To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public Radio From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant Re: Anniversary + Findings
Mr. Collins,
As with last year and 2021, I hope this day finds you well.
It was three years ago today you sent this out on your listener mailing list::
“South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)
What the heck – let’s give this a shot:
Now, I know MPR reporters don’t generally deign to respond to the peasantry – in fact, I know MPR News management specifically tells staff not to engage with the unwashed masses.
But I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?
It’s not of idle interest to me. Mine was one of the neighborhoods that got burned, looted and vandalized in May of 2020 (noting at the time that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them – the sort of fieldcraft that’d make a Mossad agent envious).
While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, very much off of it during his unfortunate unpleasantness a few years ago), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.
And as I do every year on the anniversary of this event, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings. Because it’s everyone’s city.
January 6 was, at worst, a bunch of goons and wannabes playing “Three Percenter” games. Maybe they were provoked by a Fed, maybe not.
Watergate? That was a President and his committee doing something that they knew was wrong enough that they felt the explicit need to cover it up. amind
The Durham report describes something much worse: the active co-option of the institutions of American law enforcement to political ends.
But right here, right now anybody who had faith in those liars has a choice: declare your alliance to the truth, or to the lies. Do you care more about America or hate Donald Trump so much that you are willing to give up America? Because defending the abuses of power is a rejection of America itself.
The choice is stark, but the stakes really are that high. Not because Donald Trump is the only man who can “save America,” because if that were true America would already be lost. Donald Trump is not immortal, nor has he proven capable of fighting the “deep state.” This is not about Trump, but about who rules America–the people or the Elite.
No, the choice is between upholding the rule of law, limits on power, ensuring accountability in government, and preservation of our constitutional order, or just handing raw power to the Left, the Administrative State, and an MSM dedicated to lying to you all the time.
A smaller but equally corrosive scandal is out there in plain sight; as I’ve been tirelessly pointing out for six and a half years, we don’t have to infer that the media is not just biased, but actively working for the same people the FBI has been busted working for; representatives of our media “elites” said it, proudly, in front of a friendly crowd, just after the ’16 election.
Trump’s greatest failure was his inability to drain the swamp. He made a start – but in the context of this week’s news, “getting a start” is a little like “getting halfway across Omaha Beach before calling it a ‘L'”.
This is going to have to be the next great national crusade.
Sure, it’s entirely plausible that an entire “white supremacist” group without a single inbred-looking morbidly overweight guy among ’em might march through DC without a mob of “counterprotesters” howling for their blood. It’s a crazy world, anything can happen.
I’ll return to the example of France. The French nation and people have a culture that goes back, in one form or another, to pre-Roman times, through Vercingetorix, Charles Martel, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, a phalanx of seminal authors and artists, and centuries of stories, mythical and historical, that helped define what “French” actually meant, to the world but especially to France.
The demographic bleeding-out of World War I caused a crisis in faith in that myth – a malaise, to borrow a term that’s come up in this series before, and most certainly will again. With nearly 10% of the population dead, wounded or missing. and much of the country’s heartland devastated, it’d be fair to say France had Les Bleus
Unlike France in 1940, America hasn’t been demoralized by a great military, demographic and spiritual catastrophe in its recent past (and remember – the end of World War 1 and the invasion of France were about as far apart as 9/11 and today). In the past 40 years, America vanquished its greatest foe to date without a (non-proxy) shot being fired, followed by the greatest expansion in wealth in history. America should be stoked.
But we’re kind of the opposite today.
Every rational, sane, intellectually honest American knows our history – like the history of every nation – is full of imperfections, things that modern mores reject. That’s true of every country ever – at least, the ones that evolve positively. And for the most part, with a few extremely notable exceptions, Western Civilization has done that for the past few hundred years. The notion of “progress” in the human condition was meaningless before Western Civilization as we know it today started evolving.
And so Western culture – especially American culture – developed its own myths and legends. It was the land of opportunity, and of equality.
No, not equal opportunity for everyone at every time – but that, too, has progressed. And generations of immigrants choosing American, and disproportionally succeeding at it, are evidence that the myths have not only some basis in truth, but are in fact not merely myths of facts of American life.
But the powers that be in our culture have been working to undercut those parts of our national mythology.
Equality? In 1987, a Gallup poll showed that about a third of black Americans thought racism was a driving force in American life. In 2015, that figure had doubled. Does anyone seriously think that America got twice as racist between 1990 and the third year of Barack Obama’s third time?
Even more toxically in the long run? The notion that we are a nation of equal opportunity is being pecked away at by a league of leftist intellectual lilliputians.
I was listening to NPR a few weeks ago (so you don’t have to), a show called Marketplace, a show that tries to talk about economics.
They were interviewing Alyssa Quart, a woman whose career seems to revolve around convincing Americans that there is no opportunity. She was flogging a book, Bootstrapped: A Self-Made Myth And The Dystopian Social Safety Net It Created.
And it’s exactly as cynical as you might think:
“Boots were really important in the 19th century,” Quart said in an interview with “Marketplace” host Reema Khrais. “If you’re wealthy, you had someone who could help you put them on. If you’re a working man, you were struggling to pull them up every day. So pulling yourself over your bootstraps became this symbol of getting ahead in this country all on your own steam.”
“If we have a country where the social welfare state is much more fragile than, say, other advanced industrialized countries,” said Quart, “you have people then relying on this ragtag network of nonprofits, volunteers, crowdfunding.”
Quart’s message is being spread on fertile ground, at least among Gen-Zs, who’ve grown up with the message that “Boomers” got all the money and left them the scraps (which, by the way, I also felt as an angry and under-employed GenXer just out of college).
Thing is, Quart made a good point – unintentionally, and in a way that indicts the modern Left’s sabotage of American culture. She endlessly belabors the lack of government insitutions to “support” the poor, which is the usual leftist twaddle. Because…
…of course the idea of dragging one’s self up, completely solo, “by one’s bootstraps” is rare to unheard of. Of course America had institutions that fostered that.
Family.
Church.
Communities – and by that, we’re talking social communities, not governments.
Which are the things Big Left has been aggressively demolishing.
So yeah – coming up by one’s bootstraps is hard. Never easier than in any other culture in history…
So, businesses are opening in a building that got re-opened after…uh, some unfortunate events, apparently:
Mama Safia's Kitchen, which was previously located in the building but was heavily damaged in the 2020 fires, has already announced plans to move back in. https://t.co/1GoCafs38h
To: Rep. Liz Cheney From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant Re: It’s Not Me, It’s You
Rep Cheney,
I’m not the biggest fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
For that matters, I’m not the most passionate of your detractors.
But on this issue?
Let’s review some of the governing principles of America, @mtgreenee:
Our country is governed by the Constitution. You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional. No member of Congress should advocate secession, Marjorie. https://t.co/XE3cQXYrnl
So let me make sure I’m clear on this; if our government is violating the Constitution you’re wrapping yourself in, how long are we supposed to go along with it?
“Our country is governed by the Constitution”
One might hope. But when the government turns the executive branch institutions – the FBI, IRS, BATFE, CDC – against the peoples freedom? When the government trashes the separation of powers and undercuts federalism, and proposes violating the contract under which small states agreed to share some of their sovereignty with big states by eliminating the Electoral College and making the Senate reflect popular rather than state votes…
…how long before dismissing those usurpations with an ofay “Well, the Constitution” isn’t by itself an answer?
“Secession is unconstitutional“
So?
So was the American Revolution.
Saying “secession is illegal” is like trying to end a moral argument with “…because the Bible said so”. It’s vapid and cowardly. Is it illegal even if the Constitution has been rendered moot? Because saying that is like saying the preservation of government is the point, not the system the Constitution establishes and the eternal rights it enshrines.
Not long after the FBI put Catholic worshipers on its politically, motivated watchlist, this happened:
An 18-inch pipe bomb was found behind St. Dominic's Catholic Church in Holmesburg, Philadelphia. Since the rumored & subsequent overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, Catholic churches have been increasingly targeted across the U.S. https://t.co/XPEk5rNZRo
Not jumping to conclusions, here – because I don’t think there’s any need to jump. As we continue to wait for the “epic wave of right wing violence“ that Obama promised us, the epic wave of left-wing violence continues.
What is it about you morons who got you starts writing about grown men chasing balls around fields, that makes you all such dim bulbs about politics? Eddie Schultz, Mike McFeely, Jim Souhan, Bob Costas…
Anyway – go ahead. Declare “Economic Civil War“.
See how California does having to import all of its water from the rest of the country.
See how New York City and DC do, paying import prices for food.
Rep. Winkler is no longer alone at the top of the list of casual racists in government:
The Left is so outraged by a proposal to build a statue of Clarence Thomas at the Georgia Capitol, that one unhinged lawmaker compared him to an “Uncle Tom” who “sold his soul to the slave masters.”
Watch for yourself: the hatred and radicalism of the far-Left on full display. pic.twitter.com/dt1F7bYzoJ
A shooting outside a police training center sparked riots in Atlanta Saturday night.
The police say the deceased was an anti-facility activist who shot a State Patrolman before getting killed by the return fire. The decedent’s, er, colleagues claim he was feeding puppies and getting old women across the street.
Either way, it was mostly peaceful:
Antifa is setting police cars on fire in Atlanta right now..
Although I’m old enough to remember when “Freelance journalist” wasn’t shorthand for “itinerant leftist journalism grad student with a Twitter account”, he may have a point; there may not have been a visible leader. But leaders don’t need to be visible to lead; in fact, that’s probably a serious tactical advantage; ask any platoon leader when snipers are expected.
First: Governor Klink and Mayor Mompants McDreamy could learn a thing or two from Brian Kemp about how to handle communist guerrilla uprisings. But of course, if either of them did the “progressive” wing of the DFL would get upset: Peggy Flanagan would yank the leash on Governor Walz’s dog collar so hard he’d fly out of his shoes.
Among the arrested – the daughter of House Majority Whip Katherine Clark:
Last night, my daughter was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts. I love Riley, and this is a very difficult time in the cycle of joy and pain in parenting.
This will be evaluated by the legal system, and I am confident in that process.
Yep. Daughter. One of those “menstruation is a state of mind”-kind of daughters:
The son of the Rep. Katherine Clark, the second ranking Democrat in the House, was arrested last night for assaulting a police officer during an Antifa event in Boston.https://t.co/C3qkoRSCl3
My first thought, by the way, was that the arrest of the child of a high-profile progressive would work out about the same as the handling of Woody Kaine, the son of Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary’s Veep candidate and “Anti”-Fa member who was arrested for attacking a Republican gathering in the MN State Capitol in March 2017.
But the arrest may have been state jurisdiction. Which may just mean “no woke Soros prosecutor”.
I think the first time I noticed America’s political class divide when I was doing my first talk show, at KSTP, way back when. I made the, um, profound observation that while the American Left had always sought a “class war” in which they – or at least the garden variety of “they” – saw themselves as the little guy revolting against the Leviathan, in at least one contest, the gun control “debate”, they were in fact the patricians, trying to keep the plebs in line.
I was young and naive. Literally every cultural argument breaks down on those lines, down to the rhetoric Big Left uses.
And that class war’s biggest flashpoints in recent years were Brexit in Europe, and Donald Trump in the US. The Big Government response to Covid was an extension of that skirmish.
Which brings us to this weeks’ most interesting story, the argument over the case for or against Amnesty for the culture-war criminals.
It was a salvo in the class war – America’s patrician class’s way of getting the plebs back for Brexit and Trump.
One of many “money” pullquotes:
Public faith in objectively shared political ground was already dissolving while my daughter gestated. If the Virtuals have a problem now, it’s that their counter-volley to Trump and Brexit consumed the last vestige of trust in that shared political ground: our faith in science. And the notion that such ground exists is the sine qua non of Virtual political legitimacy in its current technocratic form.
In this light, Oster’s call for amnesty can present itself as an effort to rebuild the neutral space of shared political endeavour after a period of conflict. But it reads as a continuation of now-familiar efforts to weaponise the appearance of such neutrality and common purpose, in the interests of one side of that conflict.
We all knew every pandemic policy would come with trade-offs. The lawn-sign [the “In This House…” mob – Ed.] priesthood forbade any discussion of those trade-offs. I don’t blame the class that so piously dressed their own material interests as the common good, for wanting to dodge the baleful looks now coming their way. But no “amnesty” will be possible that doesn’t acknowledge the class politics, the corruption of scientific process, the self-dealing, and the self-righteousness that went to enforcing those grim years of lawn-sign tyranny.
Gotta tell you something that bugs the bejeebers out of me.
Governor Walz’s campaign motto in both elections has been “One Minnesota”.
Now, if you’ve studied History *and* German, that slogan sounds all too close to “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer” – “One People, One Empire, One Leader”. It was the motto of…uh, a regime 80 years ago that left behind some apocalyptic historical, social and political baggage.
In 2018, the slogan was merely annoying – one of those things the kids today refer to as “Microagressions”, which is another way of saying “something that people normally suck it up and chalk up to the cognitive dissonance of human communication”.
But after four years featuring the most incredible peacetime seizure of government power in history, and a long spate of politicized violence, not to mention a campaign of “othering” dissenters from the current ruling party as “Fascists” – the same, morally and personally, as the Godwins Law convicts in the second paragraph up above – it’s not hard to wonder if “One Minnesota” is a warm, fuzzy inclusive thing, or a warning that you’re either *with* “One Minnesota” or you’re against it; an invitation, as Elvis Costello put it, “shut up or get cut up”.
The President’s speech in September, referring to half the country as “Facists”, is exactly what regimes do when they want to draw a wide, exclusive “with us or against us” line through society.
Today it’s Ukraine – but it’s the same dynamic that happened in Iraq in the 2000s, and Rwanda in the ’90s, Northern Ireland in the ’70s, China in the ’60s, Greece in the ’40s and ’50s, Finland (ffs?) in the 1920’s, even Kansas before the CIvil War; if you were on the wrong side of the “Us vs. Them” line when “Them” came through town, you and your family…died. Horribly. Then and there, bodies dumped in the street as a warning that we’re now living in One Iraq/Rwanda/Ulster/Greece/Finland/Kansas.
Given the rhetoric we are seeing today – I’ll charitable and say “on both sides”, but my heart’s not really in it – a slogan like “One Minnesota” is just too…redolent. That’s a good word.
You indiscriminately refer to your opposition – political, social, whatever – as “Fascists”, “Nazis” or whatever mortal enemy, against whom your society fought a life or death battle in living memory, that your culture recognizes.
Something causes the gloves to come off. Angry tweets – aimed at people who’ve had that label from that mortal enemy piled onto them – turn to angry words, to angry actions…
…and eventually, to mass murder.
But after the rhetoric of the past few years, escalated over the past few months, it’s not hard to see it happening in a place like
Certain people in the media know who [Umbrella Man] is and won’t reveal it.
Do you think he’s connected or related to a well known DFL elected official or donor?
It’s starting to look that way.
If Big Leftymedia felt that the identity could impugn the GOP before an election, or reinforce the “the whole right is a bunch of wytespremecists” narrative, we’d hear about it at the top of every newscast for the next three weeks.
When people stop trusting the media to tell the stories impartially, democracy takes a hit. And anyone who trusts our media to tell the story impartially is an irredeemable pollyanna.
So what would you do if you met an SS stormtrooper, in mid-depredation? One of the people who conquered Europe and ran the concentration camps? An actual “fascist”?
We’ll come back to that.
Boogie Man
So what defines an authoritarian, whatever label (“fascist”, “Nazi”, “Communist”, “Banana Republic”, and on and on?).
Here’s one trait.
Remember when this scene, from 1984, seemed fictional?
Authoritarians, from the Pharoahs to Kim Jong Un, knew that total authority rested on having a boogeyman – simultaneously the nadir of depravity and an existential threat – to divert the attention and energy of the people.
Remember that old trick from junior high, where you’d stare up at ceiling until other people started staring up with you to see what you were looking at?
“White Supremacist” groups have been shedding members at the rate of an order of magnitude per generation: they had millions of members in the 1920s (they the KKK drew 50,000 to a rally in Rocherster Minnesota in the ’20s), to hundreds of thousands in the ’60s, to tens of thousands in the early 80s (which saw the last great spasm of militant violence from those groups – the Posse Comitatus, the Alan Berg murders, and of course Oklahoma City).
Notwithstanding that, about the time Barack Obama got elected, Big Left started chanting “there’s going to be a wave of white supremacist/ultra-right terror that’ll dwarf 9/11. Any day now”.
And they’ve done their darnedest to tell that story – from portraying 100 doughy losers parading with tiki torches while outnumbered 10 to 1 in Charlottesville a “White Supremacist Uprising”, to shaking and baking more “right wing attacks” from the ether…
…almost as if they’re trying to goad someone into doing something as stupid and destructive…
…as the stuff “Anti”-Fa and BLM have been doing nationwide for the past couple of years.
But it’s not just about deflection.
It’s about making your side think the other side is just a little less noble, worthy and human than the people on your side.
Charlie Crist, taking the next step on his road toward being the Harold Stassen of the deep south, told Republican voters to take their votes elsewhere, for their “hateful” act of (checks notes) supporting Ron DeSantis. .
Which is mostly par for the course, these days.
What, Are You Gonna Cry? Huh?
The propensity for bullies to try to goad their opponents to strike first, so they can appear to be defending themselves, is pretty much bully human nature. Extremists benefit from extreme responses; among the biggest supporters of German president Von HIndenburg’s “Hitler Cabinet” were the Communists, who bet long (and, while ultimately mistakenly, not without good reason) that promoting extremism in their opposition would benefit them.
But as we wait for the “President”‘s speech on “the soul of the nation” tomorrow, the chanting point has been deafening.
If brains were gasoline, Eric Swalwell couldn’t drive a Vespa around the inside of a Cheerio. But that’s the nice thing about being a “useful idiot” – being an idiot won’t count you out of the job:
Boy these guys don’t like being called fascists. Maybe they should stop trying to overthrow their government and forcing raped women to have babies.
Doesn’t he sound like that red-faced bully in sixth grade?
Speaking of sixth grade: don’t some of them sound like they learned “debate” from the mean girls in junior high?
Just some schmuck lefty who’s not the definitive opinion of the whole left?
OK – how about the President’s press secretary?
Karine Jean-Pierre says that people who voted for Donald Trump are "a threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights." pic.twitter.com/8e2fXP2sD7
Berg’s Seventh Law alert; who said anything about a civil war?
And this next bit, from Brandon – is it yet another senile rant, or does he actually think that “right wing Americans” are killing cops?
Or does he just want his dumber, less critical supporters to think it?
Biden repeats the lie that "you can't go out and buy a cannon" and then claims "brave right-wing Americans" are "shooting at these guys behind me." pic.twitter.com/Pt9jKwDoWg
Well, clearly Big Left wants people to think someone’s itchin’ to do some killin’:
A staffer of mine—who’s 1 month into her job—received a call from a man saying he’s coming to our office w/ an assault rifle to kill me. I hesitate to share this but how else do I tell you we are in violent times, & the architects are Trump & McCarthy. Bloodshed is coming.
(Note: not gonna say “this didn’t happen” I am going to say it happens all the time, and like Ilhan Omar’s “death threats” just in time for the state fair last year, calling them out, especially on the part of an intentional incendiarist like Swalwell, is more a matter of political optics than actual law-enforcement. I’m going out on a short little limb to suggest this is but one of many threats people on all sides of the aisle get – but this one happens to fit a narrative. Prove me wrong)
Now, it may well be that “bloodshed is coming”. We’ve already had a couple of examples – although neither this nor this are the examples Swalwell is thinking of.
But the larger point is, Big Left is trying to make half the nation into “boogiemen”.
“But the right does it too! What about Willie Horton? What about Reagan’s ‘welfare queens'”?
Say what you will about both of them; nobody ascribed their traits to half of the entire electorate.
Big Left is “othering” half the population; social media is a “90 Seconds Hate” that never ends.
Why?
You Travel Back In Time And Meet Teenage Hitler…
To answer the question from the first paragraph – what do you do if you meet an actual SS Stormtrooper?
Because the “fascist” of cultural lore was an enemy of humanity. There is no “semi”-concentration camp guard, is there?
You do what our grandparents did at Normandy or Bastogne or Saint Lo? You attack and destroy them. Right?
They are making about half the population into boogiemen so the other half doesn’t see them as human beings with political differences, but rather as villains to be feared, hated, subjugated, destroyed metaphorically or literally.
Let’s see if that’s part of Biden’s speech about “the nation’s soul” later today.
In 2020, a group of activists tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus on the Capitol mall in Saint Paul.
Although the entire episode was carried live in TV, only one person was arrested; that person was “sentenced” to teaching elementary school kids about the evils of Columbus, which is a little like sentencing drunk driver to teaching mixology to high school kids.
This happened, even as the person in charge of the Capitol Architecture Commission, Peggy Flanagan (have you heard she’s Native American?), had the power in her hands to remove the statue via due process – which is slow and boring, compared to having your activist buddies do it for you.
And lefty social media was clogged with addlepated lefties nodding and going “rules, schmules; at least it’s gone”.
One needn’t imagine what’d happen if some non-DFL group decided to tear down a statute of their bete noir; I’ve thought about how fun it’d be to rip down the statue of noted authoritarian socalist Floyd Olson. I don’t suspect I’d get “sentenced” to teaching high school kids about the evils of socialism.
This episode highlights three facets of the sort of authoritarian government that is, in fact, the sort of “fascism” that Big Left is trying to paint the right with:
The Rule of Law is for Other People: Don’t want to go through the Capitol Architecture Committee – or get your Student Loan Redistribution passed by Congress, or have to convince the American people and their state legislatures of the rightness of your cause, or convince Republicans of their wrongness? Just have your buddies tear it down, or declare $10K null and void with no statutory authority, or pack the Supreme Court, or send your “Anti”-Fa crowd in to bust some heads. Rules are for peasants.
Different Versions of Justice For the Political “Haves” and “Have Nots”: Lois Lerner will never go to jail for gang-raping the First Amendment. Not only did the Ramsey County Attorney’s office not actually punish Woody Kane for leading a planned, coordinated assault of Republicans, they may as well have sent him off with a voucher for a hooker and dinner at the Saint Paul Grill.
The Ends Justify The Means: If your idea of government, like the people approving of the tearing down of the statue, is “to get the things I want done, done”, or the shorter but more cynical “move things forward” – whether good, evil or indifferent – then you don’t really get self-government, and likely don’t want to.
“But Trump did all those things!”
Are you sure you want to make “our leadership is doing the same thing the person we call ‘literaly Hitler’ did” your lede?
Just A Note Before We Go
We’ve talked about four attributes of authoritarian government – defining boogeymen, circumventing the rule of law, and making one’s ends justify one’s means.
There’s one more; wrapping ones side in some larger cause, be it “history” or nationalism or, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess, “the soul of the nation” – about which President Brandon will be talking today.
Last week, President Brandon accused Republicans of being “Semi-Fascists”.
To be fair, it sort of sounded like one of his “is he senile, or just not very bright” moments:
I could go either way, to be honest.
But it got me thinking about a couple of things.
What’s In A Word
The left has been devaluing the term “fascist” since I was in high school, and long before, if I recall.
If you want to be pedantic about it, in the 1910s Benito Mussolini – at the time a prominent Italian socialist – figured that while a command economy, a welfare state and state ownership of the mean of production might go over just fine, Internationalism – the concept near and dear to socialism that eventually all borders will be rendered moot by the unification of workers around the world – was not going to fly with Italy, which was had been a nation for about fifty years, and had a lot of nationalist energy about it.
And, presto change-o, Mussolini did some tinkering; in founding the Italian “Fascist” Party, he chucked the “internationalism”, and replaced it with a heaping helping of nationalism. The command economy, nationalization of assets and welfare state, of course, he kept – to Italy’s chagrin in World War 2, as the command economy lagged the rest of Europe so badly that the Italian war machine was positively handicapped.
Most “Fascist” movements – the Nazis, Franco’s Falange and so on – repeat that pattern, keeping the small-l socialism, substituting nationalist dogma for internationalist chanting.
Of course, the left’s version of “fascism” is more nearly described as “saying or doing anything I don’t agree with”.
These days, references to “fascism” almost invariably seek to “other” those your crowd wants to erase from the public square;
And we’ve been seeing an awful lot of that, lately.
How much?
More tomorrow.
Drop The F
So as we close in on President Brandon’s “speech about America’s Soul” on Friday near the Liberty Bell, let’s talk about some of the attributes of…
…well, not ‘fascism’, per se. Or at least not only fascism.
Let’s talk, instead, about authoritarianism, by whatever name you want to call it.
About government that:
Ignores, subverts and/or perverts the rule of law in favor of the rule of men
legitimizes itself in comparison to some boogeyman, without or within – a boogieman that personifies all evil in the eyes of the state, and who must be subjugated for “good” to prevail.
Sublimates everything to a more or less utopian vision of what the world could be, if they had the means
Since it’s state fair time Dash the time when at least some people in Minnesota start paying attention to the upcoming elections – let’s make sure we remember: when minutes counted, Governor Klink took days to respond to the collapse of law and order in Minneapolis.
Moments ago Minneapolis reported a carjacking at gunpoint to start the morning – just as the ‘Walz Failed’ ad campaign launched.
Here’s the first @WalzFailed ad which showcases Governor Walz’s failure to respond to the 2nd night of riots in Minneapolis.
If you lelt them babble on long enough, they always prove you right:
By the way – newspaper editorial cartoonists take a test when they’re interviewing, measuring their knowledge of current events, history, and their understanding of the ins and outs of American society.
If they score over 50%, they get a job in the warehouse.
Meanwhile, the military is reducing standards again, desperate to find bodies to replace the trained professional warriors they just let go.
Civilian gun sales continue unabated, the better to face off against Lesko Brandon’s Wokesters in Uniform. The next Insurrection should be a real doozy.
Joe Doakes
I’m going to break with Joe on this one for a bit. I’m going to suggest that if we ever have a real insurrection, the military will be the least of the problems, as they are overwhelmingly not drawn from the “blue“ elites.
As Robert Kaplan noted in his excellent (albeit a generation old) imperial Grunts, an 18-year-old from East Texas is 32 times as likely to serve in the military as one from New York City (and that New Yorker is much more likely a Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx, or a blue-collar Irish kid from Staten Island, as opposed to a WASP trust fund baby from Manhattan).
Protesters outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Barrett.
First, it’s illegal to protest outside the home of a federal judge and rightly so. There are limits to free speech: fighting words, fire in a theater, perjury on the witness stand, and threatening/intimidating a judge are off limits. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, these gals can take their protests to their state legislatures. They have no place here.
Second, the sign makes clear this protest is not about saving Roe v. Wade’s “first trimester” limitation; it’s not about saving Casey’s “undue burden” limitation; it’s about Kermit Gosnell-style partial birth abortion butchery and Planned Parenthood’s baby-parts-to-order sales. They might be the only seven women in the nation who demand that. The rest of the nation recoils in horror.
Third, their costumes are meant to emphasize their plight. The bloody pants mean that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, women will have to seek back-alley abortions from unqualified practitioners who will leave them hemorrhaging from botched abortions. The tied hands holding the baby mean the women will be prisoners/slaves forced to carry the baby they conceived until it is born and can be given up for adoption. Dire predictions, considering that many states have already moved to guarantee abortions and some employers have even offered to pay for interstate travel if required to obtain one. This is not 1950. Alleys are for drug sales and commercial sex acts, not abortions.
The fact that seven women can get national media coverage for their little stunt instead of a quick trip to the local jail followed by prosecution in federal court indicates the effort likely is coordinated from the very top of the Lesko Brandon administration, probably the same people who sent the FBI after parents who complained to school boards about pedophile grooming curricula and covering up transgender rapes. I hope Democrats run this photo in every campaign ad from now until the election. It’s too much to hope that Republicans would be smart enough to do it.
Joe Doakes
Of course it’s too much to hope the Republicans do it.
