I can’t say too much lest I breach Little Bookworm’s privacy, but suffice it to say that, after only two weeks at her Obscenely Expensive Liberal Arts College, she has already taken a giant step in the direction of moronic, damaging Leftism. I have refrained from berating her because that would be counterproductive. Instead, I provided her with objective information about the direction she has taken and she, with all the confident arrogance of an uninformed youngster, has refused to reconsider. I’m not feeling the love today.
I hope blogging helps me vent my spleen. Otherwise, if you read tomorrow that a woman suffered a deadly attack of spontaneous combustion during the night . . . well, that just might be me.
Preachy Leftist “comedians” may be harming Hillary. Mr. Bookworm adored Jon Stewart and was endlessly certain that, if I just sat and watched for a while, I’d be riotously amused and return to the Democrat fold. His confidence in Stewart’s powers of persuasion was misplaced. I found Stewart intentionally both ill-informed and dishonest.
When Stewart resigned, Mr. Bookworm transferred his allegiance to John Oliver and Samantha Bee, both of whom are even harder Left than Stewart, and both of whom have the same shtick: They say something insulting about a Republican or conservative, following it with a strained analogy, and then pause for the adoring audience’s laughter. It’s like a call-and-repeat in the Church of Leftism.
Mr. Bookworm has suggested that I lack a sense of humor, which may well be true. I prefer a bit of wit and intelligence to flavor political insults, so I’m probably expecting too much from the current generation of humorists. I, on the other hand, have tried suggesting to him that these smug Leftist harridans simply aren’t funny.
Ross Douthat might agree with me on that last point. He also thinks that these cultural avatars, along with the Lefties on football teams and at award shows, have pushed themselves into such an extreme political corner that they’re leaving no room for Hillary Clinton to survive:
The culture industry has always tilted leftward, but the swing toward social liberalism among younger Americans and the simultaneous surge of activist energy on the left have created a new dynamic, in which areas once considered relatively apolitical now have (or are being pushed to have) an overtly left-wing party line.
[snip]
First, within the liberal tent, they have dramatically raised expectations for just how far left our politics can move, while insulating many liberals from the harsh realities of political disagreement in a sprawling, 300-plus million person republic. Among millennials, especially, there’s a growing constituency for whom right-wing ideas are so alien or triggering, left-wing orthodoxy so pervasive and unquestioned, that supporting a candidate like Hillary Clinton looks like a needless form of compromise.
Thus Clinton’s peculiar predicament. She has moved further left than any modern Democratic nominee, and absorbed the newer left’s Manichaean view of the culture war sufficiently that she finds herself dismissing almost a quarter of the electorate as “irredeemable” before her donors. Yet she still finds herself battling an insurgency on her left flank, and somewhat desperately pitching millennials on her ideological bona fides.
Isn’t that just delicious? All I can say is, from Douthat’s essay to God’s ear.
Between the Islamic terror attack on Nice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision to go full Bulworth, and Hillary’s semi-pass from Comey (a scathing indictment followed by a “get out of jail free” card), there’s been a bumper crop of stupidity in the Facebook feeds of my Lefty friends. I have to go to work soon but before I do I wanted to share three emblematic examples with you. The first is from The World Post which is, as best as I can tell, an arm of the Huffington Post:
The post caption is my rendering of a quotation common amongst the British during WWI, to the effect that “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet.” As the British saw it, if you showed weakness, the Germ-hun would go for the jugular; if you showed strength, the Germ-hun would grovel at your feet. It was the best way that a relatively free society could describe an aggressive, rigidly hierarchical society. The same can be said of ISIS and of Islamists in general as was once said of the Germans.
A collection of pictures has been circulating on my real-me Facebook feed, a feed mostly populated by Progressives (thanks to a lifetime spent in Progressive strongholds). The Progressives who post it are very proud of themselves when they share these images of costumed “angels” taking a stand against the Westboro Baptist Church protesters who inevitably showed up in the aftermath of the Orlando shooting:
All of those who read this blog already know everything Bill Whittle says: that Islam has a violence problem; that Islam is now and has always been at war with everyone (i.e., it doesn’t play well with others); that there’s something very wrong about Obama’s rigid refusal to acknowledge Islam’s problems and his administration’s overtime efforts to erase Islam from the violence playbook; and that Obama’s cowardice means that millions of law-abiding Muslims stay silent because they know that our American government won’t protect them against their worst enemy, the fundamentalists in their midst.
After World War II, Pastor Martin Niemöller penned his famous “
Belshazzar was a great king who sneered at the Bible, partied decadently, and failed to read the handwriting on the wall when he might still have saved himself and his people.* His story is the story of the American Left.
Readers know that I hold no brief for Donald Trump, whom I view as a media-created Big Government demagogue, whose politics have half-tones of both Left and Right ideology, but whose dominant top-note is pure self-interest. The fact that I dislike Trump, though, does not mean that I dislike or disrespect the majority Americans who support him. I understand the frustration driving them, although I believe that they’ve put their faith in a false Messiah. Few things, therefore, make me go more ballistic than having Leftists smugly claim that the majority of Trump supporters are racist white men.
Bush didn’t, Obama wouldn’t, but the next president should: Call into the Oval Office the leaders of Muslim communities throughout America to say, “Because of the First Amendment, the fact that you and the people in your community practice Islam is irrelevant to us in America. Your faith is your business. What is relevant to me as leader of this nation is whether you support America or not. When all of you leave this office, you need to carry a single message to your communities: ‘You are either supportive of America or working to undermine America. If you’re in the latter category, you are on notice here and now that my administration will use every constitutional means available to track you, capture you, prosecute you, and imprison or deport you.’ End of story. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”
