NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about rightbloggers' Thanksgiving, and a very good one it was, too; when they weren't stroking themselves, they were stroked by the New York Times, the Washington Post, et alia. It's almost as if Trump were not an outlier in American expectations of governance, after all.

It didn't meet our theme so I left off my favorite gibberish from last week: National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson, who celebrated the death of a famous murderer by portraying him as a liberal icon in “Charles Manson’s Radical Chic.”

Yeah, guys, I know, but hear him out: “The history of the postwar period is the history of the struggle against Communism,” begins Williamson. “What’s sometimes forgotten — conveniently forgotten — is that our victory in that struggle was far from assured, and that a substantial swath of the Western intelligentsia and much of its celebrity culture was on the other side. It wasn’t just Jane Fonda and Noam Chomsky, Walter Duranty and Lincoln Steffens…”

Not getting the relevance yet? Well, perhaps this will convince you: “‘First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild!’ That was the assessment of…” Jane Fonda? William Proxmire? No, radical firebrand Bernardine Dohrn. And she knew Obama in Chicago. Manson to Dohrn to Obama — see, it all adds up, and also explains Obama’s Mansonian acid-is-groovy, kill-the-pigs policies as president.

Plus, argues Williamson, not only were the Sixties bad politically, “even the music was joyless, Jimi Hendrix letting his virtuosity go to rot while plonking out a honking flatted fifth, the ugliest chord in music (‘diabolus in musica,’ they call it) to open ‘Purple Haze’…” If you stupid normies knew music like Kevin D. Williamson, you’d throw away your “rock” and “rap” and, when you’re feeling festive, instead crank the speeches of Enoch Powell.

Anyway, enjoy the column; don't just leave it for extraterrestrial anthropologists to unearth and enjoy after we've destroyed the planet a couple of years from now.

UPDATE. Had to go back and correct the spelling of Bernardine Dohrn's name -- which is weird, right, since she's such an important figure among us liberals. It's like misspelling Alinsky!

THIS WOULD MAKE AN ATHEIST OUT OF MOTHER TERESA.

Do you retain a sentimental feeling for Christianity, despite the fact that many American Christians actually worship money and Trump and Rod Dreher exists? Here, this article at Reason may cure you:

Are Free Minds and Free Markets Compatible With Christianity?
A baker's dozen Christian libertarians weigh in

If you know libertarians, you may have some idea of the kind of "Christians" they would know. And no, there isn't a single hippie-dippy "Blessed are the poor" pussy in the bunch. Right out of the gate:

"In my mind, capitalism is what happens when you have the absence of initiated force, and that's perfectly compatible—beautifully compatible—with Christianity. Capitalism simply means the freedom of individuals to make contracts and to engage others in a peaceful and voluntary way. That's precisely what Christ taught." —Lawrence W. Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education and author of Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus A Socialist?

Reed's book is available online, and it'll make your average pig-eyed Jesus grifter doff his cap in tribute, full of stuff like this:

In his book, Biblical Economics, theologian R. C. Sproul Jr. notes that Jesus “wants the poor to be helped” but not at gunpoint, which is essentially what government force is all about...

This reminds me of the capital punishment bit in Beyond the Fringe, in which a warden argues for it while escorting a prisoner to his doom: [Warden] "You don't want to be cooped up for life." [Condemned prisoner] "Yes, I do want to be cooped up for life." [Warden] "Come along, now, you're playing with words."

Quotes from the other disciples of Ayn Christ include "Who nailed Jesus to the cross? The state!" and this, my favorite:

The more I read, the more I realized that there's nowhere in here where Christ attempts to use the tools of violence to accomplish his objectives. In fact, it was so extreme in the opposite direction that even self-defense wasn't used by Christ and the early Christians. They chose martyrdom.

I can see why he likes that. Blessed are the meek, they're easier to rob and kill! They talk a lot about how they, in the name of Christ, would not countenance government programs to feed the starving and house the homeless because that's violence, and violence is so ungodly it trumps their need to survive; but I bet if you went for their wallets (or even a crumb from their tables) they'd come up with a gun pretty quick.

I will only add that Kevin D. Williamson, one of the most vicious wingnuts going, is listed here as "National Review roving correspondent and a Catholic convert." As the old saying going, Jesus is alright but his friends are a bunch of fucking assholes.

TRUMPISM WITHOUT TRUMP.

Remember the brave-looking stand National Review took against Trump and Trumpism last year? Ha ha, now look: their front page is devoted to articles like "Approve the Cabinet" by noted free-thinker Kevin D. Williamson and the Trump-flattering encomia of Victor Davis Hanson and Andrew C. McCarthy.  One imagines Trump in doublet and hose: "Was ever loser in this humor woo'd? Was ever loser in this humor won? Sad!"

Worse still are the NRniks who peddle Trumpism without Trump. Get a load of Ramesh Ponnuru's and Rich Lowry's "For Love of Country":

"Dark,” “divisive,” and “dangerous” were a few of the negative descriptors that critics attached to President Trump’s inaugural address, and those were just the ones that start with “d.” (A few threw in “dystopian” for good measure.) The critics took him this way in part because he depicted the last few decades of American life as a hellscape from which he would shortly deliver us: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” But the critics also had this reaction because the address had a theme — nationalism — that has itself long been assumed in many quarters to be dark, divisive, and dangerous.  

That assumption has never been justified and should now be discarded. Nationalism can be a healthy and constructive force. Since nationalistic sentiments also have wide appeal and durability, it would be wiser to cultivate that kind of nationalism than to attempt to move beyond it.

Just because Trump is a monster doesn't mean every ignorant xenophobe strongman has to be one! Surely someone someday might-could declare "Xland for the Xlanders" without the fascist chest-beating. Then comes the history lesson:

Fear of nationalism became very widespread, especially in Europe, after the world wars, and it remains a core premise behind the sputtering drive toward further European integration.

Hitler made nationalism ick,  at least to those sputtering sissies at the EU. They go on: "Nationalism has a bad odor even among some conservatives" because "economic conservatism, particularly as influenced by libertarianism, can come to see borders as barriers to free markets" and some are "influenced by the notion that America is an 'idea' or a 'proposition nation,'" but...

Ugh. You almost want some brute like, oh, Richard Spencer to bust through the flimsy premise of this essay like Kool-Aid Man busting through a wall and go TOUGH SHIT CUCKS I AM YOUR CONSERVATISM NOW! Because that would be cutting to the chase, and who wouldn't prefer it;  after the early, moony grafs about a "benign nationalism" that "includes loyalty to one’s country" and "the revulsion that most people feel when protesters burn an American flag" even the most sympathetic reader must realize this isn't so much an essay as a Country Time Lemonade commercial for NR's milky country-club conservatism.

Who would even read it all, besides me? Some nervy souls may hang in through the Roger Scruton and (Lord help us) Chesterton citations; some bravos may persist past the unexplained assertion that the European Union "has a democracy deficit and always will"; a stalwart few may endure copybook sludge like "the appeal to national pride has also been important to conservative politics"; the dimmer of the half-mad survivors, clawing through the crumbling logic and reek of special pleading, may be encouraged to find themselves washed up on the What's Wrong with Trump's Nationalism section ("He’s not a limited-government conservative, nor does he appear to be a religious man"), but the smarter ones will realize with horror that they've been conned -- the only meaningful difference between Il Douche and Lowry and Ponnuru is that the latter bother to use big words to make the animal appeal of nationalism sound to suckers like philosophy instead of gangster movie monologues. Only relatives and sycophants of the authors will get to the end undamaged.

Bad as it is by itself, this piece of shit has been glossed by Jonah Goldberg. His column is one long wind-tunnel fart and I haven't got the time, but this section will give you some of the flavor:

It is true that nationalism is part of the equation, but it is the less important part. And by mistaking the tail for the dog, we lose sight of what is important. Think of it this way. All, or at least most, marriages require some level of physical attraction, particularly at the outset — that is only natural. But any marriage purely based on physical attraction will struggle to last. No happily married couple I have ever met has confessed that the secret of their long marriage was mutual lust.

No comment. (Loser.)

Marriages endure for a host of complicated reasons, but among the most important is surely a commitment to an ideal, be it religious or otherwise. Nationalism is a bit like lust — a natural human passion that, absent proper channeling, is at best morally neutral and more often a source of unhealthy temptation.

Thank God the writers of National Review can always get some Trump-love on the down-low without violating their vows of intellectual celibacy! Meantime in the real world, Trump's-brain Fat Goebbels is mind-melding with Mencius Moldbug and other nerd-Nazis to create the newer new nationalism, so Goldberg et alia better pay attention so they know exactly how far away to stand -- and exactly where they're expected to be in, oh, six to twelve months.

WHATEVERTRUMP.

Jonathan Chait has noticed (as I have) that a lot of the old NeverTrump guys have rolled on their backs and peed in submission to The Leader. National Review writers in particular were, back in the day, writing columns like "Is Trump a Double Agent for the Left?" and filling entire issues with demands that he be stopped, but even before the election began extending feelers ("He is a demagogue, but he might be our demagogue") and are now wholly bought in.

Some of the NR guys are crabbing about it. Kevin D. Williamson complains that Chait tied their movement to Ayn Rand, which is absurd because Rand's for babies -- mature wingnuts go for Charles Murray. Also, God: "Actual conservatives are more likely to be found in church, where, among other things, they exercise the philanthropic impulse in community." (Trump goes to church too, and even tried to drop money in the collection plate at least once, so I guess he's as philanthropic as Wilbur Ross and Kevin D. Williamson. Also, doesn't he have some sort of foundation?) Williamson does not otherwise describe the intellectual pedigree of modern conservatism, but judging from the insults with which he peppers his essay he might have named Don Rickles.

Better still is Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke, who has apparently been working on his House Englishman routine:

Here’s a fun theory, courtesy of New York magazine’s resident apparatchik, Jonathan Chait: Because they are devotees of the work of Ayn Rand, Donald Trump’s critics have begun to shut up.

I shan’t attempt to explain how ineluctability silly is this contention...

Oh, you shan't, shan't you? He goes on toffee-nosing like this ("I have seen it expressed elsewhere and think it needs nipping in the bud") for some time, but eventually has to get down to the real bullshit:

In order to answer these questions, one has to reiterate what exactly the Never Trump position entailed, as well as remember that it was never a pledge to reject conservatism or to join the Left on the barricades. Rather, it was a description that was applied to those rightward-leaning figures who believed that Donald Trump was a poor choice as the GOP’s nominee, and that he was an unfit candidate for president. Although I rarely used the term myself, it did apply to me as a practical matter: Throughout the primaries and the general election, I argued that Donald Trump was (a) an immoral man, ill-suited to the office of the presidency; (b) a political opportunist, likely to pursue policies that would seriously damage conservatism in the long run; and (c) a wannabe authoritarian who shouldn’t be trusted with power. As a result, I both opposed his nomination during the primaries and concluded during the general that I could not back somebody so manifestly unsuited to his coveted role.

Quite obviously, Trump’s victory rendered much of this moot — not, of course, because his victory has altered his character or because his success has impelled reconciliation, but because the role of Trump’s critics has by necessity been changed...

Go read the rest if you like, but it comes down to this: NeverTrump didn't mean NeverTrump, it meant UnlessHeWinsTrump, in which case he's like any other Republican, which is to say mostly dandy.

You may compare this posture to the conduct of Evan McMullin -- who was sufficiently NeverTrump to mount an insurgent campaign against him and, unlike many of his fans from that time, continues to kick both Trump and the Trumpified Republican Party in the ass. McMullin seems to have a different idea of NeverTrump than Cooke, based on principle and the plain meaning of words.

CE N'EST PAS UNE MAJORITÉ POPULAIRE.

Hillary Clinton's popular vote margin is now tallied at 2.8 million and rising -- which only counts in horseshoes, of course, but with the prospect of a possible Manchurian Candidate and definite buffoon as President the fact does rather cast an ironic pall. So many conservatives nervously downplay her higher total, with Michael Barone alone first saying it doesn't count because of California, then because it's all just coastal states full of cities and minorities. (This was also the heart of Breitbart's "DONALD TRUMP WON 7.5 MILLION POPULAR VOTE LANDSLIDE IN HEARTLAND" analysis. Apparently proximity to a Kroger or a meth lab makes your vote count extra.)

At PJ Media, Brian Boyer has a novel approach:

Let me make a bold statement: There is a reasonable chance that Hillary Clinton would not have won under a "popular vote" system, even though it seems clear that she currently has about two million more votes than President-elect Donald Trump. That's because the “popular vote” the media keeps talking about is not representative of what the popular vote would actually look like without the Electoral College. In fact, I believe that the Electoral College is actually skewing the “popular vote” in favor of Democrats.

I'll spare you: Republican turnout was low in California because they had no hope of winning ("Under the Electoral College system, if you are a Republican in California, why bother to vote? California’s 55 electoral votes are going blue whether or not you cast a ballot"); if those GOP voters were in a situation where their vote counted, they'd have come out of the woodwork in droves. Boyer doesn't explain why this same syndrome doesn't apply to Democrats in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, etc. Maybe it's because Republicans are sensitive flowers who would rather hide in the cellar than face the prospect of defeat. Another reason why they should get extra credit for voting!

But out of all of them Kevin D. Williamson of National Review has my favorite bit:

Who lost (“lost”) the popular vote (“popular vote”) is irrelevant for all sorts of reasons. For one thing, it doesn’t have anything to do with the outcome of the election. For another, it doesn’t, strictly speaking, exist. We don’t have a popular presidential vote, or a campaign for that vote.

If only he'd had the balls to say that arithmetic itself is merely a concept by which we measure our pain! I have to say Trump's solution is more elegant -- he just says he won in a landslide. But then he has no need to convince people he's an intellectual.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING.

Hey guys, Kevin D. Williamson finds something in common between the left and H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain. As you would imagine, he doesn't mean it as a compliment:

The debunking mentality is prevalent in both men’s writing, a genuine fervor to knock the United States and its people down a peg or two. For Twain, America was slavery and the oppression of African Americans. For Mencken, the representative American experience was the Scopes trial, with its greasy Christian fundamentalists and arguments designed to appeal to the “prehensile moron,” his description of the typical American farmer. The debunking mind is typical of the American Left, which feels itself compelled to rewrite every episode in history in such a way as to put black hats on the heads of any and all American heroes: Jefferson? Slave-owning rapist. Lincoln? Not really all that enlightened on race. Saving the world from the Nazis? Sure, but what about the internment of the Japanese? Etc. “It was wonderful to find America,” Twain wrote. “But it would have been more wonderful to miss it.”

Then Williamson lays into this "very left-wing American history teacher" he had in high school in Lubbock, and into Molly Ivins -- I guess because he dimly sensed that some of his readers would resentfully notice he was associating liberalism exclusively with America's greatest geniuses.

The teacher said mean things in class about slavery and capitalism, which Williamson took as some kind of mania -- "it was, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, very important to her — plainly urgent to her — that the American story be one of disappointment, betrayal, and falling short of our founding ideals" -- rather than an appropriate curriculum for sprats raised on blind patriotism and TV. As for Ivins, well, Williamson finds her a "lazy" writer (yeah, I know! Kevin D. Williamson!) and also mean to America like that commie schoolmarm, plus Ivins was born into money, which means her Argument is Invalid because liberals are hypocrites unless they're dirt-poor day-laborers, a kind of credentialing conservatives never apply to themselves because they're saved by Grace or some shit. (At present, they seem to offload their lingering need for prole-cred onto J. D. Vance and with affectations of concern for the poor white citizens of Fishtown.)

I don't think Williamson was thinking too hard about where he was going when he wandered into this dark wood, because eventually he tells us that while "a nation needs its Twains and Menckens" (though why we need them, despite his aversion to liberal scolds, he never tells us), nonetheless -- get this --

But they are only counterpoints: They cannot be the leading voice, or the dominant spirit of the age. That is because this is a republic, and in a republic, a politics based on one half of the population hating the other half is a politics that loses even if it wins...

If you happen to be Mark Twain, that sort of thing is good for a laugh, and maybe for more than a laugh. But it isn’t enough. “We must not be enemies,” President Lincoln declared, and he saw the republic through a good deal worse than weak GDP growth and the sack of a Libyan consulate.

Again, yeah, Kevin D. Williamson -- who has said that President Obama is "neck-deep in blood" because of abortion, that liberals are racist because they prefer successful Scandinavian socialism to unsuccessful Latin American socialism (and also because he projects his own fear of blacks onto them), and who famously looked at poor white communities in America and said, "The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die" -- now wants to bind up the nation's wounds! But first we must turn away from satire and anything that's divisive and entertaining, except National Review articles, and vote for Trump to stop Clinton but don't tell anybody about it because it's déclassé

Well, there's one bright side to this:  for a while we may not have to hear how great P.J. O'Rourke is supposed to be.

SCREW YOU, WE'RE FROM TEXAS.

Uber and Lyft gave Austin an ultimatum -- vote away your foolish ridesharing safety laws, or else! -- and Austin told them to go fuck themselves. Andrea Grimes at the Texas Observer expects the corporations, which left Austin in a huff after the vote, to muscle the Texas legislature to override the city's laws -- which is a good bet to succeed, alas, because, as we saw when the lege and governor overrode Denton's anti-fracking law, in today's Tejas democracy ain't shit when there's some corporate ass to kiss.

Still, Austin's resistance gladdens my heart; it's like Dürrenmatt gave The Visit a happy ending. But conservatives feel very differently about it -- including those conservatives who like to call themselves libertarians. Actually Reason's Brian Doherty, to his credit, bravely maintains sangfroid ("as of Monday Austin will be a lot harder a city to get around in without owning your own car, which is a shame for everyone"), leaving only his mangled lede to show his true tortured feelings:

Activist obsession with "level playing fields" in non-commensurate businesses (taxis lack the user rating and identification systems that Lyft and Uber have) primed the citizens of Austin to vote for regulations that they knew (or had every opportunity to know) would drive the very helpful smartphone ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft out of their city.

When you have to work that hard to make it look good, it ain't good, Brian. Others had a harder time keeping their tempers. "Austin's Regulatory Regime Drives Uber And Lyft Out Of Town," sputters John Kartch at Forbes. His lede is nice and clean, since unlike Doherty he doesn't seem to have any shame getting in his way:

With the failure of Proposition 1, Austin’s innovation-friendly reputation has taken a hit. The city’s decision to saddle ridesharing apps with an extensive list of petty, burdensome, and unnecessary regulations is driving Uber and Lyft out of town, effective Monday.

And they tell me Facebook is prejumadiced! Kartch has an interesting take on public referenda, too:

Rather than adopt the less burdensome substitute ordinance, the city council forced the Saturday May 7 special election vote on Prop. 1. The local taxpayer cost of holding the special election was expected to be $500,000 but the city council pressed ahead anyway.

The voice of the people -- what a waste!

Prop. 1 failed by a vote of 48,673 to 38,539. The confusing ballot language written by the city council was of no help to pro-ridesharing residents.

Yeah whatever buddy. "Uber forced to leave Democrat-controlled Austin, thanks to new regulations," snarls Anthony Hennen at Red Alert Politics. "Say what you want about whether or not it is practical or necessary to require these companies to fingerprint their drivers but this still provides another example of government not working well with ingenuity of the private sector," says whatever Chinese slave writes under the alias Andrew Mark Miller for Young Conservatives.

The wettest hen is John Daniel Davidson, an apparent James Poulos impersonator at the The Federalist. Under the headline "How Austin Drove Out Uber And Lyft" -- characterizing the corporations' voluntary exit as a shotgun march to the city limits is a popular shtick with this bunch -- Davidson writes:

The story of how Uber and Lyft were driven out of Austin is a textbook example of how government-backed cartels force out competition under the guise of creating a “level playing field” or ensuring “consumer safety.”

That's how statists are, with their "truth in labeling" and "Pure Food and Drug Act" and other such scare-quoted chimera.

In this case, the cartel is the local taxi cab lobby, which successfully saddled Uber and Lyft with cab-like regulations that shouldn’t apply to ridesharing companies.

"Cab" and "taxi" are such unfriendly, old-sounding words, whereas "ridesharing," "Uber," and "Lyft" all sound fun and now and hip and shouldn't be saddled with your stupid rules, Mom!

It's nice, those rare occasions when the good guys win, ain't it?

UPDATE. The snittiest comment on this so far is from Kevin D. Williamson of National Review, who calls Austin "second-rate" for not letting Uber and Lyft write their laws. "The one thing New York cannot bear, municipally, is being second-rate... Austin, on the other hand, is cool with being second-rate," he writes. "...Given a choice between annoying its long-established transit cartels and confirming itself as second-rate, Austin voted for second-rate." Makes me think of Daniel Plainview at the end of There Will Be Blood: "Bastard from a basket. Bastard from a basket! You're a bastard from a basket..." Williamson also asks, "how about we let people decide for themselves, like adults?" as if there hadn't just been an actual election -- then immediately adds, "People in Austin apparently cannot trust themselves to make those kinds of decisions. They’re second-rate, and they know it." Try to imagine any constituency that would be moved by this, besides playground bullies.

Meanwhile here's Tom Giovanelli, head of the free-market think tank Institute for Policy Innovation, with the libertarian angle (it's entitled "Only Government Could Oppose Ride-Sharing" -- apparently referenda and regulatory overreach are the same thing to the Sons of Rand):

Unfortunately, some cities insist on maintaining their corrupt cartels with taxi companies, even at the cost of depriving their residents of valuable and convenient services like Uber and Lyft. Austin, Texas, recently made this mistake. Because the states have an interest in protecting the freedom of their residents and the economic vitality of their state economies, states should consider legislation that preempts municipalities from restricting ride-sharing services. As we have argued before, local control is not a trump card that allows municipalities to restrict economic freedom.

Feel the freedom, peasants!

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Bob Luman was a little much, but I've always loved this. Check that piano!

•   Holy shit, in the event Trump gets the needed delegates, conservatives are really up for stealing the nomination from him. I mean, I've thought so all along, but now they're coming close to saying it out loud. At National Review, Kevin D. Williamson (now credited there as NR's "roving" correspondent, which must be a misprint), reminds us for the second time this month that this is a republic not a democracy, and denounces Trumpers who think "'We the People' are getting screwed by 'Them'" as unconservative  -- though this has been conservatism's selling message to the rubes since World War II. And so:

Yes, there are people in power maneuvering to frustrate the will of “We the People” on a dozen different things, ranging from economic and national-defense policy to the specific matter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. That is prudence and patriotism, and the constitutional architecture of these United States is designed to prevent democratic passion from prevailing. Have your talk-radio temper tantrum. Have your riots. Our form of government, even in its current distorted state, was designed to handle and absorb your passions. You may dream of a dictator, but you will not have one.

That's telling the rabble, buddy. Also interesting: The despairing John Adams quote Williamson uses here (“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes...") was previously used by him to blast President Obama in an article calling Obama "the front man for the permanent bureaucracy, the smiley-face mask hiding the pitiless yawning maw of total politics... For all of the power that Congress legally has given the president in this matter, he feels it necessary to take more — illegally... he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law," and other such standard-issue rightwing ObamaHitler crap. Yet in this new article, Williamson says Trump threatens "a presidency a thousand times more imperial" than Obama's. That's some mega-imperialism right there; to come up, I guess Trump will have to revive NASA and colonize the solar system.

•  Meanwhile Williamson's colleague David Harsanyi is even more forthright:

The GOP Should Steal the Nomination from Trump 

...Voters don’t decide the nominations; delegates do — preferably in smoke-filled rooms where rational decisions about the future of a party can be hashed out.

Failing this, Harsanyi would be content to see a True Conservative third party, of which such as Erick Erickson dream, elevate a sacrificial nominee who would "sink Trump and elect Hillary Clinton," on the theory that "electing a weakened and corrupt Democrat that Republicans would unite against in Congress is a far better reality than allowing a charlatan to hollow out a party from within." Republicans united against a Democratic President! That's bound to lead to better results than the love-fest we've got going on now! I begin to wonder if someone (perhaps super-tyrant Trump) is putting something in these guys' drinking water.

•  Tell ya how bad anti-Trump fever has gotten at National Review: Heather Mac Donald is actually complaining that a white guy (Trump) is getting a pass that black guys (Obama, Sharpton) would never get. That's right -- Heather Mac Donald! Don't worry, though -- John Derbyshire's still hanging in for Trump and racism. And I'm sure Mac Donald with go back to her old ways forthwith -- hell, even Marco Rubio wasn't pro-cop/anti-BLM enough for her.

•  Peggy Noonan is trying to talk reason to that bad boy Trump! With a talent like his, why must he resort to hooliganism?

Why does he speak so carelessly and irresponsibly about things such as violence and protests at his rallies? Does he not understand American politics is always potentially a powder keg? 

He has enough imagination to have invented Donald Trump. Why doesn’t he have enough to understand the potential impact of a leader’s remarks? Does he understand the power he would have if he were a person of normal comportment?

After blowing her off Trump will get home and find she managed to tuck her business card into his jacket pocket. Meanwhile Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has gone full Stormtrumper on a David Brooks doll:

The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.

You'd think Reynolds would be too smart for this guff, but Trump really has him feeling the feeling: In an adjacent post, Reynolds actually revives an Obama "lightworker" gag from 2009. I can imagine him smashing protesters with a club and yelling BOO-YAH! UNDER THE BUS! (On his holodeck, of course.)

ANNALS OF ESRD (END-STAGE REAGAN DISEASE).

Some other folks wandered out of the National Review freak show tent looking spooked, so I wandered in and got a load of Kevin D. Williamson's latest outrage. It is indeed a corker. His thesis is that the declining state of working-class whites in America (which seems to spur them to support Donald Trump) has nothing really to do with economic circumstances such as job flight -- the figures may say it's massive but look, here's a factory town that died many years ago, so there! -- and their troubles are their own damn fault and they should open a map, look up Opportunity, and go find some:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Most of the discussion I've seen around this marvels that Williamson dares to spit on "the base" -- those normally reliable masses of Republican voters who need only the merest sign that the leadership shares their concerns, prejudices, and objects of worship to be kept aboard. Why was he abandoning such a successful shtick? You just show some concern for their increasingly tenuous employment prospects, and (while continuing tax policies that encourage offshoring) promise to kick out Mexicans and to immiserate the other, darker poor so these good sons of the sod will never be mistaken for them, and they follow you like baby ducklings. It worked for decades! And you didn't even have to give a shit.

But in truth, conservatives have been losing that knack for a long time. I notice the one traditional conservative instrument Williamson employs in his essay is Marriage & Morality Nagging. We're rich because we no longer worry about meat shortages, says Williamson, but "the family-life numbers, on the other hand, came down on us like a meteor... divorce in 1960 was so rare as to carry a hint of scandalous glamour... add to that the violence of abortion, which fundamentally alters the relationship between men, women, and children," etc.

So Williamson does blame heathenism -- but he shows no sympathy for the poor crackers he says suffer from it. It sort of makes sense -- after all, backwoods preachers (on whose act modern scolds base their own) didn't show sympathy for adulterers, they called down wrath and invited shame.

Other conservative thinkers who specialize in M&MN may be gentler that Williamson, but they're not so much sympathetic as clinical. Charles Murray, in his Fishtown/Belmont mode as poor-white diagnostician, wants the enlightened richie class to "drop its condescending 'nonjudgmentalism'" and "start preaching what it practices" -- that is, telling white wastrels to get married and do other things richies do, presumably ballet lessons for the kids, golf for the men and service on charity boards for the ladies, which the poors will afford by floating a loan.

And there's Williamson's colleage, David French. When word got around about the elevated suicide and drug abuse rate among working class white people last year, French shook his moralizing fist. His target then was liberals; thanks to their "celebrating hedonism" with love-ins and pot parties, "the sexual revolution is gutting the working class," he cried, and not only that, these "cultural aristocrats" look down on their victims, the poor whites, because "mocking poor whites is among the last acceptable forms of bigotry."

But then came Trump and now look at French: He has a post called "Working-Class Whites Have Moral Responsibilities -- In Defense of Kevin Williamson." No longer does he rage at hippies for sexing up the honky proles -- though he sticks in a brief mumble over "the role of progressive culture and progressive policies in cultural decline," perhaps by reflex. Mostly he rages, or rather sighs dismissively, at the proles themselves:

For generations, conservatives have rightly railed against deterministic progressive notions that put human choices at the mercy of race, class, history, or economics. Those factors can create additional challenges, but they do not relieve any human being of the moral obligation to do their best. 

Yet millions of Americans aren’t doing their best. Indeed, they’re barely trying.

As proof, he tells us how his church tried to help a bunch of these meth-addled hillbillies and it didn't work -- so obviously it wasn't the church's approach that was the problem, it was the trailer trash's "sense of entitlement":

...it was consistently astounding how little effort most parents and their teen children made to improve their lives. If they couldn’t find a job in a few days — or perhaps even as little as a few hours — they’d stop looking. If they got angry at teachers or coaches, they’d drop out of school. If they fought with their wife, they had sex with a neighbor.

In short, it's everything they've been laying on their traditional enemies -- the hippies, the blacks -- except now they're turning on their traditional friends. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe grifts don't always die when the sucker catches on -- or even, as the Trump phenomenon suggests, when the sucker moves on to a splashier grift. Maybe grifts also die when the confidence man loses his confidence.

SOTU NRO LOL.

Hee hee.

Hee hee hee.

Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee 

Ah, I see their tweets are slowing down:

And getting pissy:

And when Obama talks against racism, David French gets even more David Frenchy:

And Kevin D. Williamson gets more Sparky, or drunk:

Now, I could go that same route -- like, "Bleargh attend my words earthlings my avatar is a FOUNDING FATHER"--

But, as Charles Laughton said in Advise and Consent, "I can afford to be charitable." Whatever you think of Obama and his SOTUs, you have to admit a large check in his favor is how mad he makes the biggest assholes in America.

Oh, and in conclusion...

...fart.

UPDATE. Jonah Goldberg extended fart!

Ultimately it was a forgettable State of the Union Address – as most are. But there is one way it will be extremely memorable. President Obama not only celebrated his ridiculous and dangerous Iran deal in his remarks, but he totally ignored the fact that Iran captured 10 U.S. sailors today. The administration is telling reporters it’s not big deal and they will all be released in the morning, Iran time. 

I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to tell you that the sailors were released about five hours later. But let's see how Goldberg prepared for this eventuality:

Well, if that’s true, the incident will likely be quickly forgotten. But, if it turns out that this becomes anything like a hostage situation, Obama’s final State of the Union will may be remembered as symbolic of his denial and delusions. It could make his claim, right before the Paris attacks, that ISIS is “contained” seem like a minor gaffe.

If only a terrorist had killed Obama during his speech! That would have been highly ironic!

My hopeful expectation is that won’t happen, and we will get our sailors back ASAP. But even if that does happen, I have every expectation that Iran will commit some other deed that will make Obama’s confidence seem ridiculous. Because on the Iran deal, and so many other things, his confidence is ridiculous.

One of these days the Iran-America deal will slip up, and when it does Detective Goldberg will be there to catch it. At least he hopes so: He's not very good at hiding, not least because when he gets nervous he flatulates like the 124-foot pedal on a pipe organ.

HAVE A MISERABLE NATIONAL REVIEW CHRISTMAS!

National Review has a holiday-themed front page today, and by holiday I mean "War on Christmas," the title and topic of Jonah Goldberg's contribution. I have long maintained -- and a plurality of Americans now seem to agree -- that the WoC is a ridiculous scam. But Goldberg insists it's a clear and present danger and it's all liberals' fault.

Alas, today’s “war on Christmas,” which has become for cable news an annual ritual, is merely another one of those metaphorical wars, like the wars on women, poverty, cancer, global warming, history, energy, religion, and science. (I’m sure I’m leaving a few dozen out.)

Of course “metaphorical” doesn’t mean “fictional.” The “war” on poverty is — or was — a real thing; it just wasn’t a war. 

And yet the metaphorical wars have the capacity to elicit as much outrage as actual wars... 

Oops, sorry, I left in some of his column-padding gibberish (more plentiful than usual -- maybe this is how they keep him busy so he won't eat the turkey before it's cooked). Let's get right to the something-resembling-a-point:

But the war on Christmas represents a special kind of passive-aggressive jackassery because the aggressors deny they have declared a war. They simply take offense at Christmas cheer. They cancel Christmas pageants. They leave baby Jesus in a cardboard box in the church basement, but see nothing wrong with celebrating the Winter Solstice as if that’s a more rational thing to do. 

No explanatory links, of course, but it seems Goldberg's confusing the ACLU's mission of defending unpopular Constitutional rights (say, wasn't that what the Tea Party was all about?) with the rest of us walking around not giving a shit whether someone says Merry Christmas or not. Also, Goldberg thinks, as conservatives often do, that liberals trick him and his Fox News buddies into being psycho about it:

And then, when people complain about this undeclared war on Christmas, the aggressors mock and ridicule them for paranoia and hyperbole.

We don't even declare our War on Christmas. We just go around singing our satanic Solstice carols and pissing them off. It's so unfair! MERRY CHRISTMAS KILL CLOUSEAU!

Also at NR:

•  Kevin D. Williamson, best known as a rageclown who thinks women who have abortions should be executed and a bunch of other crazy shit, does his version of an inspirational religious story. Shorter: There are people who run soup kitchens and AA meetings, therefore Christ is real. At times it sounds like he's at least heard of Christianity --

The boy grows into a man, and the question of family is always at the center of His thinking. “Who is my mother, or my brethren?” He asks. “Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.” He tells of hated foreigners adopting the wounded and the vulnerable of His own nation as their own, and shames His own people with that story of alien kindness...

-- and then you remember that he's against accepting Syrian refugees because he's scared they'll kill him ("Where there is Islam, there will be Islamic extremism, Islamic supremacism, and murder") and you realize he's even more full of shit when he pretends to be religious as when he doesn't bother.

•  Speaking of immigrant-haters, this is from Victor Davis Hanson's contribution:

Many Americans oppose illegal immigration and want to slow down legal immigration not because the most welcoming nation in the world is suddenly xenophobic, nativist, or racist, as cheaply alleged. Too often, immigrants assume that America owes them rather than they owe America — sort of like an uninvited guest moving into the house of the host and berating him over the menu and accommodations.

How could we have guessed Hanson would spend Christmas bitching about furriners? Guess he never got over the loss of his chainsaw.

•  Mona Charen is Jewish, but she was shocked to find -- after apparently not having been downtown on Christmas in many years -- "not only were all the restaurants open, they were also packed." And this is a big deal because --

I had pictured my Christian friends and neighbors at home, gathered around the table Norman Rockwell–style, eating goose or ham or whatever gentiles eat bathed in the twinkling lights of decorated trees. In fact, I liked to think of them that way, and finding crowds treating Christmas Eve as just another night was almost a sacrilege.

Well, maybe you should have asked your "friends" what they were doing for Christmas.

Americans have long resisted the secularizing trend of Western Europe.

Ugh, yes, you see it coming: We are becoming Godless, which is just what the Democrats want, so repent and make Marco Rubio president.

There's plenty more and worse, but this is not Easter, when we celebrate redemption through suffering, but Christmas, when we celebrate Darren McGavin and a lamp that looks like a leg. So have yourself a merry little Christmas (THERE I SAID CHRISTMAS) or whatever winter orgy you choose to celebrate.

HEIMAT ASSHAT.

At National Review Kevin D. Williamson says there are racist nationalist parties, and there are non-racist national parties, but it's all good because they're all nationalist:

I’m not sure how I feel about the Swiss People’s Party. Some of their advertising and rhetoric makes me think that they don’t seem like an entirely splendid bunch of guys: Their most famous poster depicts a bunch of white sheep literally kicking a black sheep over the border. One detects some nasty undertones. But are they wrong for liking the Swissness of Switzerland? I like it a great deal, and it seems strange to begrudge them the same feeling about what is, after all, their country.

"Swissness" means "whiteness," apparently, and who could be against that except someone who isn't white or what mah pappy used to call a nonwhite-lover. Williamson also compares love of Swissness to the desire of the Japanese not to have Frenchness get in their Japaneseness:

If you were to visit Tokyo and go looking for some Roppongi-style adventure and maybe one of those weirdly delicious curried cutlet things or a visit to a Shinto shrine, but arrived to find nothing but sallow men in black turtlenecks sipping espresso in smoky cafes and reading Baudelaire, nothing but pate and baguettes and Gothic cathedrals and everybody speaking French, you’d surely be feeling that something had been lost, and that that something was Japaneseness.

So that explains the Japanese skinheads! Well, as long as they keep the stink of Gauloises out of the Shibuya Crossing.

Williamson also predicts that he will be called racist for this, which these days is a badge of honor among his kind, to which he is welcome, though I think his problem is more an overeager and ill-considered contrariness, i.e. being an asshole.

UPDATE. Booman thinks I'm being too generous, and he's got a point:

The Swiss and the Japanese don't have the same history with immigration [as the U.S.], and they haven't historically had the same labor needs. But, here's the key, if they need immigrant labor then they need to adapt their cultural expectations rather than form nationalist parties based on the idea of preserving their cultural identity. It's okay to be proud of your Japaneseness or Swissness or Frenchness, but once your country has to become diverse for economic reasons, you lose the right to expect that everything will remain as before. 

What happens is that some people always figure out that there's political power to be had in representing and stoking people's discomfort with change. Racism is how this manifests itself... 

So, yeah, it's kind of a natural human response to immigration that some percentage of people will feel very uncomfortable, but the people who live off and heighten that discomfort are worse than mere contrarians. They're sociopathic manipulators whose net effect is basically evil.

MASTER DEBATERS.

Real quick, because I had to miss a bunch of this because of family stuff: Bernie Sanders grows on you. He's obviously not like the other candidates, in that he's not blow-dried or even (let us be honest) possessed of traditional political-theatrical gifts. But he handles very well the challenges thrown at him -- like the shady attempts to fault him on racial justice. His explanation on guest workers -- a solid laborite position based on the rights of both old and new residents -- was more granular and much, much more convincing than the other candidates' I am for a more generous and compassionate America bullshit. (Though when Clinton said let's stop and compare this conversation to what the Republicans are emitting, that was excellent -- as it was every time it happened.) I started by cringing at him, but after an hour I was looking forward to seeing him back on screen. You know why I think that is? Because he's honest. No, I'm not kidding. You don't see him changing the subject or scrambling to get around his own positions. He explained himself very clearly on gun control and it was to my satisfaction. Now, while I'm softer on gun control than most liberals, I'm not totally in agreement with his position --but at least I can respect his position because he respected me enough to tell me why he held it.

By the way, Anderson Cooper and his acolytes were very tough on the candidates -- and boy, what a difference from the Fox News tongue-baths the Republicans got! -- and while at first I was annoyed by the imbalance -- reminding me as it did of the old IOKIYAR dynamic -- over time I came to appreciate it. For one thing, it made Clinton defend her votes for garbage like, say, the Patriot Act -- and she did a lousy job of it. And that allowed Sanders to say, hell yeah, I'd get rid of mass surveillance, and make the case for it. It's nice, isn't it, to be treated with some respect as a citizen for a change?

Jim Webb has a hard time representing the Blue Dogs, but fuck him, he deserves a hard time; I'd hoped he'd try to invite the party toward a greater understanding of rural and exurban poverty and the voters Democrats are leaving behind because they can't figure out how to address it. But he wound up talking about how he'd fight the expansion of executive power and other crap Republicans who like to pretend they're smart complain about.  Really, fuck him. Lincoln Chaffee's a fucking idiot who isn't good even in the rare moments when he's right and should just kill himself.  Martin O'Malley has some good ideas but how the hell did he ever get elected to anything? Does he have gunmen working for him? Also he has a terrible habit of, whenever the others are talking among stuff like inequality, breaking in with WE NEED GREEN ENERGY!

All in all, any of these people, or their congenital fetuses in fetu, or the sweat off their balls, would make a better President than any Republican.

UPDATE. The National Review guys weigh in. Kevin D. Williamson:

The nurses all told basically the same story: They are doing fine for the moment, with a good union that secures for them good paychecks and good benefits. But they worry that the day after tomorrow something could suddenly change, that their hospitals and clinics will go under or be sold to evil hedge funds and that the terms of their employment will change radically for the worse, that their houses will for some reason be foreclosed on even though they’re current on all their payments, that college tuition will triple between now and the time their kids finish up at UNLV, that something bad is going to happen. That’s the Sanders voter, and, I think, the Democrat at large: terrified.

Stop and consider that for a moment. You know, because the author is conservative, that he thinks this is a knock on Sanders on his supporters. But really take a moment and focus on the fact that he thinks people with families who are in fear of losing their livelihoods, in a country where this can happen at the drop of a hat (or at the whim of a venture capitalist), are worthy of his contempt.

Now see with whom he compares them:

It isn’t just them. I was speaking with Sanders supporters almost literally in the shadow of a giant gold tower bearing the name “TRUMP” on the side—it is something of an achievement to create one of the tackiest things in Las Vegas—and the Trumpkins, like the Sandersnistas, are terrified: The big Mexican is gonna come and get them, the scheming Chinaman is gonna take their jobs, the surly Negro is leering at the white women. At both ends of the spectrum, we see terrified—terrified—Americans praying that Big Daddy will provide for them and smite their enemies. With sometime messiah Barack Obama having failed to deliver the goods, they’re turning to Government As God the Father Himself.

People who fear the loss of their jobs and therefore vote Sanders are the same as people who hate Mexicans and therefore vote Trump. Again, I ask: Do these guys even know any normal people?

UPDATE 2. In comments (which are great), a nice summary by ChrisV82:

Here's what we've seen after 1 Democratic and 2 Republican debates: Democrats are deeply committed to fixing climate destruction, fighting wealth inequality, and making sure people are not discriminated against based on superficial (skin color, gender, etc.) reasons. Republicans are Neanderthals who bang stones on the ground to celebrate the sky god and show deep concern that foreign tribes will attack under the glow of the war moon to steal their furs, burn their huts and rape their birthing wives.

Just go in and roam around, with special attention to erstwhile Baltimorean dex explaining O'Malley.

THAT'S NOT FUNNY, THAT'S SATAN!

There are a couple of quasi-Trumpers at National Review, but by and large they are embarrassed by him, which they naturally express with belligerent stupidity. (Here for example is Kevin D. Williamson, in a column called "National Fronts," tying the rightist-racist parties of Europe to Trump -- and Bernie Sanders, because National Socialist get it; plus, Sanders is racist against Mexicans because he complained the Koch Brothers want "all kinds of people" to "work for $2 and $3" -- which is the kind of stretch that, had it been employed by a black person as evidence of racism, would have spurred a National Review special double issue.)

Why embarrassed? Well, there's an election coming up, and when this whole Trump thing blows over they'll want the voters to remember that National Review supported sensible conservatism, such as that championed by their author David French. For example:

Not even kidding. (Actually, before they changed it the teaser read "Satanists Reveal the Abortion Movement's Rotten Core." See, they do too have editors!) Let's read a bit:

One story is interesting, two stories even more so. But six stories are a trend, in this case a particularly appropriate one: Satanists are become a leading public voice for abortion rights. In their mockery of Christianity they reveal the dark heart of abortion-on-demand: the radical worship of self.

You laugh, but I predict that "radical worship of self" thing gets a big cheer for some 5 pm speaker at the GOP Convention next year.

And what are these six Satanic stories? One, Wendy Davis supporters mocked some holy rollers with "Hail Satan." Satan and mockery -- that's SatanAlinsky! Then the Satanists cheekily filed suit against some anti-abortion laws... wait a minute -- are these all jokes French is complaining about?

And many on the Left gleefully passed around a Salon article declaring that a Satanic Temple spokesperson took Megyn Kelly “to law school” in an appearance over the Temple’s desire to place a statue of Baphomet at the Oklahoma state capitol.

Never mind Salon, that gag got coverage everywhere from Boing Boing to Bloomberg. The only thing worse than a joke about Satan is a popular joke about Satan, apparently. And oh wait, here comes a good one:

With the release of the Planned Parenthood videos, abortion sympathizers are upping their Satanic game. At a Chicago Planned Parenthood protest, speakers apparently located inside the clinic broadcast “horror music” at pro-life advocates in an effort to drown them out.

Horror music leads to Satan just like show tunes make you gay. Eventually French is reduced to sputtering:

[Satanists] also declare that man is “just another animal.” It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate set of doctrines for the rutting life of the sexual revolution, where restraint is evil, physical experience is king, and people are simply sentient mammals trying to get the best out of life. A baby is thus no more sacred — and often less — than any other animal. Just ask Cecil the Lion.

Cecil the Lion! Maybe I've been getting them all wrong, and National Review stories are all basically drinking games.

In some ways this is the best part:

While the vast, vast majority of abortion-rights supporters don’t identify with Satanists and would recoil from comparison with the Church of Satan, prominent Satanist involvement in the abortion debate does have a clarifying effect.

This is being said by the same guy who a few months ago was telling us why his love of the Confederate flag doesn't mean he's racist.

Maybe they should embrace Trump. It's their best hope of going mainstream.

THE BARREL HAS NO BOTTOM.

Among the National Review new breed Kevin D. Williamson and Charles C.W. Cooke are pretty far out there, but don't sleep on David French, who despite lacking his colleagues' hipsterish affectations (peculiar hair balance, two middle initials) is more than a match for them twaddle-wise and seems to drift further from earth's orbit with each passing column. The title of his latest:

Are Encounters with the Police Really More Dangerous for Black Men?

If you guessed "Nah, son!" you've been paying attention. French starts with a story about how as a lad he himself was roughed up by the constabulary, but generously offers further evidence:

The results so far for 2015 show much higher numbers of police killings than previous FBI reports. They also, at first glance, seem to prove the #BlackLivesMatter thesis that police target black men. 

As of July 27, the Guardian claims, American police have killed 657 people in 2015. The large majority, 492, were armed. Some 316 victims were white, 172 black, and 96 Hispanic. (The rest were of other or unknown ethnicities.) Whites constitute a majority of the population, however, and police kill black Americans at a greater rate than whites — with 4.12 black victims per million versus 1.59 white victims per million. 

So case closed, right? Not so fast. Comparing police shootings by race with crime statistics by race tells an entirely different story: It may in fact be the case that white Americans are ever-so-slightly more likely than blacks to die in any given encounter with a police officer. After all, blacks commit homicide at eight times the combined white/Hispanic rate, and, despite their constituting roughly 13 percent of the population, represent a majority of homicide and robbery arrests. Indeed, the disproportionate share of arrests exists across all categories of violent crime — at a rate that often exceeds the racial difference in police shootings. Thus, blacks are seriously overrepresented in the most dangerous police encounters of all — encounters with violent suspects.

Go ahead, read it again. He really is saying it: That while in raw numbers blacks do get killed by cops more often than whites, you have to grade on the curve because blacks are so criminal.

The rest is also gibberish, though some of it is prime:

It’s just sheer fiction that white men enjoy some sort of shield of immunity, engaging in disrespect and defiance at will. After all, police kill white men almost twice per day.

This is where I'm supposed to lament how far National Review has fallen, but except for its arts and letters coverage it always sucked; all that's interesting about the new Review is that they've found people who are willing to say absolutely anything to keep their jobs.

UPDATE. Comments are as ever prime, and include a link to a few good explanations, as if they were needed, as to why French is full of shit: montag2 offers Jacobin's "The Making of the American Police State"; Robert M. offers, in response to an industrious troll, the insight that French's "principal error is conflating 'encounters with police' with the incidence of crime, and the incidence of crime with arrest rates" -- assuming, perhaps over-generously, that this was not deliberate.

CONSERVATIVE OUTREACH TO CONSERVATIVES IS GOING GREAT.

Normally I don't talk about the comments sections associated with my subjects, on the proven theory that comments sections are generally awful (not alicublog's, though! Feel free to weigh in!). But I'll make an exception for this post by Andrew Klavan at PJ Media. Klavan, as regular readers of alicublog know, is a culture warrior of the worser sort who gets the brethren to laugh (or at least to go nnnnggh while filleting a Barbie doll named Lena with a Bowie knife) by comparing Democrats to rapists, etc. In this new thing, though, Klavan tells his readers that the hate-fest represented by (I never tire of saying this) Republican Presidential front-runner Donald Trump is a losing bet. He's taken the conciliator role before, telling the guys in 2014 they should go easy on gay marriage outrage lest liberals win the debate "by a flagrant and self-serving display of compassion." But now he sounds a little stressed about it. First he quotes Star Wars:

“Fear is the path to the dark side,” said Yoda. “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Then he preaches sweet reason:

You want to win back your country? Here’s how. Fear nothing. Hate no one. Stick to principles. Unchecked borders are dangerous not because Mexicans are evil but because evil thrives when good men don’t stand guard...

These things are true. They’re true for white people and black people, male people and female people, straight people and gay people. We should support the smartest, most proven, most statesmanlike candidate who best represents those principles. And we should do it out of — dare I say the word? — love. Love for our neighbors, our fellow citizens, white and black, male and female, straight and gay.

Straight and gay? Forbid it almighty God! Commenters descend like locusts on Klavan -- and that RINO bastard Yoda:

Why would I want to take advice from some pipsqueak who didn't see that his Jedi Council was being manipulated by evil into doing evil things in the name of order, until it was much too late?... 

...Yoda's wrong. Frustration leads to anger. I'm not afraid of these lying SOB's at all...

Also:

Klavan must have downed a couple of his elitist pills before penning this attack on conservative Americans... 

Just like the writers at National Review and Republican politicians, PJ Media writers, like Andrew Klavan want to be loved by their liberal friends... 

We don't need to be lectured about things we already know, pal. Out here in what you seem to believe is the backwater idiocracy between Hollywood and DC, we know precisely what Trump is and what he is doing... You and your peers, on the other hand, seem to have let your girlish social ambitions swirl away at your brains. This sort of article isn't about us: it's about you. It's about your preening egos and need to be seen as a certain type of (frankly, faux) conservative who can be accepted in certain circles [nnnngh etc.]... 

I am tired of people like Klavan and others calling us idiots for disagreeing with them. I am done reading Klavan and Goldberg. If I wanted to be insulted I could go to some liberal site...

The more optimistic of you may be thinking, ha, their Frankenstein's Monster has turned on them! It's tempting to think so, as the Trump phenomenon has become such an obvious embarrassment to the GOP that conservatives are trying to portray Trump as a liberal and his candidacy as good news for Republicans.

But the monster hasn't turned on them, quite -- the brethren are just lumbering around with increasing agitation, as they tend to do in that aimless period between the beginning of a Presidential campaign and the nomination of some douche of whom it can at least be said that he's not a libtard. Other conservative pundits are finding ways to occupy their attention so they won't turn on them -- which perhaps explains the latest Planned Parenthood attack, as it gives their more excitable columnists like Kevin D. Williamson an opportunity to really lay the outrage on thick ("the people who run Planned Parenthood are crooks," "President Barack Obama... is neck-deep in blood," nnngh, etc.). After a few days of that, the punters are spent and ready for a lie-down until it's time to repeat the process with #Benghazi or whatever else turns up on the Wheel of Fortune.

So they haven't lost control yet. But I'll be interested to see how many of their followers will be left after a few more rounds like this one.

SILENT UPON PEAK WINGNUT IN DERP-IEN.

Kevin D. Williamson says you lieberals are Ikea-racist:

The curious task of the American Left is to eliminate “white privilege” by forcing people to adopt Nordic social arrangements at gunpoint.

("At gunpoint" is apparently Williamson's term for something lawful he doesn't approve of -- e.g. "people who object to abortion will be forced at gunpoint to pay for them" -- you know, kind of like when you were mad at your Mom and called her Hitler.)

Progressives have a longstanding love affair with the nations of northern Europe, which are, or in some cases were until the day before yesterday, ethnically homogeneous, overwhelmingly white, hostile to immigration, nationalistic, and frankly racist in much of their domestic policy. 

In this the so-called progressives are joined, as they traditionally have been, by brutish white supremacists and knuckle-dragging anti-Semites, who believe that they discern within the Nordic peoples the last remnant of white European purity and who frequently adopt Nordic icons and myths, incorporating them into an oddball cult of whiteness. American progressivism is a cult of whiteness, too: It imagines re-creating Danish society in Los Angeles, which is not full of Danish people, ascribing to Scandinavian social policies certain mystical tendencies that render them universal in their applicability.

Call it “Nordic Exceptionalism.” 

The Left occasionally indulges in bouts of romantic exoticism — its pin-ups have included Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Mao Zedong; we might even count Benito Mussolini, “that admirable Italian gentleman” who would not have been counted sufficiently white to join Franklin Roosevelt’s country club — but the welfare states that progressives dream about are the whitest ones: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, etc. The significance of this never quite seems to occur to progressives. When it is suggested that the central-planning, welfare-statist policies that they favor are bound to produce results familiar to the unhappy residents of, e.g., Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia — privation, chaos, repression, political violence — American progressives reliably reply: “No, no, we don’t want that kind of socialism. We want socialism like they have it in Finland.” 

Translation: “We want white socialism, not brown socialism!”...

You'll notice I haven't been inserting comments on this as I usually do. That's because I don't know what to say. I've just been sitting here slack-jawed, marveling at the insanity of the thing. To suggest that liberals champion social-welfare ideas from Scandinavia because they don't want to be associated with unpopular South and Central American dictatorships is just a more advanced version of their usual slurs -- but to add that this makes liberals white supremacists is so crazy that I'm convinced I was right about these guys and they've lost their collective minds.

And I haven't even got to the really hot parts:

When Barack Obama wants some solar-energy subsidies to pay off his crony-capitalist backers, he doesn’t rebuke the Canadians, but those damned dirty brown people in the Middle East. (Middle Eastern people seem destined to take the eternal brunt of American economic stupidity: It used to be the scheming Jewish bankers, now it’s the nefarious awful Arabs who want to sell us crude oil that we need at market prices.)

Who is this written for? Whom is it meant to convince? It's impossible to imagine anyone who isn't already infected reading it and saying, "He's right -- universal health care is racist!"

UPDATE. Comments are a joy. I appreciate the contributors who sought to characterize Williamson's very-fabric-of-space-and-time-rupturing stupid ("the HyperDerp" -- derelict; "a fragmentation grenade of stupid" -- Al Swearingen), but I must give a special No-Prize to LookWhosInTheFreezer for this:

Shorter Williamson: You liberals all wanna turn America into Denmark, we conservatives want to turn it into Somalia. Now who's the real racist?!!

I'LL TAKE IT.

There are plenty of reasons to celebrate the sudden consensus on the Confederate battle flag. For one thing, since the ball really got rolling there appears to be practically no one left on the sidelines to claim that the neo-Confederates are being oppressed. Usually these days, when someone points out outrageous beliefs -- or even just promotes non-outrageous beliefs of his own -- the counter-strategy is to claim oppression. Schoolbook writers wish to inform AP U.S. History students that antebellum slaveholders believed in white supremacy? "Orwellian," says Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal. Want to see more minority writers? Then you want to "crack down on the number of Fitzgeralds or Faulkners or Cormac McCarthys," says Ian Tuttle at National Review (because literature is a zero-sum game). Don't want public money used to pay for privatized schools? You're George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door, howls NR's Kevin D. Williamson! Conservatives have become the nation's biggest drama queens, yet scores of them are abandoning the Lost Cause and not even crying Boot Human Face Forever about it. That's impressive!

Well, not all of them. "Behold the Cultural Power of the Left," wails Rich Lowry at National Review:

On the Confederate battle flag, we are once again witnessing the sheer cultural power of the Left: take an irrelevancy (or at the very least a sideshow), make it the central, all-consuming issue, move the debate with astonishing speed, and then, after achieving the initial victory (in this case, removing the flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol), demand yet more (now Wal-Mart and other retailers aren’t going to sell Confederate-flag paraphernalia and there will be a broader assault on anything associated with the Confederacy). This is the grinding wheel of the Left’s cultural war in action.

Sarah Palin gave him starbursts, but Nikki Haley has left Lowry limp. Now, I know Haley's just made a calculation here to sacrifice this many goobers for this much national cred. And I suspect, as the tide turned, Republicans both Southron and otherwise looked on the bright side and saw the big upside in severing the Party's connection to this symbol of Treason in Defense of Slavery. (Some of 'em are even trying to pin the flag to Hillary Clinton!) But that's politics, kids -- the scumbags who rule us won't get their asses off the stove unless someone turns on the heat. And now a significant number of citizens won't have to explain to their kids why their town tells them every day that they would put them in irons if they could, at least by that medium. Let us enjoy the moment.

UPDATE. Jonah Goldberg makes everything worse!

I agree with you, of course, about the moral horror that was slavery. I basically agree with you about the ultimate issues at the heart of the war. I may or may not agree with you about the extent to which southern soldiers saw the war for what it was, but that’s probably as much a matter of my ignorance as anything.

No comment.

...As a matter of reason alone, the United States flag stood for “white supremacy” too, at least when looked at through the eyes of African slaves and Native Americans. But I think everyone here would agree that while that may have once been one of many arguable interpretations of the Stars and Stripes, it no longer is (though I have no doubt there are plenty of professors out there who would like to argue the U.S. flag still stands for white supremacy).

I wonder if Goldberg knows what flag the Union soldiers carried into Richmond, and which flew when Lincoln came and the city's freed slaves gathered to celebrate their emancipation?

UPDATE 2. How's this for a Forced March through the Institutions? Rand Paul is agin' the battle flag now! The same Rand Paul who just five short years ago was explaining that the Civil Rights Act is anti-freedom. I've heard politics makes strange bedfellows, but this is practically Man on Dog.

UPDATE 3. Now Mollie Hemingway is comparing taking down Confederate flags and statues with the Taliban blowing up Buddahs, bless her insane little heart.

UPDATE 4. "I’ve been getting the feeling over the past few days that the Left is trying to troll us into defending the Confederate flag, simply by way of the trivial, obnoxious, and gratuitously partisan way they’re campaigning against it." I wonder if Mollie Hemingway is miffed that Robert Tracinski apparently doesn't read her stuff. In short, Tracinski wants some of the traitor relics to come down, but because of "love," not for the eee-vil reason the Left (whoever that is) is asking for it -- that is, as part of their endless "chipping away at America’s culture and seeking to expunge the parts of its history that don’t suit their ends." For example:

I have no problem striking the name of Jefferson Davis from our roadways, but I wouldn’t entirely expunge Robert E. Lee, and here’s where I think the campaign smacks of totalitarian-style overreach, attempting to send inconvenient history down the memory hole.

Orwell! Drink!

Lee’s reputation is not as a tyrant or fanatic but as a good and honest man fighting for a bad cause. I think it’s worth honoring him here and there, just so we are reminded that this combination can in fact occur.

You can read here the testimony of one of Lee's slaves on Lee's goodness and honesty ("Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to 'lay it on well,' an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine..."). Well, we all make mistakes; Lee probably had his slaves whipped but seldom, being so busy arranging to keep them in bondage through treason.