A Republic, If You Can Keep It

posted by Brian Parsons at American Thinker

I‘ve been at this punditry thing for some time.  I sit in my humble home office, and I read, and then I read some more.  I keep a curated list of about fifty or so conservative news sites, and they aggregate the latest headlines into a single app in my browser.  I choose not to read the corporate or leftist press because it has become aptly titled #fakenews.  It is nothing more than disseminated propaganda, and unfortunately, at least half the conservative press is as well.  The day after the 2022 midterm elections, it is astonishing how Conservative, Inc. all sang the same preferred narrative straight out of Disney’s “The Mandalorian” regarding Ron DeSantis… “This is the way.”

I have covered it elsewhere, but there is a lot to like about Ron DeSantis, save for where he gets his money and his refusal to extend a hand to the man who helped make him. In December 2018, Ron DeSantis and his wife made a video touting their MAGA street cred, which bordered on sycophancy.  It looks a lot like the ridiculous campaign videos of Georgia governor Brian Kemp, who happily rode in on the coattails of Donald Trump and Make America Great Again while playing footsy under the table with corporate America. Both of these men enjoyed comfortable re-election bids, and all that was demanded of them was to shift their allegiance to the corporate donor class.

I fully believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and that America was robbed of a second term of putting America first.  It’s easily understood how it happened; they injected upward of one hundred million ballots, forty-four million unsolicited, into the ether under the auspices of COVID and then stuffed the ballot box in select swing markets to put Joe Biden in office.  They took four hundred million dollars from Mark Zuckerberg to fund it.  It wasn’t all that different from the current FTX debacle, where politicians laundered money through an offshore cryptocurrency exchange and back to themselves into domestic political PACs for the 2022 midterms. We really need to get the corporate money out of politics.

Lower taxes, trade policies favorable to the American labor class, and a commitment to withdrawing her sons and daughters from foreign conflict are intolerable to the corporate class.  One Trump mega-donor Ken Griffin has openly stated his interest in moving beyond Donald Trump to reconnect the Republican Party with the corporate donor class that funded Trump’s ouster. This is a power move by the donor class.  They flexed their dollars to show the plebs who really runs this show.

To describe the administration of Donald Trump as tumultuous would be an understatement.  We were all pummeled into pools of bloody submission by unending contrived scandals and an apoplectic press cycle. These were not Donald Trump’s creation, though he has borne the brunt of the blame. These scandals were the creation of a permanent, unelected, and unaccountable Washington regime that cannot tolerate challenges to its bought authority.  As we have discovered over the last six or more years, the Deep State is very real.

Since their inception, clandestine organizations like the Central Intelligence Agency have been perfecting the art of color revolutions and regime changes abroad.  During the administration of Donald Trump, they turned their tradecraft inward, and the people of the United States have been subject to unending crises, so that they might blame the state of the world on mean tweets.  Mean tweets didn’t bake up a global pandemic in Wuhan, China.  Mean tweets didn’t organize violent leftists to burn down America utilizing Marxist race riots with impunity.  Mean tweets didn’t wiretap the campaign and administration of the President of the United States and then fabricate a Russian collusion narrative to depose the duly elected POTUS.

After being pummeled into submission, a good bloc of the American public feels weary and ready to accept the terms of their torturers.  It’s easier to swallow if they are made to believe it was their idea, and they arrived at their conclusions by reason and not abuse.  If we can harness the performance without the man, it is a win-win, right?  Make no mistake, it is not the man but the performance they cannot tolerate.  We’re on a globalist path, and resistance to its implementation will not be tolerated. To date, Donald Trump is the only elected official to oppose it.  This is the crux of our dilemma.

In a recent DailyWire short between conservative pundits Allie Beth Stuckey and Michael Knowles, Knowles is asked if Donald Trump will become the Republican Party presidential nominee in 2024.  Knowles responds with his adoration of Trump but his resignation that the Deep State will never permit Donald Trump to hold office again.  This raises the question posed to Ben Franklin at the Constitutional Convention of 1787: do we still have a republic?

X22, On the Fringe, and more- Nov 30

 

Starting to have an easier time getting to sleep now. Which is very nice. Here's tonight's news:

Should it be Trump or DeSantis in 2024?

posted by Edward Mike at American Thinker 

Should it be Trump or DeSantis in 2024?  The answer lies in these four words: Form Always Follows Function.  For example, if you’re shopping for a new vehicle, you must consider where the vehicle will typically be driven and for what purpose.  If you would buy a new rifle, you must consider what you plan to shoot with it.  The form must be matched to serve the function.

A classy Corvette wouldn’t be a good choice in the northern mountains.  Given the likelihood of blizzards and rocky back roads, a four-wheel-drive pickup will suit you better. Sure, they aren’t as classy looking and don’t get good mileage, but they are many times over more likely to get you where you need to go.

In a story about elephant hunting, the hunter reported that the tracks he followed were two feet wide.  Think of a large tree, two feet in diameter, thumping down every elephant step! That trusty deer rifle wouldn’t do if you’re planning to hunt elephants.  Elephant-hunting merits the biggest caliber you can find.  Sure, that ammunition is very expensive, and your shoulder will remember the kick.  But an elephant at 30 feet dictates a powerful gun.  Form always follows function.

Apply those two examples to managing a functional society.  What do we mean by a functioning society?  Instinctively, we know what that implies for us.  It works smoothly and allows every individual citizen to pursue his happiness.  These values are expressed in our Declaration of Independence (the sacredness of individual lives and the liberty that allows everyone to fulfill their potential), and the Bill of Rights in the Constitution (matching the laws of nature and of nature’s creator).  A functional society rests on the individual family unit, which is the cornerstone and model of society.  Individuals contribute responsibly what they are able.  We have the “feel” for a functional society because it works.

“America” today is bifurcated and seemingly, evenly divided.  There are the historical Americans we call patriots, who are convinced that America had it right in theory all along.  There are the “woke” progressive citizens, who sign on to the belief that America has it all wrong and needs to be trashed.  Their ideas of “function” don’t meet our definition and thus their form is contradictory.  

When Donald Trump and the patriots say they want to make America great again, they are envisaging the historical America, affirming the unalienable natural rights of the citizens.  When the progressives sign on to their own definition of function, they envisage creating a reset, called the Great Reset, with docile citizens as a collective, without individual rights but marching, lockstep, to the totalitarian agenda.  Contradictory functions are served by antagonistic game plans.  

Suppose we compromise and buy a front-wheel-drive sedan instead of that cumbersome pickup?  Suppose we take our trusty deer rifle elephant hunting after all?  It might work, but it's not the best choice.  If we subscribe to making the former America great again, we are facing far greater threats than blizzards: the antagonistic agenda of the woke progressives.  We have a more hazardous route, by far, than rocky roads to get where we need to go.  And the Swamp that they promote has proven to be far more intimidating that a bull elephant at 30 feet.  So, we need to engage the very best program in existence to confront this daunting Swamp and support our function.  And we don’t have “all day” to figure it all out and get where we need to go -- alive.  

Let’s say the apartment building is on fire.  Well, Sally just lay down for her afternoon nap and Alice is right in the middle of finding out who wins the most money on “The Price is Right.”  George and Bill are in the middle of their chess game.  But none of that is important now.  The apartment building is on fire!  Deal with it now, before the flames start licking at the door frame and you decide that well, maybe, this fire thing is serious after all!

What I’m getting at is which form or game plan -- which vehicle or rifle, if you will -- do we need at this juncture?  Our societal apartment is burning down.  Do we pick the front-wheel-drive sedan or the deer rifle?  Or do we go all-out?  I say we go all-out -- now.

This Great Reset of human society is a far greater obstacle to keep us from getting where we need to go than blizzards and rocky mountain roads.  Our lives are on the line.  So, for my money -- and my life -- I go with Donald Trump.  I don’t think Donald Trump in 2024 can be the Donald Trump in 2016-2020.  That was the “Last Hurrah,” and that “Championship Season” is in the record books.  But Donald is still healthy, talented, and devoted.  Trump still galvanizes the patriots.  He is still the icon for taking on that Swamp, which is expanding by the day and threatens to flood the world instead of global warming.

While he has many critics, I’m on the same page with The Donald.  He speaks the language of blue-collar construction workers, who build America, because their cause is his cause.  But it is also the cause of grandma and the ladies of the guild.  We’re all in the same apartment building.  He isn’t always right -- maybe, in this blizzard, he gets off-road sometimes.  But he’s the one driving on rocky roads, in the blizzard, to get us where we need to go.

I think Ron DeSantis is great.  Considering Trump’s successor, I can’t come up with a better man.  And, to belabor our analogy, in four more years Trump may have smoothed out those roads enough so that a front-wheel-drive sedan will do.  For now, we need all Trump’s four-wheel-drive muscle.

It was Florida that got the national ball rolling on self-defense and the “Castle Doctrine” -- the right to use whatever force is necessary to protect our “castle,” our home.  DeSantis is doing a great job defending the Floridians’ castle.  He has proven that he is “a deadeye with his deer rifle.”  In the next few years, he may gain the skill and the courage to also take aim at large targets: national/international challenges; the Great Reset/the Swamp.  But Trump has already proven that he has the knowledge, the will, and the courage to confront them all, “at 30 feet.”

Form makes or breaks function -- our functional society. We can’t remain asleep at the switch, hide behind entertainment, or play chess.  This is the real world, folks.  The apartment where we all live is burning down.  We need the form that matches our functional society now.

Western Liberalism Is Doomed Without A Shared Understanding Of Reality

Without a shared understanding of fundamental principles, what can we expect besides hostility and resentment?

posted by Josh Herring at The Federalist

In times of political turmoil, images of political unity provide hope for a troubled republic. One such image appeared in Dearborn, Michigan.

As Joy Pullmann reported, conservative Muslims and Christians found common ground in demanding that Dearborn public schools remove pornography from their libraries. While these two groups shared different “general beliefs or convictions,” they found unity in their understanding of what children are and the need to shield their children from accessible porn in school libraries. The “metaphysical dream” of their opposition, which wanted to preserve descriptions of divergent human sexualities to inspire children to adopt such lifestyles, is directly contradictory to that of these religious constituencies.

There can be no common ground or compromise between these two metaphysical dreams, only ideological warfare. Such ideological divides are becoming more common, indicating a crucial question about American political life: Can classical liberalism operate in a post-Christian America? 

Classical liberalism has produced immense civilizational wealth. It’s led to the lowering of trade barriers, which encourages the free exchange of goods, ideas, and people across national borders, and the affirming of human rights through documents like the Declaration of Independence and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s led to unprecedented levels of international collaboration through organizations like the UN, European Union, and the International Monetary Fund, each of which has profoundly affected the world. This way of collaborating in a common political and economic sphere is called classical liberalism.

Classical liberalism tends to produce substantial wealth but cannot explain what societal wealth and individual human flourishing are for. If we no longer have an answer to that kind of grand, civilizational, and teleological question, how long can the liberal order endure? Christianity once framed classical liberalism and provided both a telos (purpose) and a set of moral principles governing the practice of liberalism; Christianity’s decline reveals that classical liberalism cannot provide a moral framework for itself. 

The benefits of classical liberal government are clear. On a global scale, poverty has declined, wealth has grown, technology has advanced, and education is more accessible. At the same time, America has never been more divided on issues of fundamental importance, which weigh more heavily than material prosperity. Questions of abortion, transgender ideology, inflation, and election integrity divide the country. The political turmoil these questions provoke reveals the depths of our disagreement. 

Politicians and pundits use the term “polarization” to describe this reality, often paired with complaints about extremist rhetoric. Typically, this term connotes people operating at the fringe, suggesting they need to moderate themselves. Such a connotation fails to account for the real philosophical difference such polarized discourse reveals. Rather than reflecting attempts to ratchet up the rhetoric for a candidate’s electoral victory, this polarization indicates something deeper about classical liberalism: wealth alone is not enough to sustain a nation, and that reality pushes our consideration to something deeper. For liberalism to survive into the future, it needs a widely accepted moral framework. The tensions of our political moment grow out of the collapse of the prior framework.

Classical liberalism was born into a broadly Christian Europe and America. While the Founding Fathers represented many denominations (and some were deists, like Franklin and Jefferson), they accepted the basic premises of Christian anthropology and politics.

These include the following: Humans are inherently wicked and prefer vice to virtue in the absence of restraints or clear incentives; government is a gift from God to restrain evil in the world and encourage good; and whether he realizes it or not, the ruler wields the sword as an active agent of God.

Madison suggested that the lofty goal of a self-governing people would only last so long as men were moral; if Christianity declined, the number of laws and enforcement of laws would rise.

The founders and framers built a government that presumed private (Christian) morality acting as an internal restraint reducing the need for external government restraints. They did not foresee a day when Christianity would be depicted as the source of societal oppression. The last century and a half has seen the widespread decline of biblical Christianity along with the inability of any other moral system to take its place. We are left unable to define what human beings are, what duties we owe to each other, and how to live together in a community. Identity politics has not proved to be as stable and truthful a source of meaning as the Christianity it is replacing in our society.

Where earlier politicians could agree on political actions and compromise because of their agreement on ultimate things, our current political class, to speak very broadly, lacks any consensus on the nature of man and of justice, as demonstrated by Supreme Court Justice Jackson being unwilling to answer the question, “What is a woman?” 

Al Mohler presents Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom as representatives of the divide that could face voters in the 2024 presidential election. DeSantis wields his executive power to affirm parental rights, check Disney’s attempts to spread propaganda, and restrict government overreach via Covid policy. Newsom is an agent of propaganda; he affirms the fullness of the LGBT agenda, signed legislation to fix prices on California’s fast food industry, and fails to uphold the rule of law. Neither of these men can see the other as seeking the good of America because they lack any agreement on the nature of that good. 

In his 1948 piece “Ideas Have Consequences,” Richard Weaver argues that “Every man participating in a culture has three levels of conscious reflection: his specific ideas about things, his general beliefs or convictions, and his metaphysical dream of the world.” On a practical level, community members can disagree on specific ideas and general beliefs only if there is agreement on the level of the metaphysical dream.

This dream Weaver calls an “intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality, and this is the sanction to which both ideas and beliefs are ultimately referred for verification. Without overlapping metaphysical dreams, it is impossible to think of men living together harmoniously over an extent of time. The dream carries with it an evaluation, which is the bond of spiritual community.” 

We live in the aftermath of the American metaphysical dream’s collapse, and without such a dream, political claims cannot be debated.

What does a way forward look like? It begins not with political rhetoric but with foundational agreement on the most important questions. We need to have a widespread and shared understanding of essential concepts like what it means to be a human person, what the purpose of human life is, what ends man ought to strive for, and the duties that we owe each other. 

For the American political experiment to continue, we need a return to first principles grounded in an agreement on the nature of God, man, and government. In the absence of agreement on these doctrines, we will continue to see polarization spread and democratic dialogue die.

Federal Public Defender Sounds Alarm Over 'Unconstitutionally Overbroad' Warrants Against Jan. 6 Defendants

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

One of the most troubling things about the Biden regime has been the unequal application of the law we have seen. What has always made the U.S. special in the history of the world was not only its freedom but its rule of law. That’s why people came to us from troubled places all over the world, fleeing banana republics. Yet the Biden team seems to be intent on turning us into the banana republics that people have fled from.

We’ve seen the stark difference in the way that the Jan. 6 defendants have been treated versus the BLM or other leftist rioters. We’ve seen all kinds of tactics brought to bear when it comes to anything related to Jan. 6, whereas in a similar riot against the inauguration of President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017; most of those arrested had their charges dismissed.

One of the tactics raising concerns is the “geofence warrant” that I’ve previously written about.

There’s more from defense attorney Tara Fish, who takes it apart in her motion to suppress on behalf of defendant David Rhine. Fish argues first that the search was massively overbroad, first going through “millions of private accounts” to determine if any fit within the data of being in or near the Capitol. “The warrant was therefore unconstitutionally overbroad, a modern-day general warrant.” That’s a big problem because warrants have to be narrow and specific.

The warrant application didn’t set forth evidence that everyone present “at or near the Capitol Building was guilty of a crime.” Because it didn’t specify based on the person or the evidence of a crime, it guaranteed that it would sweep up people whose “crime” may only have been standing in the vicinity.

They “equated presence at the Capitol with criminal activity.”

That should concern everyone, on all sides of the political aisle. Journalist Michael Tracey snarked that because the “Jan 6 investigation is the most important in the history of human civilization or something, and Democracy™ as we know it hangs in the balance,” the powers that be think these precedent-setting violations of the Constitution should just be ignored. He also noted the evil people being pursued through these intense tactics include suspects like this couple, whose alleged crime appears to have been they went into the building and took a selfie.

Now, if they had been leftists just trespassing during a BLM riot, they probably wouldn’t even have been charged–much less hunted down with such tactics.

But it’s very easy to see how such a warrant can be abused to serve a government that wants to cut off protesters or dissent.

Hysteria Over ‘Hate Speech’ Is Killing Civil Society

America is—or at least used to be—a free country, 

not a cult or a political party.

by Matthew Boose for American Greatness

An obsession with policing the elusive evil of “hate speech” has made America a very tense and unpleasant place, where one wrong move can destroy reputations and livelihoods. As a result, many today censor their political beliefs out of fear. Even celebrities, billionaires, and former presidents live under the all-seeing eye, as recent events surrounding Kanye West and Donald Trump demonstrate. 

Consider some of the biggest news stories of the past month and a half: West caused a media firestorm and lost hundreds of millions in net worth overnight for saying he would go “death con 3” on Jews. NBA star Kyrie Irving was given a lengthy list of homework assignments after he tweeted an anti-Semitic video. The comedian Dave Chappelle was scolded for winkingly defending West and joking about Jews in show business on “Saturday Night Live.” And, of course, the melodrama found its way to Mar-a-Lago, when West had dinner with Trump and, apparently unbeknownst to the former president, the right-wing shock jock Nick Fuentes.

This encounter is supposed to have disqualified Trump, according to numerous mainstream conservative voices who have been on West’s case for weeks, often the same people who complain about cancel culture. “A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know,” said Ben Shapiro, doing his best imitation of an aggrieved lefty.

The hate speech police are never able to articulate the abstract harms caused by these outrages. The real harm is in the inevitably extreme reaction, which leaves society more on edge than a moment ago. Does it matter that Trump had dinner with someone we are supposed to find objectionable? Should we weigh very much the effusions of West, an obviously mentally unbalanced person who subscribes to an absurd ideology, which teaches that blacks are descended from the Israelites of the Torah? 

As meritocracy crumbles around us under the rule of “diversity,” an absurd and fruitless fixation with hate speech has put civilization in a convulsive death spiral. There is hardly anything progressive about this endless shrieking recrimination, which requires us all to look over our shoulders and endorse lies, if not by our words, then by our silence. Conservatives, especially, ought to know better than to join the frenzy. It should be obvious that Trump can have dinner with whomever he damn well pleases because freedom of association is a core liberty. (The COVID lockdowns proved this much: tyrants fear nothing more than free people in conversation.) 

We have, to put it mildly, lost touch with our more tolerant, manly founders, who had much thicker skins and much more wisdom. 

When this country was founded, the only recognized form of “hate speech” was against God, which was called blasphemy. Today, nothing is considered more trivial: far from it, the state requires acquiescence in depravity, including the woke elites’ blatant sexualization of children, while using the word “hate” as a cudgel against those in protest. 

Without free speech, citizens are subjects without any protection against the abuses of a corrupt, tyrannical establishment like ours. The founders knew that the dogmas and superstitions of an establishment require no protection, which is why free speech is called free speech and not “approved speech.”  ” It’s also why the Left’s favorite sophism about speech, “hate speech isn’t free speech,” sometimes formulated as “free speech does not mean freedom from consequences,” is false. Those who echo the pieties of the woke face no danger of being persecuted: it is those who offend the state and its ideology, some say religion, of “diversity,” who must worry about retaliation.

Ironically, self-described “civil society” groups like the Anti-Defamation League have played a leading role in undermining civil society by wielding “hate speech” over the country like a sword. The goal of these groups is plainly not the preservation of civil society, but its elimination and replacement by a police state. The woke police have destroyed much goodwill by simultaneously endorsing the ritual humiliation of white people, a phenomenon that suggests the refrain of “hate speech” is merely a tool of power to be wielded by some groups against others. 

The founders understood that compelled belief is not true belief: you can only compel a person’s beliefs by taking away freedom. This means that Kanye West and Nick Fuentes are entitled to whatever beliefs they happen to hold, no matter how irrational or odious anyone may find them. When they require correction, it should be by the reproof of reason, not coercion. By the same light, no one should be required to stand in line and condemn any person or “-ism,” because America is, or at least used to be, a free country, not a cult or a political party.

New Disney CEO Folds to Ron DeSantis Like a Wash-and-Wear Suit

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Big changes are coming to Disney, and though I would have never suspected it given past history, it looks like Bob Iger is looking to turn away from overt political activism.

Iger returned to the role of CEO in the last few weeks, having started Disney’s woke revolution many years ago. Yet, the company’s disastrous battle with Florida’s Ron DeSantis has him ready to change course. According to Iger, he regrets the clash with the rock-star Republican governor and will look to move Disney toward a more neutral position in the culture wars.

Better late than never, I suppose, and to be sure, there’s still a bit of “I’ll believe when I see it” in play here. Objectively, though, it’s a good thing to see Disney bend the knee. Don’t be fooled by Iger’s somewhat couched language. This is a major walk back of Disney’s prior policy on political activism. It’s also an incredibly smart business move given how unpopular the forcing of far-left orthodoxy on children is among the general population of parents.

With that said, Iger has a battle in front of him. It’s easy for him to say this stuff, but Disney is infested with leftwing lunatics who believe it is their job to shove a “not-so-secret gay agenda” down the throats of audiences. Those people are not going to go quietly, and there’s going to be a lot of entertainment value in watching the chaos.

On the other hand, Iger would not have been brought back in if the plan wasn’t to give him free rein to purge the troublemakers. We’ll soon find out how much of a stomach he has to do what needs to be done, but the shakeup at CEO was clearly driven by financial concerns, and those tend to trump woke virtue signaling when push comes to shove.

Returning to DeSantis, this is what extreme competence in governance gets you. When he decided to take on Disney, so many on the right told him he was making a mistake. Some even mocked him, proclaiming that he’d never beat such a popular entity in the State of Florida. Well, who’s laughing now? Because Disney’s new CEO just got up on a stage and folded like a wash-and-wear suit.

Imagine what a person with DeSantis’ abilities could accomplish in the White House. There is no one else as well-equipped to take on the entrenched bureaucratic state, and he has the skins on the wall to prove it. He’s willing to take on the tough battles, but there’s more to owning the libs than just shouting. DeSantis is always a step ahead, and that’s a quality that’s rare in Republican circles these days.

For The Left, ‘Antisemitism’ Is Little More Than A Partisan Talking Point

Anti-Jewish sentiment is far from a one-party problem.

posted by David Harsanyi at The Federalist

Jews are thriving in America, and even with the violent resurgence of antisemitism in the Trump era, I’ve rarely felt personally threatened, perhaps a function of my privilege,” writes New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg in a piece headlined “Antisemitism’s March Into the Mainstream.”

It must be privilege, then, that explains how a New Yorker could write an entire column in a New York paper about the resurgence of antisemitism during the “Trump era” without once noting what was going on in her hometown. As Armin Rosen detailed only a few months ago, there have been hundreds of violent attacks targeting Jews in New York since 2018, “many of them documented on camera, [and] only a single perpetrator has served even one day in prison.” Of course, mentioning that the culprits of anti-Jewish violence are predominantly black or Hispanic, and live in one of the nation’s most left-wing cities, would necessitate acknowledging that antisemitism can’t be neatly laid at the feet of Republicans. That is inconvenient, no doubt.

“For most of my adult life, antisemites — with exceptions like Pat Buchanan and Mel Gibson — have lacked status in America,” Goldberg writes. Really? Al Sharpton, kingmaker and presidential “go-to man,” must have slipped Goldberg’s mind, even though she is a regular guest on his MSNBC program. Time does not erase the fact that this man spearheaded riots and fueled insidious antisemitism and racism that resulted in Jews and others being killed. Has Goldberg ever asked Sharpton to explain his views on “diamond merchants” of Crown Heights – where, as it happens, a Jewish man was brutally beaten just this summer? Perhaps her privilege has shielded her from that history, as well.

Now, of course, simply because the liberal establishment embraces Sharpton — or Barack Obama’s mentor was a notorious Jew-hater, or a smiling Nancy Pelosi posed on magazine covers with a woman who says Jews can hypnotize the world for “evil,” or the Nation of Islam’s bigotry is rationalized in the august pages of The Atlantic, or anti-“Zionists” attack Hillel buildings on college campuses — does not excuse Trump’s meeting with Ye X and Opie Himmler. Either the former president doesn’t care who he has dinner with, or he does care, or he doesn’t know – none of which are good options. Why anyone would want to go another four years dealing with that circus is beyond me.

For every Paul Gosar, though, there is an Ilhan Omar. For every Marjorie Taylor Greene there is a Rashida Tlaib … and a Maxine Waters, who has no problem hanging out with the leader of the Nation of Islam, and a Danny Davis, who is a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and who maintains that the religious leader who called Hitler a “very great man” and compared Jews to “termites,” was an “outstanding human being.” It is not happenstance that the leadership of the once-celebrated Women’s March — organizers of the largest one-day protest in American history — are anti-Jewish conspiracists. For Goldberg, that reality was not a tragic portend of the mainstreaming of hate, but merely “heartbreaking.” There is plenty of cowardice to go around.

I don’t believe antisemitism is close to being mainstreamed in either party — though, with consistent expansion of The Squad that might well change one day. Yet, in trying to make the case that bigotry is unilaterally being mainstreamed, Goldberg is compelled to stretch her argument in risible ways.

First, she smears the villain du jour. “Elon Musk,” writes Goldberg, “enthusiastically welcomed both Trump and Ye back to the platform, and has been tiptoeing up to the edge of antisemitism himself.” A platform that hosts theocratic fascists of Iran and Chicom tyrants who manage concentration camps can handle the ugly ideas of a rapper. Allowing open political discourse, even from the odious voices, is a liberal notion, not an antisemitic one. It’s the same basic value that no doubt is used as the justification of New York Times editors to give tyrants like Vladimir Putin (though, not Tom Cotton) space to speak on the same pages as Michelle Goldberg.

The columnist then turns to the most cynical claim of antisemitism going around: the preposterous notion that any criticism of George Soros, the most generous benefactor of hard-left causes in the world — and a man who by his own admissions feels little connection to Judaism and generously funds the antisemitic BDS movement — constitutes the spreading of anti-Jewish tropes. But Goldberg adds a new member to this specially protected group: “Jewish retired Army officer” Alexander Vindman, whose entire media career is centered on the self-aggrandizing notion that he is a hero of democracy. Musk’s sin is calling Vindman a “puppet & puppeteer,” which Goldberg says echoes “an old antisemitic trope about Jews pulling the strings behind world events.” This too is a smear, since Musk was referring to Vindman’s alleged spamming and bot campaign on Twitter, not any serious political issue. The notion that Musk knew, much less targeted, Vindman because of his faith is outlandish.

Perhaps Goldberg will correct the record next time she is speaking to Mehdi Hasan — when the host isn’t spreading blood libel.

Popcorn-Worthy Tantrums Begin As 'Never Trump' Well Threatens to Run Dry

Sister Toldjah reporting for RedState 

There’s no doubt that excitement – some of it media-driven because they can’t help themselves – was in the air in the run-up before former President Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month that he was throwing his hat into the ring for 2024. The general tone and tenor in the aftermath of his speech was “let’s gooo!” with many on the right, who reacquainted themselves with the knowledge they needed to fight the anticipated information war the media was getting ready to renew against Trump.

But at the same time, frustration was swirling among even some diehard Trump supporters over his attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. There was also scattered blame on Trump, whether fair or not, for some Election Day losses. And then the Kanye dinner happened, and then controversy erupted over whether or not Trump knew the kind of person Kanye associate Nick Fuentes, who reportedly came along for the ride, really is.

The latter seems to be the straw that has come closest to breaking the camel’s back for some, so much so that some of the more prominent Never Trump grifters are now openly throwing tantrums on social media after it was inconveniently pointed out that the cash well may soon run dry if the discontent with Trump grows big enough to cause him to lose his 2024 primary fight.

The person who triggered the Never Trump cryathon was Dan McLaughlin, a former longtime writer for RedState. Though he considers himself a Never Trumper, McLaughlin is one who would occasionally note his agreement with Trump – which was and is in stark contrast to the likes of the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson, who though touting himself as a truuuue conservative nevertheless could never bring himself to acknowledge the conservative nature of many of Trump’s stances and decisions while in office, probably because Wilson was well-aware that the bulk of the funding for the Lincoln Project came from super-rich Resistance™ Democrats, with the much of it going straight to LP executives like Wilson.

Here’s what McLaughlin wrote that started the meltdowns:

“Never Trump” was a statement of non-support for a candidate for election. The mounting odor of hysteria from people who turned it into their whole public & professional identity reeks of fear that he will go away some time soon & can’t be replaced.

Soon after, Tom Nichols – a self-proclaimed “expert” on everything, especially when it comes to opening his mouth and inserting his foot – chimed in, basically telling McLaughlin to shut up because he wasn’t Never Trump when it was unpopular to be so:

Pretty sure that I don’t need a lesson from you about what “Never Trump” meant, Dan. Since you were never a part of that movement, perhaps leave it to the people who began it to define it.

Except the more outfront Never Trumpers like Nichols (and Wilson) already took care of defining it, and not in a good way, as McLaughlin explained in a back and forth that concluded with this:

And that prospect – a Republican party that pursues conservative policy effectively without wrenching internal schisms or self-inflicted wounds, & can’t be held back by Trump – truly scares a lot of people who only claimed to be scared of Trump but turned him into a meal ticket.

Perhaps feeling left out, Wilson got involved with his obnoxiously narcissistic behavior, proclaiming “Good God, the projection is strong here,” to McLaughlin after first writing an entire thread about the issue in the most cowardly way – without tagging McLaughlin or anyone else who he was directing his ire towards.

“In 2016 you said, ‘Never’ and meant, ‘Do me harder, Daddy’ once Trump won. Oh, you did the ‘I hate the tweets love the policy’ bullshit but you know in your heart how false and reprehensible that was from the start. You don’t get to walk away from that,” Wilson, without a hint of self-awareness, wrote, perhaps not realizing he walked away from conservatism entirely because the money, fame, and RTs from the cocktail circuit were more important than being a pragmatic conservative who could separate their dislike for the man versus appreciation for the policy.

“To quote the political philosopher Bane, ‘Your punishment must be more severe,'” he bombastically declared in another tweet. “Here’s how it plays out. You can write a billion NRO columns saying DeSantis craps gold bullion and smells like summer rain, but the seething, hideous mass of the MAGA base is always there.”

To his credit, McLaughlin shut Wilson down by pointing out in the simplest terms the differences in his approach versus Wilson’s:

“You know as well as I do, Rick, that when Trump is finally gone from the scene, I will be right where I was before – same principles, same party, same policy goals, same audience. I haven’t let Trump change any of that. Only one of us can say that.

Ten years ago, @TheRickWilson & I both thought & said that Joe Biden was a ridiculous buffoon of low character with no business anywhere near power. Which of us is still free to say that today?

Last but not least, Wilson’s own words about Joe Biden, written at a time when Wilson at least pretended to be a conservative, were thrown back at him:

There’s so much more “there” there, but we’ll leave it at that, because there is no own so spectacular as those that come straight from the horse’s mouth.