Right Move

New House Speaker McCarthy announced that Adam Schiff would not be allowed a spot on the House Intelligence Committee which he chaired in the last two sessions of Congress.  The right move.  

In June 2017 the Committee began hearings on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which continued until March 2018.  Though Representative Schiff was only the ranking minority member of the committee at the time, he effectively ran the hearings, as gutless wonder Paul Ryan had given into a bogus Democratic complaint regarding Chairman Devin Nunes which removed him from the hearing. Transcripts were submitted to the Director of National Intelligence for review before being released to the public because officials such as Susan Rice and Samantha Power were among those testifying.  The transcripts were cleared for release at the beginning of 2019 but by that time the Democrats had taken control of Congress and Schiff refused to release them until, finally, DNI Grenell threatened to do so on his own initiative, leading to their release in May 2020.

So, for nearly three years, Schiff was able to leave the hearings and make pronouncements about the dire, indeed criminal activities unearthed in the testimony (the committee also had access to witness emails and telephone records).  He provided a series of juicy stories to his accomplices in the media, all of whom promoted the Trump collusion narrative.  The problem was that everything Schiff said was a lie including, to quote Mary McCarthy's take on Lillian Hellman, "even 'and' and 'the'.

How do I know this?  Once the 5,977 pages of transcripts were released I read them all, unlike the media stenographers reporting Schiff's every word.  It's all there, Alfa Bank, Deutsche Bank, Trump in Moscow, the Trump Tower meeting in NYC, the Ukraine platform at the GOP convention, etc, and there was nothing there.  Schiff knew it all along, and just lied, knowing well his audience and knowing he would never be held accountable.   I wrote up my conclusions in the 53 Transcripts series.

Adam Schiff, along with Hillary Clinton, the Intelligence Community, the New York Times, and the Washington Post could not have done more damage to this country and trust in its institutions if they had been paid agents of the Kremlin.  The same goes for Donald Trump based on his actions since the November 2020 election.

Correction

On January 8, 2021 I wrote a post including this tweet, containing President-elect Biden's comments on the January 6 riot.

Biden: "No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that's true, and it is unacceptable. Totally unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/TfWa25VzEt

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021

In that post I characterized Biden's remarks this way: "This is as inaccurate, misleading and inflammatory as anything said by Donald Trump."

Recently going back and linking to this post in the course of writing another post, I realized my statement was in error and wanted to acknowledge it on the second anniversary of the post.

Biden's statement was actually accurate.  If it had been a BLM group, or any other group opposing the election of Donald Trump, they would have been treated very, very differently from the mob which stormed the Capitol.  We all do know that is true and it is totally unacceptable.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because if a white Capitol police officer had shot and killed an unarmed black woman attempting to enter the Capitol through a broken window we would have had an immediate national outcry, we would have quickly known the name of the officer, public investigations would have commenced, and drumbeat of media coverage.  Instead a black Capitol police officer shot and killed an unarmed white woman attempting to enter the Capitol (the only person killed that day) and the overall reaction was that she got what she deserved, it took months to identify the officer, and details of the DOJ "investigation" were never revealed.  The New York Times was upset that her body was not left on the Capitol steps as carrion for the crows as an object lesson to others (yes, that is sarcasm, but not far off).  Talk about privilege.(1)

We know Biden's statement was accurate because, unlike what many people seem to believe, only one Capitol police officer died in the line of duty during 2021, and it was not on January 6.  On April 2, 2021, 19 year veteran William (Billy) Evans, who was white, was killed when struck by a vehicle deliberately driven into the barriers surrounding the Capitol.  When the driver emerged wielding a knife he was shot and killed by other police.  If you were on twitter that day or watching the news wire there was a brief moment of palpable excitement in the news media, as they speculated a MAGA type was attempting another assault on the Capitol.  You can sense the disappointment when it turned out the attacker was a black nationalist follower of Louis Farrakhan and the story quickly disappeared because it had the wrong narrative and perpetrator. Talk about privilege.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because the story has reappeared and made to fit the desired narrative.  By none other than President Joe Biden!  Two days ago, speaking on the second anniversary of January 6, the President stated that Officer Evans was killed as a result of "threats by these sick insurrectionists".  So, even an officer killed by a black nationalist was really killed by MAGA types!  Talk about privilege.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because on May 31 and June 1, 2020 rioters protesting the death of George Floyd tried to storm the grounds of the White House, injuring sixty Secret Service and police, sending eleven of them to the hospital.  The focus of the media and the Democrats was on criticizing the effort to defend the White House grounds and also in taking great glee in pointing out President Trump was "hiding" in the White House command center.  In contrast to January 6, the media and Democrats expressed horror when efforts were made to clear out the "mostly peaceful" protestors and simply paid no attention to the injured law enforcement personnel.  And, if the protestors had been successful in entering the White House, the media and Democrats would have treated it as a "day of reckoning" sparking "needed conversation" about American history.  Talk about privilege.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because of the experience of 2020's "Summer of Mostly Peaceful Protests", which left 30 dead and $2 billion in property damages.  When it turned out that cities run by Progressives for decades were cesspools of racism, in which generations of minority children had been condemned to serve time in failing schools, their response was to order police to stand down, while the Progressive paramilitary wing was allowed to run wild, ransacking and destroying the properties of law abiding citizens, mostly minorities, destroying livelihoods, with the longer term consequences of increased crime and violence in these vulnerable communities.  And those who tried to object were threatened with the loss of their jobs and careers and shut down by social media.  Talk about privilege.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because, during the summer of 2020, the media went out of its way to pretend it wasn't even happening, claiming the protests were "mostly peaceful" and 93% non-violent (by that standard, I don't know why anyone would be concerned about Covid since the best estimates are more than 99% of those infected will survive).  Here's a report from an honest progressive about what's happened in our cities.  Talk about privilege.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because when Antifa spent 50 nights trying to break into the Federal building in Portland (and did the same in other cities though not as persistently) with arson and other violent attacks, outlets like the New York Times studiously avoided reporting, except to blame the Trump administration when it reacted to protect the buildings.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because during the campaign Joe Biden denied that Antifa was a real thing and Biden and Harris staffers contributed to bail funds to allow these thugs to go free while Progressive mayors and judges dropped charges against these creatures. Kamala Harris actually used her twitter feed to encourage followers to contribute to a Minnesota bail fund to spring members of the Democratic Party's paramilitary wing from jail.  Talk about privilege.

We know Biden's statement was accurate because, in contrast to the summer of 2020 rioters and protestors, the January 6 rioters and protestors have been vigorously prosecuted, and often held for long periods without bail, and generally sentenced much more severely than the 2020 lawbreakers.  One example - a January 6 protestor who was not accused of any violent act, entering the Capitol through an open door, who went into the Senate parliamentarian's office and stole a bottle of brandy and a coat rack was sentenced to three years in prison.  Meanwhile, the two people of color who during the Floyd riots in New York City, threw a Molotov cocktail into the back of a police car, were sentenced to only fifteen months, after the Department of Justice took the unusual step of changing their earlier guilty pleas and repleading to lesser charges.  Talk about privilege. (2)

I'm glad my recent post caused me to re-examine the post of January 8, 2021 and realize my characterization of Biden's remarks was inaccurate, prompting this corrective post.  The President-elect was spot on and, as noted above, we have many proof points in support of his claims.

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(1) Regarding January 6, I made my views clear in a post of that date, and, in the January 8 post referenced above, the first part contains additional comments on those events while later in that same post I wrote "The bottom line is you should be shocked by yesterday's events and repulsed by Trump's behavior" and that I "would have supported Capitol police firing on anyone who attempted to enter as part of that mob".

(2) We find further confirmation of Biden's statement in his appointment of Kristen Clarke as chief of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.  Ms Clarke does not interpret the provisions of the Civil Rights Acts as being applicable to white people.  Talk about privilege.

Idiocracy

 The GOP organization of my home county, Maricopa, has passed (by a 13-11 vote) a resolution censuring Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, for "specific actions" during the August 2022 Primary Election; "disregard for the irregularities reported in the Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 Election"; and "inaction on election integrity".

Richer is a Republican, who unseated the incumbent Democrat recorder in the 2020 election; the same election supposedly rigged to ensure Trump lost Maricopa County.  In addition, 4 of the 5 county supervisors are Republicans and they are directly responsible for poll management on election days.

You can read Richer's detailed response here and I've done this post as a easily located note to myself  so I, or any reader, can find this compendium of relevant information, as the response contains extensive footnotes and links on the topic.

I closely followed the cyber ninjas "audit", reading their report, the County response, and learning a bit about Arizona election law along the way.  The "audit" was an embarrasing fiasco, which should have been evident to anyone looking at the relevant information without an agenda.  Sadly, that was not the case for many in the Arizona GOP.  And, for that matter, does anyone think Donald Trump spent even five minutes actually objectively evaluating the evidence claiming the election was stolen?

My summary from my post last September (see Grouchy), which contains many relevant links and remains accurate today:

I'm grouchy because after yesterday's report on the Arizona "forensic audit" by the cyber ninjas, there are still those who claim the Arizona election results were not legitimate and still believe the "ninja dust" thrown out by the audit team despite their own results - their hand count matched that of Maricopa County (actually Biden's margin got a bit bigger) and they presented no evidence to support the Dominion software conspiracy theory.

Living in Maricopa County, I have followed this much more closely than any of the other election disputes.  The bottom line is pretty simple if you look at precinct results.  The votes Donald Trump picked up in Hispanic precincts were more than offset by Biden gains in the wealthier white precincts; a pattern consistent across metro areas nationwide.  End of story. 

Of course, if there really had been a conspiracy by Democrats to steal the election, the institutional media would not report it.  Between the Democrats, GOP, and the institutional media that explains why we are in such dire straits now.

Grouchy

Following the Battle of Ligny on June 16, 1815, at which Napoleon defeated the Prussian army, the Emperor assigned Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy along with a substantial part of the French army to follow the retreat of the Prussians while Napoleon took the direct road to Brussels and a confrontation with Wellington's army.  Grouchy's task was to ensure the Prussians did not unite with Wellington.

Grouchy failed in his assignment.  Late on the afternoon of June 18, General Blucher led his Prussians on to the battlefield at Waterloo, ensuring Napoleon's defeat.  Grouchy never made it to Waterloo.

But I didn't mean to talk about that Grouchy.  I'm the one who is grouchy.

I'm grouchy because after yesterday's report on the Arizona "forensic audit" by the cyber ninjas, there are still those who claim the Arizona election results were not legitimate and still believe the "ninja dust" thrown out by the audit team despite their own results - their hand count matched that of Maricopa County (actually Biden's margin got a bit bigger) and they presented no evidence to support the Dominion software conspiracy theory.

Living in Maricopa County, I have followed this much more closely than any of the other election disputes.  The bottom line is pretty simple if you look at precinct results.  The votes Donald Trump picked up in Hispanic precincts were more than offset by Biden gains in the wealthier white precincts; a pattern consistent across metro areas nationwide.  End of story.  Nothing nefarious in a County where four of the five Supervisors are Republican and the Recorder, who oversees elections, is a Republican who beat the incumbent Democrat in the same election alleged to be fixed for Biden and the Democrats.

I could go on to write another multi-thousand word post explaining why the allegations made by the cyber ninjas are nonsense, but the whole thing is so stupid I refuse to spend the time.  Instead here are some references to better understand what is going on:

Open Letter to Arizona Republicans from Stephen Richer (R), Maricopa County Recorder 

Stephen Richer on Twitter

Maricopa County on Twitter 

Maricopa County: Just the Facts - Myth Busters 

Garrett Archer on Twitter 

Rob Graham Twitter thread on audit press conference

- extra added bonus - here's Rob explaining why the Trump Org and Alfa Bank servers weren't connected (relevant to my recent post on this topic), and which contains this observation:

The entire presentation today in Maricopa by Trumpists was the same conspiracy-theory argument: their inability to rationally explain anomalies. But the defect was in themselves not being smart enough to explain, not a conspiracy.

UPDATE: This graphically explains why Trump lost in Maricopa.

 

In 2020, ~100,000 voters voted for Joe Biden and then supported GOP candidates in down ballot races (state legislature / county). Ticket splitting was at its highest in precincts with high levels of 4-year college degree attainment and high median household incomes. pic.twitter.com/XuvJyIvDFe

— Landon Wall (@LandonWall_) December 1, 2021

Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out

 My message to President Trump.  What a disgrace.

ADDED: I wrote this before learning of the storming of the Capitol.  Trump should resign.  Now.

FURTHER ADD:  If he won't resign, time to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Are The Parties Over?

In the wake of the election, both parties face critical questions going forward.  Both are in disarray, both headed in potentially dangerous directions.  During the course of 2020 I have become increasingly pessimistic about the outcome, not just because of what is happening within the parties but because of larger trends in American society.  We cannot survive as a functioning society if the outcome of every national election becomes a potential extinction moment for one party or the other. We need two viable parties with supporters that agree to some common set of rules.  That no longer exists. What happens next?

The Democrats

For the Democrats, it can be summed up simply - will it revert to the party of traditional liberals and progressives, like former New York Times writer and editor, Bari Weiss, or will it become the party of the intolerant totalitarian-minded haters who work for the New York Times and drove Bari Weiss out?

I don't use the word "totalitarian" lightly, preferring in past posts to refer to "authoritarian" tendencies.  On reflection, watching what has happened over the past few months and better understanding the academic theories driving the Woke, I think totalitarian is the more accurate word.  It is a totalizing philosophy that considers the personal as political.  It reaches everything in life, including one's private thoughts.  They will come for your job, they will destroy your career, they will deny you educational opportunities.  Everything in your life is in play.  It is an unending version of the Salem Witch Trials. You can read my Your Future series for more on this philosophy.

They feel threatened as long as everyone in society is not in accord with their beliefs.  And eliminating that threat requires complete control of society.  It reminds me of the scene in Godfather II, when Michael Corleone responds to Tom Hagen’s question about why Michael needed to continue to kill people when he’d already won his gangland war, “I don’t feel I have to wipe everyone out, Tom. Just my enemies“.   And anyone who does not agree with them is an enemy to the Woke.

U.S. Grant's observation in his Memoirs of the cause of the Civil War also comes to mind:

Prior to the time of these encroachments the great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves.  But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South . . .  

The encroachments Grant refers to are the Fugitive Slave Act and other intrusions into the life of the North that the Southern slave owners insisted upon because they felt threatened.  The Identitarian Philosophy bear similarities to the attitude of the Southern aristocracy in the 1850s, which felt threatened by anything going on elsewhere in the United States that could be seen as undermining the legitimacy of its ruling philosophy.

During the decades leading up to the Civil War, that aristocracy became more aggressive in demanding the demolition of opposition to its rule.  It demanded, and actually undertook, censorship of abolitionist literature being transported by the postal service.  For several years it imposed a gag rule on the House, forbidding discussion of any resolutions regarding slavery.  In 1857, the Supreme Court gave us the first "Living Constitution" opinion in Dred Scott, rewriting American history in light of current conditions in order to meet the modern needs of a 19th century America, potentially opening up the entire country to slavery.

And we hear echoes of John C Calhoun in the Woke.  They agree completely with Calhoun's reinterpretation of American history which insisted that blacks were excluded from the American compact (that was the point of the 1619 Project), and we see Calhoun's nullification theory in action today in Progressive sanctuary cities where violent illegal aliens are privileged over the life and safety of law abiding Americans, including legal immigrants.  Now that I think about it, we can see the evolution of Southern views on slavery from a regrettable situation which would end someday to Calhoun's formulation of slavery as a "positive good", reflected in the change in language around abortion from Bill Clinton's "safe, rare, and legal" to its celebration today as a positive good not subject to any restriction.

It's why the New York Times and other media now run pieces explaining why the First Amendment needs rethinking; it's why media and the social media companies now classify and censor as hate speech, any opinions that do not align completely with the Woke creed. 

Do I think most Democratic voters support this philosophy?  No. But the party activists, including those who will fill Biden administration positions, do.  More dangerous for our future is how the events of this year revealed how many of our institutions are under the control of those who subscribe to this quasi-religious creed - look at our universities, the infiltration of these concepts into the K-12 system, the media's overwhelming support, the high tech oligarchs and their employees, public employee unions (particularly SEIU and teacher's unions), major foundations, and many large corporations.

Do I think Joe Biden supports this philosophy?  No, because I don't think he is capable anymore of understanding what is going on.  He thinks when he speaks of "systemic racism" that he means "being against racism", but the people around him know better, and it is those people I am worried about.

Can old-fashioned liberals mount a successful counter-offensive against this pernicious development?  We need a Democratic Party that turns away from the suppression of dissent, so I hope so, but have my doubts.  I now read a long list of liberals/progressives who understand the danger of Woke philosophy - Wesley Yang, Asra Nomani, Claire Lehmann, Zaid Jilani, James Lindsay, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Andrew Sullivan, Seerut Chawla, Bari Weiss, Inaya Folarin Iman, Mike Nayna, Colin Wright, Heather Heying, Chloe Valdary, Helen Pluckrose, Debra Soh, Bo Winegard, Bret Weinstein, Jody Shaw - they are impassioned and eloquent, but lack political influence.  It will require a lot more liberals waking up to the danger, a danger that will swallow them, not just the Right, if it prevails.

The Republicans

Three questions:

Can the post-Trump GOP find a path that rejects the coming attempt by the Romney/Sasse/Bush Remnants to regain control while avoiding falling into the fever swamp of crazies?

Will Donald Trump allow the growth of a non-Trump GOP which can tread that path?

Is there a candidate who can retain Trump's appeal to new voters and bring back some of the suburban voters alienated by Trump's personality and antics?

Unless the answer is yes to all, the GOP will have trouble sustaining its national viability.

The repulsive, impulsive, chaotic traits of Donald Trump contributed to his defeat.  But he also realigned the GOP and began creating a new coalition, drawing more than 10 million new voters in this election - more working class, more Hispanic, and with a start on adding black support.

The pre-Trump GOP of chamber of commerce friendliness, always scouting for foreign interventions to Make America Great Again, pretending to care about controlling immigration, afraid of taking on the underlying cultural issues, and running for the hills anytime it is accused of racism, is dead and any attempt to revive it will rip apart the party.  

Donald Trump's time is over.  The question is whether he recognizes it.  Does he want to run again? He will be closer to 79 than 78 on inauguration day in 2025.  I don't think he will wear well with the greater public.  He'll be tweeting and holding rallies and looking even crazier than before because he will not have any positive accomplishments to point to over the next four years to offset the nuttiness.  It would be a disaster if he runs in 2024.

Unfortunately, he retains a large personal following and will be influential if he chooses to be so, I fear a temptation too hard for him to resist.  Even if he ends up not running in 2024 but manages to smother the emergent of any potential successor more palatable to a larger part of the electorate it is a big problem for the future of the GOP and, worse case, it could tear the party apart if he remains a prominent figure.

And this is what I mean by the crazies:

Lin Wood

@LLinWood

CCP & 1000’s of US citizens worked together to try to steal 2020 election at top of ticket & selected down ballot races. Serbia, Canada, Venezuela, Cuba, CIA, George Soros, Bill Gates, Biden, Clinton Foundation & many national state & local officials from both parties involved.

A new and successful GOP will need to look closer to Trump on substance than to the old GOP.  It will be non-interventionist (and when action is needed it will be quick, overwhelming and decisive as with the Iranian Soleimani), engaged with the world but not subservient to international institutions, smart about taking on China from the perspective of protecting American security and jobs, less focused on tax rates for the wealthy but willing to take on the bureaucratic regulatory state, serious about border security and immigration policy, and willing to forcefully take on the educational, media, corporate and tech establishments, and confront those attempting to reracialize American society.  Can it be done?  Theoretically yes, but as a practical matter it will be difficult.  It will require politicians savvy enough to put a coalition together and smart enough to avoid the personal pitfalls associated with Trump.

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Looming behind all this is a fiscal crisis for the country somewhere down the road.  Our federal spending habits will prove unsustainable at some point.  The Democrats haven't cared and Trump's presidency allowed the GOP to stop pretending it cared.  It's like how the Democrats pretended to care about illegal immigration until they thought it politically safe to endorse open borders.  There is no visible solution since no one in national politics is serious about it so best not to think about the problem.

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There are some glimmers of hope, amidst the ruin.  I mentioned that I do not think the majority of Democratic voters, unlike party leadership and activists, support the Woke.  We got some evidence in California last month.  Californians gave nearly 2/3 of their votes to Biden, who carried the state by five million votes.  At the same time, they decisively defeated a ballot proposition proposed by the Democratic Party, and backed by public employee unions and tech oligarchs who outspent opponents 17-1, which would have eliminated the anti-discrimination provision of the California constitution.  The votes of Asians and Hispanics were key to defeating the proposition.  This was a direct rejection of the Woke attempt to re-racialize America.

Another ray of hope is how Democrats and the media have chosen to attack the Trump administration's actions to forbid training using race and sex stereotypes and scapegoating in the federal government and by government contractors and grantees.  Democrats and their media allies have deliberately and repeatedly lied in describing these actions as banning diversity training.  As explained in a prior post, Trump's order states it:

 . . .  does not prevent agencies, the United States Uniformed Services, or contractors from promoting racial, cultural, or ethnic diversity or inclusiveness

Democrats and media are lying in their description because they are aware that most Americans, across the political spectrum, would agree that Trump's action banning training based on racial hatred, stereotypes and designed to be divisive, is justified.  They would find it shocking that such actions are needed 56 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

As to the Republicans, ask me in the middle of 2021, because it will take a few months before we get a glimpse as to whether the party can avoid the multiple pitfalls in its path, but the events of the past few weeks are not a good omen.

One further reflection helps me battle my increasing pessimism.  Growing up during the Cold War for the first 40 years of my life hovering in the background was the possibility of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.  It was very difficult to see a path that could resolve matters short of ultimately some type of major conflict, whether planned or inadvertent.  I think anyone predicting in 1980 the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later would have been thought out of their minds.  Yet it happened to the surprise of most of us.  A reminder of the limits of our ability to predict the future and the contingent factor of unexpected events and singular personalities.

Conspiracy Theories 2

Now that the Supreme Court has properly refused to hear the Texas case, the Electoral College can proceed to do its work tomorrow.  Joe Biden will be the next President.  Those filing the Texas case knew it would not succeed.  The AG of Texas is under investigation and was doing what he could to divert attention from that scandal (even the state's Solicitor General declined to sign on to the lawsuit).  The other state AGs who signed on knew it was a loser but did so to position themselves with Trump supporters for their political futures.  And the President liked it because it helps him build the "stab in the back" narrative he's going to use once he's out of office.

The web of the supposed conspiracy built around Dominion software and inane statistical analysis along with the repeated use of false facts finally fell of its own weight as a legal matter, though it is now gospel for the President and at least some of his followers.

In an election so close - if 22,000 voters in AZ, GA and WI had voted for Trump instead of Biden, we would have a tie in the Electoral College; if 38,000 in those three states plus Nevada had voted differently, Trump would have won the Electoral College vote - is it possible that enough fraud may have occurred to tip the balance?  Yes, it is possible, though I don't think likely, but that possibility was buried under an avalanche of malpractice and outright crap from the Trump legal team and its supporters, and the President's encouragement of this insanity via his twitter account demonstrates it is time for him to go.

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Having said the above, I am reprinting, with some edits and additions, part of my November 23 post on Conspiracy Theories.  We should each use our independent judgement in assessing the validity of claims regarding election tampering.  We should not take at face value the crap from the President and his team.  And speaking of crap, the Democratic Party and its media allies have lost any credibility when it comes to commenting on Trump's efforts.  You simply cannot believe what they say.

Regarding the current electoral dispute, particularly that of manipulation of the voting systems, there is an aspect that explains, though it does not excuse, some of the current belief of Trump supporters in such a conspiracy; the Russia collusion hoax and the entire way the Democratic Party and its media allies have destroyed norms over the past four years.

As I've written, when the issue of possible collusion between the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, with the Russians was raised in late 2016 and early 2017 I thought there might be something to it.  Over the next four years I read more than 10,000 pages of original source documents, not relying upon being told by others what they said.

If you had told me in January 2017 the Clinton campaign had taken Russian disinformation regarding Trump, disseminated it to the media in an attempt to influence the election, and gone to the FBI in order to prompt it to obtain a warrant to spy on their opponent's campaign, I would not have believed it.

If you had told me in February 2017 that once Clinton unexpectedly lost the election, the Democratic party, federal bureaucrats (including the Director of the FBI deliberately lying to the President) and their allies in the media, would convert the campaign actions into a conspiracy to unseat the new President and, failing that to create an ongoing investigation designed to hamstring the administration, provide a continued series of media leaks, attempt to trap the President into an obstruction of justice charge, and damaging the President in the 2018 mid-terms, I would not have believed it.

But, in fact, that is what happened.  We had an unprecedented conspiracy at the highest levels of government.  The greatest scandal in American political history.  And it worked.  A November 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found that 63% of Democrats believed the Russians directly hacked the voting results in 2016, a conspiracy theory for which there is absolutely no evidence. The Democrats rode this to regaining the House in 2018 and the Mueller investigation would still be ongoing if Bill Barr had not finally stepped in to call a halt to the farce.

Moreover, those who believe Trump is the victim of an electoral conspiracy need merely look at Democrats and their media allies who for four years have denounced Trump as a Hitler-like figure who is destroying democracy and taking America down the road to fascism.  If they really felt that way, why wouldn't they feel justified in engaging in some election fiddling to stop him?  You'd do anything you could to stop Hitler, wouldn't you?

And once he took office, Democrats refused to recognize the legitimacy of the election.  Editors of major publications like the New York Times and New Yorker announced they would lie about the President because they would refuse to "normalize" him - a vow they more than fulfilled over the last four years (for two examples of what the Times is willing to normalize read this and this).  In the Senate, Democrats obstructed presidential nominees to an unprecedented extent, simply because they were nominees of Donald Trump.

And while they railed against Trump lies, most of his typical idiotic puffery variety, they had no compunction about repeatedly lying themselves (read, for example, Rushmore and Good People on Both Sides).  In a column in the pages of the Wall St Journal in May 2019 Holman Jenkins accurately described what has transpired:

Mr Trump is said to upset the norms of our political life, but how exactly?  By lying? By engaging in demagoguery?  By making absurd claims?  His real trick has been to be a one-man satire of our politics.  And so far he has yet to find an opponent or critic - whether Mr Biden, or Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney - who doesn't prove his point.

To show what a liar he is, his enemies entangle themselves in lies.  Democrats have turned themselves into a party of Adam Schiffs, who, whatever his previous virtues, now is wholly defined by his promotion of the collusion canard.  It's an amazing psychological feat to squander their advantage over Mr Trump in this way.

Ditto the media.  In their eagerness to traffic in falsehoods about Mr Trump, his media critics lend him strength.  We face the weird prospect now of a world-class scandal involving the FBI and the intelligence community being aired even while much of the press is committed to being part of the coverup.

And lest we forget - what about the U.S. Postal Service conspiracy that made headlines for weeks late this summer and early fall?  A story with no substance became the hook for a Democratic conspiracy theory about Trump stealing the election.

As for accepting the result of the 2020 election, pray tell me - what did the storeowners who boarded up their properties in Washington, Manhattan, Boston and other cities just prior to the election, anticipate?  Enraged Republicans storming the streets, wreaking havoc?  No, they knew from this summer's experience, it would be the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party taking to the streets if Biden lost and they also knew that the Democratic politicians who rule those cities would allow it to happen just as they had during the summer.  It is impossible to overstate the impact of what happened in American cities this summer in terms of destroying norms.  We've had riots before.  The difference in 2020 was Progressive mayors in city after city standing aside, and often encouraging, while party supporters destroyed property and business and, since then violent crime has surged (and who knew that cities governed for decades by Progressives were such hellholes of racism?).  For the first time, Americans of all races understood that we are dependent on the whim of Progressives as to whether we would actually be protected against criminal elements.  We have entered a new world.

And speaking of what happened this summer, isn't the Black Lives Matter movement and Critical Race Theory one huge conspiracy theory?  Imagine, all the "evil" in the Western World attributable to, and explainable by, a single factor; a giant conspiracy to maintain white supremacy - the one thing that explains all.  And, if you deny it, it just proves you are part of the conspiracy.  It comes along with a full set of false narratives - Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Omar Mateen, disproportionate and exaggerated numbers of unarmed blacks killed by police - the list goes on and on.  This is classic conspiracy thinking in the guise of social justice and academic theory - more interested in authoritarian social transformation than in trying to solve some of the legitimate problems facing America regarding race.

Remember when before the election any claims about links between Hunter Biden, his father, and foreign powers was denounced as a Trumpian conspiracy, which most media refused to report on and saw Twitter actually shut down the feed of the New York Post which reported on the story?  Now that we know that the New York Post was correct and there is a DOJ investigation of Hunter it is evident there was a conspiracy - a conspiracy not to report legitimate stories if they undermined the anti-Trump narrative.

So while the Dominion voting machine conspiracy theory and other nonsense should be denounced and Trump needs to accept his defeat, we are not going to sit quietly and listen to lectures from Democrats and the media about "norms" and "conspiracies" when they've been complicit for four years in smashing norms, encouraging the conspiratorial fantasies of their followers, have yet to acknowledge their own shoddy behavior (indeed, they still mock those who say it is a hoax), lost the last shreds of their integrity, and making their own towering contribution to the destruction of trust in American institutions.

We are all slowly going crazy (well, some more quickly than others) and unless we find a way to halt this spiral the outlook is grim.

Conspiracy Theories

The allegation that Dominion software was manipulated to determine the results of the presidential election is a conspiracy theory and, like most such conspiracies, false.  It has all the hallmarks of classic conspiracy theories; convoluted, some pseudo-technical mumble-jumble, dark forces at work behind the scenes, hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved, ignoring alternative explanations, and just enough linkage to a couple of established facts to make people think it possible.

Per my recent post, the President will lose his legal challenges, though he has the right to pursue them, but the Dominion software stuff is malicious nonsense and unworthy of promotion by Trump and his team.  I am glad to see on Sunday the Trump legal team cut its ties to Sidney Powell, who had promoted this theory at Thursday's press conference run by Rudy Giuliani.  That she was allowed to spout this delusional material is a reflection on the chaos and lack of thought within Trump's legal team as well as Giuliani's mental state.  Now they need to sever ties with Lin Wood, and let this issue die.  However, with Trump's gullibility and penchant for conspiracy theories this may not be over and it needs to be. [UPDATE: Trump is not abandoning his insane conspiracy theories and his legal team continues to be an embarrassment.  Giuliani and his "experts"showed up here in Arizona to contest the election and it is clear they actually know nothing about how this state conducts its elections; I didn't like the election results but have confidence in the basic integrity of the process.  Our very pro-Trump governor has rejected this nonsense theories and supported the certification.  We are at the completely ridiculous stage.  What the President is doing is reprehensible, and how he is doing it is even worse than what he is doing.  He will lose but the repercussions will be with us for a long time.]*

Conspiracy theories arise in all countries and cultures.  There is something in human nature to which they appeal.  They can arise in many contexts, not just political as is happening now.

Two examples of conspiracy theories in the political context illustrate their essential features.

One that never gained more than limited traction is the conspiracy theory that President Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor and let it proceed in order to embroil the United States in World War Two.  The tenuous factual starting point for conspiracy theorists is the existence of a few Japanese communications intercepted by American intelligence indicating Pearl Harbor as a potential target, and the political and military maneuvering FDR was undertaking in anticipation of American involvement in the war.  The theory studiously ignores a lot of context.  

Yes, there were some isolated intercepted communications but these came within in a blizzard of intercepts, indicating that Japan was preparing an attack with the overwhelming bulk concerning an advance south towards the British and Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia and possibly towards the Philippines.  All of the information we see relating to top military and cabinet officials in D.C. from late November until December 7, 1941 shows they anticipated the Japanese attack but in a southerly direction, not west towards Pearl.

Because of the flow of the intelligence intercepts, there are many others beyond FDR who would have seen the communications, including our military leaders and the Secretary of War.  This would have required men like George C Marshall, Ernest King, and Henry Stimson to have participated in allowing the Pearl Harbor attack.  Anyone who knows anything about those individuals understands they would never have agreed to do so.  Nor do I believe FDR capable of it - he was, above all a Navy man.

Moreover, getting into a war with Japan was counter to American strategy and potentially derailed it.  FDR and the military chiefs of staff had agreed that war was likely but that the primary threat was Germany, not Japan.  The military had been adamant about avoiding war with Japan because it would have diverted resources needed when, not whether, war with Germany came, and even if it came with both 85% of American resources were to be direct towards Europe.  Pearl Harbor created a dilemma for the U.S during the first days after the attack, with the worry being that public opinion would force resources planned for Europe to be recommitted to the Pacific, a problem only solved by Hitler's still puzzling decision to declare war on America on December 11.

The other example, and the more impactful on Americans in triggering distrust of the government, is the assassination of President Kennedy, which took place 57 years ago yesterday.  Even today, half of Americans believe a conspiracy was behind his murder and, at times in the past more than 70% held such views.  Most of those conspiracy theories propose some combination of anti-communists, U.S. intelligence agencies, and VP Lyndon Johnson were behind the tragedy.  

How did the murder of a popular American president by an avowed communist and admirer of Fidel Castro, who had earlier the same year attempted to assassinate a right-wing figure in the Dallas area (only narrowing missing), end up with many Americans believing in a right-wing conspiracy?

As explained in my post A Cruel And Shocking Act, there was a conspiracy involving the Warren Commission, but not the one conspiracy theorists postulated.  LBJ, Robert Kennedy and the bungling FBI and CIA, each had their reasons for the Commission wrapping up its work quickly, pinning the blame on Oswald, and for withholding sensitive information during the investigation.  Some of the Warren Commission's obvious errors, along with a Soviet disinformation campaign, gave instant credibility to conspiracy theorists, leading them to ever more elaborate and far-fetched alternative explanations of the assassination, culminating in Oliver Stone's hallucinatory fantasy, JFK, in the 1990s.

Out of these initial errors, the conspiracy theorists, some of whom, like Mark Lane, made long and profitable careers, built ever more elaborate and fanciful constructs to explain the events in Dallas.  For anyone taking the time to really examine the details and think through all the practical aspects it falls apart as easily as a house of cards in a light wind, but most people don't have that time.  The result was, if you accepted the initial premise, the rest seems to follow logically.  Like many conspiracy theories, those propagating it are very careful what details to tell their followers, and which to leave out.  Sometimes, it is very simple things; I'd read some of the early conspiracy books before realizing how twisted they were and was led to believe that one reason to believe Oswald was not the shooter was how difficult it was to make the shoots he was alleged to have taken; well beyond his capabilities.  Making my first visit to Dealey Plaza in the late 1990s, I was surprised to see how much smaller it was in person than the impression given by books and photos.  And when I was at the window in the Book Depository from which Oswald fired the shots, I realized, having done some rifle shooting, how relatively easy the shots would have been for a trained Marine rifleman (and everyone I've spoken with who has experience shooting has had the same reaction looking out that window).  Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.  There was no conspiracy.

I also have a personal distaste for conspiracy theories and my default position is not to believe them without compelling evidence that I've personally examined.  It stems in part from reading a lot of history from a very early age and seeing how contingent many great events are on happenstance; how many miscalculations are made by historical figures; how much naturally goes wrong in the course of events; and how difficult it is to coordinate large groups in a conspiracy.

My working experience reinforced those views.  I've investigated incidents that looked initially as planned, requiring willfulness by the participants, and been surprised to find out that while it looked awful, no one planned the outcome or deliberately acted improperly.  Rather, a series of misjudgments, innocent acts, and actions not in anyone's control or foresight led to the result.  I've also been directly involved in some events that received substantial media attention and were the subject of public claims that I, and others, had created a conspiracy, imputing motives to us that we did not have, and patterns of action that simply did not exist in the real world.

I mentioned my default settings regarding conspiracy theories above.  But regarding the current electoral dispute, particularly that of manipulation of the voting systems, there is an aspect that explains, though it does not excuse, some of the current belief of Trump supporters in such a conspiracy; the Russia collusion hoax and the entire way the Democratic Party and its media allies have destroyed norms over the past four years.

As I've written, when the issue of possible collusion between the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, with the Russians was raised in late 2016 and early 2017 I thought there might be something to it.  Over the next four years I read more than 10,000 pages of original source documents, not relying upon being told by others what they said.

If you had told me in January 2017 the Clinton campaign had taken Russian disinformation regarding Trump, disseminated it to the media in an attempt to influence the election, and gone to the FBI in order to prompt it to obtain a warrant to spy on their opponent's campaign, I would not have believed it.

If you had told me in February 2017 that once Clinton unexpectedly lost the election, the Democratic party, federal bureaucrats (including the Director of the FBI deliberately lying to the President) and their allies in the media, would convert the campaign actions into a conspiracy to unseat the new President and, failing that to create an ongoing investigation designed to hamstring the administration, provide a continued series of media leaks, attempt to trap the President into an obstruction of justice charge, and damaging the President in the 2018 mid-terms, I would not have believed it.

But, in fact, that is what happened.  We had an unprecedented conspiracy at the highest levels of government.  The greatest scandal in American political history.  And it worked.  A November 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found that 63% of Democrats believed the Russians directly hacked the voting results in 2016, an accusation for which there is absolutely no evidence.  The Democrats rode this to regaining the House in 2018 and the Mueller investigation would still be ongoing if Bill Barr had not finally stepped in to call a halt to the farce.

Moreover, those who believe Trump is the victim of an electoral conspiracy need merely look at Democrats and their media allies who for four years have denounced Trump as a Hitler-like figure who is destroying democracy and taking America down the road to fascism.  If they really felt that way, why wouldn't they feel justified in engaging in some election fiddling to stop him?  You'd do anything you could to stop Hitler, wouldn't you?

And once he took office, Democrats refused to recognize the legitimacy of the election.  Editors of major publications like the New York Times and New Yorker announced they would lie about the President because they would refuse to "normalize" him - a vow they more than fulfilled over the last four years (for two examples of what the Times is willing to normalize read this and this).  In the Senate, Democrats obstructed presidential nominees to an unprecedented extent, simply because they were nominees of Donald Trump.

And lest we forget - what about the U.S. Postal Service conspiracy that made headlines for weeks late this summer and early fall?  A story with no substance became the hook for a Democratic conspiracy theory about Trump stealing the election.

As for accepting the result of the 2020 election, pray tell me - what did the storeowners who boarded up their properties in Washington, Manhattan, Boston and other cities just prior to the election, anticipate?  Enraged Republicans storming the streets, wreaking havoc?  No, they knew from this summer's experience, it would be the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party taking to the streets if Biden lost and they also knew that the Democratic politicians who rule those cities would allow it to happen just as they had during the summer.  It is impossible to overstate the impact of what happened in American cities this summer in terms of destroying norms.  We've had riots before.  The difference was Progressive mayors in city after city standing aside, and often encouraging, while party supporters destroyed property and business and, since then violent crime has surged.  For the first time, Americans of all races understood that we are dependent on the whim of Progressives as to whether we would actually be protected against criminal elements.  We have entered a new world.

And speaking of what happened this summer, isn't the Black Lives Matter movement and Critical Race Theory one huge conspiracy theory?  Imagine, all the "evil" in the Western World attributable to, and explainable by, a single factor; a giant conspiracy to maintain white supremacy - the one thing that explains all.  And, if you deny it, it just proves you are part of the conspiracy.  It comes along with a full set of false narratives - Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Omar Mateen, disporportionate numbers of unarmed blacks killed by police - the list goes on and on.  This is classic conspiracy thinking in the guise of social justice and academic theory.

So while the Dominion conspiracy theory should be denounced and Trump needs to accept his defeat, we are not going to sit quietly and listen to lectures from Democrats and the media about "norms" and "conspiracies" when they've been complicit for four years in smashing norms, encouraging the conspiratorial fantasies of their followers, have yet to acknowledge their own shoddy behavior (indeed, they still mock those who say it is a hoax), losing the last shreds of their integrity, and  making their own contribution to the destruction of trust in American institutions.

We are all slowly going crazy (well, some more quickly than others) and unless we find a way to halt this spiral the outlook is grim.

-------------------

* I have not paid as much attention to every Trump related election claim as I did with the Russia collusion story.  With Russia collusion I became concerned, during the course of 2017, that something was not right with the story I was seeing in the media and decided to start reading every original source document I could find so as to draw my own conclusions.

In the case of the recent election, so many of the claims being made were false, and sometimes outright crazy, that I felt it not a good investment of my time to investigate in detail.  And that's the problem with conspiracists.  To the extent, there is some underlying validity to any claim regarding election fraud it has been buried under a pile of crap by its advocates.  Moreover, while Trump's erratic and improvisational nature, along with his lack of attention to detail, has occasionally served him well, it was precisely the wrong approach it you are preparing to contest an election.  Legal teams and observers should have been identified well in advance, lists of items to be carefully watched and documented should have been prepared so that the evidence could have been collected, instead of the madcap exercise going on now.  Further, some state actions could have been contested prior to election day.  For instance, the PA mail ballot case could have been filed months ago and it remains the case with the most legal merit (though even if Trump were to prevail, it would not change the national election outcome).

Reality Bites

President Trump needs to succeed in legal proceedings in three states of four states, PA, GA, Michigan and Wisconsin to prevail in his challenge to the election results.  That will not happen.

Failing that, President Trump needs to prevail upon the Republican dominated legislatures in three of those states to appoint the state's electors.  That will not happen (and it would be lunacy to try).

Joe Biden will be the next President.

The GOP needs to hold the Georgia Senate seats.

OR

Trump should be disqualified for continuing to tweet inane, discredited conspiracy theories about the vote and counting.  It is a disgrace that a sitting President is doing this and embarrassing to watch his chief lawyer, the obviously addled Rudy Giuliani, try to explain*.  Trump just doesn't care and tosses out to his audience any piece of favorable junk that comes to his attention without the slightest regard for accuracy.

Biden should be disqualified for his complicity in the Democratic Party's decades long effort to undermine the integrity of our election processes.  Democrats have systematically pushed for lax voter registration laws, opposed a regular process for purging voter registration lists to eliminate the ineligible, including dead voters, and resisted voter ID, all routinely employed by every other Western democracy to protect the legitimacy of the electoral process, as well as relentlessly pushing for general mail-in balloting and ballot harvesting, both banned by those same democracies because of their potential to undermine the integrity of elections.

And all capped by Democrats challenging the legitimacy of any election they lose - remember the Florida fraud in 2000, the Diebold machines in Ohio in 2004?  How about the Russia collusion hoax in 2016 when the Clinton campaign colluded with Russian intelligence and used Putin's disinformation to leak to the media, and persuade the FBI and DOJ to obtain a warrant to spy on its opponents campaign and then, when their opponent lost, create a 4-year campaign to undermine the legitimacy of that election?  And then we have sacred Progressive icon, Stacey Abrams, the Georgia mediocrity, who still refuses to concede she lost the 2018 gubernatorial race based upon her loony theory of voter suppression.

Best solution is for all state legislatures to ignore the votes and select independent electors pledged to support THC for President!

Can I count on your support?

------------------------------------

*  Rudy Giuliani trying to explain the conspiracy:

Perhaps Rudy could become Robert Mueller's roomie in a nice, quiet, long-term care facility.

I Voted For . . .

. . . Donald Trump even though just a few days ago I wrote this about his handling of covid-19:

The President did what he often does.  The actual actions taken at his direction were often good or at least not bad, but they were accompanied by inconsistent statements, sloppy rhetoric, bad tone, goofy ramblings and stream of consciousness which is not what the public wants to hear at a time like this.  He sounded (and sounds) like a man not in control of himself. 

In 2019, in the midst of more turmoil I commented:

The latest kerfuffle over the Ukraine is also a self-generated disaster.  Getting Rudy Guiliani involved in anything at this point in his career shows poor judgment as does engaging in the phone call with the newly elected president of the Ukraine.

The actions referenced at the top, are of the same ilk.  He should never have suggested use of his resort for the G-7 meeting and it shows once again Trump's inability to separate his own personal interests from those of the office.

And the nature of his attack on Mattis is idiotic and typical Trumpian hyperbole.  It also reinforces the image (a correct one in my opinion) that he's a terrible guy to work for.  Irrational, prone to outbursts, not willing to read anything, and a guy who will turn on his subordinates rather than take any part of the blame for the things that go wrong.  He is not a stand up guy.

In a 2018 post on the President's Helsinki summit with Putin, I thought the meeting a bad idea, writing "I don't consider the president 'intellectually solvent and emotionally stable' "and, in its wake, commenting:

UPDATE:  Well, my worst fears were realized.  First, we had last night's disgraceful tweet blaming problems with Russian-American relations solely on the United States followed by Trump's awful performance at the press conference with Putin.  I'll end with this from the conservative blog Powerline:

Trump seems unable to handle that truth. All that matters to him is the absence of any suggestion that his 2016 victory was tainted. Thus, he puts his own ego ahead of the national interest in responding to a Russian assault on our democratic process. That’s disgusting.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  The President's course of action since the summit only compounds his problems.  His retraction of his controversial Helsinki statement, followed by his retraction of his retraction, followed by something I can't even figure out, along with his entertaining (however briefly) Putin's offer to trade interviews of US and Russians, and his seeming endorsement of Russia's second gas pipeline to Germany, after telling the Germans they were foolish to allow it, make him look foolish and inept.  I don't like the idea of the fall summit with Putin in DC, because when Trump is with Putin he acts like a star struck teenage girl. 

And during the 2016 campaign I referred to his "idiotic remarks" about a Federal judge in my post What Would Otter Do?

You can find more such comments in other posts including references to Trump's gullibility and susceptibility to conspiracy theories (my tricky way to get you to read more on my blog which also contains a lot of history, music, movies, baseball, and books).

If this election were a referendum on whether I like Donald Trump, my vote would be no.  But it's not.

So, how is it I'm voting for the guy?

Well, that's a long story and you may want to delve into my Your Future series for a more complete understanding than set forth below (which is already quite long enough!).

________________________________

During the first George W Bush administration, Karl Rove ran around with a slide deck describing his strategy for creating a Permanent Republican Majority.  I thought it silly not only because his strategy and tactics were wrong (as demonstrated by the failure of the Bush presidency) but, more importantly, because I believed American history taught us there is no such thing as a permanent majority for any party.  

I now think I may have been incorrect.

America and its institutions are deeply troubled.  The GOP collapsed due to ineptness, cowardice, corruption, incoherence, and finally, the betrayal of its base, all leading to Donald Trump.  The Democratic Party has moved Left so quickly my head is spinning, forsaking its traditions of freedom of speech and its commitment to due process and equal protection under the law, capped by the events since May, when Democratic mayors stepped aside to let their party's paramilitary wing destroy, burn, and loot at will in cities governed by Progressives for decades.  Both have proved inept in governance. Meanwhile, our non-governmental institutions have also been rotting away and lost public trust.  None of this will be cured by the outcome of this election, but my choice is based on what I think buys America the most time to see if it can come out of this tailspin and we can remain one people.

In the midst of these troubles, large segments of the Democratic Party have been working themselves into an hysterical frenzy in order to justify changing the rules under which we operate, not just politically, but as a society, in such a way as to ensure those who oppose them can never regain power.  You can better understand how fundamentally illiberal these doctrines are by reading my Your Future series and the twitter feeds and online presence of a host of traditional liberals/progressives who are raising the warnings about the Woke and current trends, not just in America, but across the Anglosphere.

These include Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein (Sanders supporters driven from Evergreen State College because of their belief in evolutionary biology and stand against racism), Bari Weiss (driven from the New York Times), Andrew Sullivan (driven from New York Magazine), Zaid Jilani, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Claire Lehman, Asra Nomani, Chloe Valdary, Inaya Folarin Iman, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose.

Though a number of them have backed away from taking the final step of voting for Trump (an issue I discuss in Do The Right Thing), James Lindsay, who has been shouting the longest and loudest about Critical Race Theory and the Woke, as well as a self-described progressive who supported and stumped for Obama and voted for Clinton, has endorsed Trump in view of how dangerous the situation has become.  You should read him on twitter and look at the materials at his website, New Discourses or indulge yourself in the entertaining explainers from the Woke Temple.

Put another way, however repellent Trump is, if you examine what he has actually done, nothing is irrevocable, nothing changes the basic rules under which we operate.  I haven't watched TV or cable news in many years or listened to talk radio, but I caught part of an interview with Tucker Carlson on CSPAN a year or so ago and what he said struck me as on point regarding Trump.  Tucker said Trump had done a service by raising many questions like; what is the purpose of NATO, is it still valid?, why do we have such a counterproductive trade policy with China?, why don't we have a sane immigration policy? and more, but that he was not the person to effectively make changes because of his inattention to detail, impulsiveness, unwillingness to learn the mechanics of government and inability to think deeply about solutions and strategy.

In contrast Democrats are moving quickly towards irrevocable change with growing hostility to free speech, and gaining control of so many institutions in our society from which they are rapidly purging dissenters, including liberals who aren't 100% on board with today's identity Progressives.

I've always been a process guy.  Keeping a society of 330 million people together, when we have so many different perspectives, viewpoints, and backgrounds is difficult.  It can only be done with respect and a large degree of tolerance for differences and with the understanding that if we follow neutral processes, we may lose a fight, but nothing is forever.  And yes, I realize no process is truly neutral but without the attempt to construct and adhere to them, however flawed, we are only left with raw power as the rule.  If those processes are destroyed or manipulated, only repression is left and, as we've seen this year, repression is already occurring and more is promised in a Democratic victory.

This was understood by those debating a new Constitution in 1787.  They had a problem to solve.  How to establish a more powerful federal government to replace that under the Articles of Confederation, yet not have it become too powerful.  The delegates knew their history.  They knew that all forms of government tended to degenerate over time.

Monarchy to absolutism.

Aristocracy to oligarchy.

Democracy to tyranny.

That is an observation that holds true even today while back then it prompted James Madison's famous observation in Federalist 51:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.  

How can government control itself?  And how can we avoid resolving disputes by killing each other in the streets?  That is what they, and we, seek to solve.

A Republic with strong democratic tendencies, an unprecedented historical combination on the scale of a populace of millions spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles, utilizing various checks and balances and separated powers was their solution.  Would we survive changes of power, without such a degree of existential terror created in the losers that civil unrest or war would result?  We passed that test in 1800 with the transfer of power between the Federalists and the Democrats, when John Adams quietly (and bitterly) got into his carriage and returned to Braintree.  We failed with the Civil War because slavery raised fundamental issues, beyond just those of the enslaved, that could not be resolved, creating irreconcilable differences with the Democratic Party, leading to its split and the election of Lincoln.  And speaking of the Civil War it is shocking to see Progressives adopt the arguments of secessionist and slaveholder John C Calhoun, with whom they agree on the interpretation of American history as well as their similar approach on dissent to the South' slave holding aristocrats, who saw any American institution that did not endorse slavery as a threat to them.

For the past 150 years we have managed to keep ourselves intact despite differences and build a successful, thriving country, a country of amazing diversity with a mix of races, ethnicity and religions amid a degree of personal freedom unlike anything seen before in history, though some today would like to pretend modern America is a hellhole of oppression and brutality.  Or, as Andrew Sullivan has observed:

And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial democracy is now described as a mere front for “white supremacy"

The rhetorical trap of critical theory is that it has coopted the cause of inclusion and forced liberals onto the defensive.

Or, as James Lindsay, has said:

"[Critical Race Theory] is evil.  It plays on people’s best nature; it takes good people and twists them to its purpose." 

While the emergence of those with the "hellhole" position - Woke and the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party (Antifa, BLM etc) this year, with Democratic politicians either actively supporting them or standing silently by, should make the stakes clear to all of us, this has been brewing for a decade as significant parts of the Democratic electorate have rationalized limits on free speech and religious conscience they don't agree with by simply classifying it as "hate speech".  I was a liberal Democrat, back when we believed in freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, due process and equality under the law.  I still believe in those principles which is why I am no longer a Democrat.  And it is discouraging to see that for many organizations and individuals those principles were merely tactics.

Today's identity Progressives/Woke bring the same analysis to American society as White Nationalists.  Both believe everything can be explained solely in terms of race.  Their only difference is who they think should be on top in the society.

And so much of what is going on is projection.

We hear that Trump is authoritarian, encourages violence, and a threat to our democracy.

But over the past few days we've heard of city governments and storeowners getting prepared for violence in the wake of the election?  Is it Trump supporters they fear?  No, it's the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party.

And who is it that threatens others so they fear that anything they might say, or even if they follow on twitter the wrong person, might cause them the loss of their career, their job, their educational opportunities?  Again, it is the Left that is shutting people down because they merely disagree with them.

This isn't new:

For four years we heard about Russian collusion and Donald Trump and it is still treated as a fact by many.  Yet, we now know that not only was it a gigantic hoax, but that it was the Clinton campaign that was colluding with the Kremlin.  It is the Democratic Party and its media allies that have served as Putin's Poodles for four years, helping him fulfill his goal of creating chaos in America.

We heard in 2016 and again this year, that Trump would not accept the results of a democratic election process.  Yet it proved to be the Democrats in 2016 who would not do so, ginning up the Russia collusion hoax and, to an extent never seen in American politics, blocking routine nominations of Trump appointees in an effort to impede his efforts to govern.  And should Trump, to my surprise, win again, the Democrats will react even more poorly.  It is the Democratic Party that today is a threat to democracy.

In 2016 we kept hearing about how Trump would disrupt campaigns, yet it was Democrats who attempted to stop Trump rallies from occurring, not vice versa.  It was Democrats who beat up Trump supporters leaving his rallies, even as Democratic mayors directed local police to stand aside while those attacks occurred.

We were told immediately after the 2016 election that there would be a wave of hate unleashed by Trump supporters, but what we saw was a wave of fake hate crimes by Democrats.

We were told that after the inauguration, Trump's brown shirts would be roaming the streets violently attacking opponents.  Instead what we had were progressive college students attacking speakers they didn't like.  We had Bernie Brothers attempting mass murder of Republicans at a baseball practice and attacking Rand Paul, sending him to the hospital and requiring removal of part of a lung.  We've had GOP Congressional candidates driven off the road by Progressives and another candidate victim of an attempted stabbing.

Did you hear about what happened in December 2016?  A guy in Alabama saw a woman delivery driver for FedEx.  He thought she was Hillary Clinton so he walked up and shot her in the back of the head.  You didn't?  That's because it never happened.  What did happen in December 2016 was a guy in Ithaca, NY shot a FedEx driver in the back of the head because he thought he was Donald Trump.  The story was buried (I only came across it by accident).  Let's be honest - we all know that if this had happened the way I first told it, we'd have seen months of coverage focused on how Trump's rhetoric inspired violence and the need for more gun control.  Instead, nothing.

One of Donald Trump's many flaws has contributed to this and played into the hands of his enemies.  He does, at time, sound like an authoritarian or maybe it's best described as a wannabe authoritarian.  For instance, during Covid he made ridiculous statements about actions he might take in response - actions that would have been outside his constitutional authority.  He then backed off precisely because he does not have the authority.  There has been a massive disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions (and that's on him, and one of the reasons for my dislike), while the media and Democratic Party attempt to cover up the massive evidence that the real authoritarian risk is on the Left

Do I think the majority of Democratic voters embrace the Woke and its authoritarian ethos?  No, and the polling data backs that up with support for the Woke strongest among wealthier, higher educated Whites (notice that in 2020, as in 2016, the political contributions of Wall Street, the hedge funds, and tech oligarchs are running more than 20 to 1 in support of Democrats) but off in other White demographics, Blacks and Hispanics.  But history teaches us, we do not need a majority to carry the day.  A well-funded, highly motivated and politically savvy minority often carries the day as it currently is with today's Democrats.

Do I think Joe Biden understands what he is saying when claiming America is systemically racist?  No, he thinks he's making a general statement against racism.  But the people around him do, as do the thousands of political appointees who will fill his administration.  While I persist in believing there are still Democrats in Congress who are wary of the Woke and oppose suppression of speech, feeling that after the election "those people" can be managed I think they underestimate the whirlwind they have unleashed and their ability to control and channel it.

I mentioned that what we have seen break into the open this year - rioting and looting in major cities, conducted with the approval of Democratic mayors in cities governed by Progressives for decades (and why are these cities such hellholes of racism?), while other Democratic politicians stayed silent; the purging of people, including many traditional liberals, for merely failing to agree to every part of the Woke party line, again while mainline Democrats remain silent, didn't start in 2020.

The doctrines of Critical Race Theory have been gestating in the academy for a long time.  As they reached maturity, they began to infiltrate K-12 education, and the growth of social media provided a further breeding ground, until it finally erupted like the creature in Alien, bursting out of John Hurt's chest, ravenous, insatiable and destroying everything in its wake.

Years ago, reading about CRT and other loony fads of academic theology, my reaction was that no one could really take it seriously and once students got out in the real world their views would change.  I was wrong.  CRT justifies suppression of any viewpoint and any person that does not accept it completely.  It is not about having dialogue.  You are either in or out.  It corrupts everything it comes in contact with.

For all the talk in the media and by Progressives about power and privilege they are just blowing smoke; they are telling you things that just ain't so (I explain how they do the trick in A Closed Ecosystem).

Colin Kapernick can hate America, celebrate the murdering, homophobic thugs Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, score multi-million dollar deals with Nike and Disney and have Netflix make a series based on his life (while never having to be hit by 300 pound linemen again), while a nurse at an academic hospital in Massachusetts gets fired for writing that all patients matter at her hospital.  You tell me who has the power and privilege.

You tell me who has the power and privilege when so many of our institutions seem to have fallen under the sway of the Woke; academia, publishing, news media, social media, high tech, foundations, government bureaucracies, K-12 education, with most other institutions either on board or too intimidated to fight back.

It is the potential of this institutional capture combined with the likely capture of the entire Federal government that poses such a danger.  We spoke earlier about authoritarianism.  The better terms for the Woke, CRT, and its supporters in the Democratic Party are totalitarian and fascist (I use here the definition of fascism used by Benito Mussolini, "Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state").  It is totalitarian because it makes no distinction between the public and the private; better action, speech, and thoughts.  

During my working career I hired, promoted, mentored a lot of people (and occasionally let others go).  It never occurred to me that their political views should have anything to do with any of those decisions.  I hired people of different races, genders, ethnicity, religions and, again, it never occurred to me that those factors should have anything to do with my decisions.  That no longer seems to be the case in many places and, if so, I simply do not see how we can sustain ourselves as one people, except through suppression and force.

When I was in college in the late 60s and early 70s, the expression "the personal is political" became popular with radicals before it faded away.  I thought it terrible then and to now see it rise from the grave decades later with far more backing than it had is to see the worst of our past resurrected.

Voting for Donald Trump and GOP candidates will not guarantee we can avoid the worst over the long-term but it, at least prevents three institutions, the Presidency and Executive Branch, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, from falling to the radicals who want to change the very rules of our society.  Whether Trump and the GOP can make good use of that time I cannot say.

The downsides are that if Trump wins, which I do not expect, we will face near-insurrection by his opponents and continued obstruction by Democrats in Congress.  In that respect it will be worse than what we saw in his first term.

We also have Trump himself.  Four more years of his rhetoric and his exhausting 24/7 reality show.

The other risk is that, somewhat to my surprise, he has not made any catastrophic policy moves so far, particularly in foreign policy.  With Trump however, past performance is no guarantee of what the future hold

And if Biden wins and the Democrats control the Senate? I know some Progressives who are very anti-Woke are supporting Biden on the theory that he and the other grandees of the party can keep the crazies in check.  I hope they are correct, but I doubt it.  This is not the Joe Biden of twenty years ago; he's merely a figurehead.  The Executive Branch will go fully Woke, and Trump's outstanding Executive Order blocking training that promotes racial stereotyping and scapegoating will be repealed.  There may be enough Democratic senators willing to block court-packing but beyond that I expect not much favorable in turning around the trend within the party towards radicalism and intolerance.  Moreover, a Democrat vicotry will encourage the social media and other high tech companies to do what they've been itching to do, but constrained so far by the possibility of the GOP still controlling parts of the government, and that is much broader censorship of non-Progressive views on its platform.  You will also see far more sweeping purges of heretics in academia and the corporate world.

What I am confident of is this.  If Trump loses, a lot of people who voted against him because they just can't stand the guy, but who really did not understand what today's Democratic Party is like, are really going to regret it.

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There is a positive policy case to be made for Trump.  The President continually complicates his situation and repels people he could potentially persuade because of the frequent disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions.  He sounds authoritarian at times and I don't think he has any particular reverence or knowledge of the Constitution, separation of powers, or how the regulatory or legal process works which makes it easy for his opponents to caricature him though his actions have been consistently within those constraints (the opposite being true of Progressives).

Foreign Policy

No new foreign entanglements or wars!

The Middle East.  The "experts" have been consistently wrong and Trump right.  We were told moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem (as long required under U.S. law, but long ignored by prior Presidents) would spark riots in the street and end the peace process.  It did not.  We were told Arab nations would never normalize relations with Israel without a peace agreement with the Palestinians.  They were wrong.

We were told Trump's peace efforts would be fruitless and naming Jared Kushner as his envoy was idiotic (and I joined them in that opinion!).  They (and I) were wrong.  Bahrain and the UAE have normalized relations with Israel (which would never have occurred without an approving nod from Saudi Arabia), more recently joined by Sudan, with more Arab nations to come.

We were told that ordering the killing Solemaini would spark a wider war with Iran.  They were wrong.  It is that action, more than any other that played to Trump's instincts for short, sharp, and powerful responses rather than engage in the tit-for-tat preferred by our foreign policy elite, a policy that tends to prolong conflict and leave the initiative with our enemies.

A more confrontational China policy and strengthening relations with India.

Ironically, despite Trump's rhetoric, a tougher policy on Russia.

Raising legitimate questions about the purpose of NATO and who should bare the financial burden. 

Successfully renegotiating NAFTA.

Domestic Policy

Appointment of judges who reject the doctrine of Living Constitutionalism which would reduce the Courts to just another legislative branch enacting its policy preferences (with a tip of the hat to "Cocaine" Mitch McConnell for his work).  I explain the importance of this in A Misunderstanding or Projection?

The recent actions to ban training using racial stereotypes and scapegoating in the Federal bureaucracy, and by Federal contractors and grantees, while continuing to allow diversity training (you can read more on the details in my post Righteous Acts).

Tax reform, including eliminating local and state tax deductions which disproportionately benefit the wealthy (and which Democrats, despite their rhetoric, are trying desperately to repeal by holding up Covid relief as a bargaining chip).

Until Covid, a booming economy with record low unemployment rates for Black and Hispanics.  A couple of years ago, I decided to start following the official White House twitter feed as well as Trump's personal feed.  I've had to take breaks a few times when Trump goes on one of his insane twitter binges and I can't take it anymore, but what surprised me is the amount of positive White House activity that most media refuses to cover, including how much of it is around Black Americans and how large a presence they have at White House events, a reality very much counter to the Progressive media narrative.

Incremental progress on healthcare in terms of availability and cost.

The biggest failure is that Trump simply does not care about the long-term fiscal stability of the United States and our budget and spending problems have accelerated.  Unfortunately, the reality is the Democrats don't care, and even most of the Republicans who claimed to care really didn't and sighed with relief when it was not important to Trump so they don't even have to pretend anymore.

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One final consideration.  I've written extensively on the Russian collusion hoax, explaining how, when the allegations were first raised, I thought there might be something to them because of Trump's reckless and stupid statements about Putin and Russia during the 2016 campaign.  Over the past four years I've read 10,000 pages of reports, transcripts, court proceedings, warrant applications, text messages etc to determine for myself what was going on - I do not rely on anything from Left wing outfits like the New York Times or WaPo or from Right outlets like Breitbart and Gateway Pundit.  My views changed.

The reality is stunning.  This is the greatest political scandal of my lifetime and possibly in American history.  Think about how Watergate would have played out if the Times and Post had been on Nixon's side and that is what you have here.  You can read my entire Russia Collusion series or this summing up (Election Tampering) from April to understand my conclusions.  And since April much new information has come to light so the situation is even worse than I thought, which I scarcely thought possible.  

It was the Clinton campaign that colluded with the Russians and worked to insert this disinformation into the media and the FBI during the campaign and then, to undermine the new Trump administration and explain away its embarrassing defeat, further propagated this nonsense with the cooperation of elements in the Justice Department and intelligence community hostile to Trump and with the full assistance of much of the media.

If Trump loses and the ongoing investigations are curtailed by the Biden administration, which I fully expect, the full story will not be revealed and miscreants will go unpunished.  The lesson for Americans will be you can act with impunity if you are on the side of the Democrats.  A lesson we will remember.