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Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s office issues a series of indictments that establish the facts of Russia’s efforts to influence the political process in 2016, which are incontrovertible and disturbing but also objectively underwhelming. The COMMENTARY Podcast hosts explore the renewed debate over Russian meddling and the ongoing campaign to secure new gun laws in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
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Very good podcast.
To believe the Russians were trying to elect Trump presupposes that they are some kind of diabolical superbrains who understand American politics better than American pollsters and political scholars. Big-brained supervillains who somehow knew Trump was electable when nobody here did.
More realistically, they were just causing mischief and dissension, and trying to embarrass Hillary.
Whatever flirtation went on between Trump and Putin during the campaign, Putin knows full well that Republicans are more dangerous to Russia than Democrats are. The formative experience of Putin’s adult life was watching the Reagan administration break the Soviet Union, with little help but considerable opposition from Democrats.
Just another example of the time honored–at least from 1968–division of labor between our nation’s enemies and the Left.
I like this podcast, but from time to time this group suffers what seems to me to be a deliberate dumbass-attack. At one point in this podcast they were objecting to the suggestion that teachers be armed so as to enable them to kill someone attacking their students. Reasons they thought of included:
(1) some teachers would not want to be armed
(2) some teachers would not want to use deadly force on an attacker.
and so on.
I cannot believe they missed the obvious point: creating uncertainty in the mind of an attacker as to Which teachers are the armed ones? Really. They acted like that didn’t understand this.
I know that all three of these guys would not have the least problem understanding how deterrence worked with respect to the USSR. But then they expected me to believe that they don’t understand how deterrence would work with a shooter? The seem to pretend they don’t understand that deterrence doesn’t commit us to arming every teacher in a given school; just arming ten percent of the teachers in the school would deter a shooter provided the shooter doesn’t know which teachers he will be encountering are part of the armed ten percent.
All of this means that it would be fine if some teachers do not want to be armed. Hell, the existence of the policy alone would deter a shooter even if 100% of the teachers in a given school refused to be armed provided the shooter didn’t know this. I just cannot believe that this otherwise smart group is oblivious to this obvious point.
It seems reasonable to consider the Democratic Party as generally pro-Communist for the last hundred years, with the exception of about 20 years, from the late 1940s through the late 1960s, when public opinion forced them to at least pretend to be opposed to Communism.
John, Israel has very strict gun control laws, especially in comparison with America. We also have a large and visible presence of off-duty soldiers and reservists who are required to carry or secure their weapons when they are off base, which accounts for the impression the casual observer gets of an armed society here. We also have a large presence of private armed security guards, especially at the entrances to schools and public buildings, almost all of whom served in combat units.
The fact that a large percentage of Israelis have some degree of weapons training plus the fact that getting a license requires regular proficiency training means that those who own guns tend to be highly motivated, as well as closely overseen (sometimes excessively so). Any given school is likely to have a few teachers who carry and who can respond quickly.
Interesting to note that not all citizen responses to terror attacks have been by people who were themselves carrying weapons. The off-duty soldier who stopped a terrorist in a bulldozer a few years ago was riding by on a bike, wearing Crocs and geeky shorts, for crying out loud. He heard the commotion, ran over, assessed the situation, borrowed the gun of a nearby security guard, climbed up onto the cab of the bulldozer, and shot the terrorist.
“This was the kind of thing we just learned about in training,” he said afterwards.
None of this, as you point out, is particularly prescriptive for America, but no society can have too few responsible people who have been trained to act in case of an armed assailant.
Very good podcast, by the way. Sohrab Amari is a welcome addition to the team.
I feel like John moved the goalposts on Trump/Russia so as not to criticize the investigation, much like a lot of people on the Left have done.
Although the motives are different: John to seem “fair minded” the Left to get away from going all in that Trump and the Russians conspired.