That Book

First podcast of 2018 so we wanted to out our best foot forward. We’ve got Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari on Iran and The Washington Examiner’s Byron York on The Book, collusion, and Congress. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy year.

Music from this week’s show: Everyday I Write The Book by Elvis Costello

Subscribe to The Ricochet Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.

Please Support Our Sponsor!

Harry's Shave

Use Code: ricochet

Now become a Ricochet member for only $5.00 a month! Join and see what you’ve been missing.

There are 39 comments.

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

    Now it’s going to be about Russian money laundering before the election. Trump knew he was a geopolitical criminal before he ran for POTUS. Sure. A good third of the GOP anti-Trump-ers are just embarrassing.

    • #31
  2. Lois Lane Coolidge
    Lois Lane
    @LoisLane

    I enjoyed the podcast, and I think you’re fair @jameslileks, which is all I really need from a commentator.  Thanks!

    • #32
  3. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    I can not relate to all of the complaining about the various podcasts here, at all.

    • #33
  4. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Lois Lane (View Comment):

    I enjoyed the podcast, and I think you’re fair @jameslileks, which is all I really need from a commentator. Thanks!

    Thanks! I try. Even if I think someone’s wrong, I have to remember all the times I’ve been wrong  – demonstrably, publicly so – and if wasn’t because I was bad, evil, wished for death and plague, etc.

    • #34
  5. Mrs. Ink Inactive
    Mrs. Ink
    @MrsInk

    I get tired of Trump bashing because I don’t understand what the bashers want. I can understand wanting things to be different than they are (after 8 years of fundamental transformation, I really do understand that feeling).

    But what do you want? Do you want Trump impeached? Assassinated? Erased from history? What would satisfy you? given that a person seventy years old is what he is, short of divine intervention.

    I suspect that what the anti Trumpets want is for his voters to shut up about their issues, and stop bothering you all about the Leftist takeover of America, because it is so uncomfortable to believe that it is happening.

    I get that you wish Trump hadn’t happened, but you cannot go back in time and make Trump not happen. Furthermore, at least 30-35% of the electorate was so afraid of Mrs. Clinton that they were willing to take a chance on a loudmouth political newcomer, rather than support her. Nine years ago, enough voters were so tired of George Bush, that they elected a guy whose major qualification was that he was half-Kenyan. When that large a portion of the electorate is that unhappy, the Republic is in trouble

    I see the Left as a clear and present danger. Many of them are demonstrably crazy (Algebra is a tool of the patriarchy! Being on time is white privilege! Illegal immigration has no societal cost! Objective truth does not exist! I have a right to force you to bake me a cake and decorate it the way I want! All the money belongs to the government, and the government lets you keep some of it, out of the goodness of its heart!), and crazy people are scary. The rest are even scarier, with a lust for totalitarian power that I find horrifying. They are no different than the Bolsheviks or the Sturmabteilung. And before you say, “All progressives aren’t like that,” understand that I work with a bunch of them, and know them well, and yes, they are like that. They think that they know best, and if they cannot persuade or coerce, they are perfectly willing to use force to get what they want. They would load me and mine onto a cattle car bound for reeduction camps on the frozen plains of North Dakota tomorrow if they had the power.

    I would vote for some one worse than Trump if I thought it would decrease the chance of a social-justice, quasi-communist Clintonian crony fascist administration coming to power.

     

     

    • #35
  6. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Mrs. Ink (View Comment):
    They would load me and mine onto a cattle car bound for reeduction camps on the frozen plains of North Dakota tomorrow if they had the power.

    I was talking about that just this morning with a co-worker.  He mentioned how crazy the left is in their belief about what Donald Trump wants to do with various groups of people.  I reminded him that that happens to every president.  Bill Clinton had supposedly ordered railcars with handcuffs welded in so conservatives could be hauled off to concentration camps. Come to think of it, the aforementioned co-worker believed this himself.  Bush was going to exterminate non-white people.  Dick Cheney was going to try to bring back slavery.  Obama was going to impose sharia law, force Christians to convert to Islam, and maybe outlaw heterosexuality.  Donald Trump wants to make women second-class citizens and starve the poor to death.  Apparently there is a psychological need for people to believe that their persecution is imminent.

    • #36
  7. Mrs. Ink Inactive
    Mrs. Ink
    @MrsInk

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):

    Mrs. Ink (View Comment):
    They would load me and mine onto a cattle car bound for reeduction camps on the frozen plains of North Dakota tomorrow if they had the power.

    I was talking about that just this morning with a co-worker. He mentioned how crazy the left is in their belief about what Donald Trump wants to do with various groups of people. I reminded him that that happens to every president. Bill Clinton had supposedly ordered railcars with handcuffs welded in so conservatives could be hauled off to concentration camps. Come to think of it, the aforementioned co-worker believed this himself. Bush was going to exterminate non-white people. Dick Cheney was going to try to bring back slavery. Obama was going to impose sharia law, force Christians to convert to Islam, and maybe outlaw heterosexuality. Donald Trump wants to make women second-class citizens and starve the poor to death. Apparently there is a psychological need for people to believe that their persecution is imminent.

    American Progressives actually did round up law-abiding American citizens and haul them off to internment camps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

    European and Russian totalitarians rounded up and exterminated millions of people who would not bow to their regimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor:_The_Unknown_Ukrainian_Tragedy_(1932-1933), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union,

    Mao Zedong killed millions of Chinese citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_of_landlords_under_Mao_Zedong

    Other, less efficient totalitarians have killed millions.

    What makes you think that we are so special that we could escape the Left if they had complete power?

    They cannot brook any dissent. They do not understand “agreeing to disagree.” There is no discussion-any one who disagrees with them is not only wrong, but evil.

    Inside every Progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out and take over. Read some HRC speeches, especially the one about how churches and cultures must be forced to change so that abortions can happen at any time.

    • #37
  8. Randy Weivoda Moderator
    Randy Weivoda
    @RandyWeivoda

    Mrs. Ink (View Comment):
    What makes you think that we are so special that we could escape the Left if they had complete power?

    There are Jews who warn that any time now, Christians will turn on them again, just like in Germany in the 1930’s.  And sadly, there are some people who call themselves Christians who in fact do think that the Jews need to be rounded up.  But they are a very tiny percentage of Americans.

    Maybe you and I know different types of leftists.  I’ve known a lot of Democrats, am related to several, and I never hear any of them wish that they could lock up or exterminate conservatives.  And the left does have complete power in states like California, New Jersey, New York, and Hawaii.  I don’t want to be ruled over by leftists, but there’s a wide gap between Barack Obama and Pol Pot.  And if I endorse the fear that a conservative holocaust is around the corner, I guess I shouldn’t laugh too hard when a leftist claims that Republicans want to round up and exterminate homosexuals or whoever.

    • #38
  9. Mrs. Ink Inactive
    Mrs. Ink
    @MrsInk

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):

    Mrs. Ink (View Comment):
    What makes you think that we are so special that we could escape the Left if they had complete power?

     

    Randy Weivoda (View Comment):

    Maybe you and I know different types of leftists. I’ve known a lot of Democrats, am related to several, and I never hear any of them wish that they could lock up or exterminate conservatives. And the left does have complete power in states like California, New Jersey, New York, and Hawaii. I don’t want to be ruled over by leftists, but there’s a wide gap between Barack Obama and Pol Pot. And if I endorse the fear that a conservative holocaust is around the corner, I guess I shouldn’t laugh too hard when a leftist claims that Republicans want to round up and exterminate homosexuals or whoever.

    I know lots of Democrats and am related to a bunch, too, and while they don’t say so in my hearing, I know that they would turn me in if there was a gun confiscation, “for my own good.”

    The gap between Pol Pot and Barack Obama is narrower than you think, and the gap between Stalin and Mrs. Clinton is narrower than that. Do you think that the Holocaust and other genocides and classicides sprang into being in their final form? No, the usual pattern is: Disarm the people, so no one can use guns to harm any one (or defend themselves). Next, or sometimes concurrently, prevent the out group from earning  a living (remember Brendan Eich?). Then, because the out group is not productive, and a drain on society, gather them up and ship them away from the in group, so their wrong-think and unproductivity can be kept away from the “good people”. Once the out group is separated, convince the majority that the out group are not really people, and do not deserve the protection of due process. Next, convince the in group that the out group deserves every thing that happens to them, because they are bad and polluting, and also they aren’t really human. After that little step in propaganda, you can do whatever you want to the out group-starve them, kill them, “experiments”, whatever. By the way, this is already happening to unborn babies all across the US. When Social Security and Medicare really start to pinch, how long will it be before elderly people are put into the same category as the unborn, with more justification? After all, they prevent the productive people from doing what they want, just like unborn babies.

    Progressives Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt interned American citizens of German descent in World War I, and Japanese descent in World War II; the Proggies do have a track record of rounding up and imprisoning people they don’t like. I didn’t search further back the WWI, but conservatives didn’t do it in what I think of as “modern times.”

    • #39
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.