SHORTER VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: We white people must rise up against our black, Mexican, and homosexual overlords.

UPDATE: For aesthetic reasons, I left out a few of Hanson's other honkey-oppressors, which include Muslims, of course, and college professors who are not Ann Althouse and Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

Hanson's pumping the bilge extra hard today. In the midst of a typical peroration about how everything Obama does disgusts him, he delivers this classic line:

Obama’s awkward efforts to appear hip have resulted in Jon Stewart calling the president of the United States “dude” and a general diminution in the dignity of the office.

Yeah, imagine if Hanson caught Obama doing something like this:



With white women, yet!

A NEW LOW.

The headline on Victor Davis Hanson's column is even more, how you say, impactful when you see how those rascals in the National Review art department chose to illustrate it:

You could use this same technique for a "Obama and Hitler: Two of a Kind" or "Obama and Leatherface: Two of a Kind" story. But how does Hanson support the interesting concept that "Obama is Trump’s doppelgänger"? This'll give you some idea and believe me, even if you're familiar with Hanson's work you may be surprised:

Donald Trump believes he can oversell America abroad in the manner of Chamber of Commerce boosterism; isn’t that the twin to Obama underselling the country in the fashion of a wrinkled-browed academic? Both are stern moralists: America is too often shorted, and so Trump is angry over the sins of omission. For Obama, past genocide, racism, and imperialism vie as sins of U.S. commission.

Ahh, we are not so very different, Mr. Trump! I think America has too much, and you think it has too little! No, wait, that didn't come out right -- how about:

The two see the world in similarly materialist — though, again, opposite — terms: Trump wants net worth to be the litmus test of political preparation (“The point is that you can’t be too greedy”), even as Obama professes that big money is a Romney-like 1 percent disqualification. Obama’s infamous communalistic quotes to the effect that you didn’t build that, at some point you’ve made enough money, and this is no time to profit are just bookends to Trump’s money-is-everything ideas that he built everything, he’s never going to make enough money, and it is always time to profit.

Ahh, we are not so very different, Mr. Trump! We are both materialists, unlike the rest of America -- you in your money-is-everything way, I in my communis -- my commonalist -- my supercommunalisticexpialidocious way oh fuck it.

In some ways it's vintage Hanson -- there's even an obligatory VDH Obama/Jay-Z moment -- but in other ways it's uniquely awful, just like so much stuff coming out of National Review anymore. They're actually breaking the Jonah Goldberg paradigm, and I didn't think such a thing possible.

OFF TO A BAD START. Victor Davis Hanson says Obama's centrist appointments show that "Obama's victory... more so even than perhaps a John McCain's, may do more for Bush's reputation that anyone ever imagined." Previously Hanson wrote that "at least on national and homeland security it is perhaps not the shadow of Bill Clinton, but of George W. Bush, that now begins to loom large" in the Obama Administration.

Two things need to be pointed out; one, just weeks ago Hanson was calling Obama a socialist, and two, Obama isn't even President yet. Apparently Hanson can't accept that so many people -- white people at that! -- voted for the socialist, so he gloats that Obama is going to be George Bush.

Rather than vamp so shamelessly, he should probably just take a vacation.

SQUARE PEG.

Victor Davis Hanson goes on for more than 4,200 words about how everybody loves you if you're "hip" -- which in his lexicon is just another word for "liberal" -- and it's just not fair. One of his dozens of examples:

Would Google have had more trouble for all its outsourcing and overseas tax avoidance had it been named American Internet, Inc., or if its founders had grown up together as good ol’ boys in Mobile, Alabama, who still had a nagging propensity for putting patriotic slogans under the Google logo when the browser pops up each morning? Imagine waking and hitting the American Internet, Inc. logo — and then reading “Live free or die” before your search. (How odd that liberals — e.g., “the medium is the message” — always lectured us about advertising-driven false demand, and then became past masters of deceptive branding.)

I thought that's what Bing was for.

The odd thing is, Hanson never seems to grasp how these alleged hip people and things  -- he includes Starbucks, Jay-Z, "Snoop Dogg," Al Gore, and Katie Couric, believe it or not -- acquired whatever cachet they have. Since he hates them, the explanation can include nothing of what they offer the public, which severely limits his options.

Midway through he comes upon an answer that's at least plausible --

Could not Wal-Mart put memorable lines from Shakespeare on its plastic bags, or a Greek hexameter from Homer, or sell vitamin water called Sophos, Kalos, or Logos, or pipe in John Lennon’s “Imagine”?

You're getting warm, Doc -- marketing might have something to do with it. But Wal-Mart has a marketing budget, too, and it eschews Shakespeare for Low Low Prices. I don't hear them crying that they're misunderstood, and I sure don't hear them crying poor.

Alas, this explanation would cost Hanson his opportunity for self-pity, so he avoids it, and retreats thus:

Hip: borrowing became “stimulus”; entitlements, “investments”; and paying it all back became “paying your fair share.” In Obama’s case, he is not just black, but black with an exotic name and a liberal ideology, unlike a Clarence Thomas, who is most unhip...

I predict the first "hip" thing Hanson will adopt will be emo.

OOGA TO THE OOGITY-BOOGA.

neo-neocon started out with a fairly standard rightwing plaint about the big bad liberals:

It’s not just the heady victory of the moment that’s motivating them, it’s their conviction that it’s clear sailing from here on that empowers the left to openly up the ante and signal their next steps in establishing and capitalizing on their hegemony. No need to hide anymore when there’s nothing the right can do about it.

Then suddenly sproinnggg! out of nowhere:

In some ways the anti-white-man rhetoric that has become standard and acceptable lately is the worst sign of all. If the term “hate speech” has a meaning, it most definitely would apply to a great deal of what has been said recently about that despised group. Those who are first to shriek “racism” and “sexism” when criticism is launched against a group defined as oppressed (blacks, women) are turning the tables and dissing white men with impunity. It is both hypocritical and vile, and especially offensive when cloaked in the sanctimony of those on the left who believe they occupy the moral high ground (that would be everyone on the left).

Huh? neo-neocon doesn't explain what the hell she's talking about, so I had to trace back through a link to Victor Davis Hanson she'd left, perhaps inadvertently, as a clue to find out where she caught the fever.

Near as I can tell, this is it: That guy who criticized the Constitution in the New York Times called the Founding Fathers "a group of white propertied men" who "thought it was fine to own slaves." (I like the Constitution fine myself but yeah, obviously they were what he said they were.) Well, Hanson takes exception, but instead of arguing a case he just links the Constitution critic's sentiments to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, for reason unshared with his readers:

I can see Seidman’s vision now: Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi decides that semi-automatic handguns, not cheap Hollywood violence or sick video games, empower the insane to kill, and, presto, their 'considered judgment' and favored 'particular course of action' trump the archaic and evil wisdom of 'white propertied men.'

And that's about it, unless there's a coded reference or an acrostic or something in there that I missed.

Hanson's fit is weird enough, but the way neo-neocon got "everyone on the left" and "dissing white men with impunity" out of it -- that's just surreal. And then there's Ole Perfessor Glenn Reynolds' endorsement of it:

The Obama presidency has certainly been clarifying. Which is probably why gun sales are up.

To recap, some nut thought a professor's smack talk about the Founders owning slaves had something to do with Reid and Pelosi; this stimulated another nut to rage about the left's alleged insults to whitey; and this stimulated a third nut to cite Obama and cheer the rise in gun purchases. It's like a game of Telephone in an insane asylum.

Earlier today I was mildly disappointed that Commentary's new "What Is the Future of Conservatism in the Wake of the 2012 Election? A Symposium" was subscriber-only. But now I feel like I just read it for free.

UPDATE. "The white man has been oppressed ever since Django was unchained," explains Halloween Jack in comments. wjts and others point out that Hanson is once again complaining that someone stole equipment from his property and, once again, suggests the theft has something darkly to do with Obama. Soon these guys will be communicating entirely by dog-whistle: "Someone made off with my entrenching tool last night..." "OOGA BOOGA DEFEND WHITEY!"

ALL IS WELL! We seem to be getting lots of panicky Don't Panic messages about Iraq these days. The authors of these messages curse liberals and the media, as usual, but increasingly include on their shit list the American people as a body.

Victor Davis Hanson, for example, reads a list of negative features of our occupation (tendentiously conflating Abu Ghraib with the flushed Koran story, as if torture/murders were the equivalent of a newsman's gaffe), and then dismisses any and all concerns with this ineptitude and depravity as "American hysteria," "acrimony at home" about which there is a "disturbing sameness." (Well, what the hell, why not throw in an aesthetic objection?) Among the wrong-thinkers, Hanson interestingly names not only his usual despised liberals but also some conservatives "who insisted that we needed more initial troops are often the same ones who now decry that too much money has been spent in Iraq."

In fact, we -- not the Royal kind -- are to blame, at least as compared to the sainted military: while "we point fingers at each other," says Hanson, "soldiers under fire point to their achievements." This is followed by patriotic mush, Kiplingesque complaints about how hard war is to do properly ("Put too many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we earn the wages of imperialism... Yet deploy too few troops, and instability arises in Kabul and Baghdad"), and finally the warning that we are in danger of losing the war at home. (That means you, citizen! Put out that light!)

A similar tactic is employed by Fifty-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters only, as we have come to expect from the General, more hilariously. The Kipling musk here suffuses the entire column: the Iraqi people are portrayed as children whose "moral infrastructure" was "wrecked" by Saddam Hussein, and who must be re-parented by the U.S. Armed Forces. Like a good Daddy, G.I. Joe will "deliver expertise and spare parts, but won't do their work for them." That's how they learn! (And all those bombs we dropped on them? That's like a skinned knee.)

By God, these little monkeys may yet make it -- if you treasonous Americans don't fuck things up! "I didn't see any of our self-righteous critics in the Risalah slum," sneered the General. "But I did see Sgt. Maurice Harris, Spec. Victor Tsung and PFC (hey, promote that guy!) Brad Sheets, along with their comrades in arms. They were soldiers to the core..." And we see them marching into history, superimposed over an American flag on a hill, while the soundtrack plays "Have You Forgotten When Saddam Bombed the WalMart?" So who are you punks to question the soldiers' successes at sewage treatment in this little town -- and, by extension, throughout the Middle East? In a sidebar the General warns the People: "You are being lied to. By elements in the media determined that Iraq must fail. Just give 'em the Bronx cheer." And we'll be paying attention to who blows and who doesn't, maggot!

The thing you have to remember is: these people have been in charge for years. They run the Executive and Legislative Branches of the Federal Governments, and most Statehouses and State Legislatures. We are ruled, for all intents and purposes, by an unfettered and barely-challenged Republican Party. They have been left free to put their heaven-sent recipes for glory into operation.

And yet, citizens who are not commie-faggot-punk-MSMers are still losing faith in the cooked-up Iraq adventure.

So the Party in Power scrambles: they're going to shift from blaming whatever little troubles (be it a humorously misplaced Koran, or a man beaten to death by U.S. military "consultants") on that bale of straw called Libruls, to blaming it on us, by which they mean you.

It's worth a try. If it doesn't work, South Dakota can always float a law instituting the Rule of the Saints up to the Supremes. For every problem, there is a solution.

UPDATE. Must be something in the air because lots of smarter people than me are on this case. (Warning: some of this stuff involves Jeff Goldstein, so if you follow the links back to their source be prepared for long debate-club dissertations about how you don't understand English etc.)

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Jim Fourniadis -- genius behind Rats of Unusual Size, and producer of the first Reverb Motherfuckers album (how's that for HOF credentials?) --  did this and I think it's great.
•  I’ve only listened to a little Chapo Traphouse — podcasts still strike me as just a slower way of reading, and I don’t have the time. But I like Chapo Traphouse; they’re like Firesign Theater meets Negativland meets Alan Berg; I think it’s hilarious that, given their arcane references and not-terrible politics, they’re so popular. So it’s actually mystifying to me that the very smart Jeet Heer, among others, is giving them a hard time about being mean. I know his argument is technically more sweeping than “they’re mean” but isn’t that what it comes down to? Heer accuses them of “dominance politics” because of the bend-the-knee stuff, but how can he miss that the experience they provide is mainly aesthetic? Saying “Chapo is fighting a two-front war, one against the Republicans and another against moderate Democrats” is like saying “The Marx Brothers are fighting a two-front war, one against Sig Ruman as a stuffy opera impresario and another against Margaret Dumont.”

Jonathan Chait, of all people, is so close to getting this — “a podcast does not have to abide the logic of political coalition-building” — but then he starts talking about cross-checking your content for bias blah blah blah. Guys, this shit is funny, and humor (real humor that you can actually laugh at, not crude apparatchiks emulating the form) is not an insidious delivery system for propaganda, it’s a timeless source of human pleasure. He who feels it knows it. I hate to be dramatic (though I do have a BFA) but this is a step in the direction of treating everything as politics. Which, as this website daily shows, makes you ridiculous, and not in a laughing-with-you way.

•  The insufferable Victor Davis Maximus Super Hanson, whose insufferability was revisited here only Wednesday, has a new offense at City Journal. In brief, it’s a yowl over how nobody (that is, nobody Hanson approves of) does physical labor anymore. VDMSH himself, a part-time gentleman farmer, reveals himself acquainted with toil, at least in an overseer capacity, which makes him superior to the sissies who push paper and then go to the gym.

As someone who waited tables for years before entering office life, I could say that I know something of what he’s talking about. It’s good to know worlds beyond the knowledge-worker one, especially now that so many middle-class kids are shunted into that world from the cradle. But Hanson gotta Hanson: eventually he is forced to admit (perhaps by an editor, though the article otherwise seems not to have been submitted to editorial attention) that people who have been made to labor for their wages would not miss the experience. That’s about when Hanson dodges to a new tack: “diminished cultural awareness about those who work physically” is the trouble with all those “privileged Yale students shouting down” their professors and other Hansonian bugbears. Blah. Here in northeast D.C., I have seen a lot of middle-class working-class people — cooks, day laborers, security guards — who hobble home from the bus. One might say they’re had too much of what Hanson counts a good thing. They might have had less, or more ease from the travails, were someone in authority and power paying more attention to them. But the Hansons of the world never agitate for them to have that kind of attention — they only want to turn the eyes of whippersnappers toward them to shame them, while feeling no shame themselves.

•  Oh and: If you get tired of reading me on Rod Dreher, or even if not, why not give Andrew Johnston a try? Here he makes some good points, including this:

[Dreher's] is an extensive list of criticisms against this modern, nightmarish world of choice. That's the watchword, the real problem. Seven hundred years ago, there was no choice - you did as you were told or else you ended up flogged, exiled or broken on the wheel. Bit by bit, this changed as the Western world acquired the political and economic means to exercise choice as well as the knowledge to recognize that those choices existed… 

Dreher doesn't like the fact that people around him have the freedom not to believe in God, or to believe in a different god, or even to worship his God in a manner different from him. What he longs for in this book is enforced homogeny.

Dreher's a buffoon, but never forget that all his blubbering about homos forcing him to bake cakes is massive projection and the sheep's clothing on a threat. He and all the wormy theocons are just itching to get medieval on your ass.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 

 Just found out about this guy. Brilliant! 

(Maybe we can make it a fun game -- Fela had a Zombie, and Zappa a Zombie Woof.

Any others?

 •  Have a blast with some free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down copy -- there's today's edition about what's probably going on at the Biden camp's Be Nice To Republicans office, and my previous column on leftward comrades who have already declared Biden the samer of two evils. And while I'm at it, my review of Mank, now playing, as a public service. 

 •  On Tuesday White Working Class Whisperer Salena Zito -- who has been scraping the clouds for silver linings since Biden won the election -- paid tribute to the brave Republican Attorneys General who have "set their sights on checking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris":

[Adam Piper, the executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association] said the line of defense Republican attorneys general will possess will be more coordinated than ever before. “You will see Republican AGs take bold action to make sure that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cannot unconstitutionally use the phone and the pen the same way Barack Obama attempted to do so,” he said...

As Piper sees it, Republican attorneys general are the one thing that will defend the country during the Biden-Harris administration.

Piper might have said "defend the country from there ever being a Biden-Harris administration," as about a day later 17 of those AGs signed on to Ken Paxton's insane lawsuit to overturn the election in states other than ones they serve, on the grounds that states that are not theirs electing Biden is against the Consti-ma-tution. 

I wonder if Piper could have tipped Zito to the attorneys' plan to destroy democracy and how the squares with their passion for our founding documents. Come to think of it, I wonder if the AGs tipped Piper. In either case, it just goes to show what happens when you praise any Republicans' devotion to American first principles these days -- they'll disprove your thesis within the week.

 •  Haven't looked in for a while on Victor Davis Hanson, the gentleman farmer who blamed Obama for Bonnie and Clyde and the theft (via his Mexican agents) of Hanson's chainsaw. Turns out VDH has taken a strong position not only on Trump but on hydroxychloroquine, the fad COVID cure that Republicans keep trotting out crackpots to promote, notwithstanding it keeps getting debunked by actual scientists -- most recently in this randomized study with results published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. This week VDH asks: Will Joe Biden make the socialistic mistake of turning his back on hydroxychloroquine just because Trump endorsed it? 

Almost immediately [after Trump endorsed the drug], the media, the university and government medical community, and the progressive political opposition declared hydroxychloroquine useless and dangerous. 

"The university and government medical community" apparently means doctors and researchers who are not obvious nutballs and quacks like Jane Orient and Stella "Demon Sperm" Immanuel.

A recent media study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that positive news stories about the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines barely outnumbered negative stories about Trump and hydroxychloroquine.

Never mind what the so-called "scientific studies" say about the drug -- what matters is that the media reports those results, which is liberal bias! I bet a lot of these scientasters will tell you Biden won the election and Jesus didn't endorse Trump, neither!

Trump’s presidential endorsement was apparent proof of rank quackery. 

Well, mainly it was the actual research, though after four years we can probably assume everything Trump says is bullshit and be right >95% of the time.

Yet a few recent second-look studies, especially abroad, suggest that hydroxychloroquine, a dirt-cheap, time-tested anti-malarial drug, can in fact offer help in treating some cases of COVID-19.

VDH declines to link to such studies, natch. 

This Hydroxy Effect — hysterical disavowal of anything Trump has endorsed — is dangerous to the country at large.

The answer is clear: Either Biden admits Trump was actually right about his debunked miracle drug (and a long list of other things Hanson describes as "Trump successes") and starts dishing it out tout suite or else he is simply giving up on COVID-19 -- as liberals claim Trump has; how ironic! -- out of spite and "Trump derangement syndrome." Either way Trump wins! That so many Republican go-getters such as the aforementioned amici AGs will mouth nonsense in defense of Trump's insane claims is disturbing, but to see an old classics professor doing it, even one with Hanson's clownish reputation, is just disgusting.  

HE WAS A CRUEL MAN, BUT FAIR. Victor Davis Hanson defends the Dick Cheney biography. I have not read that book, and thus have no opinion of it, but I can still enjoy the wonderful bits in Hanson's defense. First, relating to Cheney's advocacy of waterboarding:

I opposed those techniques, but we still do not have the complete record of the information that came from KSM et al. — though National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair has since said “high value” information came out of it — and by now we have forgotten the sense of impending attack and mayhem that followed after 9/11.

It was the 00's, man -- everyone was doing anti-terror, and experimenting with torture.

From Hanson's list of Cheney's admirable qualities, this is my favorite:

...he retains a natural comfort with the middle classes that comes from his own upbringing in Wyoming.

Though its association here with the monstrous Cheney adds some piquancy, the general notion that someone should be applauded for "comfort with the middle classes" is depressingly common. I'm generally more impressed by how someone relates to poor folks. I supposed that's just my Christian upbringing, which I understand is now referred to as socialism.

Finally, the punchline:

He had a lot of Democratic friends — remember how little acrimony he showed with Lieberman in the 2000 debate...

Now, really, how can you top that?

RACE PIMP. Normally the National Review's Victor Davis Hanson goes on about political correctness like a parrot who's been living in Hilton Kramer's apartment. Yet today he's complaining that there will be no shitstorm over Don Imus' latest race-related remarks.

One would think so stalwart a fan of untramelled speech would be pleased to learn the heat's off. But Hanson is more interested in blaming the media's unwillingness to make Imus a big story for the second year in a row on history's greatest monster, Barack Obama:

This time there will be no calls for resignation or furor. Why? Obama in his treatment of the far worse racial slurs of Rev. Wright already lowered the bar when defending Wright last spring by not calling for him to apologize or separate from Trinity, and thereby lost any high ground to voice concern about others.

If this is so, we owe Obama a debt of gratitude for sparing us another ridiculous media circus like the last Imus affair -- or, for that matter, the Reverend Wright blowout. And the current reaction, or lack thereof, seems consonant with the reason-over-rage message of the Obama race speech.

Wow, I like the Obama Presidency already! Certainly much more than I like PC, race-baiting crybabies like Hanson.

HOMAGE TO REVEREND AL. Victor Davis Hanson, deep breath now:

There were several reasons why it was unwise for the attorney general of the United States to praise Al Sharpton at a convention of Sharpton’s organization, “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill,” in the midst of the Trayvon Martin case (“I know that many of you are greatly — and rightly — concerned about the recent shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a young man whose future has been lost to the ages”), even as Sharpton has been quite actively inflaming an already tense situation...

...but the main one is, the bigots who aren't going to vote for this Administration anyway will be mad at you.

I once voted for Sharpton for the Democratic nomination for Senator from New York. It is one of my most cherished electoral memories. Sharpton has made mistakes, God knows, but he does indeed speak out for the voiceless and stand up for the powerless, something you'd never catch Hanson doing on a bet. Based on his long-term record, if I see Sharpton is on a case, I don't assume it means another Freddy's Fashion Mart; I assume it means that someone the powerful don't give a shit about is in trouble. Life experience and my Christian upbringing dispose me kindly toward such people.

Anyway, if he's good enough to train NYPD recruits, he's good enough for me.

As for Sharpton "actively inflaming an already tense situation," I suppose Hanson means this:

Al Sharpton urges Trayvon Martin supporters not to "tarnish" his name with violence 

..."We are not in the business of revenge. We are in the business of justice," said Sharpton, speaking at a convention for the National Action Network, his civil rights group. "We must make the justice system work. Otherwise the movement is for nothing. To go outside the justice system is to achieve nothing."

These people are such lying assholes that if they said something bad about Satan, I'd give Satan the benefit of the doubt.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, DOUCHEBAG. National Review's Victor Davis Hanson is not content with being both a columnist and a -- wait, what do you call a guy who knows a lot about ancient history and is constantly reminding you of it? Oh yeah, a douchebag. Well, now Hanson wants to be a neologist, too. Speaking on the speeches of politicians whose eco-enthusiasms annoy him, Hanson writes:

It is scary when Speaker Pelosi claims "I'm trying to save the planet; I'm trying to save the planet," or Al Gore barks about his utopian plan to shut down all generators of electricity except wind and solar within 10 years -- or else: "The future of human civilization is at stake." Or Obama claims that at the "moment" of his nomination over Hillary (?) "The rise of the oceans began to slow." Call this ecobonics, geo-narcissism, or hokey science -- or a variant strain of Bush Derangement Syndrome -- but it is creepy nonetheless.

"Ecobonics"? Why the conflation of ecology and ebonics? What do black people have to do with environmentalists? Oh right: conservatives hate them, too.

It would appear... wait, I'm having difficulty maintaining my arch tone and devising a glittering jest on this subject. So let's leave it at this: what a fucking douchebag.

A DREAM DEFERRED.

In my Voice column I mentioned some folks who thought Ferguson would prove a libertarian inflection point for conservatives, and I see some of them are still at it. Under the headline "Ferguson Is The Beginning Of The End For Conservatives’ 'War On Crime,'" BuzzFeed's Evan McMorris-Santoro offers the testimony of Grover Norquist and Chuck DeVore, two conservative factota who think they see an opening here:

“On the crime stuff, a Republican can stand up and challenge the aggressiveness of the cops,” said Grover Norquist, top dog at Americans For Tax Reform and a supporter of criminal justice changes. “Democrats are surrounded by the images of people who defend Mumia or whoever that guy is who killed those cops"... 

“If our policies were in place,” DeVore said, Ferguson might not have the some of the divides he sees as at the root of the turmoil this week. 

“Perhaps there would be lower unemployment,” he said. “Perhaps there would be more two-parent households.”

The opportunistic tone, at least, is convincing. But I fear the moment is passing. As I said yesterday, take a look at National Review to see which way the stagnant wind blows. Charles C.W. Cooke, who has been among NR's stronger civil-libertarian voices on this subject, has retreated to his comfort zone -- i.e., nuh-uh-you-stupid-liberals, America still rules  -- as his colleagues go full lawn-order all around him.

The latest such salvo comes from Victor Davis Hanson, who is enraged that some measure of order was brought to Ferguson's streets, because it was New Black Panther Malik Shabazz who brought it. Imagine, when Jesse Jackson freed Navy Airman Robert Goodman from Syria in 1984, even Ronald Reagan said "you can't argue with success" -- but for Hanson, Shabazz's assist represents "at least a partial erosion of legal authority in Ferguson," which he finds "emblematic of our times in which the sanctity of established law exists only to the degree that it is considered useful in promoting a more egalitarian agenda. In the matter of the recent influx at the southern border..." You can smell it coming: the lawless-Obama shtick, and how all his crimes from Benghazi to immigration have led to this moment:

And so we get the disreputable Malik Shabazz as a Robespierre-like street arbitrator of calm or violence in Ferguson, various ethnic pressure groups as de facto legislators adjudicating who will be granted access to the United States, and the current administration able to pick and choose which particular existing federal law is deemed fair and useful and which discriminatory and counter-productive — and rendered therefore null and void. 

In all these cases, any particular law at any particular moment can be judged obsolete and an impediment to social justice — and so it can be replaced immediately by a sort of revolutionary justice with the full backing of the administrative state.

Did I miss something? Was the cop who shot Michael Brown lynched? Or even arrested?

If none of that means anything, then let's just make it this:

Blacks and whites have sharply different reactions to the police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo., and the protests and violence that followed. Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to say that the shooting of Michael Brown “raises important issues about race that need to be discussed"... 

Reactions to last week’s events in Ferguson divide the public by partisan affiliation and age, as well as by race. Fully 68% of Democrats (including 62% of white Democrats) think the Brown case raises important issues about race that merit discussion. Just 21% of Democrats (including 25% of white Democrats) say questions of race are getting more attention than they deserve. Among Republicans, opinion is almost the reverse – 61% say the issue of race has gotten too much attention while 22% say the case has raised important racial issues that need to be discussed.

Contra Norquist, "challenging the aggressiveness of the cops" has got nothing to do with it. The plain fact is, Republicans (and the conservatives for whom they serve as avatars) can't back off law-and-order because their cracker constituency demands it.

But don't worry -- you'll hear all these arguments again, only louder and unanimously, if someone tries to arrest Cliven Bundy.

UPDATE. In comments, Jay B responds to Hanson's fantasy that under the Kenyan Pretender "any particular law at any particular moment can be judged obsolete and an impediment to social justice":

What law was judged obsolete and by whom? The people of Ferguson, who believed in the Right to Assembly and Free Speech only to meet with the Hermann Goering Division, Mayberry Company? Or the cops themselves, who saw fit to murder a kid, then go ballistic on the people who got mad about it? Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of law left at the particular moment, but thanks for being racist, VDH. It's clarifying. 

KULTURKAMPFERS GONE WILD! Behold the latest ravings of Victor Davis Hanson:

Reading the self-righteous remarks of the Dixie Chicks reminded me of the Nobel Prize announcements, to the effect from one judge that Jimmy Carter had been likewise rewarded for his vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.

When do we get a live broadcast of the Nobel Prizes with Joan Rivers on the Commie-Red Carpet?

All this comes in the wake of the photo-shopped Reuters photos, the AP stringers misinformation, the Dan Rather memos, the Newsweek flushed Koran story, etc. So in an age where our national elites scream about Joe Wilson ad nauseam, most of us instead worry that major institutions-in entertainment, arts, news-not merely lean to the politically-correct, but do so in such a fashion to outweigh all else.

Hanson's sweaty head thrashes on the pillow. So many enemies! And they all have gala award ceremonies!

The result is that we can no longer be sure whether merit and truth are the primary criteria in bestowing awards or reporting news.

Not that, Victor! Please tell us the People's Choice Awards are still legit!

This is not partisan criticism, but rather evident from remarks of a judge on the Nobel Prize committee, Jimmy Carter himself, the Dixie Chicks, etc., all apparently unafraid to make explicit the connection between politics and recognition.

I'm not the Kulturkampfer, you're the Kulturkampfers!

In the short-term, all this posturing brings advantage, but in the long-term, Samson-like it is bringing down the temple of our basic institutions-hence the rise of grass-roots talk radio, cable news, the blogs that either offer partisan correctives or critique the bias of mainstream institutions.

Kulturkampfers never tire of finding ways to miss -- well, everything, including the simple perspective possessed by millions of Americans who would never dream of comparing Jimmy Carter with some stupid pop group just because they both possessed shiny objects.

LA VIDA ES SUEÑO. Victor Davis Herodotus Maximus Super Hanson:

Since 1980, I can recall five or six illegal-alien drivers who ended up in my vineyard, after veering off the road at high speeds, ploughing through the vineyard, and ripping out lots of mature vines, before ending up several rows from the road. In only two cases did the police find the somnolent, intoxicated (uninjured) drivers still in the cars (both with no license, no valid ID, and no car insurance)...

In addition, I was broadsided on one occasion by an illegal-alien driver, who after running the stop sign and hitting the driver side of my truck, abandoned his car (no insurance, no registration) and fled on foot (I caught him). He had no license, but the arriving officer told me that he had charged him only with running the stop sign (not a hit and run) and would release him. I had to pay the deductible for the damage to my truck by the uninsured driver, and my insurance company later quietly informed me that the local police had filed no report of the accident...

If you're a fan of damned-Mescan stuff, there's plenty more of it in the post.

It seems a suspiciously common occurrence for Mescans to be plowing drunk into Hanson's crops, or into him, or stealing his tools, etc. I hate to give the impression that I disbelieve his stories (or his colleague Michael Austin's claim that he was accustomed to bribe Chicago poll-watchers to let him vote multiple times -- I'm sure it's true on some level), but it really does seem as if Hanson has a vastly greater amount of trouble with Mescans than any white man I've ever heard of.

Not to mention the cops.

Maybe he just doesn't make friends easily?

UPDATE. In comments, Spaghetti Lee asks, "Is Hanson trying to make a political point here or is he just crabbily reminiscing about his life?... liberals and conservatives alike can share stories of life's random indignities, but it seems to be the conservatives who see it all as a giant conspiracy against them personally." aimai answers, "It's not personal--it's in propria persona as a white person. That's what has him so upset. It's not just happening to him -- It's happening to all the middle aged chain saw using vinyard owning classics professors and pundits."

THE BIG STIFF IN PRIME TIME. I don’t mean to be rude, but much as I want it to work (and it could very well work), I cannot suspend a morbid consciousness of the political purpose of John Kerry’s DNC honor guard tonight.

Max Cleland is a very old-fashioned sort of politician, never mind the wheelchair. He looks proud and wounded all at the same time, and his face glistens in the hard light, as every Southern politician’s has since the days of Henry Clay, and like the most successful of them Cleland seems to enjoy rather than tolerate it. "My body was broken and my faith was shattered…. Although I had lost a lot, I still had a lot left. I resolved to make something of my life." This guy makes me ashamed, as he is supposed to. And you can get a lot of uplift out of that kind of shame in a situation like this.

"No Surrender." That’s a good choice – like all the songs on Born in the U.S.A., tinged with enough despair and regret to make it easier to really take to heart than Bon Jovi.

OK, this’ll be long. Better settle in. But I expect he’ll rush; they all have.

"I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty." Holy shit.

"…because we love our country… united in one purpose: to make America stronger at home and respected in the world. A great American novelist wrote, ‘You can’t go home again.’" Quick, conservatives – find Thomas Wolfe’s commie credentials!

"I was born in the West Wing." Good thing there’s a TV show. "Mother was the rock of our family…" Oh, here’s the personal touch Teresa didn’t put in. "Den mother when I was a Cub Scout… gave me her passion for the environment… march for full equality for all women…" Boy, she sounds like a handful.

"Father… first baseball mitt… Greatest Generation… in the State Department… " Another handful. "I rode my bike into Soviet East Berlin… he promptly grounded me." Ha ha. "Fear in the eyes of people who were not free." I see where this will get to. "I learned what it meant to be America at her best… determined to restore that pride to all that look to America." Do we see that in the Iraqi citizens’ eyes, or fear of the Abu Ghraib torturer? That’s a nut-cutter there, and explains all the toy drives at Instapundit.

"The great gift of service… a Junior, John Kennedy…" Got it. "We believed we could change to world, and you know what? We did… but tonight… we’re going to write the next great chapter… change the world, but only if we are true to our ideals and that starts by telling the truth to the American people… that is my first pledge to you… I will restore trust and credibility to the White House…" Craggy-face Kerry as the voice of youthful America.

"As a young prosecutor… balanced budget… 100,000 police on the streets of America… finally made peace in Vietnam." Nice, tight resume. "Commander-in-Chief who will never mislead us into war… a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the military, and an Attorney General who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Yeah, not like those weirdos we have now.

"Here is our answer: there is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can’t do better. We’re the optimists, we’re the can-do people… look at the 90s… we just need to believe in ourselves and we can do it again…" Oh, yeah, Clinton, don’t you miss him?

"I am proud that at my side…John Edwards… his life is the American dream…" Every little boy can grow up to be a rich lawyer. Well, it’s true! "Succeed Dick Cheney…" Oh, sorry I was mean to JE. "What can I say about Teresa?" You’ll be asked to, of course. I loved her dipping her head to JE’s shoulder. Maybe by her very weirdness she’s an asset. I don’t mind watching her do her loopy thing for four years.

"Our band of brothers… what we learned as soldiers… every day is extra." That’s ‘Nam talk, son. "We may be a little older… still know how to fight…" You gotta love it -- Uncommon Valor.

"September 11… strength that our firefighters… rescuers… Flight 93… flags were hanging from front porches… it was the worst day that we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us… we were only Americans, and how we wish it had stayed that way…"

It’s all one, you see, the Zen of liberalism. Every facet of public life – fighting terrorism and health care and tax policy -- feeds into the other.

"There are those that criticize me for seeing complexities…" Okay, I’m complex, you got my vote! "Proclaiming ‘Mission Accompished’ certainly doesn’t make it so." Snap. "I will bring back that time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because it wants to, it only goes to war because it has to… I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in battle… On my first day of office… never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace. I know what we have to do in Iraq… I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President." Who is this guy, George McClellan?

"I will never hesitate to respond… no veto over national security… add 40,000 military troops, not in Iraq…" At last, forward thinking. "And we will end the back door draft of the National Guard and Reservists." Hello, this really is news. What about the Coast Guard?

"Strength is more than tough words… I know the reach of our power… we need to make America a beacon… looked up to, not just feared… tell the terrorists… the future doesn’t belong to fear, it belongs to freedom." See citizen, Iraq.

"Right here on our shores… 9/11 commission… I will not evade or equivocate… 98% of our container ships… nuclear and chemical plants… not opening firehouses in Baghdad and shutting them down in the United States of America." His case on competence grounds.

"To those who would question the patriotism… wrapping themselves in the flag… what America is really about… when Americans stand up… that is not a challenge to patriotism, it is the heart and soul of patriotism. You see that flag up there? We call her Old Glory… I fought under that flag…" We know! "From the gun-turret…" We know! "Draped the casket…" We know!! "It belongs to all the American people!"

What are they going to remember? That John Kerry fought in Vietnam and no one better even hint he’s a traitor.

The crowd chants USA! USA! Kerry still wants to hurry through this. "My fellow citizens… Those who talk about family values should start valuing families… taking cops off the street so Enron can get another tax break… big drug companies… windfall profits… I will not privatize Social Security, I will not cut benefits… family, faith, hard work… that is the American Dream…" Kerry as Boston Irish politician, beating the same pulpit (not literally, of course) as a 19th-century Mick alderman pledging the workingman a better deal.

"Dave McKuen, a steelworker…" This is a good story – oh, it’s not a story? "Marianne Knowles, a woman with breast cancer…" Hey, this is a good – oh. "Deborah Kromins…" That’s – "25% of our children in Harlem… people sleeping in Lafayette Park… three million…" Well, that was a fast transition from the specific to the general. But narrative is a vanishing art.

"Middle class not being squeezed but doing better… new incentives… manufacturing… good-paying jobs… close the tax loopholes… reward companies that keep jobs in the good old U.S.A… never have to subsidize the loss of his own job… give the American worker a fair playing field, there’s no one in the world that he can’t compete against." Seamus O’Kerry will save your full dinner pail!

"We won’t raise taxes on the middle class, you’ve heard a lot of false charges… roll back the tax cuts on wealthier Americans… making over $200,000 a year…" Some gnome is now rushing to find a $200,000 a year family who can’t make ends meet under ee-vil Kerry.

"Stop being a nation content to spend $10,000 to send a young man to prison… Head Start, Smart Start… a real start…" The old playbook.

"Health care… 4 million people have lost their health care… your payments, your premiums… save families $1000 a year… under our health care plan… Medicare will negotiate lower drug prices… less expensive… a right for all Americans…" That’s the playbook again, and it sounds as good as ever. We will of course have to wait for the bill of particulars, emphasis on "bill."

"Independent of Mideast oil…" Another good page from the playbook. "…not the Saudi Royal family." Yeah, you know, those guys Bush is mobbed up with. Victor Davis Hanson will deliver another rant distancing The Movement from the Saudis, but no one on the hustings reads Victor Davis Fucking Hanson.

"Benjamin Franklin could never have said in his acceptance speech: go to johnkerry.com." You mean we don’t have to listen to much more of this?

"Let me address these words directly to George W. Bush… let’s respect one another… never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in human history, the Constitution of the United States…" What can I say? When he’s right, he’s right.

"Big ideas, not small-minded attacks… divide group from group… maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us united in one America, Red, White, and Blue… America is not ‘us’ and ‘them’… I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve, but faith has given me hope… Abraham Lincoln… I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side." Good, he stopped talking for a few seconds, at just the right time and in just the right way.

"They’re American values… if we believe in them, we can build… so much promise stretches before us… " Kitty Hawk. NASA. Microsoft. "WE did that… and now it’s our time to ask, ‘What if?’" Alzheimers, AIDS, stem cells. "A President who believes in science…" A choice, not a idjit. "Do what adults should do…" Oh yeah.

"Patrolling the Mekong…" We kn-- – oh, forget it. "Literally all in the same boat… that is the kind of America… all in the same boat…. Look to the next horizon.. our best days are still to come… Good night, God Bless You and God Bless The United States of America."

Cue "Beautiful Day." I hear a lot smack about the music here, but this is just perfect.

As oratory it was rushed, monochromatic, and lackluster. But. This guy is alright, and he’s running against Bush. Well, you know what I think. What do you think?

UPDATE. From The Corner: "Um, Mr. Kerry, 'that flag,' that 'Old Glory,' that 'Stars and Stripes Forever,' flew upside down on the cover of your book 'The New Soldier.' So why don't you explain that?"

Translation: they're scared shitless.

UPDATE II. Some of my comrades seem to think I've been too hard on the Big Stiff. Let me be clear. I think Kerry should do well based on tonight's performance, but I insist in judging it by Olympian standards. Why? Because, as the man said, there is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can’t do better.

Don't worry that there is a chorus of idiots spinning the speech down. (I see Lileks, at the lunar end of one of his frequent mood swings, believes a Kerry Presidency will lead to "a smoking crater in New York." Count on it, Prairie Putz; New Yorkers will vote big for that smoking crater!) They're all in the blogosphere, which, as far as Mr. and Mrs. America know, is one long, contiguous series of mothers' basements where stained-shirted Comic Book Guys lurk and play at politics. Which means that they may have well have the wisdom to elect the right guy.

HERODOTARD, THE FATHER OF DERP.

I just caught up with that old drama queen Victor Davis Hanson, who is doing his usual long whine at National Review about how the Mexicans and the homosexuals and the SJWs and the Deep State are all conspiring to steal his chainsaw. It's all too tedious but I will share with you this lovely graf I pulled from his muck of wingnut buzzwords:

In short, will America remain a multiracial nation united in one culture in which superficial physical appearance becomes largely irrelevant (and indeed one’s racial DNA pedigree soon becomes almost undefinable), or will it go the tribal route that ultimately leads to something like the Balkans, Rwanda, Iraq — or Evergreen State, Ferguson, and Middlebury?

I can imagine his rageaholic readers gasping: Become another Middlebury, Vermont? Nature hikes in the winter, quarry swimming in the summer? Forbid it almighty God!

Oh, this part's pretty great too:

The Great Depression, and the establishment’s inept responses to it, left a quarter of the country unemployed for nearly a decade — hungry and desperate to expand government even if it entailed curtailing liberty in a way never envisioned by the Founders. The result was eventually the redefinition of freedom as the right of the individual to have his daily needs guaranteed by the state.

Hanson's apparent plan, now that the inept establishment has been replaced with Donald Trump, is to try it again, only this time we'll steel ourselves against statism, remembering that starving to death in a cold-water shack is as nothing compared to the nightmare of social security and banking regulations.

SENEX IRATUS OTD.

Flatus Maximus Victor Davis Hanson saith the sooth on equality, which (you will be unsurprised to hear) he is against.

Millions of Americans have lost the liberty to select their own type of health insurance, purchased on their own volition to best match their own assessments of their particular needs. Obamacare — the federal government’s redistributive effort to equalize health care for all — sought to destroy the liberty of many millions in order to ensure a state-directed sameness in care for all.

Similarly, years before most of you were born, Americans were unilaterally stripped of their freedom to dispose of sewage in their own way. No more just throwing your shit into the river, or on your lawn; fascist protObamas enforced a wearying state-directed sameness of sewer pipes, and thus our liberty was flushed forever!

Also mentioned in the lengthy ululation: "mandated equality," "Sidwell Friends," Obama's "Malibu supporters," "the French Revolution’s grandees, the Soviet nomenklatura, and the EU elite." Plus Hanson compares California to "the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Eastern Europe."

I'm beginning to think the old gasbag is hipper than he looks, and composes these things from cut-up pieces a la Burroughs.

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.

EGYPT ME, EGYPT YOU. Al Jazeera, whose live feed you can see here (thanks Skinny John!), is reporting that Egyptian cops are beating up reporters. And they're on their way up to the Al Jazeera studios in Cairo. ("I will stay on the air as long as I can... until we are forced off the air.")


It's almost curfew time, so this should be interesting.

UPDATE. I'm so old I remember the Iranian Twitter revolution -- which achieved little concrete political change, though it did lead in an uptick to avatar modification -- so I'm not making any calls on this. I do notice that some conservatives are worried that the uprising, should it take, may not be to America's liking*. But the mainstream play for conservatives is to act enthusiastic about it, as they did with the Orange Revolution and the Cedar Revolution. Remember those? Many medals were given out then for supportive blogging! But the world seems not to have gotten much freer because of them.

UPDATE 2. State media reports Army's been ordered into the streets to put down the protests, says AJ. Just saw a bunch of protestors flip over an armored personnel carrier.

UPDATE 3. *At National Review, Michael Rubin really wants it both ways: "A reader points out that while Biden’s 'Mubarak is not a dictator' comment is risible, the vice president was correct that Mubarak should not step down, because what comes next — a Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship — could be worse." There's a man who knows how to spread his chips!

And would you believe it, the situation reminds Victor Davis Hanson of In the Valley of Elah, Redacted, and Stop Loss. And Michael Moore! It's become a major Hanson tic. He'll be applying these topics to world events at his rest home, assuming perhaps unfairly he's not in one already.

UPDATE 4. "GOOD NEWS," says Atlas Shrugs, "EGYPT ARRESTS MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD LEADERS." Apparently Mubarak is cleverly engineering just who will chase him out of the country and take over. Probably he's working with the most pro-democracy faction. What a patriot!

Good continuing coverage at Mother Jones.