Kanye West takes the red pill

I want to start off here by making a few things crystal clear.  I know very little about Kanye West and his music.  What I have heard of it, I don’t care for.  I have long thought Kanye was an idiot, and to be perfectly honest I still do–I know I have countered claims that President Trump is stupid with his phenomenal success being something an idiot just doesn’t do, and I stand by that because when you’re a lowbrow performer like Kanye West you CAN get rich and still be a moron.  I mean really, you don’t have to be functionally literate to write and sing the stuff Kanye West does.

In a way, I think that his innate dullheadedness was part of the reason why he could be open to taking the proverbial red pill.  Kanye West has long been arrogant and a self-promoting jerk but there doesn’t seem to have been any philosophy behind it other than “hey, people will pay me to sing this stuff and be this person.”  So while committed leftists like, say, John Legend will defend their race-hustling nonsense with complete sentences and crafted fairy tales, it seems like Kanye just shut off his brain-to-mouth filter and was the typical Hollywood type leftist saying what his handlers and promoters wanted him to say.  Don’t take this to mean “he likes Trump because he’s stupid,” far from it–the meaning here is that any idiot can see that people have been lied to by the race-baiters and poverty pimps.  Oprah and Beyonce and George Clooney and Michael Moore and Mark Ruffalo and all the darlings of La Resistance would not have even considered going to Trump Tower to talk with the incoming president and try to understand him better.  But Kanye did.

It’s not that Kanye West has come out with a resounding message of rock-ribbed conservatism, no one is claiming that (especially not after in the middle of his Twitterstorm he declared Angry Lesbian from the Astroturf Planeteers to be “his hero”), nor is he suddenly some towering intellectual giant (tweeting “naps are great”).  But somewhere in his combination of interrupt-someone-else’s-speech ego and go-with-the-flow naivete Kanye had the gall and the innocence to actually look at what people like President Trump are all about, and he had the celebrity to go right to the source.

Motivating factors aside, the fact that Kanye West had the gumption to give Trumpism and conservatism a listen is only the first part of what has been amazing about the storm surrounding him the past couple of weeks.  Many other celebrities have engaged in public wrongthink in the past only to be hounded and pressured into making an apology within days, and similar pressure was exerted on Kanye–but Kanye’s still not backing down.  As a matter of fact, he’s responding to friends and fans cajoling him into retracting his statements (that have mostly just been mild “Trump ain’t so bad” type declarations) by telling them very nicely that no one controls what he thinks.  In other words, he’s refusing to be told what he has to think and believe.  And wonder of wonders, in the process he’s continuing to educate not only himself but his fan base.  Kanye has been seen and tweeting about watching and reading real intellectual giants like Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson lately, two names that many of his Twitter followers would likely never have heard of otherwise.  Nevermind his endorsement of black conservative Candace Owens that started this whole thing.

As you might expect, Kanye going rogue has had the left in a panic and desperate to try to contain and no-platform him before his simple think-for-yourself message gets out.  At the moment they seem to have slowed his progress with one key quote about how “slavery is a choice,” deliberately ignoring the context and clear meaning that 150 years after the abolition of slavery, continuing to define yourself by a wrong perpetrated upon your ancestors IS in fact a choice.  I’ll definitely grant that this is one of those places where Kanye being an inarticulate shoot-from-the-hip trainwreck in motion is not helpful to his message, but seriously, even in the jumbled and stilted way he said it before clarifying it later, it was clear he didn’t mean anyone ever willingly signed up to be actual slaves.  For the moment, the hyperventilation over this remark seems to have stopped the spread of Kanye’s dangerous ideas but it’s only been a couple of days.

As schadenfreudelicious as it has been to watch the left’s race-hustlers scramble to do Kanye damage control, it’s been even more amusing watching quasi-conservative NeverTrump types like Tomi “Killing Babies is Awesome ‘Cause I’m a Hottie” Lahren and Ben “Can’t Wait For The Blue Wave” Shapiro try to “warn” Republicans about embracing Kanye and his conversion.  They’re acting like we don’t know damned well who Kanye is and like it matters whether this is a genuine paradigm shift or just a publicity stunt.   Shapiro in particular got his start working for Andrew Breitbart and ought to know damned well that politics is downstream from culture.  Seeing him downplay and discourage this turn of events just goes to show you, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a terrible thing.  Meanwhile, Paul Joseph Watson has pointed out that in the space of a week, President Trump’s support among black males (i.e. Kanye’s fan base) has doubled.

Look, I really don’t care where Kanye West lands on the spectrum.  I don’t care what he’s doing or what his motivations are.  I DO care that he’s not apologizing, and I care VERY much that he is not only exposing his followers and fans to conservative and libertarian ideas but that he is also sending them the message that it’s okay to not be part of the hive mind.  As Morpheus said, the red pill offers the truth, nothing more, and I care very much that whether Kanye West believes it or not, he’s delivering it to thousands if not millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t even know they had the option.  It actually looks like the message he’s conveying is just to get the facts for yourself and make up your own mind, don’t just believe the leftist race-baiting rhetoric because you’re a minority so you have to.  And really, if an idiot like Kanye can get it, pretty much anyone who takes an honest look at reality can too.

 

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Marxapalooza

It started out a few days back with one or two almost random articles in hard-left rags wishing Karl Marx a happy 200th birthday along with the proclamation “you were right!”  I thought it was pathetically stupid (like that’s anything new) but then it started popping up in more and more places until the full-on Karl Marx lovefest coupled with emphatic declarations about how right he was regarding the “failure of capitalism.” Apparently a philosophy that killed millions of people, that no serious and successful economy employs, and whose intellectual founder was so lazy that he let his kids starve rather than get a job, is a smashing success story waiting to be written, while the economic system that resulted in modern civilization as we know it is a “failure.”

Yeah, that’s not how it works, children.

I’m not going to delve into Marx the man as I am sure that for every story of his personal failings there’s a sordid tale of some capitalist entrepreneur who was a real scumbag in his personal dealings, largely because there are so many successful capitalists to point to that it’s just a statistical necessity that there will be a lot of jerks.  Hope you see what I did there.  I’m also not going to get into the minutiae of Marx’s exact theories and philosophy because splitting hairs with a Kalashnikov is something that hipster communist apologists do.  Their endless wail of “that wasn’t REAL communism” is as tiresome as it is dishonest.

President Ronald Reagan is quoted as saying that communism will only work in heaven where they don’t need it, and in hell where they’ve already got it.  This is because (as I talked about a few months back) communism’s less-violent cousin socialism, like many other failed philosophies, relies on a fairy tale condition in order to work, that being “everyone will just be nice.”  It does not require any sort of religious conviction or even a whole lot of life experience to know that this is not going to happen, nor does it take a lot of extrapolation to see that in any of these idealistic utopian societies that the moment someone is NOT nice and does NOT play by the rules for even a moment, the entire plan falls apart.  Since communism is essentially socialism with guns and ambition, you’ve already failed the “everybody will be nice” condition from inception and jumped straight along to “um…shoot everyone who disagrees!”  Bullets might win plenty of arguments, but that doesn’t make them a valid point.

The plain and simple fact is that the historical record demonstrates that the murderous regimes in the Soviet Union and China and every other communist state are, in fact, “REAL communism” because idealistic perfect-execution communism cannot exist in the real world.  Nor should it.  Not only is it contrary to fundamental basics of human nature and ignorant of the tendencies of people to seek their own interests, but its singleminded obsession with sameness would obliterate much of the good and all of the capacity for progress in the human spirit were it to actually come about.  This is precisely why you cannot make a Bolshevik omelet without breaking a few million eggs.  It does not take a lot of insight for people to recognize that enforced sameness and flat-line equality not only will not happen, but it won’t be a good thing.  So you end up having to resort to violence and intimidation to make the populace go along with your crazy plans, until eventually people get tired of starving to death.  Without the ability for working harder or working smarter to improve your lot in life, there’s no incentive other than an overseer’s whip to do even the basic minimum labor, and there’s absolutely no reason why you’d stick your neck out, take a risk, and invest your meager resources in trying to create actual progress.  Socialized medicine would never have cured polio.

Communism’s historical record of murder and failure speaks for itself.  But what is more mindblowing about these puff pieces is their grinning bald-faced assertions that Marx was “right” about capitalism failing.  Um… about that… first of all, let’s not forget that Marx predicted that the industrialized nations of the West would be the first to go red, which spectacularly failed to happen.  Marxist apologists wave that away by saying “well, these societies just had conditions that were too good for the workers for them to want to rise up against their bourgeois overlords!”  Uh, yeah, that’s kind of the point.  Communism took off in backwards crapholes that were accustomed to feudal-style rule and looking for a way to jump the line into the twentieth century and achieve parity with industrial powerhouses in Europe and the USA.  The problem was that despite the hopes of the arrogant revolutionaries and simpleminded peasants, their communist system did not eliminate classes in society but instead effectively set up a massive oppressed working class held in check by an elite ruling class and their military police.  Because force and intimidation are such great motivators, don’t ya know.  The world got a good long look at how these crazy fantasies built from envy and laziness resulted in an economic system that just spread misery around, stifling innovation and subjugating the populace.  Oh, sure, the Soviet Union made some great strides in the space and arms races (arms due in large part to technology stolen from the United States), but that was quite plainly done in an effort to both get an edge on the capitalist Free World as well as to “prove” that communism was not a backwards failure.  Capitalism responded by beating the Soviets to the moon at a walk.

So not only was Marx dead wrong about where his ideology would take root, but…where and how, exactly, is capitalism “failing?”  It’s a more or less direct correlation–where capitalism is implemented, there’s prosperity.  Yes, there is also inequality.  That’s not a bad thing.  If I work sixteen hours and you work four, we should not be equal.  If I cure cancer and you can apply a band-aid on a good day, we should not be equal.  If I speak seven languages and you’re still mastering English, we should not be equal.  The key to capitalism is utilizing your own areas of advantage–your own inequality–and leveraging that to your advantage, as well as the advantage of others (because that’s how you make money, stupid).  None of this takes away from the fact that capitalism most definitely works and continues to work.  The modern world is the result of capitalism.  You can cry about how oppressed you are when you have to wait five minutes for a soy latte at Starbucks and only get one bar of signal on your iPhone, but the only reason anyone cares (or those items and services exist at all) is because of capitalism.

Ironically this leads to where Marx’s prediction may yet come true, though not in the way he expected.  You see, the unparalleled and unprecedented prosperity created by our capitalist system has given birth to multiple generations now of entitled, clueless leeches who have the time and freedom and resources to complain about being misgendered or fuss about “implicit bias” or gripe about “inequality” or fantasize about a nonexistent “wage gap.”  The wonders of the modern world have been rendered commonplace.  I’m old enough to remember the world before the internet, when catalogs and department stores were a thing and you did research at libraries and you rented movies on VHS tape.  These kids are used to having all that available on a phone (hell, I also remember when portable phones were novel, and I’m not even that old).  Where just a few generations back people defined suffering in terms of debilitating disease or backbreaking labor or starvation and deprivation, these whiners have it so good that they march in the streets over being offended and cry real tears if there’s no vegan option on the diner menu.  These are the fools who think communism is awesome and haven’t been taught its history.  In other words, capitalism has succeeded so fantastically at turning “survival of the fittest” into “everybody lives” and making their lives so comfortable on top of that that we are now producing millions of semi-moronic entitled dullards who are stupid enough to buy into communism.  Not only are these retards not being weeded out by natural selection, they’re being encouraged to breed.

Fortunately, sooner or later life has a tendency to smack some sense into people, and whether Karl Marx or his apologists like it or not, capitalism is neither failing nor can it be destroyed.  It is simply the zero state to which any civilized economy will return–just look at any black market.  The more we get away from this model, promote failure and equality over achievement and value, and ignore rather than take advantage of the invisible hand of human nature, the less the system works.  Right now even our bastardized and corrupted form of government quasi-socialism isn’t failing, but if capitalism does ever fail, it will be a victim of its own runaway successes, and it will be there waiting in the rubble of society to be used to put the world that was back together again.

The Fights That Need Fighting

Welcome back to the long and winding path. I’ve been busy as I said in my last entry, but I’ve also been kind of wrestling with the idea behind this post. It’s actually very close to something I’ve considered writing about before, and it’s going to be controversial, but hey, since when has that stopped me?

Actually, I should answer that one. It’s stopped me when I thought the position or person I was defending wasn’t worth the time, effort, or cost. Ultimately I don’t know whether to consider that position judicious or cowardly, but I lean more towards calling it cowardly to be quite honest, and that’s just not acceptable. As I have said on more than one occasion, I do not believe in merely fighting the fights I think I can win, I believe in fighting the fights that need fighting. That does not mean that I can’t be judicious in explaining my reasoning, however. So, with that caveat, we begin. I hope if you’ve read this far you’ll stick with me to the end of this post before declaring how wrong and sick and evil I am.

This post is about Bill Cosby. By now it’s almost old news that he was convicted on retrial of multiple counts of sexual assault, stemming from very old accusations that he gave women drugs and then took advantage of them while they were in drugged states. I need to start this off by making it very clear that I do not like Bill Cosby the man any more than I like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Billy Jeff Clinton, Charlie Rose, Tom Brokaw, Matt Lauer, or any other far-left male feminist. I think his comedy was great in places and merely decent in others, but Cosby himself is a lifelong leftist and many of his defenders calling him “America’s Dad” and reminiscing about the glory days of The Cosby Show are looking back through a very rosy window.

It’s true that a lot of the humor in both Cosby’s stand-up and in the early years of The Cosby Show centered around no-nonsense parenting and family life. It’s also been said that by showing an upper middle class black family where nobody was in jail and nobody came home pregnant that The Cosby Show did a lot to improve race relations in the mid 80s to the early 90s. Maybe that’s true too. I would have to highlight that the family portrayed by the Huxtable clan was in many ways much too perfect to be believable. I mean really, Dad is a doctor and Mom is a lawyer, there’s no “Alice the maid” character to take care of the children while the parents work their high-pressure long-hours jobs (that we very rarely see them working at), and the Huxtable family just happened to be pals with lots of famous people who would drop by for musical interludes. Or the kids would just happen to get into a fender bender with Stevie Wonder. So let’s give credit where it’s due but not try to pretend that TCS was even trying to approximate a real family, regardless of race. This became even more apparent in the later seasons when the character of Cousin Pam was introduced, a much more stereotypical (and some would and did say much more “real”) inner city youth who was not as well spoken as the Huxtable kids and regularly had to fend off the advances of her overamorous boyfriend. Again, more miraculously than realistically (and I don’t care what race you are), rather than bucking the expectations of the Huxtable household, Pam gradually assimilates into the family and her street-talking friends end up becoming recurring characters on A Different World.

Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable has been called “America’s Dad” but in reality he was the prototype for Homer Simpson–an affable buffoon whose wife and kids showed him up constantly and whose main goal in life seemed to be sneaking around behind his wife’s back to eat the food he loved without being harassed. If there was an “unreasonable” paternal position to take, Cliff would take it only to be shown the error of his thinking by episode’s end, usually through being outsmarted by his wife. It was so bad that for a time (as a twelve year old) I decided I didn’t want to watch anymore because Claire was always right and Cliff was always wrong and made fun of. The PC feminist message was not always just subtle and contextual, however. In one episode, in one of the rare instances we see Dr. Huxtable being a doctor, he’s talking to a young father-to-be in his office and said young father is very excited about his wife’s pregnancy, proudly declaring “there’s nothing like having a barefoot pregnant woman at home to make you feel like a man!” Cliff pointedly shuts him down for his “outdated thinking.”

Of course The Cosby Show was not Bill Cosby’s only television endeavor by a longshot. His body of work included I Spy, Fat Albert, a late 90s quasi-reboot of The Cosby Show simply called Cosby, a short-lived detective themed series called The Cosby Mysteries, and Lisa Bonet’s spinoff vehicle A Different World. I’m not going to get into his movies as they were few and ultimately forgettable, and despite the massive success of TCS Cosby was not exactly a silver ratings bullet. But two of these series did well enough to be worth looking at. Fat Albert was a cleverly funny animated series by the same folks who did He-Man and other 80s classics that tackled lots of universal growing-up issues through the lens of inner city kids, as well as a few more edgy subjects. While Fat Albert was a generally positive show, I kind of wonder, if the Huxtables did good things for race relations with their family example, how did it play to have the Cosby kids hang out in a junkyard with almost no adult supervision besides what seemed to be an old homeless guy? In an age where the battle over sex ed in schools was still going on, Fat Albert and pals learned about “V.D.” as the solemn voiced doctor said it and had an episode where one of the girls in the neighborhood had a baby. Overall Albert was a tame, gentle cartoon, but looking at it in hindsight and knowing what the left does I wonder how much I’d see if I watched it again.

Where Fat Albert was gentle, the direct Cosby Show spinoff A Different World hit you with a hammer. I know Cosby himself rarely if ever made appearances on the show, but it was a direct link to TCS featuring the second-oldest daughter going off to Cliff’s fictional alma mater, Hillman College. It had the same creators, it had the same writers, the actors made cross appearances and it routinely followed in the enviable right-after-Cosby time slot as long as both shows remained on television. And as you might expect, the show took the theme and backdrop of academia to tell a story of a world full of proto-social justice warriors, making broad-struck hardly-subtle plots about everything from apartheid to police brutality to race relations in general, even doing an episode where the main characters happened to honeymoon in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots. One of the most memorably chilling episodes (especially in light of recent history) had a student at Hillman facing sanctions and (I think) expulsion for calling a female classmate a “digit ho.” The joke was she’d do anything for a math problem–no, I don’t think it’s all that funny either. It was cast mostly as a free speech issue although the sexual harassment theme was very plain, and the irony went up to eleven when it turned out that this student hadn’t even used the offensive language. In other words, he was being railroaded for something he didn’t do.

The point of all this is to highlight that Bill Cosby is not someone who we ought to rally around. I know he made some very recent statements about personal responsibility and telling Black Lives Matter to pull their pants up, and while that’s great, it’s also a day late and a dollar short. Cosby’s leftist cred is in good standing and it didn’t save him.

That doesn’t change the fact that what has happened to him is abhorrent. Years ago, to make one of these cases go away, Cosby entered into a settlement with the woman who now has successfully had him criminally prosecuted. During the course of that civil case, Cosby gave a deposition after being assured that he was not going to be prosecuted wherein he admitted to having a sexual relationship with the woman in question and to giving her “quaaludes.” People have taken that to mean he gave women date rape drugs, and while it’s possible he did, that’s not “quaaludes.” Quaaludes are (or were) a sought-after party drug, and in Hollywood of the 80s and 90s, doing drugs and sleeping around was just something people did. But this statement launched a thousand memes–and let’s face it, Bill Cosby was convicted in the court of public opinion because people thought it was funny. People like seeing someone famous and successful taken down, and when they can make a silly .gif with Cosby’s famous silly face or can tell a crude joke about pudding pops it catches on like wildfire. I’m not saying no one was outraged by his behavior, I’m not even saying that no one besides feminists were angry, but I am saying, that’s why this took off. It’s like his final performance where he’s the butt of all the jokes and nobody cares what happens to the comic when the curtain falls.

Regarding the trial, another alleged “victim” testified for the prosecution in an attempt to establish a pattern of behavior, and…let’s stop right there a second. Maybe most folks don’t know this, but in most criminal cases, it’s absolutely verboten to do something like this.  The way the law looks at it, it doesn’t matter if you killed thirty people or robbed twenty gas stations, all that matters is did you kill this specific person or stick up this specific gas station. “Patterns of behavior” can enlighten investigators and be considered by prosecutors but in court they are NOT supposed to be admitted as evidence to show a defendant is a “bad person.” Except, however, under the special rules in sexual assault cases.  This is not okay.  Furthermore, while I don’t have any other explanation for why this person was allowed to testify other than “it’s a sex case so reasons,” Cosby’s defense team lit her up and she admitted that she made up parts of her story in order to get a book deal. As in, the important parts, not the “I was wearing a red dress that day” parts. After hearing that kind of impeachment evidence, don’t try to tell me the jury was making a decision based on the evidence. This kind of case is won or lost on the seriousness of the charge all the damn time.

The irony here is I am not saying any of this to defend Cosby. I’ve pointed out that party drugs and promiscuous sex were just part of Hollywood culture, but the fact is, I’m not interested in defending someone who engaged in that kind of behavior. As far as I’m concerned, this is a bright shiny example of “your sins will find you out” (kind of the Christian version of karma), and as someone who has played by the rules his whole life I find I just don’t have any sympathy for someone who did what he did, whether or not it was legal or society in general thought it was okay. Cosby may be a victim of malicious prosecution or he may be a serial rapist, I don’t know and I don’t honestly care. I believe it’s horrific and terrifying that charges can be dredged up from the distant past and that prosecutors can play fast and loose with the rules of evidence and the rights of the accused when a particular crime offends the lady parts, but then again, I’m not willing to go to the mat for someone who thought doing ‘ludes and committing serial adultery was a fun way to pass the time. I can find his conduct reprehensible and still be disgusted by his conviction, because you know who doesn’t find his basic conduct reprehensible (the innocent version, not the criminal version)? The left. The free-love anything-goes if-it-feels-good-do-it aging hippies who comprise the left see no problem with casual drug use and rampant fornication. I’m not cool with either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to criminalize the latter and I have very serious reservations about the criminalization of the former, but I find it difficult to stick up for someone who did things I consider to be morally wrong. So I’m not going to defend him, but I am going to speak up in defense of what I DO believe in–truth, fairness, and justice.

I’m making these points not to defend Bill Cosby, but because this is a fight that needs fighting. Because if you think any of these male feminists is the target here, you’re sadly mistaken. If you think the Weinstein wildfire or #MeToo was meant to purge all of these hard-lefty men from their positions of power then you’re forgivably wrong (seeing as how they’re trying to replace them all with women) but wrong all the same. It’s only a matter of time before these guns are trained on us again. Roy Moore was just a test case and Bill Cosby was the first blood in the water, and now the piranha have had a taste. As far as I’m concerned, Cosby can enjoy all the benefits of his undying loyalty to the left as he ends his career in disgrace and possibly (we don’t know yet) spends the remainder of his life in prison. Someone still has to speak up, not for the man, not for behavior which I find to be immoral on its face, but for the rights that protect us all. Because this is not the end, and a frail old blind man thirty years past his prime was not the target. Who’s to say what kind of innocent conduct will be glamorized with outrage-inducing embellishments and rendered a mortal sin ex post facto next time around? They are counting on people to either consider this issue radioactive and not touch it, and/or to decide they really don’t want to support either the perpetrator or the behavior so they’re just going to let it go.

You’re welcome as always to tell me how I’m wrong, but be forewarned, missing my point here is not an argument. Seriously, I’ve gone enough rounds with people accusing me of being a scumbag defense attorney, like that’s a secret.

And don’t even start on Tom Brokaw and tickling.

Excuse my absence…

Hey folks.  It’s been a few days and I’m long overdue for a check-in.  Everything is fine, just busy.  Seems every time I sit down to do a post something comes up.  Considering how my last entry felt kind of rushed and was less than satisfactory to me in terms of what I wanted to convey I figured it was a good time to just not force it for a few days.

It’s not like there hasn’t been a lot to talk about.  In fact I’m debating whether I want to get into certain things that have transpired recently or whether I should just walk away from them.  I won’t specify what they are but obviously if they’re sensitive enough for me to be doing this kind of should-I-shouldn’t-I analysis then they’re going to need some time devoted to them.

I’d say I hope to be back soon but the schedule looks tighter than expected over the next couple of weeks and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to make time for.  So I’ll leave it as I will return to at least a semi-regular schedule when I am able to do so.  In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by.

What the left CAN do, what they CAN’T do, and what they WON’T do

We’re just about to go into midterm election season.  I expect that party primaries will quietly wrap up over the next six to eight weeks and after that the usual barrage of political haymaking will get underway.  Considering how the world of politics has been more active than usual during the Trump administration, I expect we’re going to see a very busy election season that starts noticeably earlier than usual.  As anticipated, the predictions of a blue wave in the midterms despite all evidence to the contrary are already flowing and the establishment GOP is already rehearsing its surrender speeches.  Obligatory reminder: don’t buy it.  Even if your candidate is not the biggest Trump backer ever, remember that a Democrat will be much worse.

Let’s acknowledge a few ugly truths here.  First, the Democrats quite possibly CAN win in November.  The electoral map (especially in the Senate) is not favorable to them, but the establishment GOP inexplicably is.  Many in the GOP seem like they would rather lose than win by getting on the Trump train and I’m sure both their constituents and their Democratic opponents will be happy to help them do that.  I’ve talked before about how the few Democratic wins in special elections don’t signify anything except that the Democrats have learned that their key to victory is to filibuster voters with enough salacious horsecrap that the Republicans just say the hell with it and walk away like they did in Alabama.  If Conor Lamb is any indication, the Democrats have also figured out that attacking President Trump directly is not the way to win and the old standby of pretending to be gun-friendly and worker-friendly is their best bet.  Also, if the Democrats’ incessant crying about “voter suppression” and the razor-thin margins they’ve managed to win by are any indication, the Democrats have upped their fraud game since the four million fake votes for Dr. Pantsuit failed to do the trick.  So yes, it’s entirely possible that we could be looking at losing one or both houses of Congress, whether due to fake news, cheating, or the Republicans continuing to run away from President Trump.  I would say that makes it imperative that we make the most of the next few months but really, the congressional GOP hasn’t had any sense of urgency so far.  I don’t look for them to get their act together now.

That all being said, there are some things the Democrats CAN’T do, in November or ever.  Love him or hate him, President Trump has done things that no other politician before him has been able to do and things none have even attempted.  Breaking the hegemony of the fake news remains his greatest accomplishment–and it’s ongoing.  Demonstrating that an outsider can run for and win national office (regardless of the money involved, it wasn’t supposed to be possible at all) has permanently changed the political landscape.  It doesn’t matter what happens from here on out.  The left can undo a lot of the good President Trump has done, but he has broken some things that cannot ever be unbroken, and try as they might, they cannot make it so he never existed.  They’ll be trying to de-legitimize him in every way they can for the next half century at least, but they can’t erase him from the history books.

Now let’s assume for the moment that the worst happens, the Democrats flip the House by enough of a margin to pass articles of impeachment, and even manage to flip enough Senate seats to remove President Trump.  I’m not going to say they can’t, but I am going to say they WON’T.  Oh sure, they MIGHT do the impeachment just to say they did, but then what happens?  Think this through.  On the one hand, they get impeachment through the House, and then nothing happens in the Senate.  La Resistance doesn’t understand that’s how it works.  How do they explain to their dimwitted goons that President Trump isn’t going to be led away in shackles?  But the second option is worse–they impeach, and then remove the President in the Senate.  Sure, this is what they claim they want…but then the result is they get Mike Pence.  How do they explain to La Resistance that they DON’T get Dr. Pantsuit now, nor do they get a do-over election?  How do they explain that this does not mean President Trump will be dragged into the public square to be pelted with rotten fruit and guillotined at high noon, like so many of these deranged people seem to expect?  Finally, and most importantly, how will they energize their lunatic base once the target of all their hatred is gone?  Not only would this deprive them of their best ever distraction/punching bag and let the air out of La Resistance, but it would also turbocharge and enrage the previously-sedate Trump base.  This is not a happy result for the Democrats.

If the worst does happen, pray they’re that stupid.  Pray we’re that lucky.

Democrats and leftists clinging to their hopes of a blue wave this fall might want to consider what happens if their dreams come true, and the fact that their rabid base will expect them to make good on the hyperbole.  If they did, it’s hard to say whether the establishment GOP or the Democrats would be trying harder to throw these midterms away.

Compare and contrast

I am totally stealing this from John Hayward’s Twitter feed.  Also, due to the way it comes up on said feed, I am also posting it in what I presume to be the reverse order of how the thread was originally done.  Since it doesn’t appear to affect the message in any way, I’m just going to leave it as is.

Conservative wave elections are takeovers fueled by anger.  Every one of them is portrayed as the last gasp of the dying white male.  Liberal wave elections are realignments driven by passion.  Every one of them is portrayed as the last gasp of the dying white male. 

Large groups of mainstream conservatives are non-stories.  Small groups of fringe extremists are major national news events.  Violent leftists are non-stories.  Extremists are the vanguard of important new movements.  Large rallies are the beginning of a revolution.

When the Right is in power, dissent is the essence of patriotism and resistance is healthy civic engagement.  When the Left is in power, dissent is hatred and resistance is treason. 

People on the Right get rich by stealing money from the poor.  People on the Left are rich because they are popular and virtuous.  Every dollar in their accounts is a fan letter someone wrote to them.  They give so much back to society that their financial status is irrelevant. 

Conservatives who change their positions are hypocrites and flip-floppers.  Liberals don’t change their positions.  Their old positions are erased from history.  The new position becomes the one they always held deep in their hearts. 

When conservative policies have unintended consequences, the ideas are flawed and politicians should be punished for implementing them.  When liberal policies fail, the people are flawed and should be punished for disappointing their brilliant central planners. 

If the conservative party has more money, there’s too much money in politics and election laws must be rewritten to weaken special interests at once.  If the liberals have more money, anyone who criticizes their fundraising obviously hates the people they claim to represent. 

When conservatives lose an election, it’s a clear sign their party is too conservative and must change to survive.  When liberals lose, it’s a clear sign the electorate is too conservative and must be changed, beginning with their children. 

When conservative politicians are accused of wrongdoing, they’re guilty until proven innocent, and only marginally less guilty if they CAN prove their innocence.  When liberals are accused, the accusers are guilty until proven innocent. 

When conservatives object to speech, they’re humorless, sexless Bible freaks who must be subjected to the speech they dislike until they loosen up.  When liberals do it, they’re sensitive social justice warriors working to create safe spaces for marginalized people.

When conservatives increase the deficit, they’re irresponsible spendthrifts looting the Treasury to give tax cuts to their rich friends.  When liberals do it, they’re compassionate saints making wise investments in the future by spending its money in advance. 

When conservatives stake out a bold position that currently lacks majority support, they’re out-of-touch or filled with hatred for those who disagree.  When liberals do it, they’re visionaries and the people are Neanderthals.  The people will be changed by force until they agree. 

Under the political rules of engagement in both US and UK, the fight is over when the Right loses a vote or court decision.  For the Left, that means the fight is just beginning, and the issue will be re-voted or re-litigated endlessly until they win.

No bridges left to burn

Former FBI director and incompetent partisan hack James Comey has been making the media rounds over the past several days, doing an interview with George “Pay No Attention To My Time in the Clinton Administration” Stephanopoulos and making an appearance on The View to promote his new book.  I will not mention the title here (it’s not like anyone doesn’t know about it) save to remark that it oozes irony.  In the process Comey is succeeding in demonstrating that he’s pretty much exactly the slobberingly biased Democratic sycophant we figured him for back when he laid out a flawless indictment of Dr. Pantsuit only to not indict her.  Or when he re-opened the case against her only to close it a day and a half later in an obvious play to remind voters “hey, she’s really totally innocent you guys!” less than two weeks out from election day (a move which he admits was engineered to prevent the Trump team from taking full advantage of it).  Or when it came out that he had written Dr. Pantsuit’s exoneration before she was even interviewed and her closest confidants declared “attorneys” for some reason and granted immunity on top of that.

No, recently we’ve also learned that the untarnishable James Comey, the man whose impartiality was second only to Robert Mueller’s, was moved to the point of tears by the weakest of praise from Whatshisname.  Tears.  Add to that all the juvenile playground taunts and insults he references in his own goddamned book (remarking about the President’s hair, his “small hands,” his being “orange”) and whatever was left of the facade is long gone.  Claiming he “left the Republican party because it left him” and because “character matters” is beyond hysterical given his not-even-tacit-at-this-point support of Dr. Pantsuit.  And for what it’s worth, I hope the GOP leaves people like him far behind them.  We don’t need or want them.

Despite the media blitz, it appears that Comey’s book is not exactly flying off the shelves.  In part this is probably due to the last “tell-all bombshell” turning out to be a steaming pile of crap even according to lefty reviewers (I’m looking at you, Michael Wolff), but at the same time, I can’t help thinking of the night on Stephen Colbert’s show where he announced to his audience that James Comey had been canned and the audience erupted in applause…until Colbert told them this was a bad thing.  You see folks, in the list of people who are responsible for “What Happened” in November of 2016 (according to the more-delusional-by-the-day Dr. Pantsuit and her ever-more-deranged followers), James Comey still ranks at or near the top.  Despite all of his efforts to derail and dismiss any of the allegations against Dr. Pantsuit, despite his clear and plain pronouncements of eternal penitence and sorrow for whatever part he played in “her loss” and his swearing of fealty to his Democratic overlords, they just can’t get past the idea that Comey’s the guy who made it all go south.  Of course I have discussed at length that no one is “to blame” when nothing went wrong, but the left and the Pantsuit drones won’t ever let go of the idea and narrative that President Trump’s election was a disaster, and in their minds they need a scapegoat.  And the one they keep coming back to is Jim Comey.  No matter how much he tries to make himself out to be one of the tribe and a proud member and servant of La Resistance, that disconnect is still there.

The sad truth for Mr. Comey (and sweet schadenfreude for those of us who believe in truth and justice) is that the left is merciless and unforgiving, and does not have a shred of loyalty to anything but the progressive cause itself.  He can try to ingratiate himself with their side all he wants from here to the end of his days, but they already have him pegged as the man who denied them their feminist utopia.  His penance must be eternal.  Oh sure, they’ll cite him as authority and trot him out for conveniently deep-thought-esque remarks about “character” and “integrity” and “tsk tsk what has the Republican party come to?” but forgiveness?  Acceptance?  Absolution?  Sorry Jim, you’d best get to pushing that rock up the hill.

The real fact of the matter is character does indeed matter, but principles matter more.  If you could turn on your principles because you find the character of the messenger distasteful, that tells me you weren’t really serious about what you claimed to believe in the first place.  Or to spell it out, Comey was never a Republican.  Nevermind that stacking Donald Trump’s character up against Dr. Pantsuit’s isn’t even a contest.  Nevermind that it was Dr. Pantsuit’s husband who blithely told America character didn’t matter.  Despite all of this, we saw and heard repeatedly that conservatives and Republicans desperately wanted to believe in James Comey, we wanted to hope he had a master plan at work, we’d forgive his transgressions and failures if only he did his damn job just once.  But Comey made a different choice, and has elected to burn whatever bridges he might have with the right, while failing to realize the left already burned them from the other end.

I’d say I feel sorry for him, but I’d be lying.  You could have been a hero, Mr. Comey.  I hope groveling at the feet of Whatshisname and Dr. Pantsuit was worth it.

 

Stop trying to make Nikki Haley happen

First of all, I have said on numerous occasions that I think picking former South Carolina governor and rising GOP starlet Nikki Haley for UN Ambassador was one of the most brilliant moves and best appointments President Trump made.  Seriously, no sarcasm at all.  The reason for this, however, is because the UN is useless and ought to be held in utter contempt.  Picking an intellectual powerhouse like John Bolton or Ted Cruz for this position would be like swatting mosquitoes with a Hellfire missile.  Putting Haley (whose support for the President was lukewarm at best) into this role, on the other hand, is as much flipping the UN off as it is promoting and simultaneously sidelining Haley.  Put another way, with a strong and fiercely patriotic president behind him, returning Bolton to his old job would have been like having a college English professor play Scrabble against a six-year-old.  By contrast, watching Nikki Haley own the place is like watching the six-year-old take on and own an entire room full of equally empty suits, with the added bonus of her sweet southern “li’l ol’ me” charm.

In other words, her lack of competence is showcasing just how incompetent the UN really is.  And of course, having a woman there to tell off all these Islamic patriarchies is just a bonus.  People need to remember, Nikki Haley can only talk tough because of the policies of the president and administration for whom she speaks.  She is not setting policy.  She’s merely a mouthpiece, just like every other ambassador in that room.  When she talks tough, it’s because she was given the authority to do so by President Trump.  When she talks about our foreign policy, the words may be hers but the direction comes from higher up.  Yet some people seem to think (in their haste to “pick a woman, any woman with an R next to her name”) that because she can bat the nimrods at the UN around like a cat playing with stuffed mice that she is somehow presidential material herself.

Uh, no.  Let’s look back at pre-UN Nikki Haley and see what she’s done under her own power.  Two things stand out.  The first would be the whole Confederate flag on the South Carolina capital grounds controversy from a couple years back.  As I have stated many times before, I am no fan of the Confederacy or the Stars and Bars, but neither am I under the delusion that the only thing that Confederate symbology stands for is horrible hateful racism.  It’s not.  South Carolina in particular remains staunchly proud of its history and at the same time has elected a black senator (who also happens to be a Republican).  Yet when the statue-topplers (who at this point had not gone knocking down statues yet) came for South Carolina’s flag, Nikki Haley folded.  Some have said “oh what’s the big deal, it’s just a flag,” and that’s exactly it.  Haley capitulated on a silly issue pushed by a very loud but very tiny fringe.  That’s not the kind of spinelessness I want to see in ANY politician, much less a President.  Without the fire and resolve of President Trump backing her up, Haley’s track record points to her cowering in the corner, not speaking up knowing there’s a bodyguard with a big stick watching her back.

The second item that I would bring up was when Haley was asked to do the 2016 Republican response to Whatshisname’s last State of the Union address.  This was a big deal.  Primary season was winding down–I don’t remember how many candidates were left on our side but I do know the fake news, the establishment GOP, and the NeverTrumpers had already come up with their initial litany of reasons why Donald Trump was pretty much the worst thing ever (and the fake news was giddy with the thought that the more “electable” Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were losing).  Nikki Haley was tapped to basically rebut every bogus bragging point Whatshisname would come up with, and essentially to sell the Republicans’ fall platform to voters, particularly whoever our Presidential candidate turned out to be.  Of course, at this point, we knew the Democrats would be nominating Dr. Pantsuit–let’s face it, Bernie was never even meant to have a chance.  We also saw there was a substantial likelihood that Donald Trump was going to be our nominee.  What did Nikki Haley do?  She bragged about taking down the Confederate flag, she claimed Republicans were also to blame for the erosion of leadership, and she railed against “angry” and “loud” voices.

“Angry” and “loud” voices of course being words frequently if not exclusively used to describe Donald Trump.  In short, she delivered a weak, conciliatory address full of SJW platitudes and backhanded attacks on the guy who was probably going to be our nominee.  What should have been a rallying cry to the faithful was instead a poorly disguised dig at the guy who had energized a base that establishment types like Nikki Haley had put to sleep and sent wandering off in disgust.

Over the past few days there was a minor dustup as Haley asserted that following our missile strike on Syria there would be new sanctions imposed against Russia.  This turned out to be incorrect–sanctions were merely considered and ultimately not imposed.  When pressed about this contradiction, White House spokesman Larry Kudlow praised Nikki and her work, said she was “ahead of the curve,” and asserted that “there may have been some confusion somewhere.”  To any honest observer, his statement was plainly meant to try to cover for Haley (as this was a fairly major goof-up on her part) and at the same time re-emphasize the administration’s confidence in her.  But apparently that wasn’t good enough for Nikki, who spat back “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”

First of all, it’s common knowledge that the phrase “with all due respect” almost always actually means “with no respect whatsoever.”  Never say it to a judge, just sayin’.  Second, Kudlow didn’t say Haley got confused.  He may have strongly implied it but he also wrapped it in about six layers of effusive praise and “attagirl”s.  Third and most importantly, yes Nikki, you’re definitely confused.  You apparently didn’t get the right message, or perhaps you actually got it into your head that you’re driving this train.  You’re not, and you’re starting to sound like you’re getting a little too big for your pencil skirts.  You’ve got a good gig, kid, don’t screw it up with delusions of adequacy.

Nikki Haley is a puppet.  She’s a good puppet, but she is not out there staring down America’s enemies with a death laser glare nor is she leading the charge like General Patton in peep-toe heels.  She speaks bold words because she represents a bold president.  That’s it.  The only reason she’s taken seriously and has the power to speak as powerfully as she does is because a committed nationalist patriot is standing behind her with his arms crossed and nodding with approval.  The world respects him and the nation he leads, not her.  Frankly, I think Sarah Huckabee Sanders is far more capable and powerful than Nikki Haley–the idiots at the UN are nothing compared to the piranha in the fake news, and so far Sarah’s stuck to the script flawlessly.

Look people, I literally posted like a day or two after the 2016 election that I think it’s important that we find a capable Republican woman to run in 2024, not because I like the idea of a woman president (and I definitely don’t like the idea of “make her president because woman”), but because we need to steal this thunder from the Democrats before they come up with a viable way to try again.  But there are people out there fawning over Nikki Haley and actually talking about her challenging President Trump in 2020, nevermind running in 2024.  I won’t say something stupid like “If you idiots nominate her I won’t vote for her!  #NeverNikki!”  I AM saying, for the love of all that is holy, not this woman.  This is not the candidate you’re looking for.  Stop trying to make Nikki Haley happen.

EDIT: CNN’s Dana Bash apparently had a slow news day and did a callback to Haley’s stupid and arrogant remark like it was some kind of “iconic line for a female leader.”  Look people, you can call it “sassy” all you want because she’s a woman, it’s still petulant, insubordinate, and not really a smart thing to do.  But if Nikki Haley would prefer to be considered incompetent rather than confused, I’m more than happy to oblige.

Getting up with fleas

I get that I don’t agree with everything some of the commenters I watch have to say.  As I have said before, the voices on the right are not an echo chamber, and especially lately there has been far more dissonance than harmony in our chorus.  I’m not even going to start on the zombie NeverTrumpers here–today I’m looking right over at two guys whose work I have appreciated and linked here many times, who are up in arms and full of misguided righteous fury over President Trump’s ordering of action in Syria, Stefan Molyneux and Paul Joseph Watson.

I understand both of their positions.  Molyneux is a committed adherent to the idea of the “nonaggression principle,” which I have discussed before and concluded that it is founded on the same fantasy as socialism, that being “everyone will just be nice.”  He has massive blinders on regarding the subject of Middle Eastern intervention and the War on Terror despite having a very clear view of the threat posed to Western civilization by radical Islam, and for a guy who usually thinks very clearly and backs up his arguments with logic and data he just seems perenially mired in this jargon of “American imperialism” and “military-industrial complex” and “George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John Bolton are war criminals.”  I get it, really.  He’s wrong, but we’re all allowed to have our hangups.

PJW (and the rest of the InfoWars guys) tend to be more anti-interventionist because they see American world policing as “globalist” as well as being wasteful and ineffective.  In some ways they’re not wrong.  In others they’re as deluded as Molyneux and your garden variety “war is not the answer” peaceniks.  But Watson did something on his Twitter feed the other day that struck me as a “this should give you pause” moment.  He retweeted a video from Democratic congresswoman and well-known blabbermouth (as well as nascent future national Democratic star) Tulsi Gabbard that was captioned with nonsense about how we “owe it to our service members to send them on missions worthy of their great sacrifice, missions that are in the interests of the American people.”  This would be from the same Tulsi Gabbard who was on ABC freaking news a few months back saying how North Korea needed nukes to protect themselves against American imperialism.  Yes, that’s right children, the same Democratic congresswoman crying about what we owe to the men in uniform now was making excuses for the Norks having access to nukes because America’s a big mean bully who’ll just waltz in and take over given the chance.

I get the irony in Watson posting supportive tweets from longtime warhawk and unprincipled Trump hater John McCain while he backs up his position with a video from an America-hating Democrat.  The difference between the two is the core principle.  John McCain is going to support military action no matter what, it’s just what he does.  Tulsi Gabbard, on the other hand, is going to fuss about military action and the advancement of American interests on the international stage, again no matter what, it’s just what the Democrats do.  Gabbard’s one of the few Democrats arrogant enough to show her true colors on this issue and Paul Joseph Watson damned well knows what she really stands for even if her easily-led constituents don’t.  To be blunt, the praise from John McCain and the lukewarm support of a number of party-line Democrats doesn’t concern me, but citing someone who justified an insane dictatorship having nuclear weapons to protect themselves from US ought to be setting off alarm bells for PJW.

The old saying goes, you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.  We know McCain’s NeverTrumpers and the rank-and-file Dems aren’t getting cozy.  Folks on our side who oppose this action ought to be wary of who they’re cuddling up with.  Make your points, state your disagreements, talk about why you think this is a bad idea, defend your objections, sure.  But don’t go getting friendly with people like Tulsi Gabbard for pity’s sake.

Words that NeverTrumpers should not use–special zombie edition

It’s been a while since I wrapped up the “Words that leftists should not use” weekly series.  I said when I did the final post that I might have addendums to the series from time to time.  I’m not sure this should count as one but it can definitely be argued that zombie NeverTrumpers often are leftists.  Not always, definitely not always–some of them are just trying to protect their angle, others are so ingrained into the system that they’re responding viscerally to what they perceive as a threat to their bread and butter.  But even this far into the Trump presidency, when we’ve accomplished more in a year and some change than even President Reagan did, whenever I defend or just urge people not to rush to judgment on a perceived error of the President’s I still get accused of being a “duped cultist” and a “Trumphumper” with no shortage of insults and mockery.  This comes even from centrists like Steven Crowder who have the nerve to get defensive about their unwarranted and constant criticisms of President Trump and choose to blame it not on the fact that they don’t like the guy, but rather it must be that everyone defending the president is some kind of mind-numbed robot.  So in that sense I’m going to take a few of the more popular terms they like to throw at us Trump supporters and dissect them similarly to the left’s favorite words in WTLSNU.

“4D Chess.”  I’m not sure whether this term originated as a compliment or an insult, though I’m inclined to think it started as a positive.  It of course implies that there’s a complicated game going on that many observers might not understand, but that the President is playing with the media, the Democrats, and the establishment GOP and is outsmarting them.  Now it is generally thrown out as a slur anytime someone defends the President making a controversial or “stupid” move, including but not limited to the President’s statements regarding DACA (which had the Democrats giggling until he yanked the rug out from under them) and his comments about guns (which so far have resulted in nothing except the GOP and the NRA seeing a surge in support).  If the President’s moves had been backfiring in a big way this might actually be an insult, but seeing as how President Trump has thwarted his opponents at every turn so far (to the extent that they have to raid his lawyer’s offices in an attempt to find something to keep Bob Mueller going) it becomes clear that he didn’t need to play “4D Chess” to outwit these bozos who don’t even understand checkers.

“Principled conservative.”  This snide backhand came out a lot during the election and still surfaces as a claim that “real” conservatives stuck to their “principles” and wouldn’t vote for a former celebrity Democrat…completely ignoring that President Reagan himself was a former celebrity Democrat.  But you know, a “principled conservative” would be like Evan McMullin, the wannabe spoiler who claimed that GOP tax policy was rooted in racism.  Yeah, that was a thing that happened.  Don’t even get me started on guys like Bill Kristol, Ana Navarro, or anyone over at NeverTrump Online (f/k/a National Review Online).  Meanwhile, those of us who actually believe in our beliefs and not a system and party that is more concerned with preserving the status quo can see that everything President Trump has done is fiercely conservative and his biggest opposition has been from the GOP itself.  He’s not a gamble anymore.  The best part is that President Trump is not a doctrinaire conservative, he’s just doing conservative things because they’re popular and they work.  I don’t think any of these “principled conservatives” realize how significant that is.

“Binary choice.”  This is a term and concept that NeverTrumpers like to dismiss and ridicule.  It essentially means “if you’re not with us you’re against us,” and that’s essentially correct, but it sounds worse than it is.  In a world where adults have moral agency, your failure to oppose what you know is evil is just as unpardonable as supporting it outright, especially if opposing costs you nothing but a little time to go vote.  “Protest votes” for Evan McMullin or Gary “I’ll Cry If You Call Illegals Illegals” Johnson don’t help a damn thing.  Whether you like it or not, when election time rolls around, you have two choices.  Maybe you see it as the lesser of two evils, and that’s fine.  You still have the choice to support the lesser or the greater, and your choice NOT to support the lesser means you are, in fact, indirectly supporting the greater.  We all had our chance to make a better choice, and some of us did.  I was a Ted Cruz supporter to the very end in a state that went for Cruz in the primaries.  But when November came, Evan McMullin was not going to win.  Gary Johnson was not going to win.  Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders and John Kasich and whoever else, they were not going to win.  You had a choice to stop Dr. Pantsuit, or not.  Sorry children, you don’t get to opt out of that one by not playing.  Spare me the bulls**t about “earning your vote” and wrap your head around the idea that a Dr. Pantsuit presidency would have been the end of America as we knew it.  You don’t get to sit that out because you didn’t want to vote for a guy who said “p***y.”

“Personality cult.”  Right, sure.  The guy whose slogan is “Make America Great Again” is totally comparable to the dude who used his own initial as his campaign emblem.  I think I and millions of others have been clear we couldn’t care less about President Trump’s personality other than the fact that it makes the lefty snowflakes so very angry.  But apparently acknowledging observable reality and being positive about the person who is taking all this heat and losing all this money and receiving all these constant threats of imprisonment and death from the rabid left means we are the irrational and cultlike ones.

Seriously, spare me the lectures on “principles” when all you care about is naughty language and for some reason it bothers you that the President tweets.  We’ve wanted a leader who will fight rather than capitulate ever since Reagan left office and now we have one, and anytime someone dares to suggest you’re being unfair in your deranged and unfair criticisms you NeverTrumpers have the chutzpah to claim you are being attacked unfairly.  Stop fighting against everything you ever wanted.  We have the opportunity of a generation here and you people are helping to blow it.