Alternative Hardscrabble Universe

by Mark Steyn
Tucker Carlson Tonight
November 26, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9873/alternative-hardscrabble-universe

Programming note: I'll be live on the curvy couch with Steve, Ainsley and Brian this morning, Tuesday, at 8.30am Eastern/5.30pm Pacific. Hope you'll dial us up if you're in the presence of the receiving apparatus.

On Monday's "Tucker Carlson Tonight", Tucker and I discussed the latest lies of Elizabeth Warren:

I find one of the most tedious aspects of presidential campaigning is when rich privileged people fly their private jets into New Hampshire to go to the diner, and tell people what a dreadful hardscrabble dust bowl upbringing they had. It's boring, it's boring as hell... [Senator Warren] has had a charmed existence. And yet there is a fantasy universe where Elizabeth Warren gets pregnant and the mean old school board immediately fires her.

Click below to watch:

You can see the full show with Tucker here. There's a vague possibility I'll be back on the telly with Tucker tonight for a rare Tuesday appearance - although I'd bet that the President's scheduled rally will put the kibosh on that.

On Monday Fox also reported on the Supreme Court's ruling on my co-defendants' petition in the Mann vs Steyn case, now in its eighth year in the choked septic tank of American justice:

Alito pens fiery dissent after court declines to hear dispute between climate professor, National Review

You can read the "fiery dissent" in full here. We shall have some related programming on the Mann vs Steyn front right here later today.

If you're not yet a member of The Mark Steyn Club, we'd love to have you. You can find more details about our Club here. See you on the curvy couch shortly.

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19 Reader Comments

Sol • Nov 26, 2019 at 18:29

The jogging that Elizabeth Warren does at campaign events may be a conscious distraction from the tug-o'-Warren she's mired in: running for office while running from herself.

Now a reflex, Warren's reaction, to one voter expressing a concern about relatability, indicates a double-mindedness. Warren was a "diehard conservative" in high school, according to one of her best friends, and was Republican until 1996. What does she actually believe about what she's sellling?

The job of President is one of taking issues head-on that have no easy answers.

Warren would be a dangerous person to put in the White House. A double-minded person is unstable, and that fits too well with the moral opacity and indecisiveness that led to the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Carter's handling of Iran hostages; letting Saddam Hussein go post-Desert Storm; letting Osama bin Laden go in the Nineties; Benghazi, etc. Not to mention domestic issues.

Nicholas Strathy

Sol • Nov 27, 2019 at 04:10

Hillary also started out as a conservative. I suppose their younger selves didn't find the straight narrow way very cool and consequently saw it as more exciting to wander over to the transgressive thoroughfare where all the lying cool cats hang only to eventually end up as corrupt compromised old lying bores.

I believe the old adage runs: left at 20, right at 40 but I think it's reversed for at least half the population thanks to the suspension of judgement provided by deficit spending without limit or apparent consequence.

Walt Trimmer • Nov 26, 2019 at 16:10

Mark did a great job exposing Elizabeth Warrens's naked lies.

Perhaps her memories are based on emotions so she doesn't remember the actual facts but just how she felt about it at the time.

P.S. Kate, this is substandard work but Mark barely gave me enough to flesh out a comment. Exposing the Empress Having No Clothes and that the media just will not uncover the truth left me with a very painful visualization to overcome.

Kate Smyth

Walt Trimmer • Nov 26, 2019 at 19:39

It's a very solid pass. But there's the rest of the week to go - including Thanksgiving (limited options, I assume).

P. Gao • Nov 26, 2019 at 15:37

Heh. She's also acting - always running-running and over energy-energy-wave-wave to imply she's the ageless millenial or something, not 70+. Notice Candidate Trump didn't feel any need to jog, pace like a nervous hamster across the stage or skateboard up to the mike, but boy howdy he was giving speeches everywhere in the country the last week of the campaign. Even the media pack was dragging after him practically weeping from the pace.

Dave A • Nov 26, 2019 at 13:48

"Hold on a sec... I'm gonna get me- um - a beer."

(That should impress the flyover morons. Do they actually LIKE to drink this vile stuff?)

John Shuba • Nov 26, 2019 at 10:17

As Malcolm Muggeridge trenchantly observed - "People don't believe lies because they have to. They believe lies because they want to."

Laura Rosen Cohen • Nov 26, 2019 at 09:58

The one statement that really jumps off the Alito page for me is this: "If citizens cannot speak freely and without fear about the most important issues of the day, real self government is not possible." That's really what this is about.

Also, although I realize the news cycle just coincidentally put these items together-Elizabeth Warren's addiction to lies and the Mann case, it seems like they are related in more worrying ways than one. Basically, it appears that if you are of the left, you can lie with impunity for your entire adult life and run for elected office without a single worry about being caught or punished in any way for your dishonesty. If you are of the right, you will face a tortured, uphill and relentless battle in order to be able to publicly pursue the truth.

Nicholas Strathy

Laura Rosen Cohen • Nov 26, 2019 at 11:46

I recently caught up with D'Souza's 2016 documentary, Hillary's America where he makes a cogent argument that leftist politicians are the same type of scam artists he met up with during his time incarcerated for allegedly making an illegal campaign donation. They are bent people looking for ways to get money and power by any means, so lying comes natural. The smartest of them, God bless them, gravitate to politics where you can impose scams legally, enforced by the power of the state. Perhaps the most revealing segment in the doc was the Playboy interview with Hillary and Barack's leftist mentor Saul Alinsky about his small beginnings scamming the University of Chicago's cafeteria system justified by the simple leftist principle that a person's right to food trumps a business's right to profit.

The Democrat party has always been the party that appeals to that type of person, not that we aren't all prone to that kind of behavior, but a civilized people recognizes that it actually makes a stable, fair society impossible and therefore it must be resisted.

Joseph Dornisch

Nicholas Strathy • Nov 26, 2019 at 16:02

God bless them? Don't you mean God damn them?

Nicholas Strathy

Joseph Dornisch • Nov 26, 2019 at 18:18

To augment what Mark Twain said about editing your writing, wherever you see very [or blessed] put damn or damned and your writing will appear as it should.

Bill • Nov 26, 2019 at 09:10

Thank you, Mark, for linking to the dissenting opinion. I clicked on it figuring that within two sentences I'd be hopelessly lost, but Alito writes with great force and clarity. He convinced me the full Court should have reviewed the motion.

Mark replies:

It is a great read, Bill. Alas, he required at least three other guys to agree with him...

Babs

Bill • Nov 27, 2019 at 04:55

Does anyone else see that five people in black robes can direct the fate of our country?

Brian from Minneapolis • Nov 26, 2019 at 08:17

Regarding your court case against Mann. Has anyone even stood up and called this delay as an egregious violation of your Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial? BS that you have to pay for your defense while Islamic terrorists who plot the 9/11 attacks get to sit for two decades and have their defense paid for on the public dime.

Brian from Minneapolis • Nov 26, 2019 at 08:06

I wished I was in private school. The current public school system is a joke. The bar has been set so low as to make sure as many children pass and to tout numbers praising the high graduation rates rather than making sure that the children they teach know what the hell they're being taught is even relevant in the real world. They lower test standards to "not promote white superiority" and as a consequence, are taught to hate the system that exists outside the walls of their institutions.

Josh Passell • Nov 26, 2019 at 08:05

I think we can guess why Elizabeth Warren runs out on stage at her campaign appearances: the pack of lies she spews are in hot pursuit. It's not just that has less Indian blood than Mel Brooks's chief in Blazing Saddles; whole swathes of her life story are fiction. I have to credit New England radio colossus, Howie Carr, for noticing this detail in her "hardscrabble" upbringing "on the jagged edge of the middle class": she drove a used white MG in high school. I thought they sang "I Ride an Old Paint" down in OK, not "My Ride's an Old British Sports Car". I don't want to say every word she says is a lie, including "and" and "the", because it's already been said. But I'm beginning to think her cheekbones aren't all that high either.

Denyse O'Leary • Nov 26, 2019 at 07:30

It's not so much that half the country believes her as that half the country doesn't care if her story isn't true. Consider the crucial distinction:

To believe her, they must address the fact base. In this case, they must morally assent to lies.

To not care if it isn't true, they need say only something dismissive about people who "don't think it's time for a woman president." But the vast majority of such people will end up assenting to lies little by little. It is a gradual surrender, one that won't trouble them much because they won;t really notice.

Assent to socially approved lies is beginning to seep into the courts and into science. Check out, for example, the wars on math and engineering. Warren would be well suited to preside over all that and to hound parents who want to get their kids out of union-controlled failing schools. But if they vote for it, they bought it.

Mark replies:

That's an important distinction, Denyse. You're right.

James Morphew

Denyse O'Leary • Nov 26, 2019 at 10:40

Let me add that people are quite gullible, credulous. They hear snippets, and tend to believe them if they make sense at all, or are interesting or exciting, and certainly if they want it to be true, as you said. We are simply predisposed to believe what we are told. We the Skeptics are far fewer. Part of the failure of the Intelligentsia, whomever they are now, is their loss of healthy skepticism and base knowledge of the world. This would certainly include the Press, Political leaders, Religious leaders, and even some simply famous people whose leverage is simply their wide audience. They accept certain stories with certain slants without question, likely due to their view of the world and their expectation. Do not forget that most of what we all know is 3rd hand or worse. So there is, indeed, great danger in the spread of unverified stories -- there always was, but we have very few sources upon which we can consistently rely.

Kate Smyth

Denyse O'Leary • Nov 26, 2019 at 19:51

Denyse - you should comment more often!