In 1932, when the leadership of the German parliament decided to try empaneling a cabinet under the leader of the largest party in the Reichstag, one Adolf HItler, one of the groups that lent the new idea strong support was…

…the German Kommunist Party.

This bit of cognitive dissonance startles a  lot of modern Ameircans, with their exceedingly pat, linear understanding of political history.  In the context of the times, it made perfect sense.  And not without reason.  The Communists believed that a coalition run by a Nazi would drive everyone in the middle to one extreme or the other – which would redound, conventionally, to their benefit.  They stood to gain from the violence they believed would ensue.

And barring a major change in German political life, it might have worked.

But Hitler outmaneuvered them Commies, and everyone else.   He promised Germans an end to politics – and, numbed by a decade and a half of depression, political violence and fractiousness, Germans bought it.  And he got the allegiance of the German Army, which allowed him to sustain his seizure of complete control of all the levers of German government.

But that was all in the future.  In the fall of 1932, the Commies beheld the spectre of (more) political violence, and chortled merrily.   Division – in the form of a low-grade, cold-to-warm state of conflict – was in their interests, or so they thought.

To the best of my knowledge, Dennis Prager was the first to call our current national impasse a “civil war”.   It’s a cold one – so far.

I despair, occasionally, of it staying that way;

He notes the propensity of today’s left toward violence:

Today, we watch leftist mobs scream profanities at professors and deans and shut down conservative and pro-Israel speakers at colleges. We routinely witness left-wing protesters as they block highways and bridges; scream in front of the homes of conservative business and political leaders; and surround conservatives’ tables at restaurants while shouting and chanting at them.

Conservatives don’t do these things. They don’t close highways, yell obscenities at left-wing politicians, work to ban left-wing speakers at colleges, smash the windows of businesses, etc.

Why do leftists feel entitled do all these things? Because they have thoroughly rejected middle-class, bourgeois, and Judeo-Christian religious values. Leftists are the only source of their values. Leftists not only believe they know what is right — conservatives, too, believe they are right — but they also believe they are morally superior to all others. Leftists are Übermenschen — people on such a high moral plane that they do not consider themselves bound by the normal conventions of civics and decency. Leftists don’t need such guidelines; only the non-Left — the “deplorables” — need them.

Like the Communists of 1932, they are hoping with every Antifa outrage, with every clogged freeway, with every mob scene in a store or restaurant or place of business, to provoke a response.   It will, they think, redound to their advantage.   Given that they control the means of information distribution in this country every bit as thoroughly as the Nazis did 86 years ago, it’s not a bad plan.

A friend of the blog writes:

And here we have an example of a liberal who chooses to not believe someone when they are accusing a Democrat. I wonder what reaction the blogger would get if she wrote this about Kavanaugh?

But, maybe the blogger is not too far from where we all ought to be. I mostly roll my eyes when I hear about a new accusation against a politician. These accusations certainly all seem set up to distract from real issues. Let’s vow not to be distracted. Let’s vow to make sure accusers have solid evidence before we hear about it night and day.

Perhaps the real movement should be to encourage people to report incidents when they happen and investigate then, rather than when they are politically expedient.

Of course, counter to what the blogger writes, I have heard reports that Karen Monahan did try to report it at the hospital. If true, this is far more evidence than we get from most accusers and this is one woman we ought to believe.

The blogger at the link would seem to be a reliable relater of Democrat party chanting points. But as my correspondent correctly notes, I laud the (late breaking, selective’ sudden) concern for facts as a better arbiter of justice than raw, focused emotion (dutifully applied by a biased media).

Dennis Prager puts it most succinctly:  conservatives think progressives are wrong; progs think conservatives are evil.

And for all the caterwauling about the decreasing civility and yawning tribalism in American society, and the straining to be even-handed about it, I believe it to be a self-obvious fact the problem tracks that fairly closely; Red America looks at Blue America in bemused confusion, like an older, more-responsible brother shaking his head at the tacky neck tattoo his idiot sister brought back from art school; Blue America genuinely hates Red America.

Hate.  The H bomb.  H A Double Hatepicks.

Shelby Steele sees it too:

For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.

For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left—Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind—are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.

How did the American left—conceived to bring more compassion and justice to the world—become so given to hate? It began in the 1960s, when America finally accepted that slavery and segregation were profound moral failings. That acceptance changed America forever. It imposed a new moral imperative: America would have to show itself redeemed of these immoralities in order to stand as a legitimate democracy.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Of course, the old biblical parallel says as you sew, you shall reap.   As the Democrats discovered (but, I suspect, didn’t learn) in 2016, if your entire “value proposition” is identity politics, eventually your opponents will respond as an identity group.

And if all you’re putting out is hatred…?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Interesting explanation of what’s wrong with Commerce Clause case-law precedent, written in a way that even I can understand the problem.

TL;dr version: the basic idea was sound but it’s been stretched out of shape to suit passing fads.

And that’s what’s wrong with this ruling by the appeals court in an Oregon baker case.  The court assumed the stretched-to-fit Commerce Clause interpretation was correct, so the anti-discrimination law protecting gays was valid, and therefore the baker was subject to that general law.  Having made the fatal assumption, the court was able to conclude the baker was not targeted for his religious beliefs.  Yes, but if the underlying assumption is wrong, then the baker’s First Amendment religious freedom should trump the federal government’s interest in regulating people who produce goods that could conceivably travel in interstate commerce.

I know, it’s complicated.  We all prefer simple soundbites.  But this is worth the effort to understand.  And Williamson does a good job helping with that.

Joe Doakes

The greatest achievement of the Establishment was convincing everyone that government is so complex, only government people could do it.

Remember when Tim Kaine – Hillary Clinton’s Veep nominee – told liberals to get out in the streets and fight Republicans (which his son took seriously)?

Either does the media…