Why No Wall, DEMOCRATS?

     The old gag that “You can tell when a politician is lying because his lips move” has a lot of truth to it.

     You can also tell when a politician is growing desperate. The desperate politician won’t stand his ground. He keeps changing his reasons for being for or against whatever issue is most prominent in political discourse. You can see this right now in the Democrats’ attempt to thwart the border wall.

     First, they claimed it wouldn’t work. Shortly after that it would be “too expensive,” indicating that it would work. A little bit later it was derided as “unnecessary,” which suggests that it might not be too expensive after all. Then came the denunciations of a wall as “racist,” which implies that a wall would be necessary, affordable, and effective. Today the Democrats are denouncing the wall as “immoral.” From that we can infer that it wouldn’t be racist at all. But what would make it immoral? No one will say.

     The public wants the wall. We elected President Trump largely for that reason. The Border Patrol wants the wall, plus additional measures to buttress its effect. Other nations that have erected physical barriers on their borders have reaped large benefits. Israel is perhaps the best example.

     But the Democrats are adamant that there shall be no wall. They’re willing to “go to the wall” to prevent it.

     I claim that the jury is in on this issue: the Democrats are against the wall because President Trump and a solid majority of the Americans polled on the subject do want it.

     Among other things it would complement the wall on Mexico’s southern border. Think about that.

Why No Wall?

     I found this today at Cold Fury:

     Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans need to “abandon” border wall funding if they want the government to reopen, just less than 24 hours into the partial shutdown....

     The New York senator also said Democrats are “open to discussing any proposal as long as they do not include anything for the wall,” showing Democrats are not willing to compromise on border wall funding.

     It is painfully clear that the Democrats are terrified of the Wall, that they consider an open southern border to be indispensable to their electoral future, and that any “we support border security” talk they emit is pure blue smoke and mirrors. They do not want America’s borders secured. But there’s worse:

     A substantial number of Senatorial Republicans don’t want the Wall either. They’re using their Democrat colleagues as an excuse for why they can’t (meaning won’t) fund it. We need an explanation for this.

     One possibility is “follow the money:” that the big-money donors whose support for a Senate candidate is vital don’t want the Wall. Federal politicians are among the most expensive whores in the world, but many billionaires consider them a worthwhile investment.

     Another is “keeping the issue alive:” the border crisis provides a candidate something to tout at election time. It proved potent for Trump, so some Senators might hope to exploit it for their re-election...as long as they can pose as being pro-Wall while never actually delivering.

     A third is dislike for President Trump and contempt for those of us who voted for him. Given the number of supposed “Republicans” and “conservatives” who routinely denounce the president and hope for his downfall, surely that needs no further exploration.

     One thing is clear: Present trends and modi operandi continuing, we won’t have a secure southern border any time soon. Will that make anyone angry enough to actually do something? Maybe a few hundred thousand “Yellow Vest” marchers around the Capitol, for openers?

Creeping Totalitarianism Part 2: Present And Future

“Romney didn’t win, did he?” – The Dishonorable Harry Reid

     Yesterday’s emission was one of many that started from the David French article about Wisconsin’s persecution of conservative activists. The DextroSphere is generally up in arms over it; grass-roots conservative activists were the targets, so grass-roots conservatives everywhere sense the dimensions of the threat.

     The big guns are lining up as well. Hearken to Rush Limbaugh on the subject:

     I mean, it's incredible. They could literally set out to destroy you, and the only thing standing in the way of it is the honor system. If you have a corrupt prosecutor (which this story has), and if you have a corrupt judge, (which this story has), and if you have a police department that is also corrupt (this happened in Milwaukee, mostly), then you can pull this off.

     There's even a quote from a couple police officers who were forced to participate these midnight raids on innocent people who had not done a thing other than support Scott Walker. That's all they had done, and cop car after cop car, cop after cop, SWAT teams, you name it, show up with battering rams to break into these people's homes! They're kicked out of their homes at midnight, at one o'clock in the morning. They're not allowed to take anything; they're not told why.

     They're not allowed to explain to anybody that this has happened besides the neighborhood which can see it. Years after the fact, mothers are reporting their young kids that were at home when this happened are still traumatized. People are reporting today that they get scared and traumatized and panicked when they see a uniformed police officer just walking a beat. They hightail it away.

     It is the fear that I think a lot of innocent people experience when law enforcement is pursuing them. I know. I've been there. I know a number of things. Law enforcement's never doubted, other than the civil rights community. The media doesn't doubt them. Law enforcement can leak anything they want about anybody, and the media writes it, and it becomes fact. Even average, ordinary Americans say, "Why would the cops lie? Why?" I mean, they take it on faith.

     However, there has still been no notice taken of this atrocity by the Main Stream Media. Worse, the Democrats have rallied to defend such practices:

     One of Texas’s acute corruption problems is the fact that the Travis County district attorney’s office, which prosecutes corruption cases, is absurdly, comically corrupt—by which I do not mean the “Hey can you get my dopey kid into UT law?” level of corruption that is commonplace in Texas, but Boss Hogg levels of corruption. You wouldn’t know it from the typically witless and servile reporting of the Austin American-Statesman, but the drunk-driving conviction of Travis County district attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is the least of that office’s problems—much more significant is the fact that is she recorded on camera threatening legal retaliation against the police who booked her. She is as explicit as can be about this: “You’re going to be in jail,” she said.

     The same prosecutor is trying to put former governor Rick Perry in jail for having vetoed funding for her office. Why did he veto the funding? Because the corruption prosecutor is grossly corrupt and a convicted criminal to boot. She went to jail, for pity’s sake.

     The Texas state house understandably has passed a bill that will curtail the Travis County district attorney’s special role in prosecuting ethics and corruption cases against elected and appointed officials. Instead, those cases will be investigated by the Texas Rangers. (Old punishment: jail. New punishment: Ranger roundhouse kick! Okay, not really, but that would be kind of awesome.) Naturally, Texas Democrats have sought to block that reform. And a handful of Republicans have, to their discredit, joined them, which is inexplicable.

     Please read the entire article; it’s brief (which Kevin Williamson seldom is) and piercing (which he always is). But don’t stop with being outraged. Do something Democrats and other leftists seldom do: think about second-order effects.

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     You cannot have social stability where there is privilege for the rulers and subordination for the ruled. That’s a Society of Status (Isabel Paterson, The God of The Machine), in which the “Emmanuel Goldstein dynamic” will operate until it collapses:

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

[George Orwell, 1984]

     When the High’s brazenness about their special status leads to the outright dismissal of the laws they claim to have passed “for the general good,” while they simultaneously exercise the full weight of their powers to oppress and silence their critics, the conditions for their overthrow have been established. The sequel is likely to be extremely unpleasant:

     [America is] becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it’s not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.

     Today in America, we have a liberal president refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.

     Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.

     That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind....

     What is the end game, liberals? Do you expect these people you despise to just take it? Do you think they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we better comply?” Do you even know any real Americans? Do you think you’ll somehow be able to force them into obedience – for what is government power but force – after someone finally says “Enough?”

     Kurt Schlichter and I are asking the same question.

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     The Party in 1984 strove to cement itself into permanent power by exerting that power to the utmost. The conditions to which the proles (“the Low”) were subjected were so crushing that they couldn’t even conceive of rebelling. The Outer Party (“the Middle”) was kept almost as poor materially as the proles, was regimented to the hilt, and was watched continuously for the merest hint of deviation. The few Outer Party members who dared to deviate were remade psychologically, in a fashion that would break them of the will to resist. The Inner Party (“the High”) was composed entirely of fanatic loyalists willing to do anything whatsoever to retain their hegemony. Thus the Party attempted to solve the age-old problem of political stability.

     1984 is fiction, of course. But at least one element of it has crept into American reality:

     [C]onservatives already do outbreed the left — which is why the left is so determined to maintain its iron hold on education, K-through-12-through-infinity. If they can’t (or won’t) breed more lefties, they know how to make them.

     That’s why homeschooling frightens them so much. That’s why they fight so hard against their own strongest constituents in the effort to prevent school choice and teacher accountability.

     Twelve years of endless harangues about “social justice” and the like will leave a mark on a child that’s near to indelible. It lacks the intensity and focus of O’Brien and Room 101, but it compensates with duration. Many parents find themselves helpless against it.

     Winston Smith wrote that “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.” A few moments later he added, “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” The proles of our place and time are utterly dependent on the State. The State is their father: protector and provider both. they will never even imagine that their protector / provider is really their owner, to be overthrown if they are to advance. There is no hope in them.

     We are the Outer Party. Not in material matters – even a “poor” American lives a life of riches undreamed by emperors of old – but in the view of the political elite. They don’t have the technology to watch us continuously, though with their drones, license plate readers, and the proliferation of “smart” appliances” they’re advancing on it. They haven’t yet disarmed us, though they’re working on that as well.

     The political class, regardless of Democrat or Republican affiliation, is our Inner Party. It uses its tools to subjugate where it can, and to propagandize where it cannot. With the recent, unabashed resort to political prosecutions to destroy its opponents, its consciousness of itself has become complete. Do not doubt that it will go on as it has begun, and to ever greater intensity.

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     Somewhere in the future lies a point of no return, at which all prospect of deliberately ejecting the political class will have vanished. Somewhere nearer to the present lies a point at which the possibility of doing so non-violently will have been extinguished. The Spoonerites waited too long, and were forced to flee. Unless there’s a planetoid wandering through that I haven’t heard about, we won’t have that option.

     It’s not enough to complain to one another. It’s not enough to vote. It’s not enough to support this or that promising-looking candidate. We’ve tried all that.

     What, then, must we do?

The New Salem Trials

     The Left has been straining to impose “narratives” upon America for quite some time. My earliest memory of clear evidence of their reliance on this sort of propaganda technique is from the 2004 presidential campaign, when CBS News used a forged TexANG memo in an attempt – thankfully, unsuccessful – to smear George W. Bush out of a second term as president. When the forgery was made plain by forensics and investigation, the refrain we heard was that “the narrative was right even if the facts were wrong.”

     I’m pretty sure the lineage of “Narrative Uber Alles” goes back much further than that. What’s remarkable about the present day is how openly the Left uses outright lies, and then castigates those who expose them and subject the arguments founded on them to skepticism. Consider the following from a writer for The New Republic:

     The left tends to view oppression as something that operates within systems, sometimes in clearly identifiable structural biases, and other times in subtle but persistent ways. Mortgage discrimination against black families over the last century is an example of a structural, on-the-books bias that had an extraordinarily damaging impact on African Americans; but the fact that black children are read as older and less innocent than their white peers, while neither a law nor a regulation, is of a piece with the overall oppression of black folks in America, resulting in subtle treatment by teachers and authority figures that alienates black children from wider society starting at a very tender age. These disparate forms of discrimination come together, in the left imagination, to form a tightly composed set of prejudices and policies that are difficult to disentangle. Making sense of oppression, therefore, requires looking at entire systems of oppression, not just specific instances or behaviors.

     The right, on the other hand, tends to understand politics on the individual level, which fits in neatly with a general obsession with the capital-i Individual. Thus, the right tends to pore over the specific details of high-profile cases like those of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, concluding that if those particular situations were embattled by complications or mitigating factors, then the phenomena they’re meant to represent must not be real either. And if a few highly publicized rapes turn out to be murkier than first represented, then rape itself is not a crisis, just a regrettable and rare anomaly. The positive version of this approach is the elevation of people like Joe the Plumber, individual cases that purportedly show the value and effectiveness of conservative politics. It isn’t great reasoning, but it is very appealing on a sub-intellectual level.

     As an economics professor once said of a colleague’s reasoning, this is so bad it’s not even wrong. It reveals an invincible ignorance about how the process of reasoned argument actually works. But more significant yet is the open display of intellectual and moral arrogance: a distinguishing mark of leftists’ attitudes for some years now.

     This is significant for two reasons. The first and more obvious is that one who fails to grasp why his argument is viewed with skepticism when the “facts” on which he’s founded it are proved false isn’t merely ignorant; he’s stupid. Coupled to a superficial eloquence, it testifies to a process of indoctrination at whose core is the premise that facts don’t matter if your “values” are good. One who has internalized that premise cannot be educated without first being deprogrammed.

     The second reason is even more important: The attitude of superior wisdom and morality is itself a weapon in the Left’s hands, in that it enrages us in the Right and deflects us from making our own cases. Such an outraged reaction has been observed among many conservatives, including some of demonstrated intellect and wide knowledge.

     [A brief but useful tangent: The “assumption of differential rectitude” (Thomas Sowell, The Vision Of The Anointed) is easily shown to be circular. Why does the leftist think his intellect and morals are superior to those of us in the Right? Because his political positions are themselves superior. Yet he rejects all evidence against his positions, to the point of accusing those who present it of evil motives. Why? Because we’re intellectually and morally deficient! As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum. Here’s a sample rejoinder for your consideration:

     “You shriek about ‘police racism,’ but when pressed to deliver evidence, all you have are fables and conjectures. So there’s really no basis for concluding that mistreatment of minorities by our police is a significant problem – and you can’t see that. Worse, you scream at me for being ‘unconcerned about the problem’ you can’t substantiate. That marks you as being too stupid to talk to and unfit for polite company. Have a nice life.”

     Feel free to use the above as a template, edited suitably for whatever Cause you happen to be confronted about.]

     The proper reply to the Left’s attitude is amusement, with or without audible laughter. Mind you, we must never become arrogant about our own positions; that would constitute jumping into the moral-intellectual pit with them. However, an amused dismissal of their positions and of them as well is something leftists find massively humiliating. It enrages them, which nullifies their proselytizing powers.

     The Left hasn’t produced a figure of significant intellectual stature since John Kenneth Galbraith. Its historical champions have been refuted so completely that their corpses probably blush when they hear their names mentioned or their works cited. So why not take amusement at their pretensions? Especially since it’s wholly justified by the record.

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     There is a place for anger in political outreach. When the Left creates villains out of wholly innocent men, anger is the appropriate response. When the Left tries to claim good intentions in having done so, the anger should intensify. When the Left attempts to counterattack by impugning the motives of those who’ve disproved them, thereby creating additional victims of their slanders, the anger should become white-hot. But the appropriate causes for our anger are always individual injustices; the appropriate targets of our anger are always individual perpetrators.

     Consider the disgraced Sabrina Rubin Erdely. This woman has lent her byline to the defaming of a University of Virginia fraternity. She did so in full knowledge that:

• The accuser, “Jackie,” had never filed a rape complaint with the police;
• That “Jackie” would not name her supposed assailant;
• That the alleged rape had taken place long ago, such that objective evidence that it had occurred at all would be impossible to assemble today.

     Erdely was possessed by “the narrative” to the advancement of which she was committed. Never mind that that “narrative” is founded almost entirely on a single highly tendentious survey performed at a single university. Never mind that a great many professed “rape survivors” are no better able to substantiate their “victimization” than is “Jackie.” Never mind that in lending Rolling Stone’s pages to such a story, she was knowingly eschewing the sort of diligent process of investigation and confirmation appropriate to so serious a charge. “The narrative” was all that mattered.

     That’s evil – and not evil under cover of darkness, but in the light of the noonday sun. That’s an appropriate cause and target for righteous anger. It’s also consistent with the Left’s pattern of behavior since Tawana Brawley at the least.

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     The Salem witch trials were among the grossest miscarriages of injustice ever to occur on this continent. You’ll hardly find anyone to argue against that proposition. But it’s worth a few moments’ thought over why.

     Men and women were put to death entirely on the word of their accusers, every one of whom was a teenage girl who would herself face punishment except for her claim of ensorcellment. There was absolutely no evidence apart from those accusations. The court that condemned the accused was deaf to the questions of honesty that should have been raised about the accusers, probably because it was anxious to maintain and exercise its theocratic authority. Most ludicrous of all, an accused who protested his innocence was automatically condemned, while one who “confessed” was allowed to live! That the era in which these atrocities occurred was one in which the fear of witchcraft was rampant cannot excuse a “court of justice” from its duty to seek the truth.

     The Left’s various promotions of “rape culture,” “police racism,” “homophobic discrimination,” and so forth descend to a still deeper depth of evil, in that even after the accused have been exonerated by objective means, leftists continue to press their claims as if no such thing had occurred. They never apologize to those whom they’ve slandered and in some cases ruined socially and financially. They merely move on to the next opportunity to proclaim their “narratives,” still wholly convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority. The quote from the despicable Elizabeth Bruenig in the opening segment is quite representative. Indeed, even the contemptible Tawana Brawley, who has been revealed for all to see as a liar, continues to profess her “victimhood” – and is celebrated among black racialist mouthpiece groups.

     Be angry at individual malefactors for their individual deeds. Be amused at the pitiable Left’s pathetic attempts to press their cherished “narratives” upon us with fables and garbage surveys. It means they lack facts...and as is made plain by the sequel, they lack both the intelligence and the moral standards that would entitle them to a hearing.

If It Looks Like A Duck Dept.

Ever since he burst onto the national scene, there have been questions about Barack Hussein Obama’s religious affiliations. The revelations about his Islamic upbringing and the various documents that listed the young Obama as a Muslim were disturbing. Neither did it help Obama’s claims of devout Christianity that the only Christian church he ever attended was that of black racialist, anti-Semitic, anti-American “pastor” Jeremiah Wright, nor that Wright himself said that he’d put special effort into making the formerly Muslim Obama “comfortable” with his change of affiliation. And of course, we have Obama’s current non-attendance at Christian services, his dismissal of traditionally celebrated Christian holy days, his demonstrated antipathy toward Israel, and his pronounced favoritism toward the Islamic states of the Middle East.

Despite all that, it was difficult for me to see Obama as a Muslim for a single reason: it would require him to accept that there’s a Being superior to him. That’s a tough dictate for someone as narcissistic as Obama to swallow:

If you want to know why the Obama administration failed so spectacularly to defend Obamacare in the Supreme Court last week, look no further than a 2008 statement President Obama gave to author Richard Wolfe: "You know, I believe my own bulls--t."...

Here is what Obama told aide Patrick Gaspard in 2008: "I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than my political director."...

When Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., told Obama that the political atmosphere in his state felt a lot like 1994, when Democrats lost the House for the first time in two generations, Obama replied, "Well the big difference between here and in '94 was you've got me." Upon hearing those words, Berry chose to retire rather than run again. Democrats lost a record 63 House seats -- including Berry's -- and control of the House....

But don't worry. Obama is the most talented politician of our time. Just ask him. In 2004, after his Democratic National Convention speech, Obama told David Mendell, "I'm LeBron, baby."

(Granted that his narcissism also undercuts his claim of Christian allegiance, but for me at least, that’s been a non-starter from the first.)

But they who make it their practice to delve into the backgrounds of the highly placed have not been idle:

For example, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry made certain to avoid offending or disrespectingMuslim terrorists such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He told the attendees at the forum that the U.S. government will never rush to judgment regarding the nature of the Islamic State: “We have to keep our heads…the biggest error that we could make would be to blame Muslims collectively for crimes not committed by Muslims alone. Crimes that the overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose… Religions don’t require adherents to raze villages and blow up people, it’s individuals with a distorted and an even ignorant interpretation of religion who do that.”

According to the Examiner's anonymous source, those were not the words of Kerry, but were the dictates of Valerie Jarrett, who had been born and raised in Iran, and has always shown sympathy for the fundamentalists in the Islamic religion. While a student at Stanford University, Jarrett admitted her loyalty to Islam and continues to object to any negative statements aimed at any part of her "religion of peace."

" Farsi-speaking Valerie Jarrett, the senior advisor to Obama, his right-hand woman was born in Iran. She also has ties with terrorist William Ayers, and her father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett is a card-carrying communist party member and associate of Frank Marshall Davis, the controversial Communist Party activist who was Obama’s childhood mentor. Davis is mentioned many times in Obama’s autobiography. Obama’s senior advisor/campaign manager David Axelrod also has family roots in the Communist party. His parents were Communists," according to former Saturday Night Live comedian and actress Victoria Jackson, who now hosts a conservative talk show and researched what she calls "the real Obama White House."

(Applause to CM Blake for the link.)

Given the indisputable behavioral patterns of the federal executive branch and essentially all its conspicuous members, perhaps the acknowledged religious attachments of Obama and Jarrett don’t really matter. But doesn’t it all make a consistent, hugely compelling picture?

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Any Gentle Reader who hasn’t yet lapsed into a diabetic coma from regularly reading my treacly-sweet effusions will already be familiar with my opinions about Islam. That we have an executive administration resolved to kowtow to this totalitarian, inherently anti-American creed should appall anyone with three functioning brain cells. That with sufficient information it might have been predictable from the first makes the matter even more disturbing. It resurrects a set of familiar “whys:”

• Why has Obama been so secretive about his college and law school records?
• Why is so little information about Obama’s pre-Senate career publicly available?
• Why has Valerie Jarrett trailed him like an imprinted duckling, wherever he’s gone?
• Why, given her obvious influence, does Jarrett have no official position in the Administration?
• Why did those who know the answers to the above questions work so diligently to suppress them?

And why did the American electorate, which already had four years of experience with the duplicity of the Obamunist cabal, return him to the White House for a second term – if, indeed, it really did?

Food for thought.