Midnight in the Republic, Volume 6

 

“[A] significant and growing portion of the American population is losing the virtues required to be functioning members of a free society.” – Charles Murray in Coming Apart (Page 289), 2012

EXHIBIT A: (Provided with no further comment.)

Disturbing video shows teens beating pregnant mom, kicking toddler

EXHIBIT B: (From the “Things aren’t really what they are being portrayed as being” file.)

A Black Portland Cop Says Rioters Are Racist. Leftists Immediately Confirm It.

A black police officer says there are racist white people stage-managing the riots in Portland, Oregon and “they’re not even from here.” …

Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters are being imported to Seattle and Portland. …

It’s been obvious that the violent protests, allowed by a politically pliant Portland city hall, haven’t been about George Floyd for a very long time. The idea is to foment chaos and violence and to keep it going. The willingness of the elected officials to tolerate civil unrest, at the expense of other peoples’ security, is scandalous. The police officers’ union has accused the Leftist politicians in Oregon and specifically Portland of defending the violence.

Officer Jackson said the rioters, most of whom are white, are “using are the same tactics that are used against my people. … White protesters stage-manage the riots.

Oregon Politicos Defend Antifa and BLM Rioters – Politicians find it politically convenient to blame President Trump for riots that have been going on for weeks.

Portland’s mayor and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden have blamed President Trump for injuring an imported antifa protester from Texas who got hurt while attacking federal officers. The federal officers are ordered to protect the federal courthouse, which had been under attack for days.

[Emphasis added]

This story from Officer Jackson in also quite insightful:

A lot of times someone of color – black, Hispanic, Asian, come to the fence and directly want to talk to me. ‘Hey, what do you think about George Floyd? What do you think about what happened about this? I go up to the fence, someone white comes up ‘F the police, don’t talk to him.’ That was the most bizarre thing because I could see it coming. I even had a young African American girl tell me ‘why is it you guys aren’t talking to us?’ Honestly, I think this was the 23rd day of doing it and every time I try to have a conversation with someone who looks like me someone white comes up – blocks them – and tells them not to talk to me. And right when I said that, this white girl pops up…

EXHIBIT C: (From the “Someone needs to obtain the communication records between Elected Democrats and known ANTIFA / Black Lives Matter contacts” file.)

Look at the Evidence: Democrat Lawmakers Pick the Targets for Antifa and BLM Rioters

When Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey withdraws his city’s police officers from the Third Precinct, he … cedes the ground and picks a target for looters and rioters. Black Lives Matter and antifa rioters oblige and set fire to the cop shop, thereby encouraging other members of the mob to loot nearby stores.

It’s been going on throughout the country in cities and states run by liberals long before George Floyd. … The mob is given near-free reign to loot, riot and destroy. Those who are arrested are immediately released. Many have charges dropped against them.

You can see it with more clarity every day. Like the Klan before them, Antifa and the Marxist mob called Black Lives Matter are the shock troops for the Democrats who gladly choose the targets for them to attack.

Trump Voters Are ‘White Supremacists,’ So Rioting Is OK – A woman old enough to know better and smart enough to get herself elected to office, Senator Mazie Hirono, this week said Donald Trump voters are “white supremacists, that’s his base.” …

While rioters and looters are literally still in the streets, a sitting US Senator gives the groups that cloak themselves as virtuous anti-racists carte blanche to attack anyone who identifies as a Trump supporter because, after all, they’re evil “white supremacists.”

They all deserve to be beaten, doxxed, gunned down, chased, surrounded, threatened, knifed, and burned out, don’t they? They’re white supremacists…

[Emphasis added]

Epilogue

The essence of the quote at the top of this post can be easily seen at the base level in almost any non-COVID-19 related news report these days. But much of what Murray discusses in this final chapter is directed at failures of the upper (or, more specifically, the Ruling) class. (And if you don’t see the stark difference between the Democrat and Non-Democrat varieties of this creature at this point then you are either completely hopeless or just a shallow Arizona Democrat. But I digress.) Murray notes that while those virtues and the free society itself crumbles:

…the people who run the country are doing just fine. Their framework for pursuing happiness is relatively unaffected by the forces that are enfeebling … society. In fact, they have become so isolated that they are often oblivious to the nature of the problems that exist elsewhere. – Page 289

This isolated minority (See Pelosi, Wyden, Hirono, etc.) then find it easy to slip into a state where they openly cheer for “a rejection of the obligations of citizenship” and “the collapse of confidence in codes of honorable behavior.” Murray zeros in on our “hollow elite”:

A degenerate elite code can inspire contempt and encourage revolution among the rest of the population. – Page 292

[The hollow elite] have abdicated their responsibility to set and promulgate standards. – Page 298

As we follow the behavior of these democrat mayors, governors, and beltway elites it is hard not to employ much of the language that Murray brought into the conversation in mush less violent times. But it is “obscene” and “unseemly.” They continue to play political chess (fundraising, electioneering, etc.) with the lives and livelihoods of so many while intensifying the “schism in the soul” of America.  The “disintegration of a civilization is not a monolithic process”; businesses will die, cities will die, the middle class will die, but the corruptocrats like Pelosi (and those striving to achieve similar status) will continue to thrive for quite some time as they devour the rotting corpse of the great experiment they themselves have snuffed out…all because of Orange Man Bad. My contempt for them is complete.

Headline for Wednesday, November 4, 2020: “The American project is dead.”

[Quotation marks indicate items taken from the Murray book. I admit to taking liberties with their intended meaning based on the much-changed state of the Republic compared to when they were published.]

(See also Volume 1, Volume 2Volume 3Volume 4, and Volume 5)

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 17 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Almost like clockwork:

    Pelosi Blames Trump for ‘Kidnapping Protesters,’ Paints Violent Antifa as ‘First Amendment Speech’

    Pelosi is siding with the terrorists, laying no blame at all on them, calling Antifa “protesters,” attacking officers and trying to burn down the federal courthouse is just “First Amendment speech” and “graffiti.” Nowhere do you see the slightest concern for the officers they’ve attacked, the citizens of Portland or the businesses they’ve looted and destroyed.

    Now, let’s also dispense with this nonsense about unmarked secret police, storm troopers. …:

    From Andy Ngo:

    Antifa train in black bloc tactics to “de-arrest” their comrades by swarming police & pulling them out. It’s already happened this week with the local police. They can’t do that as easily w/federal law enforcement. And that’s why they want to stop them.

    and:

    Graffiti? How about explosives, hammers, knives, sledgehammers, slingshots w/ metal ball bearings, blinding lasers, pipe bombs and more? You have no clue what is going on here.

    Go read the whole thing.

    Pelosi is possibly the most despicable creature to ever walk the halls of American power. 

    • #1
  2. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Good post.  I agree with most of what you say.

    philo: [The hollow elite] have abdicated their responsibility to set and promulgate standards. – Page 298

    [This is a quote from Charles Murray.]

    I think that this is incorrect.  The hollow elite is promulgating standards, and they are profoundly bad.  The huge and tragic increase in illegitimacy that followed the adoption of radical feminism in the 1960s was not the result of a failure to set and promulgate standards.  It was the result of adopting, and vigorously promulgating, a different standard.  The same goes for homosexuality.

    Now it is trans.  Again, a new standard has been set and promulgated — that insanity is to be protected and praised, and that dissenters are to be punished.

    • #2
  3. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Good post. I agree with most of what you say.

    philo: [The hollow elite] have abdicated their responsibility to set and promulgate standards. – Page 298

    [This is a quote from Charles Murray.]

    I think that this is incorrect. The hollow elite is promulgating standards, and they are profoundly bad. The huge and tragic increase in illegitimacy that followed the adoption of radical feminism in the 1960s was not the result of a failure to set and promulgate standards. It was the result of adopting, and vigorously promulgating, a different standard. The same goes for homosexuality.

    Now it is trans. Again, a new standard has been set and promulgated — that insanity is to be protected and praised, and that dissenters are to be punished.

    Yes, I presume the “high” before “standards” was understood in the original discussion. But point well taken.

    • #3
  4. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    philo: Disturbing video shows teens beating pregnant mom, kicking toddler

    Mother defending son who kicked the toddler:

    He didn’t try 2 kick that baby he tried 2 jump over the baby on to her and made a mistake…as y’all can see the baby ran from under the girl fighting while he was coming down. My kid is not that type 2 kick a baby…accident [sic] happen.

    Her defense is that he was trying to jump on top of a pregnant woman.  It’s easy to see where he learned right from wrong.

     

    • #4
  5. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    The ACLU joins the engagement…sides with domestic terrorists:

    ACLU Sues Homeland Security Over the ‘Cuff-‘Em-and-Stuff-‘Em’ Policy for Antifa Goons in Portland

    For several nights, these hoodlums have tried to attack the federal courthouse in Portland and have been resisted by federal officers from ICE and Border Patrol. Though these ill-bred and unwashed thuglets are portrayed by their fanbois and enablers as “peaceful” demonstrators, they are anything but. Their lack of physical ability and any conception of planning while attacking the federal building might seem laughable, but they are becoming more and more violent. …

    Part of the effectiveness comes from the increasing aggressiveness on the part of federal law enforcement and their willingness to treat these people for what they are, that is, domestic terrorists. They are foiling attacks, and they are using classic cuff-’em-and-stuff-’em tactics. …

    Naturally, in the eyes of the ACLU, this assault on insurrection and sedition cannot stand, and they’ve filed a lawsuit to prevent federal agents from interfering with the activities of ‘journalists’ and ‘legal observers’ near the scenes of violent attacks on federal facilities. …

    It doesn’t take a legal mastermind to see the fallacy here. …

    Go read the whole thing.

     

     

    • #5
  6. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Meanwhile, back on the (merely) anti-intellectual front:

    Woke Inquisition Strikes Again: Andrew Sullivan Is Out After Attacking the Left’s Stifling Orthodoxy

    … “They seem to believe, and this is increasingly the orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in questions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity is actively, physically harming co-workers merely by existing in the same virtual space.

    “Actually attacking, and even mocking, critical theory’s ideas and methods, as I have done continually in this space, is therefore out of sync with the values of Vox Media. …

    Make no mistake, America is wrestling with a dangerous threat to its culture and heritage in the form of the critical theory that Sullivan rightly opposed. The woke inquisition will brook no dissent, however, and it wields the language of “safetyism” to silence its opponents.

    EDIT: An important note from the Instapundit link:

    “Safetyism” strikes again. Or as Glenn has noted, for the left in 2020, “your free speech is violence, but their violence is just free speech.”

    [Emphasis added]

    • #6
  7. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    I agree with the information offered inside the OP and also with the comments.

    But the technology is also the problem. We now have young adults whose entire pre-teen hood was spent in front of gaming equipment, and when they socialize, it is thru their cell phones.

    Emojis now substitute for forming sentences. In the late Sixties and Seventies, I knew enough people as I was coming  of age who did not have good writing skills. But usually they could talk your head off.

    Now we have an entire generation of young adults who know little about logic. I will  grant anyone saying so that it  is true logic was no longer being taught even in the 1970’s version of HS. But when you are part of a verbal society, you do pick up on logic.

    I wish Facebook “watch parties” were easy to distribute here on Ricochet. (The fault lying with FB and not R.)  One of the film segments that recently went viral  was a young black man who called the police to come in and arrest some young white adults who were at the campus and offering up pamphlets and information from Hillsdale college.

    The young black guy kept insisting that he had a right to have the police arrest the well informed duo  due to “they make me uncomfortable.” The police politely explained that his discomfort was not grounds for arrest. They eventually sent the complainant on his way. The Hillsdale duo remained engaged in the matter, acting quite polite.

    They  eventually got some satisfaction, over which they did not even appear to gloat. I think they were simply stunned that we have entered an era where feelings are facts, and these “facts” should bring about arrests. As we saw during the Kavanaugh confirmation process, due process is not even required from those on the Left.

    • #7
  8. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment): The young black guy kept insisting that he had a right to have the police arrest the well informed duo due to “they make me uncomfortable.” The police politely explained that his discomfort was not grounds for arrest. They eventually sent the complainant on his way.

    Clearly this happened in the still-semi-rational period before June 2020.  Future such encounters will (likely) turn out much different.

    • #8
  9. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    philo: This story from Officer Jackson in also quite insightful:

    A lot of times someone of color – black, Hispanic, Asian, come to the fence and directly want to talk to me. ‘Hey, what do you think about George Floyd? What do you think about what happened about this? I go up to the fence, someone white comes up ‘F the police, don’t talk to him.’ That was the most bizarre thing because I could see it coming. I even had a young African American girl tell me ‘why is it you guys aren’t talking to us?’ Honestly, I think this was the 23rd day of doing it and every time I try to have a conversation with someone who looks like me someone white comes up – blocks them – and tells them not to talk to me. And right when I said that, this white girl pops up…

    As an addendum to this, it would be hard to do any better than Jeff Charles in properly framing the current situation:

    Marxist Black Lives Matter Activists Are White Progressives In Blackface

    It can be no surprise then, that white progressive BLM activists believe they have the right to scold their black colleagues for trying to find some common ground with police officers. As many black Americans on both sides have noted, these white liberals believe they understand these issues better than black people.

    To white progressives, black people are little more than pets that must be told when to sit, heel, and fetch. In this way, they can wreak havoc, sow division, and foment violence while putting a black face on their machinations.

    What Officer Jackson described is simply a microcosm of what is happening across the nation. While black community leaders call for police reforms, the white progressive crowd ignores their pleas and insists on defunding, or even abolishing, the police. It seems clear that these people, who claim to champion black causes, do not care about black voices.

    But is any of this a surprise?

    May 25, 2020 seems like a million years ago already.

    Exit question: What percentage of BLM “protesters” across the country on election day 2020 will be able to properly identify George Floyd?

    • #9
  10. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    philo (View Comment):

    philo: This story from Officer Jackson in also quite insightful:

    A lot of times someone of color – black, Hispanic, Asian, come to the fence and directly want to talk to me. ‘Hey, what do you think about George Floyd? What do you think about what happened about this? I go up to the fence, someone white comes up ‘F the police, don’t talk to him.’ That was the most bizarre thing because I could see it coming. I even had a young African American girl tell me ‘why is it you guys aren’t talking to us?’ Honestly, I think this was the 23rd day of doing it and every time I try to have a conversation with someone who looks like me someone white comes up – blocks them – and tells them not to talk to me. And right when I said that, this white girl pops up…

    As an addendum to this, it would be hard to do any better than Jeff Charles in properly framing the current situation:

    Marxist Black Lives Matter Activists Are White Progressives In Blackface

    It can be no surprise then, that white progressive BLM activists believe they have the right to scold their black colleagues for trying to find some common ground with police officers. As many black Americans on both sides have noted, these white liberals believe they understand these issues better than black people.

    To white progressives, black people are little more than pets that must be told when to sit, heel, and fetch. In this way, they can wreak havoc, sow division, and foment violence while putting a black face on their machinations.

    What Officer Jackson described is simply a microcosm of what is happening across the nation. While black community leaders call for police reforms, the white progressive crowd ignores their pleas and insists on defunding, or even abolishing, the police. It seems clear that these people, who claim to champion black causes, do not care about black voices.

    But is any of this a surprise?

    May 25, 2020 seems like a million years ago already.

    Exit question: What percentage of BLM “protesters” across the country on election day 2020 will be able to properly identify George Floyd?

    For me the most telling snippet of the mindset of BLM activists is when a young white woman was taunting cops, and one white cop got on his phone and said he was calling his black wife.  And the protester had the audacity or ignorance to keep arguing that just because you have a black acquaintance doesn’t mean you’re not racist, implying that the cop’s marriage was so shallow as t o be no more than an acquaintance, and implying that the couple didn’t realize, or overlooked, that the husband was a racist.

    • #10
  11. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    One of the film segments that recently went viral was a young black man who called the police to come in and arrest some young white adults who were at the campus and offering up pamphlets and information from Hillsdale college.

    Was this the incident?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdrtyVMcH9o

    Police Officer: Are they threatening you in some specific way?
    Student: No, not specifically. They’re threatening me with their language, with their ideals.

    • #11
  12. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    One of the film segments that recently went viral was a young black man who called the police to come in and arrest some young white adults who were at the campus and offering up pamphlets and information from Hillsdale college.

    Was this the incident?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdrtyVMcH9o

    Police Officer: Are they threatening you in some specific way?
    Student: No, not specifically. They’re threatening me with their language, with their ideals.

    This student probably never did any plumbing, knowing that he had to, on his twentieth try, successfully solder a copper joint in the wall behind a tub, or else waste another day.  That’s threatening.

    • #12
  13. Richard Fulmer Inactive
    Richard Fulmer
    @RichardFulmer

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    One of the film segments that recently went viral was a young black man who called the police to come in and arrest some young white adults who were at the campus and offering up pamphlets and information from Hillsdale college.

    Was this the incident?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdrtyVMcH9o

    Police Officer: Are they threatening you in some specific way?
    Student: No, not specifically. They’re threatening me with their language, with their ideals.

    This student probably never did any plumbing, knowing that he had to, on his twentieth try, successfully solder a copper joint in the wall behind a tub, or else waste another day. That’s threatening.

    The student was totally unarmed.  All he had in the way of argument was to gainsay the Prager U reporter and call to in the adults.  When the police officers arrived, he had nothing other than his Maoist script, “This guy is terrorizing us.”  

    Do his professors look at that video and say, “We’ve failed him,” or do they say, “Mission accomplished”?

    • #13
  14. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    The week ends with a key bit of wisdom:

    “WOKE CULTURE” ISN’T ABOUT PUBLIC OPINION, IT’S ABOUT STAMPEDING THE ELITES

    • #14
  15. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Battles on the Chicago front:

    WARFARE IN GRANT PARK

    … These are Communists or Anarchists (in practice, the same thing). Why do they go after statues of Columbus? Not because he was evil, which he wasn’t, although he certainly was a hard man. News flash: the commander who drove crews of ships, consisting of men who by our standards were almost unimaginably tough, to and fro across the ocean, was not Mr. Rogers. What a shocker.

    But that isn’t the point. The point is that, in the eyes of radical leftists, the discovery of America was a mistake. The settlement of America by Europeans was a tragedy. Why? Because it led to what we have now–the United States of America. We are the target, not Columbus. It is the same with George Washington, by any standard a great and good man. Why do they attack monuments to the Father of our Country? Because he was the Father of our Country.

    The nation dissolves under the perverse nature of such arrested development…juvenile energies combined with grotesquely malformed cognitive skills. As always, I blame the Comprachicos of the mind.

    The big Powerline finish:

    Still, there is a bright side to the current madness. Violence by Communists and Anarchists may well help to re-elect Donald Trump, the only presidential candidate who stands foursquare against them. If Joe Biden has any problem with leftist violence, he hasn’t ventured outside his basement to mention it. Nor do Nancy Pelosi and Chuckles Schumer have anything to say against the radicals, for good reason. We have gotten to the point where Communists and Anarchists are the shock troops of the Democratic Party, a role analogous to that once played by the Ku Klux Klan.

    The lesson is clear: unless you want to join with those who are trying to destroy America, vote for Donald Trump and for a Republican House and Senate.

    • #15
  16. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Richard Fulmer (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret (View Comment):
    One of the film segments that recently went viral was a young black man who called the police to come in and arrest some young white adults who were at the campus and offering up pamphlets and information from Hillsdale college.

    Was this the incident?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdrtyVMcH9o

    Police Officer: Are they threatening you in some specific way?
    Student: No, not specifically. They’re threatening me with their language, with their ideals.

    Yes I went and re-watched it and of course it is the same. Sorry for attributing the “threatening university student” as being from Hillsdale rather than Prager University.

    I loved the comment made, referring to the student who wanted him arrested, that “He was so threatened by ideas I hold that he cannot even describe what ideals those were.” (Paraphrasing a tiny bit.)

     

    • #16
  17. CarolJoy, Above Top Secret Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Above Top Secret
    @CarolJoy

    Philo, your very challenging assertions remind me of today’s challenge from Sundance over at The Conservative Treehouse:

     

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/07/18/never-live-within-the-limiting-opinion-of-others-that-aint-living/

     

    • #17
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.