FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Been thinking of this album a lot lately. It's my kind of 90s nostalgia.
• My friends back home aren’t crazy about Bill De Blasio, but I give him credit for expert trolling with his trip to Hamburg. The wingnut bullshit take on this is that he shouldn’t miss the swearing-in of new police officers — which is hilarious, given that conservatives are always talking about how much the NYPD rank and file hate him; why would they want him around, then? — and because an officer got killed a couple of days ago. (De Blasio will be back for the funeral, where the cops will no doubt turn their backs on him again.)

This guff is of course all aimed at outlanders, who except for the cops (whom they have come to know and love from TV shows) despise New York, full as it is of socialists and non-whites. The Right Scoop puts on its shocked face, claiming “De Blasio has abandoned his city, which is reeling after a NYPD officer was assassinated…” as if New York were Mayberry and Barney Fife had been gunned down. "He’s a terrible mayor and hopefully this gives his city the impetus to oust him,” they add. “But it’s New York… so this might actually be a plus to many of his constituents.” Their gomer commenters join in raging at the city slickers who defy their will (“If you keep this guy or go with someone worse… no one to blame but yourselves”). Outside of that, the brethren are all sputtering rage (“Dirtbag” — Greg Gutfield; “Red Bill” — Pamela Geller; “Commie” — Gateway Pundit, etc). I wonder if those amongst them who like to claim, every time The Leader is insulted, that This Is Why Trump Won have any idea what they’re doing.

• Trump made a speech in Warsaw today (in front of a bussed-in crowd of local wingnuts) that was full of Blood and Soil bullshit:

Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. (Applause.) If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies…

The Darkskins from the South will sap our precious bodily fluids!

…The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it? (Applause.)

We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche — the new KKK! This has of course gone over gangbusters with the worst of our wingnuts, like Rod Dreher, who affects not to know why liberals are objecting and thinks it’s because they “despise Western Civilization.” Dreher loves Western Civ -- but not because of its values: he says “the United States is, at its core, Western, because it is a product of the Enlightenment,” but Dreher doesn’t like the Enlightenment because it gives reason the upper hand on superstition, as his longtime readers will know (“I am skeptical of the Enlightenment because I think too much has been claimed for reason’s power, absent revealed religion and tradition,” “the Enlightenment conception of liberty atomizes everything, and posits as the Good the economically, sexually, and morally autonomous Self,” “Had I been alive during the Revolution, would I have been a Loyalist to the Crown, for the same reasons that being in Jefferson’s house and being confronted in his art by his Enlightened sensibilities made me feel so surprisingly alien,” etc). Mainly Dreher seems to like "The West" because it’s his team and it gives him something to fight to the death against the other team for:

Thank God that the deracinated, de-Christianized EU elite plan to integrate Turkey into the European Union did not work. And if I were a Turk, I would thank Allah for preserving my Islamic country from that fate too. Elites in both countries wish to deny the religious basis of their respective cultures, and pretend that we’re all a bunch of universalists. We’re not, and never will be.

That’s the West to him — he ain’t no damn Turk, and resents you one-worlders telling him he has anything in common with them! (Jesus called all men brothers, but come on -- he also said give to all who ask, and he couldn't have meant that!)