2020 election – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

November 2, 2023November 2, 2023

The Trump Personality in Politics

Ilhan Omar calls on House leadership to take action against Lauren ... — Part of the House Republican clown caucus (l-r): Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene

As a public-school teacher for 30 years, I know the critical rule of classroom management. If one kid’s bad behavior is left unattended, it won’t take long for the classroom to become a zoo. A parallel is Trump’s entry into the Republican presidential sweepstakes in 2015. More than Trump entered the race, also came his personality. It has left an impression on certain adolescent-minded clusters of grownups in the Republican Party – both registered voters and some in elected office. Think of the clown caucus who engineered the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.

“Trumpian” boils down to braggadocio, bombast, simplistic and blunt issues in a blunt style with a lot of bullying of friends and foes alike. It’s the over-the-top behavior of a person who craves the tabloid limelight. The Obama birth certificate dustup is a classic example of a simplistic and blunt issue to be exploited for personal gain, which would be Trump’s signature approach to modern politics. The only thing is, the bombast that drew so much attention ended in Trump scaping egg off his face when Obama produced the document.

Few, however, would predict that a windbag’s curtly rudeness would have an appeal among the rank and file. And the whole style seemed to be electorally validated when Trump won in a 2016 black swan event. Success can bring out the worst in people, and “Trumpian” came to be as fashionable as the John Wayne swagger in the 1950s.

While the personality type is appealing to certain party voters, it’s a big turnoff to getable swaths of the general electorate. After 2016, Trump’s appeal down ballot was a disaster. Let’s not forget 2022, at a time when the Democrats have made a shambles of the country, the Republicans could only squeak out a bare majority in the House leaving the clown caucus in a position to put their Trumpian hijinks on public display. The Republicans are proving that neo-Marxism is survivable if Trump, his political personality, and the clown caucus are the face of party.

In Orwell’s “1984”, Big Brother had a face. In today’s rendition of the Republican Party, its face is that of Donald Trump with the likes of Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Majorie Taylor Greene, Matt Rosendale, and Nancy Mace in a chorus line behind. Big Brother wouldn’t be laughed at; the picture of Trump and the Trumpkins elicits guffaws at first, followed by beads of sweat from the realization that they have actual power. To be sure, these are not the kind of people that I would trust with my kids.

IBM software patch upgrades power grid to version 2.0 - ExtremeTech — Big brother from 1984

95,000 words, many of them ominous, from Trump's tongue ...

The despicability of the Democratic Party and a sizeable faction in the Republican Party is registered in polls, something that you’ll recognize if you rely on more than Laura Ingraham for your news. She doesn’t hesitate to bellow a poll with Trump ahead of Biden. Yet, the reality in the most recent Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll presents a more complicated picture (see below). Yes, among Republican primary voters, Trump is far and away the favorite with 58%. Metrics of enthusiasm for Trump are high among these voters. But – here’s the key number – among the general electorate, Biden squeaks out a tiny lead, essentially a tie.

Trump is favored on a host of issues – the border, economy, foreign affairs – but when offered a choice between Biden and Trump, it’s essentially a dead heat. What’s holding Trump and the Republicans back from a sweeping lead? Look at Trump’s negatives. He’s even more reviled than Biden in a recent NBC News poll (see below). Biden’s negative rating stands at 49%; Trump registers a 54% downside. Megaphones like Laura Ingraham of Fox News would mention a Trump lead in a poll’s head-to-head matchup, but nary a word about Trump’s unlikability. Does “putting lipstick on a pig” remind you of anything?

The Trump personality is only appealing to a sizeable portion of the Republican Party base. It’s reviled nearly everywhere else. Trumpian bluster might carry a candidate through the primary, but in places other than a crimson district, it’s the kiss of death. If you want to stop the Democrats’ neo-Marxism, first win elections. What’s a turn-on for primary voters can be poison in the general election.

Democrats know this. That’s why they’re interfering in Republican primaries to elect Trumpians. In my home state of Montana, mysterious ads are appearing that throw mud on Tim Sheehy, who’s challenged in the primary by the Trumpian Matt Rosendale. Not a word in these hit pieces about Rosendale.

The group – Last Best Place PAC – is an undercover Democrat operation (see below) to help get Rosendale the nomination and, thus, an easier challenger for incumbent Democrat John Tester. It’s the same Democrat tried-and-true tactic from 2022. It’s not out of distaste for Sheehy that drives Schumer and company to stick it to Sheehy. He knows, like everyone else who are not fans of the Trump schtick, that a Trumpian is a weaker candidate. What worked in Arizona, Pennsylvania, et al, in 2022 has a good chance of succeeding in 2024. Watch Republicans rush headlong into the trap.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Further, watch an example of a boisterous Trumpian on full display, Lauren Boebert from September of this year. After this, is she like Trump – “I could stand in the middle of 5th Ave. and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters” – and therefore immune from the voters’ wrath? Are some Republican voters that morally stunted? Is the Trumpian personality that hypnotizing?

The Trumpian personality came through the door in 2016 and has entrenched itself. At this point, the party will have to face a disaster before the malignancy can be removed. Like a classroom under the control of hellions, we have a party that has allowed this element to run roughshod. And we will pay the piper.

RogerG

Debunking “2,000 Mules”

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* Please read John McCormack’s rebuttal to “2,000 Mules” at https://www.nationalreview.com/…/06/12/sorry-trump-lost/

I have been asked to watch Dinesh D’Souza’s “2,000 Mules” by people who believe it to be gospel on the November 2020 election. I didn’t because spending the money elsewhere mattered more to me. Heaven knows, I got the gist from a host of Trump-friendly publications and websites without the added expense. Being a man on the right, access is no problem. After reading about many of the same sources referenced by D’Souza in the film, D’Souza’s argument ranks up there with anything written by the author Dan Brown (“Angels & Demons”, “The Da Vinci Code”, and “Inferno”, etc.). The only difference between the two D’s is that Brown acknowledges his work to be fiction.

There is a debate here that needs to be aired. Trump, the leading contender for the Republican 2024 crown, is running on … what for it … November 2020. His contention that the election was stolen is the centerpiece of his campaign, along with the long trail of verbal abuse directed at anyone he doesn’t like, normally people who haven’t shown sufficient obeisance. He made it the focus of his return to the center stage, so it deserves a careful examination. John McCormack gives one of the best and most concise critiques of the Trump claims that I’ve come across.

First, from the get-go, the notion that a massive, sprawling plot mostly across five states, maybe more, involving hundreds of thousands of fellow conspirators with none of this huge crowd being detected or slipping up boggles the mind. That alone, without seeing the film, should cause a person to be very leery. There are millions of spine-tingling stories across the internet of mysterious dark forces bringing down the world. How is this one any different? They, like all tall tales of expansive conspiracies, have to maintain an inhuman level of operational secrecy. The absence of at least a few dufuses to spill the beans among the hundreds of thousands of participants (voters, couriers, organizers) simply can’t pass the smell test.

Here’s one rule for rationally assessing conspiracy claims: believability is in inverse proportion to the number of participants.

The “mules” in the film are the 54,000 couriers (not 2,000) who allegedly stuffed ballot boxes in key locations. None has been fingered by Trump’s army of independent bounty hunters, nor law enforcement, to prove the existence of the plot. Nor will the producers and publisher divulge the names of the left’s NGO’s who are supposedly at the center of the scheme. Dominion’s $787 million lawsuit award hangs over the producers and publishers who might be inclined to name some. Apparently, millions of dollars for over-priced attorneys and the need to bribe some in the jury pool is a bit too daunting to run the risk.

The database for the story consists of cellphone pings and security camera footage on adjacent buildings. I’m reminded of the techie acronym gigo: garbage data goes in, garbage comes out. Data doesn’t stand alone; it is massaged by prior assumptions. So, if you go into the issue assuming something is fishy, don’t be surprised that in your imagination a fish pops out. But it’s not a fish; it’s the lingering smell in your nostrils from cleaning the garbage cans the day before. The pings could be delivery and Uber drivers and the surveilled clutches of ballots at drop boxes turn out to be a family member legally depositing ballots for the family.

Not that fraud doesn’t happen. Of course, it does. It occurs in every election, and is made easier by ballot harvesting, no voter ID, and shot gunning ballots through the mail turning election day into election season. But it doesn’t happen like this. When you have elections like this, elections begin to lose respect and you end up fanning the imaginations of the already unhinged. That’s the real lesson of 2020.

Let’s go back to election day being . . . election day, and 70% of the ballots cast in-person. Add voter ID and we might have more people accepting the results. We don’t need to follow a self-serving narcissist into another electoral defeat. The GOP’s self-preservation should trump Trump.

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RogerG

April 29, 2023April 29, 2023

The Sovietization of Science in America

October 2020 - Scientific American — October 2020 – Scientific American

Nature - 15 October 2020 » PDF Digital Magazines — Nature – 15 October 2020

The communist rulers in the old Soviet Union gradually came to believe that opposition to them was more than a different point of view but symptomatic of mental illness. Dissent from Karl Marx’s mental prism was tantamount to being emotionally disturbed. They developed a form of pseudo-scientific psychiatry to suppress disagreement, and the same thing is germinating in the United States: the distortion of science to pursue political ends.

In the USSR of the 1960’s-80’s, a pseudo-scientific jargon was invented to give The Science the sound of legitimacy. An entire fake science was cobbled together by a professor of Soviet psychiatry, Andrei Snezhnevsky of the impressive sounding USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. His diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia” and “delusion of reformism” was applied to anyone whose beliefs led them to renounce their atheism, attempt to immigrate, engage in protests, or practice a faith. If you think that it’s not happening here, think again.

Leonid Plyushch in 1976, after his release from a mental asylum where he was held for years by the Kremlin. (photo: Agence France-Presse)

Let’s be clear, “The Science” must not be confused with science. It’s an institutionalized variant of science that carries with it all the norms of organizational man/woman/whatever. People in organizations don’t behave like man/woman/whatever in their natural and private settings. A group personality coalesces around shared expectations and norms and frequently morphs into shared opinions. Once a shared attachment to collectivism takes root, for instance, the organizational politicization of science will soon follow. It’s happened, and is happening.

Our science is increasingly politicized to promote highly contentious opinions. Disagreement is persecuted as ignorance and bigotry, and maybe even attributed to a disturbed emotional comportment. Ideologically partisan journalists such as Chris Mooney in his books “The Republican War on Science” (2005) and the follow-up “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality” come close to imitating Andrei Snezhnevsky when they hide their glaring political opinions under the cloak of “The Science”.

VIDEO: Chris Mooney: The Republican War on Science - UCTV - University of California Television — Chris Mooney

The tactic of branding your political opponents with dementia isn’t limited to Mooney. Express some skepticism about the extravagant and ideologically tinged claims on highly debatable issues from climate change to transgenderism to systemic racism and you’ll face a fusillade of abuse and threats to your livelihood, and maybe jail time if they can get away with it. Having these forbidden thoughts isn’t a career enhancer. You’ll be erased off the ledger of respectable humanity. The word “denier” serves the same purpose as “sluggish schizophrenia”.

Zeks (gulag prisoners) in Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” often referred to “beyond the wire” (or something like it) for the world outside the camp. In today’s politics masquerading as science, the equivalent of zeks, or “deniers”, are accused of straying “beyond the wire” of the approved mental prison – synonymous with “scientific consensus”. Straying beyond the wire is the excuse for the gatekeepers – er, mental prison guards – to put The Science at the service of a particular political party, the Democratic Party, who helps keep the fence electrified, and at the disservice of the other who questions the very existence of the camp in the first place. Political endorsements by science figureheads, organizations, and their publications have followed, and to the detriment of their reputations as they come to be viewed as just another collection of political hacks.

Politicized Science - YouTube

It hasn’t occurred to the guards that naturally non-political organizations and their participants – think professional sports: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, etc. – alienate half, maybe more, of their clientele when they identify with one side in the country’s political divide. It’s a no-brainer: endorse Democrats, anger Republicans. At least half the public, maybe more, begins to see them as little different from a super-PAC. Buying a ticket or product of the compromised enterprise is perceived as the equivalent of a political donation. The same political self-labeling occurs when scientists step into partisan battles and the culture war.

Phil Jackson, the famous coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, doesn’t watch the NBA because it’s too political (see below). When players were allowed to festoon their jerseys with political slogans and obscuring their names, his grandkids recounted a particular play with “Justice went to the basket and Equal Opportunity knocked him down.” It’s funny if it wasn’t so tragic to the sport. And now The Science is turning off people in like manner.

NBA, gli slogan più scelti dai giocatori sulle proprie maglie: domina 'Equality' | Sky Sport

What NBA Players can do to support BLM instead of boycotting the playoffs | by Jessica Lim ...

The culture war, or revolution, has a clear partisan flavor to it. The high-stakes contest is one of revolution and counterrevolution with the D’s in the vanguard of the revolution and R’s trying to put the brakes on it. The journal “Nature” in 2020 jumped with both feet into the cultural and partisan war in a ringing endorsement of Joe Biden. In an editorial that could have come from Biden’s campaign staff – or Stalin’s chief prosecutor in the show trials, Andrei Vyshinsky – they branded the R’s candidate as “accelerating climate change, razing wilderness, fouling air and killing more wildlife — as well as people.” Trump may be a lot of things, but singlehandedly obliterating the planet is a bit of a stretch. This is the language of the zealot, not a lab scientist grappling with a hypothesis.

Not to be outdone, as if on cue, “Scientific American”, the sister magazine to “Nature” (same publisher, Springer Nature), issued a partisan clarion call in an October 2020 editorial titled “Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden” (see below). Their hyperbole descends into the same political septic tank: “The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science.” The hubris is astounding. They claim to own The Science and the zeks must be kept from straying “beyond the wire”.

U.S. Rep. Rush Holt criticizes federal approach to airline security, full-body scanners - nj.com — Eight term Democrat representative Rush Holt, Jr., was chosen to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the publisher of “Science” and other prominent journals. A partisan bias in The Science?

But they don’t own the science; they own a collection of political opinions. At the root of these opinions is an affection for collectivism. It’s the one thing that unites the denizens of The Science. Somehow, in their mind, collectivism became the thinking man’s (or woman’s/whatever) ideology. They were perhaps blinkered by an academic marination in it without knowing it. It was embedded in their insular classroom instruction as undergrads. Hayek’s freedom-based spontaneous order, or anything like it, was never allowed to grace their intellects.

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'Spontaneous Order is system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation, and trial and error F.A. Hayek b4 Spontaneors Order'

A constrained education is woven with an endemic apocalypse-mongering which turns all issues into calls for collectivist action: it’s existential and therefore we can’t afford free markets, freedom of conscience, capitalism, or anyone practicing real science which is based on a healthy skepticism of extravagant claims. A healthy scientific intellect would raise eyebrows at hysterical calls to eliminate an entire car fleet and transportation system in the span of twenty years. A healthy scientific intellect would raise eyebrows at burdening an already overstretched grid with electric-everything and radically shifting it to low-density energy after banning high-density. This isn’t science. It’s ideology on the march.

Not unlike The Science in the Soviet Union. The gambit is the same: make the science an adjunct of the politics and then weaponize it against your political opponents. It’s a very dangerous thing to do for a country in an increasingly perilous time. It’ll ruin us. Khruschev did say, after all, “We’ll bury you.” Well, we’ll bury ourselves.

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RogerG

Read here for more:

* Much thanks to the work of Christine Rosen of the American Enterprise Institute in “The Folly of Nature’s Biden Endorsement”, 3/30/2023, National Review Online, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/04/17/the-folly-of-natures-biden-endorsement/

* “NBA champion coach Phil Jackson says he doesn’t watch basketball anymore because it got too political”, Lauren Sforza, The Hill, 4/23/2023, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/nba-champion-coach-phil-jackson-says-he-doesn-t-watch-basketball-anymore-because-it-got-too-political/ar-AA1aeBfW

* “Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden”, Editors, The Scientific American, 10/1/2020, at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden1/

March 26, 2023March 26, 2023

A Time of “Repressive Tolerance” and a Broad Depravity

Marx on the beach: the forgotten story of Yugoslavia’s rebel communist summer school — The ... — Philosopher Herbert Marcuse makes a speech at the Praxis Summer School, 1968

“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.” —- Herbert Marcuse in “Repressive Tolerance”, 1965 (see below)

Let’s face it, the above quote from Herbert Marcuse (an acolyte of Antonio Gramsci) is emblematic of the rise of the Left’s totalitarian thought control that plagues our times. You know, you’ve seen its fruits in the neo-Marxist critical theory littered in your child’s school curriculum, our teachers’ training, and the campus anarchy spawned by “restorative justice” disciplinary policies. Even casual attention to the news during the 2020 summer of mayhem would expose you to the wholesale defacing of monuments and memorials and urban centers being set ablaze. The gray lady, The New York Times, jumped into the fray with a neo-Marxist rewrite of our history in “The 1619 Project”, which is inserted in bits and pieces in the instruction in many of our classrooms. And let’s not forget the campus mob beatdowns of contrarian voices to the zeitgeist in higher ed from Middlebury to Stanford. Speaking of repressive tolerance (?).

Herbert Marcuse in a heated exchange with a student, from the 1960’s. Practicing a little “repressive tolerance”?

Taking apart the above witticism from Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” essay, it’s a call for intolerance by hiding it in oxymorons. Repressive tolerance? Liberation by repression? But it is convincing to minds heavily marinated in the intellectual mush.

These young minds are immersed in “woke” thought, and “woke” thought is critical theory, and critical theory is obeisance to the claim of systemic oppression. You see, the whole civilization, its society and culture, according to critical theory are oriented to oppress the “other”, or so-called outgroups as defined by characteristics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, etc. Everything about the civilization, its law, principles, institutions, are cynically appraised for their supposed malevolent impact on the “other”. The basic rights of free speech, association, conscience, religion must be reinterpreted as part of the system of oppression. The effort is a very longwinded way of saying that we, the self-appointed spokesmen of the oppressed, have the power to silence you. Welcome to the college campus of today.

Something is afoot, and it ain’t pleasant. Our culture and nearly all our institutions are being hijacked by this neo-Marxist junk-thought. And as happens with a radicalization of the Left, there is a commensurate radicalization of the Right, which oddly takes the form of a cult of personality and performance art politics. Trump and dramatic displays of bellicosity replace strategic and reasoned confrontation to the nonsense. Fringe extremes they may be, but we still are in a hell of a mess.

Neo-Marxism is now the prevailing doctrine of the Democratic Party. It comes in the form of “diversity, equity, inclusion” (DEI — or DIE if you will) and furtherance of ESG (environment, social, governance) in the c-suite. It’s a combination of a neo-Jim Crow (race/gender/sexuality-based favoritism) and a dismantlement of western civilization in private sector venues. As for the Right, they have the utterances of Fox News primetime and some talk radio hosts. These venues are deathly afraid of the personality cult in their audiences.

Hugh Hewitt on his radio show regularly declares himself to be in Switzerland (neutral) in the coming Republican presidential primary fight. All contestants will be treated as moral equivalents, probably in a bid to avoid angering the large Trumper listener base for talk radio. The fear is certainly evident at Fox News. The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News unearthed a treasure trove of duplicity and alarm on the part of Fox News’s celebrity pundits and execs. In released emails and tweets, the channel’s stars spitefully attack the news division over its coverage of the 2020 election and aftermath. The vitriol is lathered in ample dollops of hubris – “we have the power”.

The anxiety in Fox News headquarters in the wake of the 2020 election was palpable. Execs and producers noticed the absence of evidence to support the election-was-stolen angle. Tommy Firth, Laura Ingraham’s producer, is exasperated with the storyline of Dominion rigging the vote for Biden: “This Dominion shit is going to give me an aneurysm – as many times as I’ve told Laura [sic] it’s bs, she sees shit posters and trump [sic] tweeting about it.”

Laura Ingraham: Trump voters didn't riot, they rallied [Video]

The call of Arizona for Biden was particularly galling to Fox’s commentariat. Laura Ingraham blames exec Irena Briganti for the call: “She is coordinating this.” To which Tucker Carlson responds, “Without question. She hates us.” Sean Hannity chimes in, “Why would anyone defend that call [the Arizona call] [sic].” Later, Laura noticed a ratings fall after the announcement and concludes, “Friday numbers aren’t that surprising with Trump impending loss – but how much of the bleed is due to anger at the news channel [division]”. She levels her distaste for the news division: “My anger at the news channel [division] is pronounced”.

"Every Institution Is Run By People Who Will Use Any Means to Disclude Them" - Tucker Carlson on ...

Tucker’s response is telling because he predicts ratings damage by angering the channel’s Trump-laced audience:

“It should be [sic] We devote our lives to building an audience and they [the execs] let Chris Wallace and Leland fucking Vittert [host, reporter] wreck it. Too much.”

After asking, “What can we do?”, Laura answers her own question in a series of tweets: “I think the three of us have enormous power” – “We have more power than we know or exercise” – “Together”. Hubris follows from immense power, the power to craft the story to appease an audience? I can’t say at this point, but the communications are suggestive.

Hannity Sows Doubt in Election Results, Suggests PA Do-Over

Sean Hannity cuts to the chase in a tweet exchange with Steve Doocy: “You don’t piss off the base”.

So, the Left’s cancel culture joins the Right’s reluctance to aggravate its base to produce either indoctrination through censorship or information that conforms to only blatant confirmation bias. Either way, dangerous fairy tales take root to mangle the public discussion.

Both sides are pandered by only information and stories congenial to their sensibilities. The effect on the young is shocking. They are the ones who are immersed in a Marcusian cognitive hellscape. Herbert Marcuse and his colleagues at the Marxist Frankfurt School – aka Institute for Social Research at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany – scattered like rats on a sinking ship when the Nazis seized Germany. Many came to the U.S. and joined faculties at prestigious American universities such as Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley, etc. Therein spread the mental straitjacket of neo-Marxism for our young.

Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance” intolerance became deeply embedded in campus culture. Most recently, on March 9, it was on full display at Stanford when the school’s Federalist Society invited Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan to speak. The essence of Marcuse’s logic to stifle speech from the Right came out of the mouth of the school’s Dean of DEI, Tirien Steinbach, when she took to the lectern after students prevented Duncan from speaking and lectured him on how “hurtful” his opinions and rulings were to the “community”. She and the bullying students claimed the total power to determine what was “hurtful” and prevent any further discussion. It’s classic Marcuse; repressive tolerance in operation.

See video below. Watch Stanford’s DEI dean takeover the lectern from Judge Duncan.

Marcuse ended his academic career at UC, San Diego. For academics braying against capitalism and western civilization, they clearly flock to western civ’s most comfortable, well-paid sinecures in the most pleasant spots on earth.

Herbert Marcuse enjoying the good life at UC San Diego, the 1960’s.

Check this out: they even had a “summer school”, the Korčula (Praxis) Summer School, or camp, on Croatia’s soothing Adriatic coast from 1963 to 1974 when the Marxist Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito shut it down. Some participants referred to it as “Marx on the beach”; others called it a gathering for “dionysaic socialism” (see below). Tenure, hobnobbing with similarly privileged fellow Marxists, adequate incomes, and academic freedom work to insulate them from having to live in the consequences of their detached ruminations. It makes for a very special caste of Brahmins, one that will produce a living hell for everyone not so privileged to be among the revolution’s vanguard elite.

Come to think of it, this is a time of “repressive tolerance” intolerance and a broad depravity on both the Left and a slice of the Right. The Left tries to set themselves up as commissars of daily life, allowing only what conforms to their sensibilities. Some on the Right want to be cradled only in the pronouncements of the chief priest of the Trump cult. The reality is that we need to seize back control of K-grad school from this brewing totalitarianism, and Trump-the-drama-queen should hang up the MAGA hat and enjoy retirement.

tma_sierrahills: Ramirez Cartoon: "Tolerance" Protester v Freedom of Speech

RogerG

The GOP’s TPAC Suicide Squadron for 2024

Steve Bannon blasts Murdochs, Fox News in fiery CPAC speech | The Hill — Steve Bannon at CPAC 2023

CPAC may be turning into a pure Trump personality cult. The first “C” in the anacronym stands for conservative, but truth in advertising demands that it be replaced by a “T” for Trump Political Action Committee – TPAC. If Steve Bannon’s recent speech before the group is any indication, and the thunderous reception that it received, the Trump hero-worship brigades are fully prepared to torpedo the GOP’s chances in 2024 and saddle us with more of the looney left in the seats of power.

Watch a portion of the Bannon speech in the link below.

Bannon is nuts, and so is the TPAC audience. If the numbers in a recent poll are reasonably accurate, 43% of registered Republicans support Trump as the party’s nominee. 43% of Republicans equates to 12% of all registered voters because 40% of all party registrations nationwide are Democrats versus 29% Republicans. Do the math. 43% of 29% equals roughly 12%.

A good portion of that 12% are diehards for an intensely polarizing figure. Let’s say half of the 12% are zealous true-believers (only-Trumpers) which reduces the kamikaze recruits to 6% of all registered voters. Trump only gets more polarizing as he pushes a “stop the steal” story that he can’t prove in court and mires others who were sympathetic into more legal trouble for lending some credence to it.

Trial Lawyer Richard on Twitter: "I think they'll follow him until his downfall. Richard Nixon ...

Dominion v. Fox News is only one case in point. The network and its primetime lineup should be applauded for their honesty rather than castigated by a fanatic like Bannon. The depositions and disclosures of Fox News internal communications in court forces me to partly reevaluate some of my earlier criticisms of Fox’s celebrity pundits. Those disclosures further confirm the out-of-their-mind emotional state of that 6%. The Bannon audience at TPAC, if it’s typical of the cranks attracted to Trump, can only lead the party to more dismal electoral performance – 2018, 2020, and the red wave of 2022 turning into a ripple.

The attacks on Paul Ryan are particularly galling. Somehow, the low-tax/small-government/free-market philosophy of every Republican from Coolidge to Reagan as represented by Ryan is besmirched by ad hominem attacks by the cult’s agitators. It’s just that Ryan won’t pledge fealty to Trump, and that list of dissenters from Trump megalomania has only grown as more people cross paths with the alleged demi-god. Now, we must add Fox News to the ever-lengthening enemy’s list. How many more dissenters from Trump worship must there be before the TPAC crowd begins to question their slavish devotion to a self-absorbed and octogenarian adolescent.

Facebook Shuts Down Pro-Trump 'Stop the Steal' Group | Time

Ryan promises not to attend the Republican convention if Trump is the nominee. I’ll leave the presidential line on the ballot blank if he once again bamboozles the party into the nomination. The argument that it’s a binary choice has worn its welcome.

Trump is a loser. He turns off more than he turns on. His electoral performance over three elections is proof. The only way for him to deny the numbers is to label them as fraud without the proof to convince a judge and jury, let alone a majority of the electorate in a presidential contest. At a certain point, Trump is just embarrassing. Embarrassment doth not make a winner.

RogerG

* “CPAC Crowd Stands and Cheers as Raging Steve Bannon Vows to Bring Down Fox News: ‘We’re Going To Fight You Every Step Of The Way!’”, Mediaite, 3/3/2023, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cpac-crowd-stands-and-cheers-as-raging-steve-bannon-vows-to-bring-down-fox-news-we-re-going-to-fight-you-every-step-of-the-way/ar-AA18cqic?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=e82b976dd18142c187e4f85ded29053a&ei=32

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022

We Did It to Ourselves

See the source image — Electric vehicle catches fire in Florida after Hurricane Ian.

In Rob Reiner’s “This Is Spinal Tap”, the boys in the band are asked about the unexpected deaths of some of their drummers, including one who mysteriously erupted in spontaneous combustion.

It’s hilarious, but not so funny for Florida electric vehicle (EV) owners in the wake of Hurricane Ian. We now know that water and EV batteries don’t mix. The things don’t need a spark. After the deluge and submersion in flood waters, they’ll just quietly simmer in a super-hot chemical reaction, smoke a little, and then erupt. Watch the Good Morning in America (GMA) report below.

The EV is the darling of our eco-central planners and the eco-acolytes who sit atop many of our institutions. For the elected ones, they didn’t gain their seats of power and influence by accident. We chose them. Through the franchise and Electoral College, we made the choice to give power to those who would force us out of our deep family investments in clean and fuel-efficient sedans, mini-vans, and SUV’s and into the thing that could set a packed parking lot and neighborhood ablaze. Add to that the range anxiety from inoperable, scarce, and inconvenient charging stations; dishonestly advertised operational distances if one takes into account running life-support and other systems like air conditioning and the heater; and the threat of hypothermia as we wait the hour or two for enough juice to get the thing up and running in a Michigan winter.

Wait, there’s more. The same folks who are foisting the EV on us are creating the most unstable grid distributing the most expensive electricity. An ever-growing expanse of giant windmill forests and broadening seas of solar panels marring ever greater portions of the earth’s surface will be our future if they have their way. And if that isn’t enough, much of that grid is exposed to the annual seven-month firestorm season from eco-crazed forestry practices that annually belches millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air, like the 130 million tons from last year’s conflagrations in California – the equivalent CO2 of 25 million regular autos. So, they shove everyone into EV’s to allegedly save the planet as they encourage the buildup of debris to burn it up. Go figure.

Incidentally, try to find a place to charge up the thing if you happen to be in the path of the flames, the lines are down, and the cell towers are incinerated. It’s a perpetual motion machine of eco-nuttery. Lesson: Don’t sell that old Camry with the regular unleaded in the gas tank.

Who’s at fault? We are. We elected the clowns who thought that showering the country in paper money was economically righteous and think that eco-central planning is somehow different from the Soviet variety.

It’s not that the donkey party hid it from us. Nancy Pelosi and The Squad have been busy concocting the Green New Deal since Pelosi took the gavel (2019) and Biden the oath of office (2021). Anyone above the sentience level of a worm should have known. Biden repeatedly bellowed their intent when he, for instance, looked into the eyes of a teenage girl (a real XX-chromosome one) in 2019 and said,

“I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel.”

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden pumps his fist as he speaks during a campaign stop, Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, in Laconia, N.H. (AP Photo/Mary Schwalm)

True to his word, he’s trying to euthanize the entire industry: practically ending oil development on federal lands and offshore, axing pipelines, lavish spending on loopy “sustainables”, and a quiet strangulation of the energy companies by frightening financial capital away from them. For this gang, real, affordable energy is a dragon to be slain.

The choice of candidates in the 2020 presidential race was between the uncouth with the right policies (for the most part) and a revolutionary ethos of class warfare, neo-Marxist race-baiting, transgenderism, open borders, law unenforcement, and greenie fanaticism. As it turned out, a majority preferred the revolution. Look no further than the mirror for the cause of our troubles if you thought that the uncouth drove you into the arms of the revolutionary. A candidate is much more than the fact that he’s not the other guy.

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RogerG

Read here for more:

* “Red Tape Is Making Wildfires Worse”, Shawn Regan and Tate Watkins, National Review Online, Oct. 4, 2022, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/red-tape-is-making-wildfires-worse/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=third

* “About Those Green Jobs . . . They Keep Vanishing”, Andrew Follett, National Review Online, Oct. 15, 2022, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/about-those-green-jobs-they-keep-vanishing/

* “Climate Policy Should Pay More Attention to Climate Economics”, John H. Cochrane, National Review Online, Sept, 3, 2021, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/climate-policy-should-pay-more-attention-to-climate-economics/

* “In intimate moment, Biden vows to ‘end fossil fuel'”, Steve Peoples, ABC News, Sept, 6, 2019, at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/intimate-moment-biden-vows-end-fossil-fuel-65442382

July 17, 2022

Social-Political Tumors in the Depp/Heard Case and the Trump-Russia Con

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According to verywellhealth.com, a tumor is “. . . an abnormal growth of cells, which serves no purpose in the body.” In addition, “A tumor develops when cells divide too quickly and without control.”

Are tumors limited to biological manifestations? I think not. In today’s culture, the concept applies to the weird nexus of celebrity, media, activism, government, social class, and narrow geographic location that “develops” into an “abnormal” and tight-knit social grouping “too quickly and without control”. Two stories of late illustrate the existence of a kind of social tumor with a decidedly political complexion: (1) the Amber Heard op-ed which led to the famous (infamous?) Johnny Depp lawsuit(s) and (2) the Trump-Russia imbroglio. You won’t need better evidence for the actuality of socio-political tumors.

I find few things as amusing as when the public is shocked to learn of the chaotic nature of the personal lives of celebrities. The recent Depp/Heard dustup provides ample proof of the toxicity of some celebrity marriages. Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation after an op-ed appeared in the Washington Post under Heard’s name characterizing Depp as a wife beater.

May be an image of 4 people — Heard and Depp at the trial.

But that’s only the half of it. “Under her name”? Yes, the op-ed was ghostwritten by ACLU staffers after the organization received a windfall of $1.3 million from her after her divorce settlement with Depp. Her ex-boyfriend, Elon Musk, added $2.2 million to the promised total kitty of $3.5 million. Celebrity divorce, celebrity-sized payouts, and political activism came together in one socio-political tumor, or “abnormal growth”.

It seems that the ACLU was very appreciative to Heard, whom they referred to as an “ACLU artist ambassador on women’s rights”. ACLU communications people were all over the op-ed’s composition and dissemination to big media. All of this was born out in the trial. Robin Shulman, an ACLU communications staffer, wrote the first draft with edits from Heard’s lawyers, and Terence Dougherty, the ACLU’s Chief Operating Officer and general counsel, peddled it to the media. Humungous gifts lead to humungous help in hatching a smear.

In the end, the jury in the Depp defamation lawsuit would have none of it. Juries are tied to the evidence at least to some degree. The facts showed that these were two mutually abusive individuals wrapped in nuptials. The verdict ordered Amber Heard to be on the hook for about $10 million to Depp and his legal team. For the life of me, I fail to understand why the ACLU wasn’t in the dock as well since their fingerprints were all over the slander.

Then we come to Durham, the special counsel appointed by then-AG Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia fable. The Sussman trial and subsequently released court documents glaringly expose another “abnormal growth”. This one is composed of two types of cells – the Clinton Campaign and certain federal agencies – developing in cooperation “quickly and without control”. Indeed, they were intertwined like the common root system of birch trees, and like the cells of a tumor. Professional and social courtesies abound. This class of DC operatives are interwoven in a web of friendships, past and present occupational connections, and similar backgrounds and outlooks. All of this is cooped into the narrow confines of the DC metropolitan area. They can’t help running into each other at the soccer field, Whole Foods, and dinner parties. It’s a mutually reinforcing social ecosystem.

The prevalence of the bonds in the social petri dish of DC was on display in the Sussman trial, who was charged with making false and misleading statements to the FBI. Michael Sussman, one of Hillary’s key campaign lawyers and a veteran of the Justice Department’s cybersecurity team, called an old acquaintance, James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel at the time, to kickstart the Hillary campaign’s scheme to connect Trump to Russia under the contrived moniker of Trump being “under federal investigation”. Keep in mind that she was under investigation for the much more real charge of violating her legal responsibility to follow security procedures in her communications as Secretary of State, and the likelihood that she obstructed justice in destroying evidence (her emails, home brew server, hard drives, and cell phones). She desperately needed the distraction of something to pin on Trump.

May be an image of 2 people and beard — Michael Sussman (l), Clinton Campaign lawyer, and John Durham, Special Counsel.

In stepped the malignant cells of the supportive DC tumor. Court records show that Hillary gave the go-ahead to begin the scam. The whole campaign apparatus in DC leapt into motion. The Campaign’s part of the tumor included Fusion GPS and co-founder Glenn Simpson to dig up dirt on Trump, Christopher Steele who provided much of the dirt, Igor Danchenko (a suspected Russian asset) who was Steele’s source, and Rodney Joffe and his Neustar data mining firm (hired by the Hillary Campaign) to help create the illusion of a Trump “backchannel” to Putin through Russia’s Alpha Bank.

May be a closeup of 1 person and beard — Igor Danchenko suspected Russian asset and Christopher Steele’s source for the “dossier”.

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'AN' — Glann Simpson of Fusion GPS, the company tasked by the Clinton Campaign to dig up dirt on Trump.

The stage was set for the sales job to friends and acquaintances in the sympathetic administrative state, the other part of the tumor. Sussman texted his old friend at the FBI, James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel:

“Jim — it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

What did Sussman have for Baker? The next day, Sussman plopped on Baker’s desk Joffe’s concocted illusion of Trump-Russia collusion through Alpha Bank. The Hillary campaign lawyer, Sussman, gave the FBI an excuse to do what they were chomping at the bit to do anyway. FBI headquarters opened the investigation with enthusiasm according to the chain of command in Chicago. James Comey was said to be particularly jazzed up. The FBI higher-ups hid the Sussman/Hillary Campaign connection to the alleged “information” by carrying on as if it came from the Justice Department, not the Clinton Campaign. It’s clear that the FBI wasn’t really duped by Sussman. Come on, everyone in the halls of power knew who Sussman worked for. Let’s just say that they wanted to be “duped”. It provided great cover. The rest is a history that’ll live in infamy.

In the Depp-Heard case, a storied civil liberties group is muddied by its zeal to manufacture oppression through defamation. In the Trump-Russia fairy tale, Hillary campaign friendlies in the superstructure of the DC administrative state were essentially adjuncts of the Campaign and the Democratic Party. This is the reality of socio-political tumors that plague America. Like the biological kind, they can be malignant and need to be irradiated. After all, they “serve no purpose” other than as comfortable sinecures for government careerists.

How? Dismantle the administrative monoliths in DC. Scatter them to the wind. The country has about 300 cities in the 100,000 range who’d love to have the headquarters for the Justice Department, its FBI, its ATF, the Department of Homeland Security and its sundry appendages, the Department of Agriculture, etc., etc. It’d be nice to see the pressed suits running the Agriculture Department regularly having to clean manure off their shoes, or maybe the potentates running the show at the EPA having to live in the vicinity of the people whose jobs they destroyed. It’s juicy to think about.

Malignant tumors need oncological treatment. The events of the past six years show DC to be a dangerous concentration of cells that has developed “quickly and without control”. Congress needs to act like a hospital oncology department by flinging the functions of government to the far corners of the nation. Our mode of government would be healthier if DC was more of a ghost town.

As for the Heard-type smear, put an end to the mantra of always “believe her”. Chromosomes should have very little bearing on truth and guilt.

RogerG

Sources:

*Andrew C. McCarthy’s piece on Durham and the Sussman trial: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/06/27/russiagate-misunderstood/
*Dan McLaughlin’s piece on the Heard-Depp case: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/amber-heards-aclu-ghostwriters/

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022

The January 6 Committee: Another “High-Tech Political Lynching” (to borrow from Clarence Thomas)

May be an image of 8 people, people standing and text that says 'JANUARY 6TH Attack on the United States Capitol EXIT 恭者' — The January 6 Committee during Cipollone’s closed-door hearing.

In a June 17 post, I stated, “. . . the January 6 Committee is a farce and Donald Trump is a scoundrel.” I stand by those conclusions.

That said, a scoundrel need not be a criminal, and the attempt to make the scoundrel one by hook or by crook is an embarrassment to the country. Thanks, Liz Cheney, for lending your esteemed family name to political behavior that is reminiscent of banana republics and the worst political thuggery of the twentieth century. Andrew C. McCarthy in his column (see below) on the latest happenings of the January 6th Committee exposes the abomination.

The Committee’s sleight-of-hand maneuvering included the demand that Trump counselor Pat Cipollone testify to add weight to Cassidy Hutchinson’s (aide to Mark Meadows) earlier hearsay testimony that Trump came unglued after his January 6 speech.

May be an image of 1 person and suit — Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White Houe counsel

The Committee then molded the interview in a manner not to allow him to contradict Hutchinson’s hearsay. Everyone in DC knew that he would, so what did they do? They didn’t give him the opportunity. Thus, committee hanging judge Zoe Lofgren (D, Ca.), on a committee of hanging judges, soiled herself with the claim that Cipollone “did not contradict other witnesses”. Of course, he didn’t. The questioning was structured in such a way as to not allow him to. What a sham.

Power-hungry prosecutors have a number of techniques at hand to twist testimony. One is to never ask the witness simply what the person saw, said, or did – point by point. Contradictions would inevitably arise between the two accounts. That isn’t good when the goal of the show trial is to put on a show of guilt. If witness-A’s testimony does the trick, don’t allow witness-B to mess up the script. And, by the way, declare to the public that B “confirmed” A.

Our modern politics has become a theater of the absurd. In this latest episode, we have a tabloid, combustible, self-indulgent ex-president, a neo-Marxist revolutionary party enthralled by Marx’s ends-justify-means modus operandi, a press that functions as the public relations arm of the revolution, and a couple members of the opposition party who are so blinded by fury at the then-oval-office rascal to the point of cooperating with the revolution. Stephen King couldn’t come up with a more dramatic cast of characters for a thriller . . . or horror show.

Or maybe Clarence Thomas’s assessment is more accurate when he described his “Borking” as a “high-tech lynching”. Revolutionary parties seldom have scruples when the revolution is all that matters. For them, a “lynching” is just fine.

May be a cartoon of text that says '"A11 News FORECAST Chance ParHy Apocalypse Clovdy ThatFits" The Daily Spleen wit BOMBSHELL: JAN. 6 WITNESS HEARD FROM A FRIEND OF A GUY THAT TRUMP'S RUSSIAN HOOKERS GAVE SECRET SERVICE DRIVER A GOLDEN SHOWER IN PRESIDENTIAL LIMO FROM RUSSIA WITH Love PREZ Jan.6 Comm. Adjourns to Burn Down Supreme Court Haynέ 022 AnDREWs mcmeeL EMAIL: hpayne@detroitnews.com'

RogerG
*Andrew C. McCarthy’s column on the Cipollone testimony: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-january-6-committees-gamesmanship-on-cipollones-testimony/

June 17, 2022June 25, 2022

Georgia and Donald Trump’s 2020 Self-Dealing

Clockwise from upper left: Jon Ossof (D), David Perdue (R), Raphael Warnock (D), Kelly Loeffler (R) — From the January 2021 Georgia special election, clockwise from upper left: Jon Ossof (D), Davis Perdue (R), Raphael Warnock (D), Kelly Loeffler (R)

Of late, two things are proving to be true: the January 6 Committee is a farce and Donald Trump is a scoundrel.

Pelosi scandalized her own creation – the Committee – when she packed it with hanging judges, with two of the most egregious carefully selected from the other side of the aisle. As for Trump, his warped character wasn’t necessarily exposed by anything uncovered by the January 6 rump. We’ve known since 2015 that the guy is prone to excitable outbursts, almost all self-serving. One series of outbursts, though, and their immediate aftermath, plague us to this day: his caterwauling about being cheated in November 2020 with disastrous results for the country. He depressed the Georgia conservative vote in the January 2021 special election which then gave us two hard left Georgia senators and a hard left Senate for the country.

May be an image of 7 people and people standing — Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked committee to hang Trump and Republicans.

May be an image of 4 people and people standing — Pres. Trump at Georgia rally in support of Perdue and Loeffler,12/5/20.

Where’s the proof that he made it easy for Stacy Abrams and neo-socialists Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof in that January Georgia faceoff? Atlanta’s David Burrell, CEO of Wick, a well-respected producer of opinion surveys, cited their poll of conservative voters who voted in November 2020 but stayed home in January 2021, the date of the Senate special election. The results showed “lack of confidence in the 2020 election outcome” by respondents. The “lack of confidence” didn’t materialize out of thin air. Trump gave ample reason for Georgia conservatives to not waste their time going to the polls in January 2021. He lambasted the November vote as corrupt, and still does today. A hard left Senate thanks to Donald Trump.

Thank goodness, Republican Kelly Loeffler, a victim of Trump’s bombast in that special election in January 2021, wasn’t so dispirited to exile herself from Georgia politics. She rolled up her sleeves and founded Greater Georgia to reenergize Georgia conservatives and go toe-to-toe with the demagogic Stacy Abrams. Loeffler succeeded wonderfully. This May’s Georgia primary had 1.2 million votes in Republican contests while the Stacy Abrams crowd only generated 724,244 for the Democrats.

May be an image of 2 people and people standing — Kelly Loeffler at the launch of Greater Georgia.

In addition, Governor Brian Kemp (R), a special target of Trump vitriol, showed he was adept at recognizing the need for and appeal of election reform. It was a Republican two-fer: conservatives came out in droves and Biden’s “Jim Crow 2.0” demagoguery only splashed more mud on the senescent occupant of the White House and his donkey party.

It proves that Republicans can overcome the plague of Trump’s self-dealing. It begins with the recognition by Republicans that Trump is the Democrats’ long hoped-for gift that keeps on giving. Well, at least in Georgia, 2022 was the year that conservatives with help from Loeffler could get out from the Trump shadow.

In an interesting aside, Trump’s shadow isn’t as large as some of the pundits in the Fox News primetime lineup would have you believe. In spite of Biden’s wrecking of American life, his approvals dipping into the 30’s, an Emerson College survey showed Trump besting Biden by only 2 points, 44-42. A Harvard/Harris poll put the margin at 45-42 Trump. Let’s be clear, Trump is no Reagan of 1984 when the Gipper swept 49 pf 50 states. Trump has an enthusiastic following, but he can only produce cliff hangers in which he wins the Electoral College and loses the popular vote (2016) or draws more people to his camp but energizes the opposition even more to lose in another squeaker (2020).

I don’t know about you but I’m ready for a landslide, a complete thrashing of the donkey party. However, don’t expect to win the Kentucky Derby riding a bucking bronc.

RogerG

Bibliography:

*Read Jack Fowler’s piece on the 2022 Georgia primary here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/sweet-georgia-red/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=third

*The Harvard/Harris poll here: https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1529504276489322497

*The Emerson poll here: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/27/poll-trump-bests-biden-in-head-to-head-matchup/

April 16, 2022April 16, 2022

Republicans Dodging a Bullet

Macomb County Republican Party Convention from August of 2020.

Reporter Salena Zito, co-author of “The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” of 2018, has long been sensitive to the views of those in Red America and accurately diagnosed the problem of an America dominated by an out-of-touch bi-coastal elite that set the stage for Trump’s amazing win in 2016. We have moved on, but Trump hasn’t. The Trump of 2016 is now the Trump of “I was cheated”, constantly regaling his followers at rallies with his complaints about 2020. In this column, she reports that the Macomb County, Michigan, Republican Party has had enough. At their county party convention, important for choosing county party leaders and candidates, county delegates threw out the party leadership that was obsessed with re-litigating 2020. We’ll have to wait and see if the party across the nation is willing to dodge the bullets that Trump is firing at it.

I have long maintained that Trump is principally responsible for the loss of the two Georgia Senate seats to neo-Bolsheviks, of all people, in Georgia of all places! A dispirited post-election Republican electorate was further dispirited by Trump’s post-election grandiose and unsupportable charges. If there ever was a time for “Move On”, this is it.

Macomb County Republican delegate Jamie Roe described the scene: “Last night [April 14], everyone who was focused on winning the election in 2022 had been pushed over the edge.” He added, “Fed-up activists and elected officials joined together to remove the Executive Committee and officers from office and replace them with a new group focused solely on winning in 2022 and not on the past.”

The Trumpers have long called disloyal Republicans – disloyal to Trump, that is – RHINOs. Yet, expressing fealty to a person is much more reminiscent of “in name only” than loyalty to a party. The pot calling the kettle black? Projection?

Macomb County may be a healthy bellwether for this year’s elections. It was your typical blue-collar Democrat bastion but was shifting red as the Democratic Party became a reflection of our brain-dead college faculty lounges. A blue-collar Republican Party doesn’t have to be equally as brain dead. At last, the party may be in the process of shaking off the personality cult just in time for the Democrats’ march into cultural Marxism.

Please read the article.

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RogerG

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