not only is it no moral failing to be last-minute, it’s a damned evolutionary adaptation that helps us thrive!
I don’t want it to look like I am singling out Claire on this, but I worked with a squad a veterans fresh from Vietnam on a construction site, and people just don’t know how to cuss properly. It is an art, and the skilled practitioners that could even approach those gentleman are few and far between. I would provide preciously lurid and vulgar examples but, well, COC. Anatomical verisimilitude is not expected nor encouraged.
The battle is for the interpretation of the riots. Is it all anti-Trump feee speech or insurrectionists attempting to terrify ordinary Americans and sow chaos.
I resemble that remark. Even though I don’t work in a daily medium. Rewriting consumes time that could be spent writing. See Heinlein’s third law.
Deadlines are different. Of the things in my life, God is the most important, followed closely by family, with deadlines third by a nose. I am not a genius like Douglas Adams. I need to meet deadlines to stay in business.
I wonder if Claire is, if you will, doomed by her atheism? I know her father is an atheist and she adores him. I think, for some, it can lead you to become very bitter and unhappy with humanity since ultimately you see no hope. I am not articulating this very well at all but so sorry to see her go down this path.
They talked about this on the latest American Greatness podcast. It was atheism in the time of a pandemic. I really recommend listening to that twice.
I mean it was a topic, not the whole show.
There was the time when my youngest was about three and we were stuck in traffic on the way to a Brewers game, when suddenly I heard from the back seat “C’mon, people, DRIVE!”.
I guess our last two nominees Romney and McCain would feel more comfortable as Democrats today, although McCain could be against the Democrats too at times.
I think Christopher Buckley now thinks his dad would be a Democrat or at least Never Trump too. I don’t think WFB would have been a Trump fan, but I don’t think he would have gone down the Bill Kristol road either. Norman Podhoretz is or was a bit of an anti-anti-Trump fan. The older generation can be full of some interesting surprises at times. They have seen a lot.
I’m pretty sure he said he’s for Trump.
McCain has no political philosophy, really.
I suppose Romney has potential in the right political environment, which is not now.
I just became her 6 comment on her tweet. Which just goes to show, that she isnt that important anymore. That we got close to a 100 comments on the post about her ranting.
My comment did violate the CoC though so I wont repeat it here.
I always took you for a Crusader.
Yeah, me too.
If WFB’s own words are anything to go by, he would have voted for Trump.
Hence why Turkish Percival is an ultra-nationalist Islamist.
It would be nice. But we’ve seen that a lot of other conservatives’ own words were NOT something to go by.
Christopher may be under the false impression that George Will is his father. But I will give him credit after the 2008 election to be the only ‘conservative’ pundit to have endorsed Obama who was willing to take an extended hiatus from punditing after being proven spectacularly wrong on that call. All the others simply pushed on and tried to memory hole that they ever backed Obama over Maverick.
This deserves an extended explanation that I’m not going to provide.
There are Republicans that just don’t get how dysfunctional so much centralized government is and what can be realistically done about it right now. They don’t really get the cultural issues.
The other option is, they are Rockefeller Republicans, really, or neocons and they are just freaking out about what is going on. These types are losing their living and their status. That’s the orbit of Bill Kristol in the Lincoln project. Of course there are a bunch of fools that just follow them even though they don’t get this.
I basically get this from Minnesota Twitter and Gary.
Romney will do what he needs to do in order to achieve prestige. If that means sucking up to Trump, he’ll do it (and did it), and if that means sucking up to Schumer, he’ll do it (and did it).
I met Ms Berlinski in Paris in 2016 and had a delightful dinner with her and my son.
But it was clear to me that she has completely lost touch with average Americans. Unless she repatriates for awhile maybe to someplace like Kansas or Arizona I don’t think she has any insight into America or Americans.
Which makes her like a lot of – perhaps most – Europeans who have no idea what’s actually going on here, let alone the foundations/history/etc, and yet seem to think they should have – and that we should care about – their say on who the US president is, etc.
Sure he did.
“What gets Johnny elected?”
Now that the Turks have turned Hagia Sophia back into a mosque I’m ready to sign up for a Crusade.
Agree. My formerly Canadian cousin who has lived in Italy for 40 years is completely at sea on US politics. She has no clue.
But Claire votes in US elections.
Are you dissing the dash? I love the dash – it’s so inappropriate when it comes to punctuation and good grammar, but I an lazy and use it all the time………..!
You mean Jeff Sessions?
You make a good point – in the current environment, short attention spans have become the norm. It is hard to focus on a book, especially an in-depth book, or even writing………Since we all now type, I have lost a bit of my semi-graceful handwriting. I start out writing, then print, then revert back! My mother-in-law, a great reader of classics and doing puzzles, had beautiful penmanship.