Willful Ignorance
By Mitch Berg
People can vote for whoever they want to. It’s still a fairly free country.
But I have a fair number of people in my social circle – co-workers, high school classmates, former teachers and professors – who are declaiming that they’re voting for Harris and Walz “to save democracy”.
And I read that and try to grasp how much one must ignore – willfully or not – to believe that Harris and Walz support the American republican (small-r) system of popular, federalist government:
- Supports (and gained power in part thru) big tech censoring dissent
- Actively suppressed dissent (Walz’s snitch lines and thoughtcrime database, as well as Harris’s coziness with Big Tech and Big Media with their record of censorship so bald-faced that even Mark Zuckerberg is feeling ashamed)
- Supports repealing the free market – the most human economic system for the most people in all of human history – via price controls and rent control
- Harris supports undercutting federalism and the separation of powers via:
- proposing bringing the SCOTUS under control of the executive branch
- further ratcheting up power to the administrative state
- abolishing the Electoral College
- abolishing the filibuster – one of the last ditch tools in thwarting the impune tyranny of the majority
- further centralizing power in the Executive Branch
- Indeed, *defying* the checks and balances of our system of enumerated powers (the Harris/Biden administrations’ unilateral “forgiveness” of student loans, and withholding of Congressionally-mandated support to Israel)?
- Supports abolishing private healthcare
- Openly seeks to disarm the law-abiding by executive decree (since they’ll never get it through Congress), and expressed contempt for the Fourth Amendment in pursuing that?
- Wants to ramp up the power of the administrative and regulatory state – with “stochastic” implications of violence.
- Actively working to make the border more or less irrelevant – and the nation’s shared ideals along with it.
- And let’s not forget the notion that if you dissent obstreporously enough, professional rioters may “spontaneously” and with no collusion from Big Left whatsoever, nosirreebob, arrive in your neighborhood?
- Subsuming American foreign policy to the power of alliances ?
Against that:
- Mean tweets
- A riot only rhetorically connected with Trump, which has been lavishly prosecuted.
What am I missing, here?
October 3rd, 2024 at 11:19 am
Minnesota was largely settled by German and Norwegian immigrants, people used to obeying orders without question who taught their kids the same culture.
Minnesota DFL voters know that everybody agrees Trump is a danger to democracy – politicians, news, teachers, social media – and Harris/Walz is our only hope. The few deplorable people who disagree are right-wing kooks, racist haters who hate hatefully. Minnesota DFL voters know this is so, because everybody agrees it is so – politicians, news, teachers and social media.
Minnesota DFL voters would have made wonderful storm troopers herding people into cattle cars. Why wouldn’t they? They are just following orders, and besides those awful people had it coming, everybody says so – politicians, news, teachers, social media.
October 3rd, 2024 at 12:12 pm
Mitch,
You’ve completely overlooked the most damning thing about Trump.
ORANGE MAN BAD!!!!
October 3rd, 2024 at 12:49 pm
Norwegian immigrants, people used to obeying orders without question
Germans yes.
Norwegiains?
Not quite so much.
October 3rd, 2024 at 1:40 pm
Not quite so much
Mr Jones may have phrased it poorly, but he’s not all that wrong.
One of the negatives with high trust societies is that everyone pretty much acts the same and enforces that behavior. See, for example, Janteloven which was made famous in Denmark but it was written by a Nordmand. Norway is a high trust society – probably still is to some degree even tho’ the Powers That Be there are presently doing everything in their power to sabotage it. Germany, ditto.
Taking advantage of behavior enforcement is/was key to squashing the feeble protests against MENA immigration as well as the Kung flu restrictions. In fact, regarding the latter, they’re still doing it in Norge – Trippeldom i Høyesterett: – Smitteverntiltakene var gyldige (or Triple Decision from the Supreme Court –
The infection control measures were legal).
October 3rd, 2024 at 1:59 pm
The Biden-Harris administration is at this moment actively restricting civilians from helping the victims in the Appalachians. An example from RedState, Become Ungovernable, Save People.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, I’m trying to wrap my head around our government’s response. They’re inept to the point where it’s almost cruel, and everything I see from the government right now points to one that has such disdain for the people that it’s actively wanting to stop them from being saved, or is so lost on what to do, and they’re making all the wrong decisions.
There are so many more examples.
October 3rd, 2024 at 3:04 pm
Both Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp had the foresight to position equipment and resources before the storm hit. They have been able to tell FEMA to direct resources elsewhere.
I seem to recall the leftists excoriating GW over the response to Katrina, asking why didn’t he preposition equipment. Well, if we recall, both of the inept buffoons running Louisiana (Kathleen Blanco) and New Orleans (Ray Nagin), were like deer in headlights, but they blamed their lack of leadership and action on Bush.
October 3rd, 2024 at 4:42 pm
Is it just me or does Walz look like Don Rickles?
October 4th, 2024 at 6:33 am
I supposed it is too late to say so because comment threads here tend to go stale after a day – however – I neglected to mention what a great post this is. The last 48 hours have revealed so much about the Biden-Harris administration that the impact of your excellent list has been degraded.
Have you confronted any of your co-workers, high school classmates, former teachers and professors with the items in this list?
October 4th, 2024 at 7:41 am
jdm;
Regarding your last paragraph; Every freaking day!
October 4th, 2024 at 8:24 am
boss, with where I live and the people I am around daily, I have very few people that I can confront with Mitch’s list. They mostly all have the same politics that I do.
What I’m really interested in, is how do people react when you tell them?
October 4th, 2024 at 9:11 am
jdm;
Reactions are varied from “You’re just a crazy MAGA person”, to deer in headlights looks and silence, with a couple of them grudgingly admitting it’s happening.
October 4th, 2024 at 9:22 am
One of the interesting things about the German immigrants is that many of them were “cordially invited to leave” after the failed socialist revolution of 1848 by the Kaiser, so to speak. So they didn’t necessarily fall into the category of “people who follow orders”, but many were in the category of “people with good views towards socialism.”
Good summary of what the problem is with Harris & Walz, though. It used to be that even Democrats held back from open support of Communism, and that ended after Gus Hall decided not to run against Dukakis because the Democrats had adopted most of the Communist Party platform.
October 4th, 2024 at 9:26 am
Is it just me or does Walz look like Don Rickles?
Looks like Don Rickles, debates like Foster Brooks.
October 4th, 2024 at 9:40 am
Interesting, bike… that goes a long way towards explaining the why and what of the “far-left” Farmer-Labor party.
October 4th, 2024 at 10:35 am
Here in NC no one is going after Democrat Governor Cooper for lack of preparedness. He’s a lame duck so I suppose he gets political cover. Interesting article I read today compared Helene with the great flood of 1916, a result of two tropical storms hitting the same part of Western NC a week or so apart. Largely the same result except nobody was chirping about “climate change.” I think it’s called a hundred year flood.