On Tuesday I had the great honor of sitting in for Rush on America's Number One radio show. Among the topics covered were Mr and Mrs McCloskey facing down the mob in St Louis, the latest wrinkle on "Russian collusion" (jihadists on the Kremlin payroll), the pitiful state of Canada's National Post, China's advantage over a western world obsessing on trivia, Joe Biden out of the bunker, and my proposed ballot question for November - "America: Yes or No?" Click below to listen:
I'll be here in a few hours with the latest episode of The Marching Morons for Mark Steyn Club members. For more on the Steyn Club see here.
On Wednesday I'll be back behind the Golden EIB Microphone for another three hours of substitute-host-level Excellence In Broadcasting on America's Number One radio show starting at 12 noon Eastern/9am Pacific. You can dial us up either via the iHeart Radio app or on one of over 600 stations across the fruited plain, such as our old friends at WNTK New Hampshire, where you can listen to the full show from anywhere on the planet right here.
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The fact that many thousands of people are out mingling in mobs and not keeling over sick and dying means that the entire pandemic thing is overblown. An increase in people testing positive for the virus is NOT a bad thing for those who are unlikely to become severely ill. The states that have loosened up restrictions should be encouraged to go forward. People who are over 60 need to be protected, but everyone younger needs to go about their business in the normal way. The chance of any of them getting deathly ill is extremely low, as low as with the ordinary flu and other illnesses. Children are not being vaccinated for serious childhood diseases because of inordinate fear of Coronavirus, and other people are not going in to be diagnosed with heart disease, cancer, etc. out of fear of infection. The lockdown is more deadly than the pandemic. Schools should be opened so children can get the virus and become immune. Younger and middle-aged adults should go to work and church, get exposed, get over it, and become immune. Immunity acquired by exposure to a non-deadly virus is exactly the same as getting vaccinated. They will not transmit the virus to others.
Once the bulk of the population has become immune, the risk of exposure to older people will drop precipitously. People who work in health care should be given two weeks off to get exposed and acquire immunity, and no longer serve as potential vectors for transmitting the virus to old people in nursing and retirement homes. Most people 70 and above are not working to support themselves and thus can more easily cope with social distancing measures, and without impact on the economy. When a vaccine is available, only the old and chronically ill will need it. In the meantime, the virus transmission prevention protocols for nursing and senior residential facilities need to be tightened up. That is where most of the deaths are occurring, not least because idiots like Governor Cuomo ordered infected patients to be placed into nursing homes with uninfected seniors. I am frankly amazed that a class action lawsuit against him and the State of New York has not yet been filed by the families of seniors victimized by his carelessness.
In our 300,000 population area in southeast Washington, we have just passed 100 fatalities, 80% of them in nursing and senior residences. The residents do not get out a lot, so it is clear that the staff are failing in personal hygiene.
The result in November will be a dismal one, either way. If the Democrats win, the decline and decadence will accelerate. If Trump wins, there will be hysteria and violence 24/7. Think about finding a safe space.
This was a great analysis of the big picture and the basics: The survival of America now depends on something even more fundamental than the two party choice. But would the 2020 US election as a referendum - "America: Yes or No?" - be answered in the affirmative (voter fraud notwithstanding)?
For decades, America's transformation - demographically and economically (through open borders, and "coupling" with China) and culturally and institutionally (starting with "education") - has been inexorably post-Constitutional, to use Mark's term. Recent events are the spark that lit the smouldering stack of vulnerabilities. And the ongoing (bipartisan) political coup against Trump and his supporters feeds into the wider cancellation of everything. Meanwhile, the rise of China continues, along with other foreign - and internal - security threats.
Let's hope there's a "silenced majority" in favour of "Yes", because the visible momentum in every respect is post-American.
PS. The views of the moderate Democrat caller reveal the rift opening up on the Left. The frustration over anarchist Morons and the untouchable Swamp isn't confined to conservatives. There's widespread "liberal" despair - over lawlessness, political corruption, economic uncertainty and cultural Marxism - now that reality has hit home.
"Let's hope there's a "silenced majority" in favour of "[America:] Yes", because the visible momentum in every respect is post-American."
I hope the same is true in Britain. George Floyd suffered a bad fate, but nobody can convince me that the know-nothings who emerge from British schools and universities today could find Minneapolis on a map of Minneapolis. They riot, all the same, and the pols (police, politicians - same thing, now) do nothing.
"The views of the moderate Democrat caller reveal the rift opening up on the Left. The frustration over anarchist Morons and the untouchable Swamp isn't confined to conservatives. There's widespread "liberal" despair - over lawlessness, political corruption, economic uncertainty and cultural Marxism - now that reality has hit home."
Unfortunately, as Mark Steyn has also shown, there is a rift on the Right, too. It's a San Andreas-sized one and is not new. It's the rift between American voters who lean to the right and the politicians, who, regardless of what they say before the election, veer leftwards afterwards. It's not just America. Britain's Conservative government includes only a handful of genuine conservatives (although Parliament, since December, may finally be a bit more representative). Try to find an authentically conservative Conservative in Canadian politics and you may as well be looking for a way to turn maple syrup into 24-carat gold. I'm not sure that there are all that many classical liberals in the Australian Liberal Party, either.
The political and intellectual Right has demonstrated something unknown to science: that it is possible for a vertebrate to devolve to an invertebrate species.
Absolutely. The conservative-in-name-only "leaders" are the problem on the Right (with those who subverted Trump and Brexit - and the voters - being obvious examples). The rift on the Left seems to be between the "liberal" vs "woke" classes.
PS. Feedback from a couple of Australia MSC members, Owen: your comments are always appreciated, and perfectly complement Mark's insights on all things cultural and historical.
I am going to pause my boycott of the MSC comments section long enough to answer Mark's question to caller Dave: Yes, there will be some voters so turned off by the craziness that they will be driven to vote Trump/Republican. HOWEVER, there will also be a group in the "strong horse/weak horse" camp who will think, we've already done this and the people we voted in still let the crazies out of the bottle and are doing nothing about it. Why bother this time? I don't know which group will be larger, but I fear it will be that second one. Well, maybe fear is the wrong word. I think it will be that second one. I think I may be in that group.
Resume boycott.
Does your boycott go for replies, Steven? I'm anxious myself that the last unifying threads holding the country together are being yanked out before our eyes. Yesterday, just as the day before and recent weeks created so much anxiety across our country, I thought surely it was over. Nothing seemed to going in the right direction, but this morning I woke up with renewed optimism.
I saw that a young woman in Colorado, a business owner and pro Second Amendment, won in her primary. I saw the SC ruled in favor of religious schools. I see beginnings of local people pushing back against the anarchists. I hear blacks in the afflicted cities speaking out against the vandals and senseless shootings on our city streets. They don't want to watch our black youth perish in their own neighborhoods and they want to preserve our shared history, too. I heard a very articulate young man on Tucker delineate what the Republicans need to do to improve the chances of blacks to succeed in our country without sacrificing safety and rule of law to mob mentality.
As people want and need to get back to work they are beginning to see how much of the virus misinformation has been by design with negative reverberations to our economy, education and health care. The distrust has reached the max but I sense the frustration is beginning to turn into actions. I think the struggle for us is to not allow ourselves to get depressed. It's easy to let that happen. I know firsthand. This is just one part of the plan the anarchists have for us. It is the part we can control.
Steven, You have a point. What is needed right now is leadership, and the logical person to provide it is POTUS. But he is not doing it.
It's probably time for a third party. One made up of sensible Democrats (I know a few. A very few) and Republicans who are fed up with the likes of Senator Mike Braun of Indiana--if you caught his disgraceful Surrender Monkey performance on Tucker Carlson, you'll know what I mean. Now, a leader is needed.
It's good to hear some optimism, Fran - which is something Mark always maintains.
"Keep America Great" reframed as "Keep America?" is a question that needs to be resolved.
I hadn't heard of your boycott, but I would never do such a thing because I paid my dues and show tunes give me a headache. I write comments to get my money's worth. I see the same thing you do about the voters that are disappointed that Trump has not accomplished more and the voters that are alarmed at what is going on and won't vote for Ol' Joe (if indeed he is the nominee) or just sit this one out. The 2016 election was a near run thing and 2020 will again be decided in the swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Ohio by thin margins. How the "independent" voters will swing is impossible to poll now just because the number of deciding votes is much smaller than any poll's margin of error. Many of the changeable voters will likely only decide in the last few days or even in the voting booth. This leaves you and I to fret all the way to November.
There is good still to be found in America, Kate. Good people aren't out on the streets causing mischief for the rest of their compatriots. These people don't get much attention, and, in fact, often they're nowhere to be seen right now, except when they pop up on the evening news trying to protect their home from an invading lunatic mob. No, most are busy trying to hold or piece their shattered lives together. (Uh oh, I'm just now sitting down with my coffee and Mark is in for Rush talking about an Ayotollah Lottafolla; just a moment, need a sec to swallah).
I have to wonder if we would have so much upheaval if it weren't for the media heads who have been spotlighting the unhappy trouble makers, reframing their violent actions as peaceful protests. How they get away with such blatant lies is one of the roots of the sickness pervading this country. The other roots are found in turning away from religion and treasuring family and life.
I see America as my heart's home. It's a place where I can be a part of something worth preserving. It's a place worth handing off to the grandchildren so they can have productive and fully creative lives. It's our job to share this love to preserve what we've been bequeathed by our parents and grandparents very typically regular folks who immigrated here from other parts of the world. It's our job to share this love and enthusiasm with others both within and without. Who knows, maybe we've all fallen down on the job.
Mark once made a comment regarding how we proceed as a nation. A rough paraphrase, for sure: we don't have to invite the rest of the world to come here to share in our democratic Republic but we can share what we have it by exporting it to the rest of the world. It's a very good idea. First we need to root out the destructive forces within. It's a never ending job and that too, is part of the process.
You're right, of course, S. President Trump's recent display of limpness may prove to be politically costly. On the other hand, the BLM riots may prove to be politically costly to the left. We'll see: interesting times, with much at stake.
To exemplify your point about "the 'strong horse/weak horse' camp", and at risk of angry personal criticism, I offer my own thinking, noting that I speak strictly for myself but do not think that I am unique. There should in my opinion be more to effective leadership than talking a good game. There should also be more, I submit, to effective leadership than being better than an awful alternative. The current president cannot even be accused of never putting a foot wrong in talking a good game, let alone delivering on it. That is a problem which real political and electoral consequences. It exacerbates a sense of helplessness among conservatives and feeds anger with the political system per se.
I cannot think that many honest folk can have much appetite for another "Beavis versus Butt-head" election, but the United States polity at large seems hell-bent on a repetition. Butt-head remains Butt-head but has been exposed as toothless - specifically, as positively limp in the face of the wave of riotous criminality which has endangered many honest citizens and their property and business interests. Beavis is now senile, even if his corruption does not obviously run to outright kleptocracy. It's repellant, and many conservatives must be contemplating staying at home on election day.
On the other hand, the wave of criminality continues. Perhaps President Trump does not deserve his good fortune, but folk who might otherwise have contemplated staying at home will surely want to have something to say in opposition to it, and voting for a second Trump term might be the only way to do it.
Damned bilious choice, from where I stand, but I'd steel myself and get out to vote. I don't think the world (let alone the USA) can afford President Biden. If I am at all representative, that might be the bottom line for what you aptly call "the 'strong horse/weak horse' camp",
Please pause your boycott often. I think I know how you feel, but you add great value to the conversation on these boards. To me, anyway, and to others, judging by the discussion which you unfailingly generate.
I fear there's a paradigm shift underway, Fran - much of it due to the impact of education and immigration. The ideals haven't been transmitted to younger and recently-arrived citizens; many seem not to view themselves as "Americans".
Here's to a great Fourth of July! See you on another thread...
Thanks, Kate. If only it was not so full of grief. There really needs to be some kind of revival or sea change across the land. At least I found Mark Steyn and all his brilliant followers. I would be long lost by now. It has been liberating. I can hear the truth here and people have been good. That's really something in these times.
"America: Yes or No?" brings to mind Jack Benny's dilemma when being mugged.
"Your money or your life!... Well?"
"I'm thinking!"
Regardless of the outcome of the vote, the name's gotta go. Recent revelations of unacceptable attitudes toward race relations among Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln...Heg, et al got me looking into the rap sheet of Amerigo Vespucci. Not exactly enlightened was our amico, Amerigo. Just because one of his crew was allegedly captured and eaten by the locals was no reason to argue for their enslavement--regardless of prevailing attitudes of the time.
With Vespucci and Columbus canceled, after whom should we rename our country, Alyssa Milano? Unlike the nihilist nudniks of the rabid mob, I propose an alternative: Bartolomé de las Casas. Look him up; he should be acceptable to all. And "God Bless Bartolomé" scans just fine. Even "The United States of Las Casas" has a welcoming ring to it for all the illegal immigrants caravaning their way to our borders: "Nuestras Casas Son Sus Casas." Except for the McCloskeys, that is.
You could put up a statue of Bartolomé de las Casas and they would still tear it down. They wouldn't know who he was or what he did, but he is an old white guy and that's enough.
Great stuff, J.
You have the gift. During the worst times of my life, I've found that laughter, like a cup of hot beverage, might not solve problems, but it never does any harm. Combined with shrewd insight, it's a tonic.
Thanks.
Thanks for the reminder of Allen Sherman's You Went The Wrong Way Old King Louie. I needed that. Like many, I grew up listening to his songs.
This November, the message shouldn't be about if you believe black lives matter but how you want grievances to be handled. Do you believe in a system that allows you to bring your issues in a civil and non threatening manner that may or may not give you the desired results? Or do you prefer a mob, using riots, assaults, and murder to get what they want. I heard that Democrat that you were talking to and the question that should be asked to America is: Do you want what is happening in these cities that are burning to be the way we deal with issues in America? They say systemic racism as in the system itself targets black people. Meanwhile the system they created in CHOP kills more blacks than any police officer has and is viewed as a necessary evil to combat the ancient evil.
Lord Conrad Black was on Sebastian Gorka's podcast. He discussed how Trump is being careful because of the dissent of now military "leaders" who are openly opposing the president. Sounds like the anger about non-action needs to be directed at these now politicized generals and servicemen who decided to be social justice warriors instead of warriors and let them know we are suffering. We need to go to their homes and establishments and demand the same justice that they allow the anarchists in the streets to do.
Obama quietly fired hundreds of general's and admirals that didn't agree with what he was doing in Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc. (Coincidentally, all the new places Obama sent troops were on Trump's original travel ban...and all with the letter Y in a different position!) Makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes. Is the coup d'etat fait accompli?
Mount Rushmore? I thought all of America was stolen from the indigenous tribes of America? If they truly believed that this land is theirs, then why didn't Obama return America back to the people for whom we "stole" it from?
This is all so embarrassing...Tucker lectures us on what we must do. How do we do anything as individuals but resist? To organize we need leaders, Trump is one but where is his support? Am I supposed to step up to the Twitter mob chopping block with no help of succeeding? Lose my ability to support and protect my family because the mob targets me? and don't give me the and then they got me next stuff...Perhaps our multi-millionaire leaders/Senators/hosts could step up? Trump did, and Paul Ryan abandoned him, Obama sabotaged him, our institutions and our corporations erased him while the mob tore town our history. We need more than angst, we need leaders. Mark, ;you have been a stalwart defender of free speech and this is not your fight but where do we turn? How do we do it? We are not organized, we are normal people living out our lives and we are the target....Cheers for all the content, fan forever, just frustrated....
The reason why Trump has no support from his side is that what they'd be losing isn't worth the fight. They have no problem watching us lose our jobs in a pandemic because they're still getting paid. They only say "reopen" because it's a party line. The mob has nothing to lose because they have nothing to begin with. If they lose it, someone just replaces it for them and that someone is the taxpaying citizen. These "leaders" would rather have Trump take all the slings and arrows and then bring up the rear from a continent away. And why do they do this? Just as the line goes in A Few Good Men: "You don't want me on that wall. You need me on that wall." They know we need them where they are and they dare us to do something to them because by removing them for not doing their jobs will open the door for an extremist to take their place.
Point is that our electorate only votes in one leader and the rest are posers. Trump is our leader while the rest simply are filling a position. This pandemic has put us in a position where we're afraid of losing it all but I'd rather go out with a bang than with a whimper.
Yeah, I heard that on Tucker, too, Gary. I thought at first he was dreaming but I think he's saying we have no other choice than to try and make some noise to our reps. Organize people in your town even if it begins with one small conversation that could produce a chain of conversations that could lead to small gatherings at county or city meetings open to the public. Mark mentioned school boards and attending meetings to discuss renaming a city or high school (here they want to change Oñate High School). We've been single party for decades here in New Mexico so getting our clocks cleaned election after election takes the wind out of the soul. The annual electric light parade was cancelled because of the virus but some patriotic town leaders are organizing a car cruise. I'm a little tired of going to parades but I can put an American flag through the car roof window and tie some ribbons to the roof rack. It might be fun.
At this point there is no reason to worry about how we'll be perceived for speaking out against this. They want us to remain silent and if we speak out they'll call us white supremacists wanting America to be white again and other BS so to hell with them. We're in a cold war of our own and we can't win by being quiet.
Princeton University has announced that it is removing Woodrow Wilson from the name of its public policy institute and one of its colleges, despite the fact that Princeton had selected Wilson as president of the university before he was elected governor of New Jersey and then president of the US, was a leader of the Progressive political movement, leader of the US intervention in World War I, and his establishment of the League of Nations. The statement referred to Wilson's refusal to admit black students to the university and other actions reflecting his upbringing in a Virginia dominated by racial segregation, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan. The University has not addressed the fact that the institution selected him as its leader, and implemented his discriminatory policies for which it is condemning him. Nor does it address his leadership of the Democratic Party which was, at the time, strongly identifying with its glory days during the Civil War and the mythos of "The Lost Cause".
The Democrats seem anxious to dissociate their party from their founders, Jefferson and Jackson, but they have not been willing to addresd the racial legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, who maintained racial segregation in the armed forces during World War II and summarily imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans based on their race, nothing more, violating the entire Bill of Rights and 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. What FDR did was far more blatant than anything done by Wilson against blacks. The Drmocrats' unwillingness to condemn FDR for his racism demonstrates their utter hypocrisy more than their condemnation as racists of the leading Democrats of the past.
"Franklin Roosevelt [...] summarily imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans based on their race."
The mass imprisonment of ethnic Uighers under Chairman Xi is the same (and also not criticised by the left).
So true. The Han Chinese communists have no tolerance for people who are Muslim, and have a distinct racial identity going back thousands of years to their red haired ancestors, likely related to the indigenous Ainu of Japan. A million Uighurs are in prison, while the government sends ethnic Han Chinese to occupy the western provinces. It is worse than what Americans did to Native Americans a century ago. Sadly, other Muslims don't care about them either.
The Afghanistan story is absolute rubbish. I've been in Afghanistan and you assessment of the place is spot on. There is also nothing in it for Russia anyway so Putin would have nothing to do with it.
Just another attempt by the neocons to fight an endless war in Afghanistan. But even if it were true, why open not only our borders but Europe's borders for paid Russian assassins to go in and commit acts of terror? Strange they only mention US soldiers being targeted but not civilian.
I've been in Afghanistan too. This Russian hit list is just another distraction. The Russians have been giving support to the Taliban for several years. A little support to destabilize Afghanistan goes a long way and this is just a continuation of the Great Game. I can't see the difference between supplying arms and a bounty for killing NATO allies but the oxymoron 'Intelligence Community' really get wound up over it.
What isn't being discussed is China's role in Afghanistan. They are working hard to have influence in Afghanistan politically, commercially and militarily by supporting the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan with aid, arms and bribery. The Chinese get to do it on the cheap under the American umbrella and probably even get their arms paid for with American money. The Chinese have also made great strides in Pakistan too. Ironically, this penetration was accelerated by the Bin Laden raid. The Chinese support Pakistan which is in conflict with India over the Kashmir. The Chinese are in conflict with India on the northern side of Kashmir.
The Taliban (there is no such thing as THE Taliban, it is a collection of groups with a common purpose) get a lot of their Chinese made small arms and ammunition for the Northern Territories of Pakistan. I can only assume that as the Chinese are not in direct conflict in Afghanistan themselves, this contradiction doesn't bother them. The situation is complex and irrational to Americans so the best thing to do is just get out and stop sending money into the region.
PS. Afghans don't speak with Peter Sellers 'the elephants are running in the garden accents' but Mark does the best he can.
Thanks especially that in the opening moments of Rush you pounded on the fact that the Democrat party has always been the party of slavery and the Klan. That isn't said or heard nearly often enough.
Pleasant attack of good sense. Sadly, rare, but that pushes up the market rate, and I'm working on looking for silver linings. Thanks for this one.
Times of high comedy, these. Black comedy, but high. I'm not numb enough not to laugh.
RE: The righteous indignation of Mayor Jenny Durkan that her peaceful, lily white neighborhood was disturbed by demonstrators.
This reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine, with whom I worked back in the 1980s. She was a 20-something Black woman who lived with her mother at 23rd and Union St in Seattle. Which is about 10 blocks from the current CHOPistan Police Free Zone, where their 'security' just emptied a magazine into a Jeep carrying 2 Black teens. Killing one and putting the other into critical condition in a hospital.
My friend was much younger than I was, but decided she wanted to get to know me, for some reason. She was one of the sweetest persons I've ever known. I used to tease her that she could give Mary Tyler Moore lessons on optimism. One day she arrived at work, and was NOT being MTM. She was obviously distressed, so I wormed out of her what had happened.
Which was that when she went to catch the bus into downtown Seattle that day (at the bus stop she'd been using all her life) there was a scary guy already there. She wasn't a shrinking violet, so for to her be frightened of someone, meant he was REALLY scary. She decided that it would be better to defuse the tension by engaging him in conversation, rather than stand there with her knees knocking. Which ploy worked.
Worked well enough that she casually asked him where he lived. He responded with, 'In this building.' I.e., the one next to the bus stop. She said, 'This is an old-folks home.' He then said, 'It used to be, but now it's a half-way house.'
My friend looked at me and said, 'Now, every day, I have to get on and off my bus in front of a bunch of criminals.'
To that, all I could think to say was, 'Yeah, they don't put half-way houses in Sand Point (the upper middle class neighborhood where the then mayor lived). I still remember, not only what she then said, but how she said it. The bitterness in her voice was so strong, I hadn't thought she was capable of it:
"No, they put them in my neighborhood, because they think I'm used to it.'
And where does the current mayor of Seattle live? Not Sand Point, but the even tonier Windermere which adjoins it. On the shore of Lake Washington. Needless to say, no half-way houses allowed there either.
It's very sad to read about your friend, Patrick, but I received similar distressing reports from my daughter who works nine blocks from CHOP. Before the virus closed things down, a few weeks I think, she said there was a shooting at her bus stop right at the time people were exiting from work. One little boy of seven years, I believe was killed. There were others. She did tell me that she missed the shooting because she happened to be working from home because she had a bug. Shortly after that her building was closed and was being disinfected. She has not been back since early March. She complained that the law is not enforced in downtown Seattle and she really now just wants to see about working entirely from home if it's possible.
Well told. Worthy of a Paul Harvey..."the Rest of the Story"
A great undocumented three hours Mark! Thanks especially for maintaining a high level of exasperation throughout, the only appropriate emotion we have left. Simple anger seems kind of silly at this stage. I was angry twenty years ago, about stuff like 9/11 and the decline of standards. Now, what's the use?
Conservatives in America remind me of a sporting event in which the home team falls far behind quickly but is able to convince itself a comeback is on the way. Then the home team begins to notice that half their teammates, coaches and all of the officials now inhabit the other sideline. Suddenly a comeback doesn't seem possible, nevermind likely. And if these are the new rules, what difference does winning make anyway?
I can't even take my own anger seriously anymore. Your warning that we can become too stupid to survive has reached fruition. (Master bedrooms, indeed). Voting has been rendered moot and not just due to the rampant cheating. Republicans do nothing except undermine Trump. The Supreme Court is now obviously lost forever, regardless of who wins. SCOTUS is just the cherry on top of the Deep State. The media generally is in an advanced stage of syphilis. And our military leadership? You've covered that debacle as well. So yes, an exasperated pessimist am I.
Take the McCloskeys for instance. Maybe they prevailed momentarily and their lives aren't yet ruined, but can they go forward without constant fear of assault and/or arson at their home or business? And what if an actual shooting had occurred? I think we know who would be prosecuted and who wouldn't.
This is of course what the Left wants, the more casualties the better. I do believe a mass casualty confrontation is inevitable, probably sooner than later. But it won't provide deterrence. More likely it will simply ratchet up the violence. Who can say what infringements on our remaining liberties such an event will bring?
It wasn't really my intent to go on such a depressing rant. I'd rather say how much I still enjoy your humor and occasional Trudeau "mammy!" yelps. I will still be listening tomorrow, to you and VDH and Tucker. Along with Rush and a very few others, you let us know we're not alone. Thank God for that.
Great summary, Michael.
Constantine had a direct link to York, since it was where his father, Emperor Constantius I, died and hence was the launchpad for Constantine's bid to be Emperor in his turn. As Christianity went from being tolerated to becoming the official religion, slavery was technically abolished. It was not quite as simple as that, since serfdom soon replaced slavery and the English word "serf" comes from the Latin word for "slave," whereas the English word "slave" is from the Mediaeval Italian word for "Slav." Yet serfdom did, at least, recognise, as slavery did not, that those on the lowest rank of society were, nevertheless, part of that society, i.e. actual humans.
It gets better. "slave" is the same word as Slav, because that's where a large number of slaves came from in the Middle Ages. In Italian "schiavo" actually developed to "ciao".
So, ciao is "racist". Make sure all your liberal friends know. Call them out. Say you're acting as an "ally" to the Slavs, who can be argued to have undergone a fair degree of "oppression".
And clearly, the song "bella ciao" has to go as well.
It gets better. "slave" is the same word as Slav, because that's where a large number of slaves came from in the Middle Ages. In Italian "schiavo" actually developed to "ciao".
So, ciao is "racist". Make sure all your liberal friends know. Call them out. Say you're acting as an "ally" to the Slavs, who can be argued to have undergone a fair degree of "oppression".
And clearly, the song "bella ciao" has to go as well.
Listening to Mark standing in for Rush ....
The reduction of Victoria and Columbia to "ia"....
.... reminds me of Zadok Allen in The Shadow Over Innsmouth:
"Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! Phn'glui ....."
There's a Lovecraftian story waiting to be written working the Deep Ones and Cthulhu into BLM.
Still listening to Mark....
Even Stephen Jay Gould, a Marxist, recalled looking at Mount Rushmore as a little boy and wondering "what is Teddy Roosevelt doing up there?"
His essay which began with that question ended up showing that Roosevelt was indeed most worthy to be included, citing in particular his serious contributions to zoology.
And I've just heard Mark expounding on "stinkingly corrupt Joe". I'm afraid you haven't quite got it, Joe's actually dead, and his corpse is being ferried around. Of course, lstinking and corrupt".
The Slavs (Croats and Serbs, presumably) were an early case where slavery was identified with a particular ethnicity. In the Roman Republic, less so in the Empire, vast numbers of slaves would be taken from whichever territory the Romans had just conquered: Greece, Thrace, Gaul, wherever. None of those places, however, continuously represented slavery in the Roman mind. Slaves were people who had been cast down by warfare. Later, they were either born into servitude, or were unwanted children, cast out by their parents.
The Venetians traded Slavs to Moorish kingdoms in Spain and North Africa and there isn't the slightest doubt that the Moors chose them for their ethnicity; one Moorish king had to dye his hair dark, to conceal the fact that he had more Slavs and fewer Moors in his ancestry.
Unlike the Romans, the muslim world could always, for its own purposes, anyway, justify enslaving The Other. While the Barbary pirates preyed on Atlantic Europe as far north as Iceland, because the people there were white and Christian, other slave traders exploited people in West Africa, because they were black. Even after much of West Africa converted to islam, the slaving continued. An equal opportunities religion islam decidedly is not.
We'll never hear BLM condemn the white slave trade, because that wouldn't remotely fit its storyline, and we shan't hear BLM have any bad words for the continuing existence of slavery in muslim countries, because elements of the muslim brotherhood, along with the regime in Iran, have been vocal in BLM's support.
But BLM never had anything to do with slavery, really, did it?
A very popular tweet, from @RealMiniAOC:
"Can we put up a statue of Joe Biden so we can topple it for all the racist stuff he's said?"
I thought the "Slav=slave" link went back further than that - the northern shore of the Black Sea (and is that racist, by the way?) having been the source of slaves for the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Vikings and Turks since well before the Christian (oops, I guess that's cultural imperialism, too) era.
Well, no. The modern Italian word is, as Robert says, "schiavo,' but I'm afraid I don't know anything about Venetian Italian, beyond the fact that that is where that word originated. I do know that that etymology did not exist before the Middle Ages. You'll find no references to "Slavs" in Classical texts.
With Woke Disney trotting out the movie this weekend, let me ask... if it so heinously racist for white people to voice black characters these days, why isn't racist for black people to be playing white Founding Fathers in Hamilton?
I suppose it is an extension of the way in which a non-black man can never play Othello in English, these days, even though no-one complains when a black actor performs Hamlet, Lear, or Henry V, or, for that matter, when a black actress plays Lady Macbeth or Desdemona, both explicitly referred to as "white," or, now I've really got started, when a black actress plays Henry V. This is hypocrisy. If the theatre is to be colour-blind, which is fine by me, it must not be selectively colour-blind.
Funnily, enough, white tenors are still permitted to sing Otello, in the operas by Verdi and Rossini (although I'm not sure that that second one gets many outings).
An article published just today, in the UK Spectator, by Patrick West, argues:
"Shakespeare plays are only the most obvious casualty of director tampering. Two years ago, in a West End production of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, the Duchess of Berwick was played by the white actress Jennifer Saunders, while her biological brother Lord Lorton was played by Joseph Marcell, who is black. While the play received rave reviews, it still had an inherent incoherence at its heart."
I've seen Joseph Marcell in "Much Ado About Nothing," where he had a black daughter, white brother and white niece. Despite that "inherent incoherence," it worked very well, since all theatre is about suspension of belief, but, again, that ability to suspend belief should not be hostage to the last bunch of BLM thugs who threatened to burn the theatre down.
The Kenneth Branagh 'Much Ado' from 25 years ago had Denzel Washington as Don Pedro. Only way that was a little strange was that his supposed brother was played by a white guy. However, it was pretty easy to blow past it as it was a pretty fun movie.
One time I saw a production of Oklahoma where the female lead was played by a black actress as was her mother. That was weirder because I hadn't seen it before, and didn't know whether those characters in fact were black, which given the setting, would have hugely affected the plot. Still, I figured it out pretty fast.
The Shakespeare Globe performance, to which I referred, had a Scottish actor sounding English, as Don Pedro, and an American actor, putting on a Scottish accent, as Don John. Don John is Pedro's (ahem) not-quite brother, so all these jokes sort-of made sense. Make-believe is essential to theatre (it's the whole point, actually), but, if the thesps can't convince me, they aren't doing it right. The Globe did it well.
The board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera in NYC recently announced that from now on only baritones of African - and by that, the board of course means sub-Saharan African - ancestry will be cast in the title role of Verdi's "Otello." Despite the fact that in Shakespeare's day "Moor" was synonymous with Moroccan - which is to say North African, or broadly Semitic, ethnicity. As with defacing and toppling statues - or just running around screaming slogans - this is all about making leftists feel good about their SJW street-cred, while doing nothing to address the societal, cultural and educational pathologies infecting low-income African Americans.
OK, I'm emigrating to Mars.
The question is whether the McCloskeys brave stand will be inspirational or will they be made an example for others to ponder before defending their homes from the mob. The latter seems more likely given the rhetoric coming from the authorities in St. Louis. They are already taking a page from General Mark Milley's playbook - these protests are peaceful in nature no matter how they behave. I seriously doubt this will end well - at least from our perspective. The police didn't show up which sends a chill down my spine. Tucker ran an audio last week of a young mother with child in tow trapped in her car by a raging mob. The 911 operator told her the gathering was 'authorized' suggesting she call City Hall if she had a complaint. This is 2020 America and it's only likely to get worse as the election approaches.
They inspired me! Nobody comes near my dogs! It wouldn't matter if I lived in a double wide or the equivalent of the Frick! No frickin' way anyone is walking away without a hobble after threatening my lil' Winston (or Jack, Luke, Iggy or Pepita). We can no longer depend on any police or politician to come to our rescue. Each is now looking out for their own skin now.
(Ex-)President Obama recently stated that protestors had to make officials "uncomfortable". Sealed off in secure buildings, surrounded by guards and voted in by both the quick and the dead, just what can make these officials "uncomfortable"? Add to that the (dark) racial shield many were born with and the recipe for getting an official "uncomfortable" raises the stakes to a rather severe level. This is almost to the level of Thomas Hutchinson if not beyond. Now the definition of "peaceful" is changed as looting, burning and murder are common in "mostly" peaceful "protests". Mark was dead on as to the simpleton level of gun handling as these are not talismans as many believe. To be a creditable hard target one has to not only act it but be able to be it. Possessing a trigger means being able and willing to pull it as needed and knowing when to not pull it. Being judged by 12 and not carried by 6 can be a very lonely position. But it beats the only other option.
As always, Mark is spot on in the Rush chair. Favorite moment: we've raised a generation that sees only the warts in our key historical figures. So true. So sad. So dangerous for our future.
The Left is"purifying" the nation. It's just plastic surgery now with "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil", but after that doesn't work to fix their failures all traces of their mistakes will need to be removed.
It is sad, J., and I'm not a great one for politico-historical hagiography.