NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...and surprise, it's an end-of-year top ten! Specifically, "Rightbloggers' Top 10 Facepalms of 2015." In its own tweet the Voice calls it "Conservative Media's Top Ten Facepalms," which shows they're paying attention: our dummies laureate include not only pure bloggers like Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser and Roger L. Simon, but also Megan McArdle and the boys from National Review, who are only rightbloggers in the broadest sense (that is, they're online and they suck). The journalistic race to the bottom is over and we all lost.

This column is pure fun -- well, fun for me, but my desires are unconventional -- and since it's pulled from a year of my  "research" at alicublog, there are no outtakes or overflow: you can just go through the archives for that. I must say it was hard picking ten.

THE DEFIANT ONES.

There will be large spoilers in this review of The Hateful Eight because, though it’s easy to evade spoilers when discussing its technical aspects (all first rate) and overall air of menace, it’s impossible to evade them (at least I find it so) when trying to discuss what, besides box office and ultraviolent jollies, the thing is trying to accomplish.

Marquis Warren, a recently demobbed Union Major and bounty hunter on the road to Red Rock, catches a ride on a stage with another bounty hunter, John Ruth, and his current, living prize, Daisy Domergue, worth $10,000 upon delivery. They are joined by another stray, former Confederate raider Chris Mannix, claiming to be Red Rock’s new sheriff. Later they’ll get snowed in with four other characters of at-first-uncertain provenance, and we’ll have ourselves that Eight.

Things are tense from the start. Domergue is extremely troublesome — she’s a spitter, for one thing — but Ruth is committed to taking her, as he does all his charges, to the law alive, despite the lack of a financial percentage in this (though he thinks nothing of breaking Domergue’s nose and, later, knocking out her teeth). He says it’s because he doesn’t want to cheat the hangman of his wage, but it’s easier to believe he does it in accordance with a crude moral code. He trusts no man but has a feeling for justice; when Mannix announces himself to be the new sheriff of Red Rock, Ruth is far more outraged than Warren that a Reb would get the job, or lie about getting it. Warren, for his part, would prefer a simple excuse to kill Mannix, as he is accustomed and in fact pleased to kill white men, especially but not exclusively those whose cause had been his death or enslavement.

The relationship between Warren and Ruth is important. We find out quickly that the two men know each other, but when we learn that Ruth respects Warren’s war record, it’s puzzling, and when Marquis reveals Ruth saved his life, it’s a surprise — because obviously neither trusts the other, or only trusts him insofar as he has to. Theirs is what you might call an unsentimental relationship.

But each has something that motivates him beyond his survival instinct. Ruth, it turns out, not only respects justice, but also has a soft spot for a “Lincoln letter” Warren holds, addressed personally to Warren by the Emancipator himself. Ruth remembers the letter fondly and is visibly moved when he gets a chance to read it again. The letter is mostly anodyne, complimenting Warren’s service, but it vaguely alludes to a post-racist future when they can “work together.” Can there be any other reason why Ruth nearly weeps to read it but that he would like to think so, too? (So long, of course, as he needn’t risk anything to achieve it.)

Later, Ruth is also visibly affected when Warren reveals [look, I told you, spoilers] that the letter’s a fake. He’s more emotional than one might expect; he’s partly angry, but also deeply hurt — feels betrayed, even. And Warren is surprisingly cold and contemptuous as he explains to Ruth that, as a black man in a white world, he is sometimes obliged to “charm” the caucasians to survive, and the fake letter is one such charm.

This is the point where everything starts to break apart, and when the more mechanically plot-driven part of the story kicks in. It takes that long to happen, I think, because Tarantino wanted to first show that the two major characters who seem most evenly matched and who have the best grounds for friendship can’t be anything of the sort because of the huge fact of endemic racism — a bloody chasm too large to be crossed by simple fellow-feeling.

But race isn’t everything, and there are other grounds for unity. At the end, after much Tarantino-style bloodletting, [massive spoiler, here], a new interracial team — Warren and Mannix, both bleeding to death — unite to bring Domergue to a perverted version of the justice to which Ruth was attempting to deliver her. Why this is preferable to just shooting her is not made explicit; Warren cites Ruth’s code, but from what we’ve seen, why would Warren, even in delirium, adopt it? Tarantino drops some hints earlier in the film: a character claiming to be a hangman says that “justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice.” When Warren and Mannix clumsily put Domergue to the rope, it’s certainly not justice. (When Mannix reads aloud the Lincoln letter in, as it were, the shade of Domergue’s hanged corpse, the irony is too clear to miss.) It is instead a simple shift in the grounds of hatred. Though the word “nigger” is heard frequently in the film — a Tarantino hallmark — the word “bitch” runs a close second. Some critics have commented on the disturbing abuse Domergue withstands in the course of the film and wonder if it’s misogynistic. I think misogyny is too limiting an explanation. The violence against Domergue is disturbing; worse than anyone else's. I can’t imagine any good reason why this character had to be female at all except this: so that the story’s menfolk, or what’s left of them, could be shown to take a special pleasure and comfort in using a moral code, even a second-hand one in which they don’t really believe, to elevate their violence against her into something more satisfying as they face the end of their days. Think of the Eight as a little divided society -- as one of the characters explicitly describes it -- that's too poisoned by greed and fear to survive, and whose members while away its decline indulging every opportunity to settle scores, and you begin to see the point. I wouldn't go so far as to call it feminist, but I will say that it isn't women Tarantino has it in for.

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.

CALM-DOWNWARD MOBILITY.

In our annals of Libertarians Smell, Bryan Caplan holds a special place. He is perhaps best known for telling women they were freer in the 1890s than now because, although they didn't have the vote and were basically the property of their husbands, they didn't have to live in a welfare state. He's said some other even creepier, wackier things.

Today he has a post which we may consider his Christmas present to the world. In the holiday spirit he generously tries to understand why the littlebrains don't think capitalism is the berries, don't appreciate their bosses, and keep demanding absurdities like a living wage.

4. The main lesson of labor econ is that markets for labor closely resemble markets for other goods. Why then are people so eager to believe that unregulated labor markets are terrible? Part of the reason is that the little differences are occasionally traumatic. Wages don't adjust like stock market prices, so involuntary unemployment is a real and frightening prospect.

Workers fear the trauma of involuntary unemployment, and get frightened. (Irrational of them, really -- involuntary unemployment and the descent into poverty that often comes with it are just Acts of God, like hurricanes. And global depressions are the butterfly effect. They can't be helped, certainly not by statism.)

5. Another important reason, though, is that markets where people trade vaguely-defined products for cash tend to be acrimonious. When products are vague, the side paying cash often feels ripped off, and the side receiving cash often feels insulted.

So, see, it's traumatic on both sides! Bosses grumble over the injustice of paying you for your servitude, and you feel insulted, not so much by the lack of income as by the lack of validation.

In most markets, sellers strive to standardize products to preempt this acrimony. In labor markets, however, this is inherently difficult because every human is unique.

You're not a widget; you're YOU. And sometimes YOU are inadequate, and must work two jobs to earn your place in a men's shelter.

As a result, employers often lash out at workers because they feel cheated, and employees often resent employers because they feel mistreated.

6. These problems are amplified by the fact that our jobs are central to our identities. So when we feel mistreated by a boss (or by co-workers the boss fails to control), we experience it as a serious affront. This in turn leads people to demonize employers as a class.

The lashing! The resentment! The demonization! Good thing Caplan has a degree in straw-counseling or you might think this has something to do with money rather than fee-fees.

7. Once you demonize employers, it's natural to (a) look to government for salvation from current ills, and (b) imagine that existing "pro-labor" laws explain why the demons in our lives don't already treat us far worse. This isn't just the root of our secular religion. If you take the demonization of employers and salvation by government literally, you end up with Marxism or something like it.

Gasp! The "M" word! Now I hope you both learned a valuable lesson. Now back to work!

Seriously, do these guys even know any real people?

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about rightbloggers and Star Wars. If there's anything more obnoxious than conservatives, it's conservatives with a light-saber fetish. Wedgies all around, wingnerds!

Among the outtakes: Jonathan Witt of religious-right site The Stream. “Big-time Democratic donor J.J. Abrams and his team somehow managed to smuggle three conservative truths out of the liberal death star that is Hollywood and into The Force Awakens,” he claims. For one when (spoiler) Leia regrets sending her and Han’s kid off to Jedi school, this is a knock on liberals because “progressives have attacked the idea of male headship in the family”; also, liberals “have long promoted welfare policies that render fathers economically redundant.” So Leia received WIC assistance! Well, I warned you about the spoiler.

If you were wondering why Abrams the Democrat would promote such a POV, Witt explained that the film’s scriptwriters, Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, are Jewish, and Lucas was raised Methodist (unlike everyone else in Hollywood, who were bred in atheist vats) so “maybe they absorbed the biblical stories of sin and redemption… Maybe they absorbed those old truths so thoroughly that they couldn’t help but work them into their movies.” I love the idea of Kasdan trying to make The Force Awakens into a plea for Single Payer, except G-d forced his pen to write Conservative Truths.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Hard to pick a favorite Nilsson song but this one has been giving me chills for 43 years.

•  I've been telling you guys that the longer Trump hangs in there, the greater the dilemma he presents for mainstream conservatives -- they have to disown him because he presents such an ugly picture of their real beliefs, but they also can't disown those beliefs. This is breeding some fascinating fleurs du mal. Attend Peggy Noonan today at the Wall Street Journal, who has gone further faster in that direction than even I would have expected. Noonan is a master of lipsticking the pig and silk-pursing the sow's ear, and here she goes all-out:

What a year of wonders. For a good portion of it there were three Republican presidential candidates who, if you added up their polling numbers, had the support of more than half the voters—and they had never, not one of them, won a political office in their lives.

You and I see Carson, Fiorina and Trump as malevolent clowns merrily stomping the reputation of the Party into the mud with their elongated shoes, but Noonan sees them as sunny populists. And she's not sweating a Trump nomination -- she thinks it could be great. She fantasizes a future headline: "Trump Expands the Base—Trump Grows the Party!” (I'm so sorry she wasn't around to tell us about the miracle of Wendell Willkie.) And if "Mr. and Mrs. Longtime Republican in the suburbs" don't like it, says Noonan, then "they’d better get ready to press the viable non-Trump candidates to stay, and all others to leave." Sound advice! Will eeny-meeny-miney-moe work? Oh, and get this:

Jeb Bush, by stepping down, could become what he wanted to be this year -- a hero, a history changer, a man who enhanced his own and his family’s legacy.

In the Hall of Bushes, Jeb!'s statute will be inscribed, "I don’t want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives... I've got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me..." Then Noonan tells us, gosh, Democrats aren't like they used to be, i.e. losing:

This is not like the Democratic Party! It was once a big brass band marching through the streets—loud, dissonant, there. “I’m not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers famously said. “I’m a Democrat.” For generations Democrats repeated that line as a brag. They knew disorganized meant vital, creative, spontaneous, passionate—alive. 

Now that party acts like this tidy, lifeless, fightless thing, a big, gray, dead-hearted, soul-killing blob. “I have the demographics,” it blobbily bellows, “I have the millennials.” Maybe it doesn’t have as much as it thinks. It is no honor to the Democratic Party that it is not fighting things through with a stage full of contenders this epochal year. 

The Republicans are all chaos and incoherence, it’s true. But at least they’re alive. At least they’re fighting as if it matters.

In 1984, when the Democratic primaries were contentious, the New York Post ran a front page with a picture of Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Walter Mondale under the headline BEST OF ENEMIES. Parties love it when the opposition is in disarray. But in the last ditch, Noonan tells us the Democrats should be so lucky to be fractured and led by an unstable demagogue! She's got them right where she wants them!

•   A cautionary tale:

The self-driving car, that cutting-edge creation that’s supposed to lead to a world without accidents, is achieving the exact opposite right now: The vehicles have racked up a crash rate double that of those with human drivers. 

The glitch? 

They obey the law all the time, as in, without exception. This may sound like the right way to program a robot to drive a car, but good luck trying to merge onto a chaotic, jam-packed highway with traffic flying along well above the speed limit. It tends not to work out well. As the accidents have piled up -- all minor scrape-ups for now -- the arguments among programmers at places like Google Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University are heating up: Should they teach the cars how to commit infractions from time to time to stay out of trouble?

If you made it up it would be too on-the-nose, eh? And I don't mean about driverless cars. I have long believed, with Bob Dobbs, that we Americans suffer from a lack of slack. I say this not only out of personal preference (or, as some might say, laziness), but out of longtime observation of what happens to humans who are deprived of it. We see the endless and pernicious efforts to take up and tighten slack at every level of society, from the illegalization of the homeless to the prosecution not only of legal behavior but of legislation itself -- it's as if we all have to be on guard all the time, lest society collapse. (Nothing typifies this better than the professionalization of just looking for a goddamn job, which gets more absurd all the time.)  Now we have these driverless cars which, at first blush, would seem to be a slack-enabling devices that would leave us free to chill in the car like we would at the bar. But because they are not gifts from a beneficent society, but part of the usual slack-averse bullshit, they have created this problem -- the automatons can't behave like humans -- they can't draw outside the lines -- they have no slack in the nature. And now the scientists are trying to find way to emulate it, presumably with an algorithm. You know what comes next, right?



What life could be if we were just allowed to be human.

•   Speaking of automatons, at National Review Stephen L. Miller bitches about SJWs and that Star Wars thing the kids are all talking about. Apparently people on the internet are speculating on the sexuality of that little ball robot, talking about the black guy in the white whatchamacallit suit, etc. Killer finds this intolerable, and imagines other people find it intolerable too. Key passages include, "We can surely expect our celebrity president to weigh in as well," and "the scourge of Social Justice Media tempts us to give in to our anger and aims to tear us apart." "Can Star Wars survive such an onslaught launched from the Social Justice Media’s veritable Sarlacc Pit — more commonly referred to as Twitter?" Miller asks. Yes, but can your underoos survive this wedgie?

VIEW FROM A LOCKED WARD.

I suppose it's time to look in on PJ Media kingpin Roger L. Simon. What'd he think of the debate?

No more bets, ladies and gentlemen. The game is over. Donald Trump has won the nomination.

Explain, please.

Everyone acknowledged as much, heads nodding around me in the press room...

They told you it was the press room, Rog, but your tip-off should have been Robert Stacy McCain calling everyone "cousin," or all the "reporters" wearing black vests and pants and white shirts saying "it come wid two side."

...when, nearly at the end of the debate, Hugh Hewitt served up by far the most serious, in the sense of fateful, question of the night by asking Trump to answer finally whether he will support the Republican candidate under any circumstances.

The Donald smiled, stared straight into the camera with the practiced skill of a Cronkite or a Murrow, though more playful and, one reluctantly admits, winning...

"This... [distant explosion] is London, very classy town, not a lotta conveniences but wait'll I put in the Trump Fallout Shelter, it'll be huge."

...and acknowledged that, yes, he will. He has been treated well by all concerned and even come to like and admire many of the candidates on the stage with him. Murmurs of approval all around.

All around what? The tinfoil on your scalp?

And then he administered the coup de television. Looking square into the lens at America he promised to beat Hillary Clinton in November. And he did so in full recognition by all concerned, barring force majeure, he already was the nominee and everybody knew it. He was taking a graceful bow.

Game, set, match, tournament and whatever they say in bocce.

Then come a lot of Fellini references, which is probably Simon preparing an "it was just a dream" excuse for later. I'm trying to imagine, though, what other reason he might have for publishing this. Help me out, readers? Is there actual money in working the odds on this nomination?

FEAR ITSELF.

Glenn Reynolds in USA Today:

Democrats' terror compassion gap

And as is always the case anytime a conservative mentions "compassion" he's being sarcastic. Let's skip past all the palaver in the middle and get to the button:

....Yes. When we talk about “compassion” in American politics, it usually involves some sort of scheme to give poor people money.

What'd I tell ya? Pfft, imagine giving money to poor people! They'd only spend it on non-artisanal food.

But compassion ultimately comes down to caring what happens to people, and when Obama acts as if he doesn’t take the threat of Islamic terrorism in America seriously, he’s sending a signal that he doesn’t care what happens to Americans who might be victims of terrorism or even about Americans who are worried about becoming victims.

Doesn't Obama remember FDR, who said, "We have nothing to fear but HOLY SHIT HERE COME THE JAPS WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE"? Well, soon enough this country may graduate from a President who reminds people to hold fast to American values even when they are under threat, to one who'll encourage them to piss their pants with terror while his buddies loot the treasury.

GETS 'EM WETTER THAN A REAGAN DILDO.

Nicole Russell at The Federalist:

With A Beard, Paul Ryan Exudes Manliness
Men, take a cue from our speaker of the House and embrace your masculinity.

Get up off the floor, you gotta see the lede:

Love his politics or hate him, many women—and surely some men—swoon over the dashing good looks of House Speaker Paul Ryan. What with those blue eyes, dark hair, and famous P90X abs, he inspires an entire Tumblr account—“Hey Girl, It’s Paul Ryan.” He kicked up the lovefest another notch when he announced on Twitter and Instagram that he’s first speaker to sport a beard in 100 years.

Mrrrow, look out Frederick Huntington Gillett, there's a new bear in town!

The New York Post said Ryan now “looks less like a frat boy you’d pick a fight with and more like a top dog.” In response, women went gaga, and men such as National Review’s Deroy Murdock seethed with jealousy. The lesson? Beard or no beard, men: Take a cue from our speaker and embrace your masculinity.

For extra points actually look at the Deroy Murdock thing. It's seething, but not with jealousy.

Anyway the rest of the article is about how "wimp, softie or pleaser" men aren't physically brave -- thanks, Betty Friedan! -- but they can butch themselves up by growing facial hair. No, Russell doesn't claim that will make them courageous, but she does imply it will get them laid: "Many women -- especially women with higher levels of estrogen and those who aren’t on hormonal contraception -- are naturally attracted to this," says Russell. So you won't attract whoo-ers, just those down-to-ovulate Bristol Palin types. Hope you like kids!

P.S. In fairness to Russell, when male Federalist writers do the Argument from Butchness it's even worse.

BOB JONES AWAITS.

It's December, time for top-ten lists! My old pal, Crazy Dave "Discover the Networks" Horowitz, has one:

Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis are among 10 leading American universities named by the David Horowitz Freedom Center as being the "most friendly" to radical Islamic propaganda and anti-Israel incitement. 

Analyzing hundreds of examples from the past decade, the center asserts that "there are organizations on American campuses that support the agendas of terrorists groups [Hamas, al-Qaida and Islamic State] and spread their propaganda and lies with the financial and institutional support of university administrations." 

The report lists the 10 worst offenders alphabetically: Brandeis University; Columbia University; Harvard University; Rutgers University-New Brunswick; San Francisco State University; the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, San Diego; the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; and the University of New Mexico.

Harvard? Columbia? Brandeis? This item, from Isreal Hayom, has the Center claiming that student orgs like the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine "lead chants calling for the destruction of the Jewish state 'from the river to the sea.'" Elsewhere Horowitz himself explains that what they actually chant is, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," but, he adds, "the river is the Jordan and the sea is the Mediterranean. Those are the east and west boundaries of the state of Israel. So what they’re really chanting is 'Death to Israel.'" Freedom for the Palestinians means death to Israel? Well, no wonder they're pissed.

I have said this many, many times over the years to people who yap about campus radicals, and I will say it again: If you think Harvard and Columbia are too radical for you, please remember that there are in this great nation plenty of Bible colleges at which your son or daughter will never hear a "radical" idea, and the prices are reasonable. (I know Horowitz is Jewish, but that should be no impediment, as evangelicals respect their Jewish brothers as providers of the on-ramp for the apocalypse.)

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the air allegedly leaking out of the Trump phenomenon. Actually my thesis is that while Trump may be losing voters (which is hard to know, given his appeal to citizens not accustomed to polling places who may yet turn out for him), he is definitely getting pushback from rightbloggers, specifically the Better Sort who like to speak for The Movement.

There are and will probably always be gremlins who love how Trump sticks it to libtards ("BOOM: Trump Just Fired A 5-Word Missile Directly At Hillary She WON’T Want Anyone To See") and the libtard media  ("ATTKISSON: MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS FORCING THEIR OPINION ONTRUMP DOWN AMERICAN’S THROAT," etc.). And there will be, at least for a while, tweedy columnists who'll tantalize their readers with a taste of Trump (like Byron York, who starts one such number "As the Acela Corridor fixates on Donald Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigration...") before landing firmly in a Questions-Remain fence-straddle. But now that Ted Cruz has broken through as the first actual politician to get in front of Trump since his summer surge began, you can already see the brethren treating him as yesterday's news.

Take Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner. He wrote "Donald Trump has already peaked" -- in August. Apparently abashed, he got with the program and wrote earlier this month:

I still argue that the fundamentals are that the anti-Trump vote will consolidate around a candidate as the field narrows, and that he won't be the nominee... [but] the track record of Trump skeptics has not been very good so far this unorthodox election cycle, so it's quite possible that candidates will refuse to drop out, and that by the time they do, Trump will already be off to the races.

Last week, Klein apparently got still another message, as shown by his glorious headline, "A Trump win would validate liberals' caricature of Republicans," followed by a essay on how the best people in the party are declaring Trump de trop. In a few months, Trump will be the dream deferred for some, and a more versatile sort of Rush Limbaugh type for others; what he won't be is the Republican nominee.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

For a while in the 1980s I had a girlfriend with a Farfisa.

•   Conservatives are tumbling to the fact that if anything's gonna save 2016 for them it's stone cold racism. National Review's David French, a bless-your-heart I'll-pray-for-you Christian, does his bit with a post that shocked even me, and I've been reading his wormy shit for a while. It's called "The Hidden Reason Why Americans Dislike Islam" and that reason seems to be: Because Muslims are no damn good. Seriously. Reflecting on his spell in the Army, French writes:

I spent enough time outside the wire and interacting with tribal leaders to get a sense of the reality around me, but the younger guys on the line spent weeks at a time living in the heart of the local community. I remember one young soldier, after describing the things he’d seen since the start of the deployment, gestured towards the village around us and said — in perfect Army English — “Sir, this s**t is f**ked up.”

It is indeed. While it’s certainly unfair to judge Indonesia or Malaysia by the standards of Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s very hard to shake the power of lived experience, nor should we necessarily try.

Let that last clause sink in for a moment. Maybe his Muslim accountant is okay, but that'll never shake his ugly memories of the sub-humans whose homeland he was kind enough to invade and occupy.

After all, when we hear stories from Syria, Yemen, Gaza, the Sinai, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali, Pakistan, and elsewhere they all fit the same depressing template of the American conflict zones. Nor is the dazzlingly wealthy veneer of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, or the other Gulf States all that impressive. Tens of thousands of soldiers have seen the veritable slave labor that toils within the oil empires and have witnessed first-hand their casual disregard for “lesser” life.

You all know how depraved the Saudi princes are, right? Well, even the poor ones are like that!  The next graf is amazing:

But this same experience has caused us to treasure the Muslim friends we do have — in part because we recognize the extreme risks of their loyalty and defiance of jihad. That’s why American officers fiercely champion the immigration of local interpreters, even to the point of welcoming them into their own home. That’s why there’s often an intense connection with our Kurdish allies, the single-most effective ground fighting force against ISIS.

As French has said before, lest anyone think him racist, there are a few good ones -- and they're all named Gunga Din! In fact, I'm beginning to think French watched that movie before he slagged the entire world Muslim population:

I bet he's looking forward to a gig with President Trump's Department of Mooslim Relations. (Bonus: At one point French says, "Even more disturbingly, it seemed that every problem was exacerbated the more religious and pious a person (or village) became." If only his programmers had put in a capacity for reflection!)

•   Camille Paglia in the Hollywood Reporter! On "girl squads"! Well, this should win her a brand new audience! Imagine the sunshine people reclining poolside and opening their HR to this:

Given the professional stakes, girl squads must not slide into a cozy, cliquish retreat from romantic fiascoes or communication problems with men, whom feminist rhetoric too often rashly stereotypes as oafish pigs. If many women feel lonely or overwhelmed these days, it's not due to male malice. Women have lost the natural solidarity and companionship they enjoyed for thousands of years in the preindustrial agrarian world, where multiple generations chatted through the day as they shared chores, cooking and child care.

Paglia has the soul of a gossip columnist but not, alas, the chops.

•   Jonah Goldberg's newsletter today:

Now, I’'m not necessarily saying we should meet ISIS at Dabiq and give them the Islamist Ragnarok they want. But I'’m not saying we shouldn't either. My point is if they want to have one big mano-a-mano fight between the forces of the West and Mordor, it’s purely a tactical question whether we should give it to them...

Oh Jesus. You can read the rest if you like; it's nearly quitting time.

TERRORISTS IN OUR MIDST!

Among the respectable conservatives climbing on the Trump Muslim-ban bandwagon is Byron York, who quotes a Pew study to suggest that even though statistically small, the percentage of Muslim abroad and even at home who say violence in the cause of Islam is acceptable is too high:

"Muslims mostly say that suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified, including 92 percent in Indonesia and 91 percent in Iraq," Pew reported. On the other hand, in some countries, the "justified" answers are quite high. In Afghanistan, for instance, 18 percent say such violence is often justified, 21 percent say sometimes justified, 18 percent say rarely justified and 40 percent say never justified. Four percent say they don't know. 

Read the numbers however you like. Some stress that large majorities of Muslims in the United States and in some other countries oppose such violence under all circumstances. Others point to those Muslims in the United States who believe it is justified in at least some cases — 13 percent — and say that is an unacceptably high number...

You know who else thinks violence in their cause might be justified? From a 2013 Fairleigh Dickinson University survey report:

Partisan divisions on gun control go deeper than the legislation being fought over in
Congress. Supporters and opponents of gun control have very different fundamental beliefs about the role of guns in American society. Overall, the poll finds that 29 percent of Americans think that an armed revolution in order to protect liberties might be necessary in the next few years, with another five percent unsure. However, these beliefs are conditional on party. Just 18 percent of Democrats think an armed revolution may be necessary, as opposed to 44 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of independents.

So who's more likely to shoot the place up -- Muslim-Americans, or Molon-Labe-Americans?

UPDATE. In comments (excellent as always), Andrew Johnston points to a 2011 Gallup poll in which, confronted with the question "Some people think that for the military to target and kill civilians is sometimes justified, while others say that kind of violence is never justified. Which is your opinion?"  Americans who were Muslim were more likely to say "never" (78%) than those who were Protestant (38%) or, indeed, of any other religious persuasion -- though atheists were ahead of the curve with 56% (but don't tell Dawkins, he'll get a swelled head).

This'll mean nothing to the meatheads, who if they've been properly propagandized will tell you it's all lies because Taqiyya and how your Muslim pediatrician, newsstand vendor, and co-worker are all ready to cut your head off at a word from the Imam. (If they haven't been properly propagandized, they'll just say of course violence is justified if you're a white Christian -- specifically the right white Christian; specifically, them -- and leave it at that.)

A THIN CROP.

I guess it's time for another stroll around Acculturated, the wingnut welfare training school for the shock troops of the cultural revolution. But there's less overt craziness there these days, it seems; maybe they've given up on trying to get attention outside the WW community. For example, what is one to do with something like "Celebrities, Please Stop Talking About Menopause," which author Charlotte Hays asks because, well, who knows -- this is as close as she gets to a reason:

But embedded in the current menopause talk is the notion that menopause was once a stigma from which women are now boldly freeing themselves. No, it was never a stigma. It was a fact of life. But it was private.

There are certain things about which one simply does not talk because they are disgusting -- like defecation, or menopause. And definitely don't tell your little girl that she can be anything she wants when she grows up, that's just too "vacuous" and "tiresome," says Carrie Lukas (seen before here). Sometimes I think the brief at Acculturated is "Advocate for a world in which no man ever learns anything about women except they're supposed to smell nice and wait for marriage to fuck them."

Thank God, then, for Mark Judge, who tells us that the new James Bond movie is really about "what is arguably the modern social problem that is at the root of all other social problems: fathers abandoning their sons":

Whereas Steve Jobs won’t acknowledge his own daughter, being too busy creating machines that will turn people into petulant narcissists, Bond ventures into the world, throwing himself into danger and accepting the mantle of father figure – and not just for one child, but for an entire civilization. Beneath his cynicism Bond loves Britain and Western Civilization. In his designer suits and gold watches he is a brutal but sophisticated guide for the soft boys and weak Millennials of today... 

In his novels, Bond creator Ian Fleming gave 007’s family a motto: “The world is not enough.” This reflected Bond’s Scottish-Catholic roots – the idea that the things of this world are not sufficient to attain happiness or salvation.

That's why he was always helping those pretty ladies say their prayers at night, see. Now that's the kind of thing we expect from Acculturated! Maybe we should think of this as a rebuilding year and come back later.

UPDATE. In our comments, which are as always very good, some readers note that Judge includes the Steve Jobs movie in his paradigm, with Jobs symptomatic of the wages of fatherlessness, and Bond, who was adopted and had, in essence, two daddies, of the blessings of fatherfulness. "Somehow, James Bond is the well balanced personality, and Steve Jobs is an empty husk of failure," observes Downpup E. "Imagine an editor, staring blankly into the void, and finally shrugging: 'Hopeless. Just run it as it is.'" Some funny stuff about Orbis non sufficit, too.

HE MAY BE A FOOL, BUT HE'S YOUR FOOL.

Now that the Republican Presidential front-runner has anted up his bigotry, conservatives are trying harder to disown him. But it really cuts against their grain. When Trump proposed keeping Muslims out of the U.S., David French had just put up a post at National Review all about how dangerous Muslims are -- the title, in fact, is "Dispelling the ‘Few Extremists’ Myth – the Muslim World Is Overcome with Hate." Among the choice bits:

...jihadists represent the natural and inevitable outgrowth of a faith that is given over to hate on a massive scale, with hundreds of millions of believers holding views that Americans would rightly find revolting... 

To understand the Muslim edifice of hate, imagine it as a pyramid — with broadly-shared bigotry at the bottom, followed by stair steps of escalating radicalism... 

The base of the pyramid, the most broadly held hatred in the Islamic world, is anti-Semitism, with staggering numbers of Muslims expressing anti-Jewish views... 

The next level of the pyramid is Muslim commitment to deadly Islamic supremacy. In multiple Muslim nations, overwhelming majorities of Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy...

Etc. To be fair, he stops short of calling them vermin. If you said something like this about Christians, French would file a hate-crime complaint. You can imagine some goon reading this and thinking Shee-it, them Muslims sound awful, I better vote for Trump an' keep 'em all out!

But today French is trying to distance himself from Trump. Not on the grounds of their mutual beliefs, mind you -- French reiterates that "it’s foolish to admit a class of refugees when we know the world’s leading terror army is attempting to infiltrate the displaced masses or recruit from their ranks." But the ones that are here already, they can stay, French says -- and we can let in a small, select group of "good" Muslims, such as "interpreters who’ve laid down their lives to serve our warriors downrange... members of allied militaries who are training to be the Muslim 'boots on the ground,'" et alia. Everyone else can go die in the sea.

Oh, then he talks about what a menace political correctness is. Which is weird, because he and they are really just waiting to put in a nominee who can be as racist as Trump but keep his mouth shut about it.

UPDATE. As has become his habit of late ("We Didn't Start The Fire: Who Created Trump?"), Matt Lewis of The Daily Caller emerges again to tell us that Trump's strong support among Republicans is bad for Republicans, especially when they were getting so pumped up denouncing Obama after his pro-reason terrorism speech:

Yesterday, the media cycle was focused on radical Islamism and President Obama’s inability to counter it. Today, Donald Trump has changed the subject. But it’s not just that. Yesterday, the view that radical Islamism was a serious threat that President Obama has not taken seriously (polling backs this up) was a persuasive mainstream position that evoked sympathy and agreement. Today, it’s marginally harder to make that argument.

Now when Ralph Peters calls Obama a pussy, people will think we're intemperate! At the end Lewis admits Trump will probably get a boost from his statements -- another case of Republicans being unfairly made to look bad by other Republicans!

UPDATE 2. At The Federalist, Ben Domenech:

It is no accident that President Obama’s America has given rise to Donald Trump.

It defies explanation, but I'll try: Everyone thinks Obama's a failure and hates him (never mind showing Domenech polls that suggest otherwise, those are all run by liberals), and "our modern elites respond to that rational distrust by smearing it as vile hatred, which further divides and toxifies our politics." In other words, if you point out that their argument is wrong, that just makes Republicans more insane and racist -- so it's all your fault! "And Trump is a perfect personality to exploit these divides," Domenech goes on, "offering the promise of an authoritarian who represents the people in place of an authoritarian who represented the elites." I hope you're proud of yourself, liberals!

Like the rest of our subjects, Domenech basically agrees with Trump; he, too, thinks Muslims are toxic and "elites" are losing the War on Whatchamacallit with their "tolerance" bullshit ("Republicans have spent much of the past three years wringing their hands over how to win the white working class – Donald Trump is showing them how: by confronting and rejecting the values and authority of the elites..."). But he got the Trump-bad memo, so he portrays Trump as a menace while embracing his message. Look, it's at The Federalist -- it's not like it has to make sense.

UPDATE 3: You see this shit:

"The author advises Marco Rubio’s campaign for president." Presumably he advises on non-sequential thought, because his column is just the usual rightwing froth crowned with an "if it weren't for Joel Grey singing 'Wilkommen' there'd have never been a Hitler" assertion. And actually that's not new either: Conservative factota have been trying to blame Trump on Obama, or draw parallels between the two men, since Trump became the front-runner, and because they've saturated their little world with this false equivalence, there's no longer any reason to even pretend to back it up with evidence.

UPDATE 3. What have I been telling you people.

DAWN OF A NEW AGE.

Some days back I wistfully mentioned that a once much-esteemed member of the alicublog rep company, Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters, had moved on to Fox TV commentating, and since it's a mug game (or Media Matters') to scan that shit for gold we weren't having him anymore, and would move on to new hypermacho nutjobs like Kurt Schlichter.

Well, wouldn't you know it, Ol' Blood-'n'-Guts has found a way back into print:

Fox News analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters did not mince words when expressing his displeasure with President Barack Obama Monday morning, saying on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. that he was a “total pussy.”

Maybe fans will start watching more faithfully for him, as they once did for Howard Beale.

Peters was moved to obscenity by Obama's Sunday night speech, in which the President tried to be reasonable. (He did talk a little about killing people, but not enough to qualify as a Fournier-grade leader.) I see Obama also caused some lady on Fox to also make a swear:

"His speech was an epic fail," [Stacy] Dash said on the Fox News Channel show "Outnumbered." "It was like when you have to go to dinner with your parents, but you have a party to go to afterwards, that's what it felt like."

Watch your back, Peggy Noonan.

"I did not feel any better. I didn't feel any passion from him," Dash said. "I felt like he [couldn't] give a s--, excuse me, like he [couldn't] care less. He [couldn't] care less."

I don't know what's the bigger outrage here: Stacy Dash's swears, or that Newsmax corrected her perfectly acceptable colloquial use of "could care less."

I like to think this is the beginning of a new era of conservacursing. Obama's trying to keep the lid on, and conservatives have been trying to pry it off with belligerent talk about killing everybody and their wives and children with a third-time's-the-charm Middle East invasion. It must be frustrating to have that much rage dammed up inside without the near prospect of an armed conflict to relieve it. So I can't wait for, say, Mike Huckabee to go, "Jesus fucking Christ on a crutch, when the fuck are we gonna nuke these cocksuckers?" on live TV. Then maybe we'll finally get a full run of "Ow! My Balls!" and handjobs at Starbucks, as was prophesied.

UPDATE. The Washington Free Beacon put up a collection of Peters' TV work, confirming my original instinct -- while it is provocatively stupid, it lacks the the keening nuthouse poetry of his prose efforts.  Well, he wouldn't be the first artist ruined by television.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the San Bernardino shooting and rightblogger attempts to wrest benefits from it. The War on Whatchamacallit angle was expected since the assailants turned out to be Muslim, but the "prayer-shaming" bit was something new and unexpected. I mean, it fits their classic template -- since they lost their 9/11 juju rightbloggers have perfected the rhetorical soccer dive, and Lord knows they like to pretend they're oppressed because of their Christianity, as we saw after the gay marriage ruling. But whereas their gay-marriage victimhood claims were based on the possibility that The State would make them do something -- bake cakes for gay weddings, for example -- the prayer-shaming shtick is nakedly about people making them feel bad. Adding to the jest: Many of the complainants, like Peggy Noonan, simultaneously denounce college kids with their trigger warning as budding fascists. Self-awareness would be a positive liability for a conservative columnist these days.

Anyway please read the column, it's got two Jonah Goldberg references and some jokes even.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I owe this one to Chuck Gilligan, 

who thinks he was late to Lampchop but beat me to it.

•  The response to the San Bernardino shoot-'em-up has been everything we could expect -- that is, a nightmare. For one thing it's a gift to hardcore Muslim-haters like Robert Spencer, who was completely mum about the Planned Parenthood massacre but believes that because these latest in a series of  shooters are Muslim- instead of honky-American it's not gun-craziness but jihad that killed all those people. (I wonder what Spencer wants for Americans who are Muslim? Concentration camps? Expulsion? He likes to tantalize on the subject, perhaps waiting for the day when something more intemperate may catch fire.) We also have propagandists like Mollie Hemingway saying that if you dare make fun of gun nuts who offer prayers over the red harvest, you're actually being religious yourself -- to the "god of federal government," whom we know to be false because legislation "never solves the problem of man’s fallen condition," so it's useless -- once every head has bowed and every knee bent to Mean Conservative Jesus, he'll fix this mass murder thing, maybe, if he feels like it, and if he doesn't there's a good, unknowable reason. Theodicy!

•  If conservatives are all a little crazier that usual in their reaction to these massacres, I think it's because the gun-control ground has shifted a bit under their feet; the bill Senate Democrats put up to ban terror-list people from getting guns was a stunt -- nobody expected it to pass, so it was just meant to heighten the contradictions -- but it was a clever stunt, as the long moratorium on serious gun control and some high-profile incidents have begun to wear on the public. Conservatives are in the position usually held by liberals -- armed with the evidence that gun violence has actually diminished, but unable to make the sale, as liberals have been when it comes to violence against police -- and conservatives aren't used to it; also, rage is a key part of their shtick, not to mention their psychological profile, so that's what they double up on in times of uncertainty. Longtime readers will know I'm much more bearish, not to say despairing, on the subject; as long as everything else that's wrong with this country makes citizens feel powerless, they're not going to let go of the hope that they'll either be rich some day or at least sufficiently well-armed to feel secure in their persons.

RISIBLE DENIABILITY.

Here's the pitch from Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller:

We Didn’t Start The Fire: So Who Created Trump?

You can't blame conservatism for anything these days -- not the mess in the Middle East, not anti-abortion terrorists, not racism -- and, Lewis is here to tell you, certainly not the jingoistic, pro-torture, pro-bombing blowhard Archie Bunker/Reggie Van Dough hybrid who's been leading Republican Presidential polls for three months. Why not?

Trump is not a conservative, although his perverted version of conservatism currently represents a very vocal minority of the GOP base. Historically, America’s Right and Left have both had moments when strains of nativism and populism were more or less prominent. This is one of those times.

Both sides do it -- populism, that is. Don't you remember Henry Wallace hollering that we had to torture people and steal oil from the Middle East?

Today, for a variety of reasons (none of which indict conservatism as a philosophy) the environment is ripe for a master demagogue to exploit... 

...the liberal media and President Obama’s disastrous presidency are part of the story. Liberals aren’t responsible for the Republican base’s decisions, but if the goal is to understand this phenomenon, it’s fair to point out some of what we are witnessing is a backlash. This is a scary time, both domestically and internationally, and people want to find a strongman to fix the chaos that weak men have created.

This reminds me of how  back in the day Moral Majority types would tell you the Weimar Republic caused Hitler -- by which they did not mean hyperinflation and instability were among the forces that led to his rise, but that there were a lot of homosexuals in Cabaret so God punished the world with Nazis. And by the way, the late Obama Administration ain't Weimar; a 46% approval rating isn't great but it's not Helter-Skelter-she's-coming-down -fast either. Maybe Lewis is thinking of the previous President? Or Congress?

We are also undergoing a continued cultural revolution that began in the 1960s. This might have begun on the Left, but the degradation of traditional family values is now ubiquitous. We once prized virtues like humility, wisdom, experience, and prudence. Now, we value celebrities.

If it weren't for Woodstock we wouldn't have Trump.

But I want to get back to where we began, which is with the notion that Trump-ism is somehow the inexorable denouement of conservatism’s historical arc. If liberals can get this notion to stick, then they will have discredited the Reagan era, which brought us an unparalleled time of peace and prosperity.

Well, there's the real reason Trump can't reflect badly on conservatism -- liberals would benefit if he did! But don't worry, Matt...

Some of the people pushing this narrative have ulterior motives; others are frankly just sincerely (mis)guided by a liberal worldview. This is one of the reasons why the subtitle of my book—“How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)”—is significant.

...however the party does next year, you'll still be able to work the crowd for shekels -- and if the book doesn't work out, you can always sell them gold and survivalist supplies.

NOT ENOUGH TINFOIL.

As soon as I saw the title -- "10 Resources For Hack-Proofing Your Mind" -- I knew it would be by Stella Morabito, an alicublog favorite who thinks liberals are using mind rays to make you liberal. She seems at first to be comparing campus protestors with ISIS ("But if we’re honest, we can see that these cases represent different stages along the same well-worn path of tyranny"), but eventually she admits maybe the campus kids are less dangerous than ISIS -- they're just "easy targets for mind-rape by the elites and lobbies who can use them for mass mobilization behind various agenda items." The real menace is those elites and lobbies (and I doubt by the latter she means oil and gas!), for whom the students, zombie-like, serve "as deployable agents for hacking the minds of others. Kind of like a Borg."

Now to the service-journalism part of Morabito's essay:

Ten Resources to Jumpstart Conversations about Mind-Rape Prevention

Whaaa...

Why not start a mind-rape prevention book club?

How about a mind-rape prevention happy hour instead? Or maybe Morabito could start a little slower -- like teaching students the difference between fact and opinion (though I hear that this is no longer acceptable to many conservatives), and encouraging them to read and discuss great works of literature and philosophy, rather than psych and sociology textbooks, and thus strengthening their minds, rather than putting coats of armor on them.

But this would be like telling an NRA official  it's more important to learn to get along with others than to fill your house with weapons -- it simply wouldn't compute. Because for some people it's more important to be perpetually on guard than to identify what's worth protecting.