by John Kluge
The only way to describe the media’s reaction to Trump’s press conference and statements about the events in Charlottesville yesterday is irrational. To understand how irrational the reaction was, just imagine if instead of involving white nationalists and antifa counter protestors the events of last weekend had been a conflict between two rival biker gangs.
Do not change a single event from this weekend but imagine the events being the result of violence at a biker rally. One biker club has its national rally and a rival biker club shows up to protest and disrupt it. During the course of the weekend, a lot of shouting and violence take place. Fights break out on Friday. For reasons yet to be known the local police do nothing to separate the rival gangs and violence and conflict spills over into Saturday. Finally, on Saturday afternoon a member of the first gang runs a car into a crowd of its rival gang injuring nineteen and killing one.
Now ask yourself, would anyone in their right mind claim that only the first biker gang was to blame and everyone is obligated to condemn it? Of course, no one would. There would be national outrage about the problem of biker gangs. The local police would be called to the carpet for not maintaining order. Law enforcement would crack down hard on both gangs and biker rallies in general.
The only reason the media and the nation at large are not having the same reaction it would if Charlottesville involved a fight between biker gangs is because it involved white nationalists. And the media and political class are incapable of having a rational conversation about anything involving white nationalism or white supremacy. The reason for this is that to do so would be to call into question the entire concept of white guilt.
White guilt, like all racial collectivist beliefs, is completely irrational. White guilt is doubly irrational because it embraces the very sort of racial collectivism it claims to reject. It is irrational to say that one person is responsible for the actions of another person just because they share the same color of skin. It is irrational to say that anyone living today is in any way accountable or responsible or has any reason to feel guilty about events that occurred before they were born. The entire concept of collective guilt, be it based on race, class, sex or anything else is utterly irrational. It represents the worst sort of tribalism that civilization and rationality seek to end.
White guilt, like all irrational belief systems, is completely antithetical to any form of rational discourse about any of the areas it concerns. Once a believer in an irrational ideology is forced to have a rational discussion about one area of the ideology the entire ideology comes into question. This is why the integration of professional sports did so much towards ending the idea of white racial supremacy. When blacks and whites were not allowed to compete on the same field, whites could hold the irrational belief that whites were inherently superior athletes to blacks. Once Jackie Robinson became a star in the major leagues and Jim Brown became the best football player in the world, whites could no longer hold that belief. They were forced to have a rational conversation based on facts about the relative athletic ability of the two races. And once they did that, they could no longer refuse to question or discuss rationally their views on racial superiority in every other area of life. The entire ideology fell like a house of cards. Within a few decades, white supremacy went from a societal given to a fringe belief.
One of the primary tenants of white guilt is that white nationalism is a unique evil. White guilt necessitates that white nationalism not just be wrong but a unique wrong in the world, worse than communism or any of the sins of other races. If white nationalism isn’t worse than other isms, then whites have no more or less to answer for than any other race or creed and the whole edifice of white guilt collapses. This is of course irrational. White nationalism and belief in white supremacy is evil but no more or less evil than any other form of nationalism or religious or racial supremacy. So no believer in white guilt can have a rational discussion about white nationalism without calling the entire concept of white guilt into question.
When Donald Trump spoke yesterday, he attempted to force the nation to have an honest and rational conversation about white nationalism and its involvement in the events last weekend. He said two undeniably truthful and rational things about the events this weekend. First, he said that not everyone at the march in Charlottesville was a white nationalist. This is true. The march was a protest against tearing down of the Robert E. Lee statue. It was organized by white nationalists but 200 or so people attended. It is perfectly rational and truthful to say that not all of them were white nationalists. Some of them, albeit a small minority, no doubt were there because they wanted to save the statue.
Second, he said that the counter protesters deserve a significant share of the blame for the resulting violence and death. This is also true. The counter protesters were active willing participants in the violence that occurred. The proof of that is in the photos and accounts of the weekend given in the Virginia ACLU Twitter feed. And as I explained above, had the events in Charlottesville involved any other group but white nationalists everyone involved would be assessed their share of the blame.
To say those things and to try and have a rational and truthful conversation about last weekend is to admit that it is possible for white nationalists, no matter how bad they are, to have been if the victims of a wrong or at least not be entirely responsible for the events of last weekend. And to do that is to necessarily admit the reality that white nationalists are not uniquely evil or worse than other violent or supremacist groups. Donald Trump’s statements were a direct challenge to the entire concept of collective white guilt.
One of the interesting things about Charlottesville that no one seems to have noticed is that an event that was supposed to be about white nationalism and white supremacy was not a race riot. I have not, in any of the pictures and video I have seen of the weekend, seen a single black person. Charlottesville was a conflict almost entirely or maybe entirely between white people. There is a good reason for this. The debate and conflict over white guilt is almost always a conflict between upper class and middle and lower class whites. Black people are nearly always bystanders or props in that conflict.
To understand why you have to understand how white guilt works. You would think the belief in collective white guilt would be an expression of self-loathing, but it is not. When a white person believes in white guilt they are engaging in one of the purest forms of virtue signaling. Since the belief is irrational and has nothing to do with their actions, they are not accepting any real moral responsibility. What they are doing is asserting their moral superiority over other white people who refuse to accept the belief. When a black person asserts collective white guilt, they are doing it to attack white people. When a white person does it, the white person is saying they understand their burden and the horrible sins of their race. In doing that, the white person is showing their moral superiority over other white people who refuse to accept their guilt and responsibility.
Embracing some level of white guilt is one of the primary ways upper class and gentry whites assert their moral superiority over middle and lower class whites. Middle and lower class whites don’t believe in white guilt. As a result, they often have more rational views about race. Middle and lower class whites can say and think rational things about race that upper-class whites cannot do without losing their class status. Lower and middle-class whites can believe that black people are sometimes just as racist as whites. They can believe that black supremacist groups can be just as bad as the KKK. They can believe that the Civil War was a complex event that wasn’t just about slavery and white supremacy, or that just because South Carolina or Mississippi were slave states and have a bad racial history doesn’t mean there are no good parts of those places or that people from there can’t be proud of being from them.
Upper-class whites cannot believe any of that. No upper-class white would ever wave a Confederate flag. No upper-class white would ever say that the Black Panthers are as bad as the KKK. If they are conservative, they might say the KKK is insignificant but they would never say that a black group is qualitatively just as bad. To do any of that would necessarily call into question the idea of white guilt and mean being kicked out of the class.
So when Trump yesterday tried to force a rational conversation about white nationalism, Washington, that most white and upper class of cities, lost its mind. It was all hands on deck, left and right, to save and assert the white guilt moral privilege. The responses to Trump were predictably irrational and counter factual. For the crime of saying not every incident is entirely one sided, Trump was accused of being a white supremacist; the President everyone feared he would be. Some of the reaction was so counterfactual it can fairly be called insane. Mitt Romney and John McCain described the counter protesters as fighters for justice and equality against the forces of prejudice and racism. People who showed up waving Communist flags and carrying pepper spray and bags of feces and urine are now fighters against evil and prejudice. Really? The entire response boiled down to a giant guttural groan of “How Dare You!!” by the white upper class. Trump had attacked their most sacred moral privilege and they were not going to take it lying down.
What will be the fall out of all this? Like most things involving Trump, a lot less than people think. First, I don’t think it is going to make a bit of difference politically. The people who voted for Trump are almost to the person people who reject the concept of white guilt. So, they won’t see it the way the media and Washington has. They will see it as Trump saying entirely fair and rational things. I don’t see Trump’s support dropping one bit. Trump’s enemies will just have a new reason to feel aggrieved.
Second, I don’t think we are going to see much white nationalist antifa violence going forward. Trump tried to force a conversation the left doesn’t want to have. For the left white guilt is not just about class it is also how it enforces identity politics. The left needs white guilt. Trump also tried to force the left to talk about its role in this violence. And that is also not a conversation anyone on the left wants to have. The left has condoned and enabled antifa violence for years and gotten away with it. They do not want to have to answer for that.
So I think the police departments in Democratic cities are going to start doing their jobs. Instead of standing down at these marches and counter protests, the police will start keeping the two sides apart, arresting people who show up with weapons and bags of urine and cracking down hard on any fights that break out and maintaining order. Deprived of the ability to riot with impunity, antifa will find better things to do. They don’t want to go to jail any more than anyone else and protests get pretty boring if you no longer have free reign to attack people. Deprived of any violence to use to slander the right, the media will lose interest as well. These marches are going over the next few months return to being the small events of paper hanging losers they have always been. So, I wouldn’t stock up on ammunition for the coming civil war just yet.
Lastly, I think that the drive to tear down Confederate monuments will likely fizzle as well. They will tear a few more down in Democratic cities but the issue will fade away as well. Trump did another thing yesterday and laid down the mark that if this stuff didn’t stop they would be calling for tearing down George Washington statues. Of course, all right thinking people are today dismissing this. They, however, know that it is true. There are already calls to tear down the statues of Theodore Roosevelt in museums in New York City. You can tear down Confederate statues and largely avoid a rational conversation. Most people really don’t know who the people were and you can always use the “but it’s racist” charge to keep the average observer from objecting. George Washington or Teddy Roosevelt are different. People do know who they are and can’t be scared off by the racist charge. And the left doesn’t want a rational conversation about that any more than they want a rational conversation about last weekend.
The statue controversy like all leftist causes is entirely manufactured. We had a hundred year struggle for black civil rights in this country. During that time not a single person to my knowledge, not Martin Luther King, not W.E.B Dubois, not Booker T. Washington, not Malcolm X, ever cared or said a single word about those monuments. Yet, suddenly in 2017, they are a threat to all that is right and good. Give me a break. Once the left decides tearing them down is no longer to their advantage, and they will if they haven’t already, no more will be heard about the subject.
small events of paper hanging losers
You know who else…?
Hillary Clinton…?
Donald Trump’s statements were a direct challenge to the entire concept of collective white guilt
Not possible with me. I keep my white guilt locked in the trunk of the car that is on blocks in my front yard.
The thing about what Trump said, is that it’s only a matter of time before antifa does something truly horrific. Then the media will at least be forced to shut up. They’ll never condemn their comrades no matter what, but it will get to the point that they are silent about it, and it will give sane people pause about joining forces with them or vocally supporting them.
Sure thing.
“After months of abuse for exerting their right to assemble, fringe members of a group whose aims aren’t clear are caught up in violence against Trump policies to deny X right to Y group.”
Or:
Meeting about Trump policies turns violent.
That’d be like a guy shouting Allahu Akhbar while shooting up a gay nightclub or something. There’s no way the media could obfuscate the motive.
+1 Workplace violemce
A lot of gays would never say they voted for Trump in polite company, but I don’t doubt many of them had Pulse on their minds when they walked into the voting booth.
It was pretty grim watching the realtime suppression of information about the Pulse shooting on Reddit. Gays are below Muslims on the progressive stack even if bodies pile up.
Antifa has done numerous things that are horrific. Sane people already know. It is the insane we have to worry about.
I would say attacking someone with a bike lock is horrific.
What’s going to happen is they’re going to attack an innocent, somebody not involved in any of the protests, somebody just walking to their car. The media will try to suppress it, but there will be such a level of outrage that they’ll be forced to cover it.
People rightly don’t have a lot of sympathy for Nazis and white supremacists. They also don’t have a lot of time and interest in digging into stories. And they pretty much want normal people to be left alone by “bad people”. And the media has gotten away with painting the battle as nice, normal, not racist people standing up to Nazi or white supremacist bullies. When the victim turns out to be a nice, normal person just going to their car, the public is going to demand blood. And a sophisticated enough Trump administration can play the media as the commie thugs’ willing accomplices.
Didn’t this already happen Bill?
Good analogy, except one point is missing. The reason that only one side is being blamed by the large majority of the media is about something more than white nationalism. The antifa are leftists, so they are defended by other leftists, including the media. The reason the media won’t call them out is that they are aligned with them.
Indeed. Everyone comdems one side. The other is backed by by a significant portion of the country that fully sympathize or at least want to appear sympathetic to their cause.
Hardly, Antifa’s support on the left is far greater than White supremacist support on the right.
Nevermind I misread your comment.
This – groups of useful leftist idiots support each other.
I maybe “bourbon enhanced”, but I enjoyed the article. Welcome back John. I do think that we will see another 6-12 months of Antifa violence before it fizzles out.
Huzzah! I’m about to get into this yummy Buffalo Trace right now.
Evan Williams on ice, topped off with some mint iced tea.
At some point antifa will get carried away in a city with adults in charge (not a university town). A bunch of them will end up prosecuted for every crime committed and ordered to pay damages for every broken window.
The Durham, NC statue destroyers are already being arrested and charged with felonies.
Great article, just one piddling request …could someone enact my labor and give links to
(a) The ACLU – Virginia coverage of the riot
and
(b) the Teddy Roosevelt “controversy”
Thank you!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/11/museum-natural-history-theodore-roosevelt-statue-protest
Teddy plus Columbus, no ACLU
Thank you
Here’s what the VA ACLU had to say.
The most recent three items are the main ones addressing the violence. One condemns the violence on Friday night, one condemns racists, and the most recent one blames the city for not stopping the violence (this last one was in response to the city blaming the ACLU for supporting the right of the UTR to speak).
I agree that antifa and the left are shielded because their views more closely align with the media and middle class white people.
I would also say, however, that the reason the “protesters” generally are given more of a pass is that, at least superficially, it would make sense that the percentage of people marching with Nazi flags who are Nazis would be fairly high, while the number of people protesting against Nazis who are radical Marxists wouldn’t quite be of an equal proportion.
I should say:
I’d tend to agree. I mean, even if you’re caught up in the moment, you’re not gonna take the Nazi flag someone hands you and wave it. You’re just not gonna do it unless you’re a Nazi sympathizing piece of shit.
But if you’re there protesting Nazis and someone hands you a flag of something you can’t easily identify, there might be a feeling of “this is ok. I’m sure. They’re fighting Nazis after all. And once SHTF, you just join in the melee.
That’s why I wish reasonable people would go back to ignoring the Nazi groups like they’ve been doing for decades. Giving them attention while in close quarters with a different group of not-so-easily-identified idiots lends itself to becoming part of the mob for a lot of people. And when mobs start to happen and adrenaline kicks in, good people can make bad decisions.
The memes to turn this are spreading already. I’ve seen this popping up all over the place. The line:
Looks like they’re just trying to normalize the punching “Nazis” even more.
And just to make my views clear.
Oh, yeah.
Thanks for that. Many good memories just floated to the surface!
It should be “Nazis clashed with Nazis pretending not to be Nazis”.
He’d have a point if the “anti-fascists” hadn’t engaged in some Grade A doublespeak and called themselves the opposite of what they actually are.
When Liberals Club People, It’s With Love In Their Hearts
– Anne Coulter
My goodness she’s in her element. Too bad she’s such a cop-sucker.
Huh, and I kinda liked Rubio.
Yes, there certainly wasn’t a list of speakers who have mass quantities of online activity to give us even the slightest clue.
Anne, always the voice of reason and restraint.
She is such a mendacious cunt.
Go back to her tweets about the Dallas Police shooting, an even she specifically mentions in the article. She was very reserved and fact seeking in her tweets. She’s not at all, just like the left media she is bitching about in that article. Nope, not one bit
I personally cannot stand the giraffe, never could. And she hates libertarians as much as the left do.
Hmm, I’m no lover of Coulter, but it strikes me that she’s just applying the same motive standards as the media does when “workplace violence” occurs.
That having been said, I stand by my thoughts vis-a-vis Trump vs. the media on Coulter vs. (the mainstream) media. I’d rather we had neither.
When there is anything even hinting at left wing scandal, violence, etc. she’s all aboard the hype train. So, I don’t really care or need to hear her scold the media for jumping to conclusions.
She has a point (a point that everyone on this site surely has a firm grasp on), but she’s also guilty of the same thing so I see know reason to cut her any slack
Quanto costa questo bambino?
$20, same as in town
while the number of people protesting against Nazis who are radical Marxists wouldn’t quite be of an equal proportion.
That isn’t at all clear to me. Notably, the media doesn’t show Antifa in these stories. They only refer to anti-racism protesters. I’ve known some people who’ve checked these things out. The red flags are out in force.
Also, great article John! I’m so happy you are over here and contributing articles.
Let’s give some credit to the “antifascist, anti-racist” forces. Many of them are crafty agitators with ideas they know the norms won’t like. I’ve given link after link to the Workers World Party (the statue-toppling vanguard in North Carolina) and their defense of North Korea’s communist regime and its nuke program, it’s knob-polishing of Vladimir Lenin, etc.
These guys are retards, but they have some idea of what will or will not appeal to the normies.
“Hands off North Korea’s nuclear program” isn’t really going to get the masses into the streets.
“Down with slavery [chattel slavery, that is, not commie slavery which we support]! No statues of slavers!” if more popular.
“Down with national socialists [or “nazis,” since they would never dream of using the full phrase]” is also a good crowd-pleaser.
Just so long as the media doesn’t get on their case about their less-popular beliefs, they can define themselves as “anti-nazi” [anti the *wrong* king of totalitarian socialism, that is], anti-slavery [except the totally cool slavery the soviets had], and anti-statues of slavers [except Lenin].
The incuriousity of the media does the rest.
The phrase national socialists should be used instead of Nazi, if only to create a momentary “wait, what?” moment
A sepulchral statue of a generic common soldier on a memorial to all the men from the county who served.
There were regular (wholly peaceful) protests about Jackson every single year at Springtime Tallahassee as far back as 1989.
Ouch! Meant as a reply to Mexican Sharpshooter’s comment bellow.
If they’re mad about Teddy Roosevelt I can’t wait to see what they say about Andrew Jackson!
But he was anti-Calhoun! No I don’t know who to blame *hands on hips, turns to camera with quizzical look, theme song plays and credits roll*
That’s how I see the first episode of the rebooted My White Mama going, anyway.
Meh, Andrew Jackson is already in the dog house. They wanna take him off the twenty. He was kinda a racist POS who contributed to the ethnic cleansing of native Americans. He did some good stuff too, though.
Good article, however I do think they believe that they have found a pressure point that works. I expect more “uncivil disobedience” for a while or at least until there is a political price to pay for it.
Antifa and the myriad college grievance studies losers are the useful idiots for the Democrats right now.
And the “speech is violence” trend is unsettling in the least. That worries me more than most of the other stuff.
The iconoclasm over Confederate statues that is occurring due the event is only going to embolden them. They’ve been validated and know they can affect public policy if they use violence.
Police need to crack down hard the next time they pull this shit if we’re going to get anywhere.
Baltimore fucked up so badly.
There won’t be any recovery from that.
Baltimore wants even more segregation and dislike between blacks and whites in the city, there’s not enough yet.
Sure, or the people Soros hires if the crowd isn’t big enough.
Why Was This ‘Crowd Hire’ Company Recruiting $25 An Hour ‘Political Activists’ In Charlotte Last Week?
I’m sure we’ll learn about that on CNN any time now.
I don’t know, but I do know Charlotte != Charlottesville.
You are correct. Could be totally unrelated or they could have gone for a 4 hour bus ride.
Even closer to Durham.
I say we raise donations and hire this forward thinking group to go out and hire us some protesters! What should we protest? Maybe a giant protest in DC about the rights of sentient rape apes?
Jesus… a bit of elementary school just flashed before my eyes.
The internet, preserver half remembered childhoods.
Now that you put that in my head, I went and rewatched the intro to the show, now all I hear is “The Great Rape Ape”
Intro
That’s a lot more entertaining than I remember. Well, now it is.
This was a refreshing read after the weak sauce offered over at TOS in recent days not to mention the shitshow in the comments.
I think a lot of journalists, like the teenage me, marinated in crap like this, about how naive “Cold War liberals” enabled the mean old conservatives and helped them persecute the pure and noble Communists. And the press was the worse, reporting accusations of communism and ruining people’s lives.
So after marinating in this stuff for a while, journalists absorbed the lesson that they shouldn’t be mean and naive like those Cold War Liberals and should stop denouncing communists.
So people can now walk around saying “hello, world, we’re Marxist Leninist Communists who want the government to take over everything and we sympathize with America’s enemies!” and journalists just ignore them or treat them as a normal part of the political spectrum, as opposed to racists and homophobes, etc., who are outside the pale of rational discourse.
No, it’s because the media is full of Communist sympathizers.
As usual there is a gap between what Trump actually said and the way the media reports it. Trump responded to critics of his earlier statement by taking questions at an event that was not planned to allow questions. The today show this morning of course described this as Trump” going rogue”. He ” lashed out”. Then we see a clip of Trump saying that it did not make sense to make a definitive statement without all the facts and that even now all the facts are not known.
This of course was followed by a statement that prominent Republicans are critical of Trump. You’ll never guess who they showed not in a million years okay I’ll tell you it was John McCain
Truly an M. Night Shyamaladingdong twist right there.
It wasn’t LIndsay Graham?
Deblasio won’t be upstaged by anyone.
I assume this means no more Malcom X Boulevard.
A blind DeBlasio finds a nut
Holy crap, they have a Pierre Laval plaque, too
Apparently Laval and Petain got ticker-tape parades in 1931, which to be fair was before they became national socialist collaborators, slavers and murderers. Petain in 1931 was known as the hero of Verdun. Laval was…a statesperson.
There is a plaque for every ticker-tape parade. The guy had a parade in 1931 for some reason – I confess to being ignorant of why – therefore there is a plaque. It is not “honoring” him to note that.
I expect that Petain got a parade because of Verdun. Laval…who knows?
Perhaps ticker-tape parades are like Duranty’s Pulitzer…irrevocable?
Here we go
“…40. October 22, 1931. Pierre Laval, Premier of France
“41. October 26, 1931. Henri Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France…”
It’s called the Canyon of Heroes…I mention this because I’m tired of Southern cities getting all the flak.
Petain and Laval enslaved and killed more people than any individual Confederate.
I used to work on Broadway, and wondered why only sportsball teams are “heroes” any more. I guess we don’t care about anything else.
I thought it was only government-sector workers who were “heroes” anymore, specifically the ones dishing out violence.
Well, yes. They happened. Memory-holing them does nobody any favors. And as has been mentioned many times, how are you going to decide who goes into the “good” bucket and who the “bad”?
Like I say, I’m enjoying New York’s discomfiture.
Those media outlets headquartered there send out their correspondents to benighted Southern towns with statues of Confederate privates, while they could just go down the frickin’ street in their own metropolis and find worse slavers than Lee and the others.
I hope John is right and this stupid movement to cleanse the public arena of badthinkers will wear itself out sooner rather than later.
…until then, I say troll the Yankees as much as possible.
For example, East Aurora, NY, is putting up a statue of the guy who signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
New York will purge a couple names from the Nazi part of Brooklyn that I mentioned at TOS this morning and consider it “job done” as far as continuing to feel superior goes.
I don’t consider Buffalo to be “Yankee” but OK.
Not so fast.
The Duke of York was a slaver and founded the English colony of New York.
The “Wall” in Wall Street was to keep out Native Americans.
And various cities in the NY State have Seymour Streets – perhaps named after the racist governor who played footsie with Copperheads in the Civil War?
Keep these journalists in New York where they belong – their bosses will appreciate the smaller expense accounts.
Best I can come up with is that many people in the US and France were “smitten” by Laval – even though he accomplished little in the early 1930s despite a lot of travel. He was also Time’s MOY in 1931.
http://imgur.com/fblE8gm
My brother sent me this earlier. Don’t take it too seriously, I don’t want a cat butt.
I laughed, then felt bad about, then said “fuck it!”
Oh that’s wonderful.
The statue controversy like all leftist causes is entirely manufactured
The only way this makes sense is if all causes – left,right, and center – are ‘manufactured’ which would make the criticism moot
Yet, suddenly in 2017
Bullshit, this has been going on for years, possibly decades, I can’t be arsed to find the first case but I know it’s been a long time.
Black bloc was causing this exact same shit at the 2010 G20 riots in Toronto.
Thanks, John. That’s a well thought-out editorial. There’s plenty to think about.
Mencius Moldbug wrote about this several years ago
Damn, that’s one of his writings I was trying to remember the details of. Thanks!
Also, SFed the link.
Witch Hunts
HA! My very first SFed link. Thanks for pointing it out. I’m glad I’m not the only one here who has read him.
Sorry to post way after the fact, but I loved this passage: [When the witchfinder can attribute the consequences of meteorology, biology, or any other department of reality to a human conspiracy, there is no limit to the proto-divine authority which the witch-cabal then assumes. To rebel against it seems almost as daring and hopeless as a rebellion against God himself. How romantic! How empowering! Smash the great conspiracy of differentness, without which we would all be gloriously the same! Throw the Jews down the well!]
Thanks, John. A very well written and argued piece.
So, I wouldn’t stock up on ammunition for the coming civil war just yet.
I agree. Maybe it’s my age, but I’m having trouble seeing doom around every corner.
I always look back to the 60s and 70s and realize the Chicago riots would put every riot of the past 5 years put together to shame. Not to mention the dozens of bombings, assassinations, etc.
If that didn’t cause a literal war, I don’t know what will. It’s also good to remember that 95% of the country has seen a Nazi or Antifa in person. If we didn’t have the internet, most of this shit would be a blip on the nightly news (is that still a thing?).
Exactly. When I was a kid, planes were being hijacked with some regularity, but somehow we managed to not give a fuck and just get on with life.
Shitheads will always be with us.
I was trying to convince an Asian immigrant friend that the USA is probably safer today than at any time in our history. He’s afraid that the KKK are going to get him. It would be funny except that it’s too sad to be funny. I told him to turn off CNN and facebook.
“I told him to turn off CNN and facebook”
A point that cannot be emphasized enough. Shut down and go outside for awhile! The world is fucking amazing and people are interesting and cool.
I’m getting really bored with the doomsayers .
I am seriously very close to needing to take a break from all this.
Do it! Go shoot the shit with some buddies over ice cold domestos and don’t mention any of this stupid shit.
I spend most of my time trying to out shitpost my buddy in our group chat. When not doing that I’m going to church or hanging out with Dad on the weekend.
Helps put all of this nonsense in perspective
Unfortunately my one best bud became a bum after leeching a shit-ton of money out of me and the other one was an enthusiastic pussy-hat participant.
I don’t really have any buddies for that sort of thing at the moment.
Or you could just masturbate.
That’s what I do.
Well see, Mulatto needs a companion. Making friends on the internet!!
Seriously, sucks about your friends. If you’re ever through Lexington, I’ll be glad to get drunk as fuck with ya
Maybe we should get an NYC meetup going. Well, someone should. It probably won’t be me.
I’m down for a meetup. Who wants to come out to The Rockaways?
The guy was just as scared right after the election because his prog acquaintances were telling him that Trump’s going to deport him. I told him ‘those assholes are not your friends’. And I added it to my point about him not being in danger from the KKK. I reminded him of the deportation thing and asked ‘Have you been deported yet, or was I right about that?’. Progs are fucking scum.
It’s nowhere near that at this point, the problem is more that the powers that be should be doing more to ensure that it doesn’t get to that point.
Which it probably won’t. But appeasing and avoiding violent rioters is not the way to go.
You misspelled “aiding and abetting”.
Looking at the analysis of how the police forced the rightwingers into the waiting mob of antifa goons, and then stood back and watched the ensuing riot, makes me ask the eternal question:
“Malice, or incompetence”?
A harder question: When you are “just following orders” that you know are wrong, are you malicious or incompetent?
Look, I found a racist moose, someone cue antifa.
White supremacist moose
Good article, John! Wish I could share it with the idiots in my acquaintance, but I think hitting my head against a brick wall would be a better use of my time.
White guilt, like all racial collectivist beliefs, is completely irrational.
Speaking of irrational.
No. Just, no.
The commenters are retarded. I mean, I suppose that is to be expected of anyone who would actually read that tripe.
The first sentence my eyes hit:
LOL
Oh fuck me there’s more?!
I still can’t get over how she’s a black Muslim… Wiccan priestess? Not to mention her culturally appropriative reiki usage.
black Muslim… Wiccan priestess
The Muslims call those ‘apostates’.
Hmm, I wonder what the punishment for apostasy is in Islam?
I’m sure it’s just a slap on the wrist.
She’s a loon who wants attention. Anything else is all in her own mind.
“If you are not comfortable with me using words like white supremacy and white privilege, or you want me to stay away from the political and stick to the spiritual, or you use phrases like #notallwhitepeople or #alllivesmatter, then this is where we need to part ways.”
Who are you and how are we close enough to be able to part from each other?
You would know, except that you ain’t woke, bro.
“I’m on day 31/32 of my cycle as I write this. I can literally feel my womb burning, waiting to release. So you are getting my words in the Wild Woman / Crone phase of my cycle. I’m fired up. I’m not going to dance around the subject. I stand for the Truth.”
I lolled. Then felt repulsed. Then lolled again. This bitch is nuts.
my face reading that site
Ok, finally got next review wrapped up – will post on my channel tomorrow at 0800 EST. Cannot recommend this movie highly enough.
I like the format I used this time – i’ll link directly to it tomorrow, but I still need to do some editing/tweaking next time I use footage since I’m still getting hit for copyright stuff – at least it’s still cool for posting. Will look at setting up a parallel channel on vid.me this weekend too.
Cool! Looking forward to it!
John – I am generally fan (here and on TOS), and am aligned with the majority of this post. However, to say you haven’t seen “a single black person” – unnecessary hyperbole.
Agreed.
I would also put the Blank Panthers are as bad as the KKK in the unnecessary hyperbole column in an overall good article
Aligned!
There were black people in those videos and pictures, I’m not sure how anyone missed it, though I guess it’s possible.
The difference between antifa and BLM, in my opinion is that BLM actually started out with a real and legitimate purpose, then the race baiters and actual racists took over the movement and it lost it’s orginal purpose, which was to protest police brutality. Antifa, OTOH, are a bunch of fucking commies with a smattering of anarchists. IOW, antifa never had a legitimate purpose outside of hate for capitalism and people who have led more prosperous lives because of it.
It still pisses me off the BLM was taken over by the race baiters. There was potential there for a movement to do something about police accountability. They could have done some good.
Worse than that – Marxist race baiters.
It really really hurts. The last few years could have been fantastic for finally working to get reforms in police accountability and methodology/training, but looks like we’ll have to delay that until the next generation maybe.
Absolutely, I had high hopes for them at one time. They had a rally in Baltimore and lots of white people showed up to back the cause. But then some of the more militant blacks told whitey to go home. That was pretty much the end of it, they lost all of their support outside of their core group of race baiters and militants.
Same thing happened to the tea party. It started off with such hope to get the spending under control, taxes cut and a lot of regulation out of the way.
Then the motherfuckers in the establishment GOP put their nasty hooks in it and it turned into their little plaything.
With all the talk of ‘fascism’ the past year or so, and how tiring it is that people simply employ that for any racist agenda; I was wondering about fascist Spain (which no one ever talks about, I don’t even remember it being mentioned at any point in my education). According to wikipedia, just as my first look into it,
They were technically Phalangists and were closely aligned,but not synonymous with, fascism. Strangely enough, the phalange is still a party with a fair amount of political power in Lebanon of all places.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kataeb_Party
From what I gather the nationalists were actually a rather inxhoate rightist groups only united by dislike of the Republicans.
Also until Hitler pushed him wasn’t Mussolini not particularly anti-semitic?
The Nationalists weren’t really fascist at all IMO. Fascism, while mostly a nebulous term, is fundamentally a nationalist, revolutionary, and totalitarian form of socialism. That doesn’t describe Franco’s regime IMO.
Mussolini in general didn’t have very strong opinions on the Jews, you could probably argue he had a greater dislike of Catholics (publicly he argued in mostly favour to achieve their support, but privately he has very negative views).
Mussolini didn’t do much against the Jewish population aside from the Racial Laws until he was installed as the puppet state of Salo. By then he was a sad little man rather than the bombastic asshole he was prior.
BTW, since I missed the thread this morning (as usual) – a quick note. I went down to the cville downtown mall last night for my bi-weekly French flick (“Eyes Without a Face” – glorious large screen B&W face-slicing beauty….brought to us by the criterion collection? Did they just play the blu-ray?) – saw the memorial, etc. I thought the street looked familiar from the clips. I walk by there every time I’m down there between the parking garage and theater/stores. He definitely had to run at least 1 stop sign to get to where he was at that speed/angle/etc.
What blows my mind (aside from not blocking the streets off in general) is that the two through-streets on the mall don’t have proper anti-vehicle barriers (even movable ones, the kinds you can lock or remove as necessary to make space for delivery trucks, etc) – where they cross the mall or on the part bordering the mall directly. Definitely a liability – and I would sure as hell be suing the city for not blocking off traffic in the immediate vicinity of a known public gathering if I or someone I knew was injured.
Anyone tell deBlasio of James II’s past.
Please, like a good gangster boss, he maintained his slaving monopoly by repressing rival slavers…it was his successors who, for the sake of “freedom of commerce” opened up the slave trade to anyone, and it grew.
NYC ‘s flag honors said rival traders who brought slavery to America and stole Indian land…
My whole take on the media reporting of the events in Charlottesville is that the media is not reporting anything anything newsworthy. There has been very little reporting on what actually happened, you know the facts of the case. I have seen any in depth investigative journalism that puts together the sequence of event and the motives off all involved. All I hear is narrative shit that is less than worthless followed by “reporting” on which member of the political class said what about what happened.
This is my major gripe with the media. I would enjoy a news program that told me what happened and who was involved. What I get is a bunch of statements from people who weren’t involved about what their opinion of what happened is. I don’t care about the opinions of the political class, I can form my own if the media did it’s fucking job and reported on what happened.
They got a stick to beat their enemies with so the actual event is irrelevant.
I listen to weekly news podcasts from Australia. Lately about a third of each 30 minute ‘cast is an Australian journalist interviewing an American journalist about the American journalist’s opinion of something Trump has done.
This exactly x 1000.
For example my morning news’ most exciting hot-take about Trump’s latest meanderings was that David Duke gave it two thumbs up. WTF?!
That’s really my point. Who gives a fuck what David duke has to say about what trump has to say about what happened in Charlottesville.
Some say that the media has grown lazy, and complacent, and they don’t have the funding to do real reporting.
Others, more cynically, say that they know exactly what they’re doing.
I’m on the cynical side. They know what they support, and want it to happen, damn reality.
Agreed. How bout some simple facts like “how many people were actually there on either side?”
I know some people are worried about this antifa thing that the media are hailing as a great victory against hate. I came out fairly early saying that the left were going to pay a heavy price for their divisive identity politics, attacking white people as a whole, and attacking everyone in the middle of the country as a whole. And they did. I’m going to once again make a prediction that they are going to pay an even greater price for embracing the antifa thugs. The real problem for them is that once you have let the crazies in, it’s very difficult to tell them to just chill and go home. The left are actually proving this right now. There is no way out for them. The democrats have made a home for the most hateful anti-western, anti-capitalism loons in society And they’re going to lie in that bed.
The midterms will be a good indicator of whether the left’s power play is working or not. If the left is repudiated then I’ll feel a lot better.
I ask because I don’t know. How did this all work out in the 60s amd 70’s with all the lefty violence being committed. I’m sure they had their cheerleaders then too. Were they as rationalized amd accepted by the mainstream left of the time? Did the mainstrram.left come out and specifically condemn weather underground and their ilk?
The went full crazy in ’68 and turned the DNC convention into a riot. Then lost a landslide to Nixon.
The Democrats still controlled Congress but those old-fashioned southern and mid-western Dems who didn’t play well with the radicals.
Problem is the elites support these radicals as long it is directed at Trump…
All the evil terrorists were defeated and sent to Guantanamo Bay forever. And by Guantanamo Bay, I mean elite universities where they taught terrorism to impressionable presidential larvae.
Nixon won, a lot of American criminal law got kind of stupid, partially causing the beginning the prison population problem today.
I’m amused that will all the glorification of the defeat of the CSA they will ignore the fact that those same generals also killed a bunch of Indians. And spreading free territory meant taking Indian land…
I mean the abolitionists wanted free labor and to steal more Indian land…
General Phil Sheridan monument, Albany, NY
“Sheridan’s post-Civil War career also included overseeing the army’s campaign against various Native American tribes throughout the territories of the west. And Sheridan employed the same brutal scorched-earth tactics he had used during the Civil War while showing little interest in protecting non-combatants who happened to get in the way.
“It was during this time that Sheridan is reported to have made the infamous statement “the only good Indians I ever saw were dead” — though Sheridan denied he said it.”
Are you implying that Union heroes like Colonel Custer were insufficiently woke?
Please don’t give them ideas.
Quotes from one of my dear friends WRT to Trump and the Charlotteville Debacle: “At this point, I legit would 100% not be suprised if he pardoned the murderer,” and, “Trump blamed the Left for the Nazis killing them.”
I don’t know if we even read/heard the same press conference.
I’m finding it easier to lie low and not seek out what my friends are saying because I respect them too much to think badly of them due to any bouts of temporary insanity.
That is a very wise call.
“Them”? Trump was talking about the violence between the two groups broadly, not specifically talking about the one who’s in the morgue, and the other in jail (one got wasted and the other’s a waste…)
And I’m glad John used the example of biker gangs, because if it had been the Bloods and the Crips, that shit wouldn’t have even made the news. But far be it from me to suggest that it’s because the news media values the lives of white commies more than inner city lumpenproles.
Agreed, none of the regular sources would have bat an eyelash if it was just regular ol’ inner city gang violence or biker gang violence.
I’d also guess he used the bike gangs as a reference to the 2015 shootout, which didn’t get much media play.
a reference to the 2015 shootout,
You mis-spelled “massacre”. No one returned fire on the cops. It was just the cops firing into a crowd in a parking lot.
Catholic militants pull down the statute of Garibaldi in New York City, chanting “a bandit who fought with the pope/deserved his statue getting pulled down with a rope.”
Just kidding, actually.
wrong picture – here
http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-washington-square-park-garibaldi-statue-manhattan-new-york-city-usa-14216210.html
Garibaldi gave us Italy who in turn colonized Somalia…
Canada has a movement to airbrush the founder of Halifax because he wanted to kill Indians…
Turdeau Jr Renamed a bulding because the a father of Confederation instituted residential schools.
This shit is so hot and off the hook especially if you watch it with the sound muted. Boners ahoy!
So I’ve been reading some of those podcasts from libertarianism.org (part of Cato) and I see quite a few remarks blaming Trump on the GOP elite losing control and deinstutionalization. Not really explained is how do stop this and how making people trust government again will make people libertarian.
Also classical liberalism didn’t happen because people liked absolutism, feudalism or state churches…
Also I really feel like cosmotarianism us nothing more than bootlicking elitism with the hope that they can influence the elites to be libertarianish. Quite a few of those Cato guys seem to think that Trump I’d so bad that the elites have no choice but to listen to them.
Did I soil another race by tossing my DNA in their gene pool or is that the only to get this whiteness thing browned up?
Not using enough of the correct cosmetic products. As always, capitalism solves all problems.
“This item does not ship to Japan. Please check other sellers who may ship internationally.
Sold by Japanese Cosmetics and Fulfilled by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.”
Interesting.
Gonna be a shit lord and assume your race, but a White man going after the Asian womyns, obviously you are soiling their gene pool and colonizing it.
+10 dishonor to you and her family
-previous comment is all in sarcasm-
Dishonor on your cow…
Actually, that might be misinterpreted.
Seems that we homo sapiens may have actually genocided at least one other species of the homo genus, the Neanderthals and may have even wiped out a couple other species such as Floriensis and the Denisovan. So I think that one of us soiling some Asian gene pool is a relatively mild occurrence in human history.
Some people still have some Denisovan DNA in them, so their genetic legacy lives on. Similar to how I’ve got some Neanderthal DNA in me. That partially explains why I have more hair on my back than on my head.
So, It looks like Homo Sapiens were wetting their wicks for the past 50,000 years. We’ve Got DNA proof that our ancestors stuck it in Cavegirl.
As for Floriensis, last I checked it was pretty much a small population living next to an active volcano. So their extinction might not have been caused by modern humans, it also might have been caused by having a small population living next to an active volcano.
Something about the iconoclasm — it always seems to be a reaction against the deplorables. Ie, Roof commits a terrorist act, the Confederate flag gets erased. Fields runs someone over, people decide to take down loads of statues. It reminds me of the people who argue that we should destroy Muslim holy sites (not the people there, just the sites) in retaliation for terrorist attacks. Difference being that lots of people who would be in favor of the one are probably against the other, and vice versa.
Oh, and since it has to be said: “It’s my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of ’em was one kinda sumbitch or another.”
Every Republican must denounce Nazism.
Okay, every Democrat must denounce Communism.
Every Muslim must denounce radical Islamic terrorism.
See how quickly this gets stupid? No consistency.
I read Brink Lindsey admit that liberaltarianism was a failure and that the pros aren’t the leftist he hopes to ally with but he hopes that maybe Trump can lead to some realignment where the GOP is a white nationalist party but NeverTrumpers might turn the Dems more libertarian.
Well judging by Europe this won’t happen. Also moderate Republicans think the GOP and Trump are too libertarian so bringing them into the Dems won’t make them better.
As for the fiscal conservatives well they have been a powerless minority in the GOP for a long time and the Dems have Despised them during that time so I fail o see how they can have more influence on the Dems.
Also becoming more libertarian would alienate the Berniebots…
So Trump has quite a bit of discussion among libertarianidm about elitism and intellectualism. So eould anyone here describe themself as an elitist? And if so could you name a living member of said elite that is not yourself?
Maybe not actually elites, but I know quite a few people in my life who like to act/think like they are.
That depends on what your definition of elitism is. I would not assign the label to myself, but I’ve read opinions from some non-libertarians that libertarians are elitist, whether intentionally or effectively. If somebody wants to call me elitist for supporting life, liberty, and property or for viewing the ideas of men like Bastiat and Hayek as superior to “working-class common sense” or “proletariat class consciousness”, then so be it.
I mean how Trump is proof that anti-elitism is bad. Some libertarians have said this.
I think any -ism that isn’t libertarianism, classical liberalism, minarchism, or anarcho-capitalism is on a different axis entirely. Elitism and anti-elitism are not inherently good or bad until they start dictating conflicting with libertarianism. I also don’t think many people actually are anti-elitist. They’re just anti-the-established-elite which is not quite the same thing, since they want to supplant that elite with a different one.
dictatingVery true.
Another thing is quite a few libertarians love Mencken as some elite intellectual who would have eviscerated Trump. Problem is the actual Mencken got a degree from correspondence school and attacked elites and intellectuals in America all the time and he like Lafollette for standing up to Wall Street.
no one praises mencken as some “elite intellectual”. he was an excellent prose writer. where you get your fucking degree has nothing to do with developing a unique literary voice. Twain left school in the 5th grade. of course mencken said some things that aren’t at all libertarian because he wasn’t one. jesus fucking christ you are a broken record.
I think the point is that Mencken was not shy about sharing his opinion of the common man.
People with more than an ounce of brains have a habit of doing that. If the vast masses of people weren’t mostly horse-stupid, no one would ever seem clever by contrast.
Rothbard has a sad.
http://mises.org/library/hl-mencken-joyous-libertarian
Well Mencken certainly an elitist.
Quite a few libertarians have said that we need a new Mencken as an answer to modern anti-intellectualism such as bashing universities. So the fact that he himself didn’t go to college is very interesting.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=m1e1MF9sXGMC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=mencken+elite+intellectual&source=bl&ots=UdNia31vj2&sig=wmHCjZbbkk8zafbKih8lxHSnBb4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE1_T6qt3VAhUC04MKHWGoBqIQ6AEIIzAA#v=onepage&q=mencken%20elite%20intellectual&f=false
Of course, rather than take it up with the people who actually say these things, he wants to rehearse his tedious retorts in perpetuity
Glibertarians never complain about people not here ever. And isn’t Gojira here? And I did say something similar in reply to his actual comment.
all you need to add now is some whinge about “The Libertarian moment”
I’m i’m not even the first guy on this thread to complain about Reason. Several people complain about how they hate social media and no longer use it. Why are you singly me out for unusual behavior.
29, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45
I still don’t get it, do you think I post too much, too repitive, i have a whiny tone, or that I am associating views to this site when I (usual) critique views that I do not tend to associate with people here?
yes
I think many of the people who say that “Trump is proof anti-elitism is bad” or something similar to that are really saying, Trump is goring some of the sacred cows of neoliberalism (paging John Titor, John Titor to the white courtesy phone) which to them seems like a regression. They are forgetting, though, that while there is overlap between neoliberalism and libertarianism, they are not the same thing. If Trump creates trade barriers but slashes regulations, is that not, at worst, a zero-sum change from a libertarian perspective?
“zero-sum change” is perhaps not the right phrase, I mean something that doesn’t really have a net positive or net negative effect, i.e. it’s just shifting from one good/bad mix to another good/bad mix of roughly equal measure.
I think that trade barriers have too much opposition among the GOPe to really get much traction. What I hope is that Trump gets so mad that he pulls out of the cronyist NAFTA and that the opposition is so unhinged that nothing replaces it, leading to real free trade.
It just occurred to me that Ken Burns would be a wonderful person to put in the hot seat right about now.
The guy is about as proggy as they come… but!…. he’s also done so much work on the civil war that it would basically be impossible for him to parrot the shit all the NAZI! shriekers are saying while still being consistent with his past work.
Basically… his own political allies would want him to affirm their idiotic demonization of people like Lee and any/all symbols of the confederacy… but for him to do so would also undermine/contradict years of work he did actually humanizing and revealing the complexity of the conflict. I just think it would be an interesting “get” for an interviewer. Which is why he’s probably hiding in a foreign country at the moment.
Ken Burns: Struggle Session
i suspect his PR team could find a way for him to thread the needle, where he could both pretend to call for equanimity and a measured consideration of multiple perspectives…
….yet at the same time say the past is over, and the time has finally come to smash all evidence of un-woke history and bring on a progressive utopia where enemies of The New Truth will be branded on the foreheads and dragged through the streets and stoned to death to appease the souls of the the ancestors of the aggrieved.
How about taking this to the people who actually say these things?
i realize now why you don’t actually do repartee.
I suppose you have emailed Burns and challenged his fans directly then?
Also let’s talk about the terms left and right. These terms have always been rather useless. After all it original referred to seating arrangements.
Originally it referred to opposition or support of the ancien regime.
For the right this meant, among other things, Absolutism, Feudalism, Catholic Church. Already you have problems since the first battled with the other two. And how many right wingers today support Absolute Monarchy?
I mean in France Fillion was a Republican and Macon is bemoaning the lack of strong leadership since Louis XVI was guillotined.
A for the left you had classical liberals and proto-socialists and proto-communists. Again real fissures between leftists.
To confuse matters the US was quite classically liberal in the first place which makes the right much more classically liberal in the first place. And Britain and its colonies as well we’re more classically liberal than Europe…
Not to mention that current leftist critiques of capitalism is quite similar to the old aristocracies attacks on classical liberalism.
Better yet Jimmy Carter. Didn’t he have Lee’S citizenship restored?
There was never a finer smell than the smell of a freshly opened, brand new, cassette tape.
I recall Gojira made a comment a few years back about how the New Deal was an example of the dangers of anti-intellectualism. Problem is FDR was a poltroon who went to the Ivy League. I think he may have also mention the Khmer Rouge (Pol Pot and friends went to the Sorbonne) and the Reign of Terror (Robespierre went to fancy schools). Mao, Stalin and Lenin weren’t uneducated either.
The issue with the libertarian intellectual community is that they seem to believe that if they could just have gotten an hour to sit with Obama that they would have been able to dazzle him with white papers showing beyond a shadow of a doubt that Obamacare was a bad idea, and surely good Ivy League intellectual Obama would have seen the light, if only those Tea Party poltroons had not poisoned the well with their gauche chants of REPEAL REPEAL REPEAL.
I don’t know which intellectual community you’re referring to here. I don’t think the likes of Block, Woods or Sowell believe that.
Cato, reason and maybe Long? The latter did gush over how Obama was the return of intelligence to the White House.
Cato, fair enough, but Reason? I wouldn’t view them as a core intellectual aspect of libertarianism, even before their quality decline over the past couple years.
Stalin was uneducated. He went to seminary school but dropped out. He was kept in the Party by Lenin because of his lack of intellectulism. Lenin referred to him as uncultured and kept him around as a link to the working class proltariat the the party was supposedly empowering.
He was the first of his family to go to school and got good grades…
And to think he was the slightly less insane option after Lenin’s death. Choosing between the guy who wanted permanent, constantly expanding murderous revolution, or the guy who wanted to get the country functional first?
Talk about no good options.
I read Koba the dread a few weeks ago. It was recommended by some one here, I don’t recall who. It was a pretty good take on stalin.
I’ve been reading the Eastern Border podcast which has a good series on Stalin
Ugh…*listening to*. Man I can’t put together a coherent thought today.
Also I agree with Eddie that Trump’s libertarianish behavior is an accident mostly. The Dems and GOP establishment hate him leaving only the conservatives to ally with. If the Dems and GOPe liked him more more we would plenty of “bipartisan” horrors.
As I said earlier today, accidental libertarianism is still libertarianism. Because conservatives have been the only sane people in the room his entire presidency (and probably for the forseeable future), libertarian ideas are actually making more headway than in any other presidency in the last 25 years. Keep pissing off the establishment, Trump!
Accidentalism libertarianism is probably the best we can hope for. Not like we can get it from the LP.
Talk about damning with faint praise!
Cato had some guy from the Niskansen institute who said that we need identity politics. Said that libertarians have to oppose Trump completely lest we be seen as Vichyites. Problem is the left hates libertarianism already and will earn no good will by opposing Trump.
I propose that we replace each Confederate statue with a statue of Dr. Thomas Sowell, Dr. Walter Williams, and/or Justice Clarence Thomas. If you oppose this plan, it means you hate black people.
+1 mind blown
Who is John Kluge?
The commenter known as John.
Hitler?
Oh, everybody is hanging out at this end of the thread.
I’ma retell a joke told on the ass end of an earlier thread by Gilmore:
So, the Dali Lama retires and opens a pizza joint. Guy comes in and says “Make me one with everything”.
Hey now, saying that to a Buddhist is like telling an anorexic to lighten up.
Why did the pizza burnt the hipster’s tongue?
Because he ate it before it was cool.
Reminds me of the old joke that seemed hilarious back in 5th grade.
What was Helen Keller’s worst day ever?
When she burned her mouth on a slice of pizza and couldn’t taste anything either.
The Dalai Lama didn’t get the joke.
i only saw the version (below) where they edited the joke and the awkward laugh to make it seem like he was like, “Ok bud, whatever”
it was a good punchline in search of a better delivery.
YOU CHANGED IT. IT WAS MINE!!! (files lawsuit)
actually, i stole it/modified it from this guy, who told it TO the dalai lama, who i think only laughed because he was being nice.
today in “wet streets cause rain”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-trump-gets-wrong-about-antifa/537048/
***
What Trump Gets Wrong About Antifa
If the president is concerned about violence on the left, he can start by fighting the white supremacist movements whose growth has fueled its rise.
…
Trump is right that, in Charlottesville and beyond, the violence of some leftist activists constitutes a real problem. Where he’s wrong is in suggesting that it’s a problem in any way comparable to white supremacism.
…
Antifa activists are sincere. They genuinely believe that their actions protect vulnerable people from harm.
…
And antifa’s vision is not as noxious. Antifa activists do not celebrate regimes that committed genocide and enforced slavery.
***
[head desk]
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”- Nietzsche
But what if the monster I become is a kaiju? I’d be OK with that.
Run for your lives! It’s DERPZILLA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En4aAGpVuYU
“Save us from fate, save us from hate,
Save ourselves before it’s too late.
Come to our need, hear our plea,
Save ourselves before the earth bleeds.” – Metallica
I wonder if the person extolling the sincerity of antifa is doing so sincerely…
“Antifa activists are sincere”
They are sincere marxists.
Wait a minute I thought leftist violence was not happening and calling it out was the same as endorsing neo-nazis?
You must have a different version of Antifa than the ones we have on this planet, because antifa doesn’t to have a problem with people up wearing Che t-shirts and waving USSR flags. They’re not against murderous regimes in general, they’re just picking on one specific one specific ideologies that opposes their own murderous ideologies.
It’s like a sick joke.
-Would you kill one innocent person to create your Socialist Utopia?
-I can live with that.
-Would you kill 100 million innocent people to create your Socialist Utopia?
-That’s monstrous, what kind of person do you think I am?
-We’ve already established the kind of person you are. All we’re doing now is haggling over the cost.
If the president is concerned about violence on the left, he can start by
fighting the white supremacist movements whose growth hasallying with them and giving them victories, because that won’t fueledits rise.What a moron – “X is bad, so we should stop X by doing what X wants”.
The left are vapid and can’t see they’re acting like the Taliban when it comes to history, John.
They love deception and lies.
I read somewhere by a prog justifying the removal of symbols by saying Germany removed Nazi statues and replaced them with the victims.
Such is the depth of their intellectualism.
Rufus! What up Canada?!?!?
We have cucks running our country. That’s what up.
‘Progressive elements’ in a free trade deal with America.
What a bunch of nitwits.
We have jackasses in charge and I hope that the next election will at least punish their backwards stupidity.
At this point I’m praying for at least a minority government, because the next charismatic and competent military leader will lead to a coup.
Care to elaborate? Do you mean an auto coup by the liberals or the military will oust the current legislators?
i mean that, for better or for worse, military personnel have a better understanding of this country than backwards asshole politicians do. I’m willing to back a democratically elected group for awhile, but if they continue to fuck up certain views on the nature of the civic population I’m willing to overthrow them for the betterment of the nation.
We tried a minority government and got an awful health care law slapped on us.
The Chilling Effects of Openly Displayed Firearms
Charlottesville marks a new era of even bolder assertion of the right to threaten violence for political purposes.
David Frum
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/open-carry-laws-mean-charlottesville-could-have-been-graver/537087/
***
The carrying of firearms by random citizens into public places is typically defended as a contribution to public safety. If criminals must reckon with the possibility of armed resistance, they will hesitate to commit crimes—or so goes the theory. It’s a hard theory to prove or disprove, because the thing to be measured—“defensive gun use”—is so subjective. An altercation erupts after a traffic accident. One motorist raises his voice. The other displays a weapon. Has the weapon carrier prevented a crime? Or has the law empowered a subset of Americans to intimidate their neighbors? The Florida man who shot 17-year-old Jordan Davis dead for playing his music too loud also claimed he was acting in self-defense. If widespread gun carry enhances safety, why are countries that forbid it so much safer than the United States?
Whatever its merits, however, the theory of the crime-reducing effects of citizen carry applies only to concealed carry. Society receives the putative benefit of citizen carry only if the potential criminal does not know which potential victim might be armed.
***
[head desk]
Frum is wrong.
I would suspect that places with strict gun restriction have a much higher incidence of murder by poison, stabbing, and blunt force to the head.
Water is wet.
Why is the geographical majority of America (outside of certain criminal hotspots in major metro areas) just as safe as Europe? Why did the American crime rate only get as high as it is after the War on Drugs and War on Poverty? Why are there safe countries like Switzerland that are actually fairly permissive with their gun laws? Why are European women getting molested in public and nobody is stopping it?
Hitler?
Why is it that, when you actually analyze American gun violence based on region, it shows that the overwhelming amount of incidents come from areas with strict gun laws but plenty of illegal firearms?
SHUT UP NAZI SCUM!
I have brought up similar points before and it usually devolves into the above.
One time, when I pointed out that Houston is about the same size as Chicago, yet has lower crime despite lax gun laws, the prog basically said “well, of course there’s more crime in Chicago- there’s more black people there.”
Whoa! You said it, not me.
Seriously, it’s because of power. For some reason, stoopit rules. Despite the lessons of history, people still want free shit and to punish those more successful than them.
We’re petty, vindictive primates who share 99.9% of our genome with chimpanzees.
Most people are stupid. To get to this site, you’re probably not like most people.
There are most people, and then there are smart people. Some smart people use this smarts to make money, create art, contribute to humanity. Some smart people use the gift to manipulate other people into doing bad things purely to achieve and maintain power.
This civilization has run it’s course, and we’re just fighting over butchering.
Frum is a jackass and I fully support you keeping him so we don’t have to deal with his neocon bullshit.
Thanks America.
This one Beinart is strong in the ways of Derp.
whoops, wrong cite
Thom Hartmann goes full retard
Why the GOP Sides With the Klan and the Nazis
If you can’t win on issues, you win on racism.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/gop-and-donald-trump-are-same
***
They don’t care if the air and water are poisoned: they have super-fancy air filters for their mansions and yachts, and their own water supplies.
***
I larfed
So when is he joining Reason?
2Chili debated him on the internet sales tax:
http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/13/jd-tuccille-debates-thom-hartmann-over-i
Hartmann hates libertarians. He refers to it as the velvet glove over the iron fist of racism.
So how does Hartmann handle the cognitive dissonance of having (had? I don’t know if it is still on) a show on Russia Today?
After RT was insinuated in the ‘Russian meddling in the US election’ I never heard a peep about Larry King having his show there.
Reason guys used to go on it until avout the time Crimea happened. Do Rockwellians still go on it?
RT got dropped from my dish package when I downgraded. Now the only ‘news’ channels I have are CNN and Headline News (which hosted Glenn Beck when he was against GWB, but cut ties when Obama was elected, for him to land on FOX to oppose the current president. I know Beck is a wackadoodle, but that just shows the political football they play)
A couple of cocktails will solve that /Reason and Cato
“The Atlanta march traveled from Woodruff Park to Piedmont Park Sunday, where some damaged the Peace Monument, erected in 1911,” a blog on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website said. “The sculpture features an angel standing above a Confederate soldier, guiding him to lay down his weapon.”
Where does this shit end? Are they going to destroy statues of ancient Roman or Egyptian leaders since they no doubt made use of slave labor? Why not? If it’s wrong to have a statue of a slaveowner sitting around, what’s the delay?
Is it wrong for Cincinnati to honor its namesake, since the Roman Empire used slavery during his short stints as dictator? Statue of Cincinnatus in Cincy
Where does this shit end?
With antifa and their Marxist sponsors in jail, or with America stretched out on the rack being purified of its history and culture by Marxists and their manifold useful idiots in academia, the media, the ruling class, and the Deep State.
file under: Ice cream, Mandrake. Children’s ice cream.
Trump May Actually Have Millions of Americans Hypnotized, Expert Says
Maybe it’s not just distraction tactics, but actual mind control.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-may-actually-have-millions-americans-hypnotized-expert-says
***
Eric Greenleaf, director of the Milton H. Erickson Institute of the Bay Area, is an expert in hypnosis as a science of psychotherapy. He believes Trump is inadvertently hypnotizing Americans, including the powerful (and supposedly independent-thinking) members of his Cabinet. And in one way or another, we’re all under his trance—not just the folks who voted him in.
***
I larfed.
And about Milton H. Erickson:
***
Masson was particularly concerned by Erickson’s own reports of cases in which he acted in a manner he felt might be construed as sexually inappropriate. He even goes so far as to suggest that Erickson may have obtained “sexual pleasure” from cases like the following, where he reports asking a young female client to gradually strip naked in his office, allegedly as a psychotherapeutic exercise. It is to note, however, that Mrs Erickson was present in the room. Furthermore, Erickson presents the case as illustrating the power of shock therapy against inhibitions and rigidities of character, claiming his technique has freed the patient from her incapacity to marry her fiancé.
“Now you need to know how to undress and go to bed in the presence of a man. So start undressing.” Slowly, in an almost automatic fashion, she undressed. I had her show me her right breast, her left breast, her right nipple, her left nipple. Her belly button. Her genital area. Her knees. Her gluteal [buttock] regions. I asked her to point where she would like to have her husband kiss her. I had her turn around [naked]. I had her dress slowly. She dressed. I dismissed her.[18]
Masson also notes that Erickson, as a psychiatrist in the Arizona State Hospital, was an enthusiastic advocate of the use of restraints, a subject which he delivered a well-attended talk on, and frequently had patients confined by straitjackets. Masson cites various instances of Erickson’s behaviour toward psychiatric patients which he considers “cruel, crude jokes”. Referring to Erickson’s authoritarian approach as “prison-camp therapy” and “therapist-as-boss”, Masson concludes, “It is not surprising that Erickson succumbed to the opportunity to abuse his patients, as the examples quoted make clear.”
***
Huh. Sounds legit.
Might as well rename the place after something less silly, like Hypno-Toad.
Is the Moon a Trump hologram?
“restrain this patient while I hypnotize her to undress! It’s not a sex thing! My wife is here! Now, orderly leave the room! So my wife and I can science this chick!”
“I love science f****ing!”
awkward moment from my early teens, my parents were flipping through channels and stopped on Cinemax, and I said, “You don’t want to watch this, it’s a smut movie about a woman using science to convince women to go lesbian”.
That is awkward. What normal teenager wouldn’t want to watch a smut movie about a woman using science to convince women to go lesbian?
“Drugs are for losers. And Hypnotism is for losers with big, creepy eyebrows.”
Ok, so I won’t be so bold as to ask anyone here to denounce any form of speech. But for fucks sake, I can also ask we don’t adopt dumb speech. So, can we stop using the term cuck in reference to politics in any form other than ironic? It’s a stupid term, used by stupid people…now if you don’t mind I’m going to go watch my wife get railed by a mandingo while I masturbate.
I like referring to people I don’t like as dingdongs and windowlickers.
These are pretty good too:
KLAZOMANIAC
Someone who only seems able to speak by shouting.
ZOILIST
Zoilus was a Greek grammarian who became known as one of the most vitriolic critics of Homer, author of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Consequently, a zoilist is an overly-critical and judgmental nitpicker.
I use “snotnoggin”
I refer to my political opponents as hacks, scum and various other descriptive views.
Is it really a stupid term? Ugly, yes, and I myself would say something like “pathological altruism”–see avatar–but how exactly should one describe something like Romney’s groveling before violent communists or any of the myriad antics of PM Zoolander?
Brow beaten? or the myriad synonyms
There are centuries worth of words
Those don’t capture the meaning at all.
Of course not. Roget was a cis-het white male.
Doodoo heads?
I’m not big on the history of America’s hat, but I thought Zoolander’s dad was the one who enjoyed being cuckholded?
And as for insults, I like ‘pederast’. It is a nice $10 word that still in usage enough that it is still in the dictionary, but not in common enough usage that the insulted party knows how to respond beyond being slightly insulted by the tone, and has to vaguely defend themselves and pretend they are super smart and know what the word means when they obviously don’t.
Well so much for my Hatreon plan (try hatreon.us for an after-school special).
Seriously…I’m starting to wonder what the general options are for un-good-thinkers if it is growing increasingly complicated to even find a platform just because you disagree with someone. I’ll look again at vid.me and gab this weekend (minds is on the short list too).
Not that I’m really expecting to get banned for anything I say (so far) but just the principle of the thing. – and if I wind up following creators I like. Not sure how Razor and Styx, etc will react to losing funding from hatreon, etc – unless it’s just a temporary hosting swap.
The short-sighted, willful ignorance is absolutely staggering – a complete absence of self-awareness on the part of these major tech companies. At this point…..does anyone lose anything by regulating them as utilities when it comes to the reach and operational impact to average users?
It needs to be done if this continues.
God make speakers, but EMP from atmospheric nuclear detonations made them equal.
does anyone lose anything by regulating them as utilities
Self respect?
4 basic principles should govern any discussion of the affairs in Charlottesville:
1. The Nazis and white supremacists of Unite the Right are repulsive and decent people should reject them.
2. As long as they’re not assaulting anyone or directly threatening anyone, the Nazis and white supremacists still have a right to protest.
3. The IWW Wobblies of Antifa are repulsive and decent people should reject them.
4. As long as they’re not assaulting anyone or directly threatening anyone, the Wobblies still have a right to counter-protest.
Honestly, I’m shocked and appalled that any of this is in any way controversial. All of it used to be part and parcel of America’s civic religion. Yet the left and the media seem bound and determined to ignore points two and three.
^So much this. I need to rant and rave a little bit so I guess I’ll use this probably-dead thread. The political/media response to this is so far beyond the bounds of rationality that it’s literally driving me to distraction. The folks in my workplace, who are normal, everyday, largely non-political people bobble their heads chicken-style along with the media narrative and frankly it’s getting under my skin. I’ve heard statements like “I saw a meme comparing antifa with storming the beaches in Normandy; it’s kinda had to argue with that.” That statement coming from a part time cop who also copsplained to me why the police just couldn’t interfere when the statue came down because “officer safety.” So the same fucking people you just compared to the army on D-day are also such a threat to your fucking safety that your kind can’t stop an act of brazen vandalism you glorified tax collector coward? I had another person tut-tut Trump because “he really needed to just condemn Nazi-ism.” Tried to explain that the media isn’t really interested in him condemning Nazi-ism, it’s all about condoning and legitimizing violent leftist assholes…..which was met by stares of horror. People are so easily manipulated that they literally cannot imagine taking anything but a consensus approved position. I know there are a lot of people on here who think that the left is imploding and they are in the beginning of their decline…..I wish I could agree…..IMO opinion they are consolidating power, successfully marginalizing anyone to the “right” (to include small-“L” libertarians, paleo-conservatives, etc) of Mitt Romney and successfully advancing cultural Marxism. I cannot see how this gets much worse before it gets better……I’m starting to think that seeing these antifa assholes (or there children) tear down the Jefferson memorial in my lifetime is almost a foregone conclusion.
*hard to argue with that
*Cannot see how this gets better before it gets much worse
Man I’m suckin’ today
I completely agree. I would only add one other principle.
5. Whatever happened at Charlottesville, people should tell the truth about it even if the truth makes people uncomfortable or is not something people want to hear.
Completely agreed. It should probably be a meta-principle governing just about all discussions.
You left out number 5:
Anyone, whether Nazi, white supremacist, commie, or useful idiot should be jailed if they commit a crime.
That could be because they actually know some black people, unlike the Upper crust whose closest interactions with black people are talking to Al Roker.
This may be the best article and take on the events in Charlottesville that I’ve read so far.
John, good stuff. Glad you made it over and are a contributor. Hopefully, the lack of trolls and idiots here will help you keep your blood pressure under control.
Has anyone seen any estimated totals of the number of people present on either side of the protests/rally? John mentions 200 at one point. I found a surprisingly informative Wikipedia article already exists on the event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally). The best number is gives is that at some point that morning prior to the planned start of the event “…an estimated 500 protesters and more than a thousand counterprotesters were on the site.”
I imagine more people showed up after that, but how much more? 500 seems like a relatively insignificant number of people. Even if they were all 100% neo-nazi white supremecists, that number doesn’t come close to the level of pants-shitting that’s resulted.
They said THOUSANDS of racists would be there. SPLC was saying it would be the biggest hate gathering of its kind in DECADES!! Seems like people were trying to pre-emptively whip up Leftist hysteria… and look how that turned out. Funny that the Wikipedia article mentions similar white supremecist gatherings already occured THIS YEAR at the same park in Charlottesville. Had it not been for leftist media hysteria, this event would’ve likely just ended the same way the other ones did… in obscurity.