Narrative

It's kind of amusing to observe the Democrat's (and therefore, the media's) evolving narrative on the protests/riots that began three months ago with the death of George Floyd while in police custody.

• "The protests are a modern day civil rights movement. 

• "The police are racist. Reform them by reallocating funding." [a.k.a. defund the police]

• "The protests are far more important than the CDC guidelines that advise against large gatherings to avoid transmission of COVID-19."  [But schools MUST remain closed and everyone else should shelter-in-place] 

• "There is no evidence that rioting is occurring and claims to the contrary are lies." [Just ask Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY)] 

• "The protests are "mostly peaceful" and any arson, looting or violence do not represent the underlying intent of the BLM movement." 

• "Unrest occurs spontaneously and is driven by frustration. There is no evidence of any outside agitators or planning. Antifa doesn't exist." [All of those outside coordinators and weapons caches just appeared magically] 

• "The presence of federal law enforcement officers (who were protecting a federal court house) caused the mob to want to burn down the courthouse. It's the DHS's fault."

After three months of avoiding any condemnation of the riots, and as Biden/Harris began sinking in the polls, focus groups indicated that the rioting was hurting the Dems. The narrative changed instantly:

• "We condemn the rioting and mobs and urge everyone on both sides [as if] to cease these unfortunate activities." 

• "These violent mobs have arisen in Trump's America. He is directly responsible for the riots." [in Democratically controlled cities that have rejected his offers of help]. 

• "It's Trump's right-wing supporters who have become vigilantes and are responsible for the rioting and violence." [even though Trump's supporters were nowhere in evidence for the first three months of rioting]And now:

And now (from Biden):

• "Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is elected?"

That's just a great strategy ... blackmail Americans into voting for Dems by implicitly threatening more rioting and unrest unless Biden is elected. Using the leftist mobs as a threat reeks of desperation, but worse, it's reprehensible to suggest that a cessation of arson, looting, and violence is conditioned on the Dems acquisition of political power. 

Americans have never responded well to threats, but apparently, a cognitively-challenged Joe Biden and his left-wing handlers have forgotten that.

Pushback is coming.

Tantrums

Although there are many flaws in their overarching ideology, the Left almost never changes course. In recent months, leftists have shown both explicit and implicit support for antifa and BLM rioters in cities across the country. After all, they argue, America is "systemically racist" (a bald-faced lie) and the looting, arson, destruction, and even murder is somehow justified by that lie. 

There are leftists who contend that looting is a form of "reparations" for people of color. That is so idiotic it crosses into parody, but it's also politically toxic. It's almost as if leftists who make such claims are uncover operatives for the Trump campaign.

As if to double down on stupid, Vicki Osterweil has written a book that is getting a fair amount of play on hi-brow leftist sites like NPR. In her book, "In Defense of Looting," she states:

"Looting... provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be." 

"And I think that's a part of it that doesn't really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory."

It's hard not to laugh, but she's serious (I think).

Ann Althouse comments:

I don't know if other people in "the movement" are happy to see that idea spoken aloud. I've been hearing that there are 2 groups of people — the peaceful protesters and these mysterious other people, who, I've noted, the journalists don't seem to care to identify and investigate. Osterweil is saying these are not 2 different groups. It's one movement, and it's been going on for a long time.

Osterweil says it's a Republican/right-wing myth "that the small business owner must be respected, that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community." She conceptualizes the small businesses as agents of oppression within the community. They're not innocent victims, unfairly targeted. So don't worry about them. In fact, as Osterweil tells it, the looting is a cogent argument — an attack on "the idea of property... the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions." In this view, it's "unjust" to have to work to make money to buy the things you need and want, because "the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories." Looters "get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.... Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police." 

That seems to present looting as street theater with a message. It makes an argument. A terrible argument. We've heard that argument in words many times over the years, and most Americans reject it. We want to work and build wealth and enjoy our lives and we want the great mutual benefits of hard work and wealth. Osterweil's looting is a switch from making the argument against property in words and to speak with actions — the destruction of property. But that doesn't make the argument more convincing! It's a nasty tantrum thrown because you can't convince people with your ideas. Ironically, fortunately, it makes the argument for the other side. 

History has proven that the Left isn't good at much, but it is good at throwing tantrums and then making specious arguments like Osterweil's to defend those tantrums.

In cities like Portland and Kinosha, along with NYC, Chicago, and D.C., Democrat leaders have demonstrated that small business owners and property in general are not to be respected and protected from the leftist mobs. Leaders of the Democratic party have largely remained silent about the actions of mayors and governors who have decided that dissing Donald Trump is far most important that protecting their citizens.

All of them do NOT deserve to lead.

UPDATE:

Fools like Vicki Osterweil contend that "... riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory."

I wonder how she'd characterize this:

When there is retaliation—and there will be retaliation because Democrats leaders in Portland are doing NOTHING to stop the riots—the media will clutch their pearls and tell us all that "mostly peaceful protestors" have been killed by "right-wing vigilantes." (note that the phrase "left-wing rioters" is NEVER used by the media). That might have worked as propaganda on day 9, but it won't work on on day 99. We all know who the rioters are.

Rules are Rules

For well over two months, mobs have descended on cities such as Portland, Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Washington, DC and small towns like Kinosha, WS. Leading Democrats, including their cognitively challenged presidential candidate and his VP, remained silent as peaceful protests morphed into ugly episodes of arson, destruction, looting, and violence—including murder. Worse, left wing Democratic mayors and governors in some locales told the police to 'stand down', allowing the protesters and the mobs they spawned to run wild. Once the mobs realized that they could operate with impunity—there was no price to be paid—groups like antifa and BLM became more violent, more destructive, and more dangerous.

But with the police gone, a vacuum has been created. It will ultimately be filled by citizens who refuse to take a knee and allow the mob to destroy their property, their homes, and their businesses. As Glen Reynolds has stated: A police presence is there as much to protect criminals from the populous as it is to protect the populous from the criminals—and make no mistake, the leftist mobs are criminals.

At first the Dems all but encouraged the "mostly peaceful protestors "(a.k.a. mobs), but now, these leftist thugs are out of their control, and it's beginning to hurt the Dems' political prospects.* Even worse, the "peaceful protestors," taking their cue from the mobs, are becoming increasingly aggressive and threatening. As examples:

• "Peaceful protestors" stand inches from diners at outdoor restaurants in D.C and scream at them. Their spittle landing everywhere. And here I though the woke were so, so, so concerned about the spread of the virus.
• "Peaceful protesters" threaten people leaving the White House with violence and have to be restrained by police. These "protesters"  truly are scum and if you don't believe that, read this.
• "Peaceful protestors" set up a guillotine and mock execute an elected president—classy.
• "Peaceful protestors enter suburban neighborhoods at dusk yelling threatening slogans to homeowners and are then surprised when homeowners brandish weapons to discourage them. 

Victoria Taft comments:

Seattle’s Jenny Durkan, Minneapolis’s Jacob Frey, Portland’s Ted Wheeler, Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago fan the flames. They make excuses for murder in St. Louis and the constant assault of local and federal officers in Portland. They hate the president so much they won’t take help from him as a point of pride, salving their own egos while their cities are looted “for reparations,” pillaged for “social justice” and set on fire to leave a sick mark of “accomplishment.”

It was all very bad politics, driven by TDS and rabid leftist ideology. Over the past few days, the Dems decided 'better late than never' and cynically flipped a switch. Now they're against rioting. But their main concern seems to be the Normals who have decided that since Democrat mayors have called off or defunded the police, it might be time to arm-up and defend their businesses, neighborhoods, and homes.  The Dems are worried that these "vigilantes" (I'll can call them "mostly peaceful citizens") might decide to become as aggressive and violent as the woke mobs that up until a few days ago, were cheered on by people like Nancy P. and AOC.

After months in which they wouldn't cover the rioting, the media is now showing us video of violence, but with their own special spin. CNN be-clowned itself (but then again, when does it not be-clown itself) by showing a massive car dealership fire due to arson in Kinosha, WS with a chyron that stated: "Fiery, mostly peaceful protests in Kinosha." You can't make this stuff up. 

It seems that the leftist woke want to set the rules, but then not accept that those same rules also apply to them. They argue that violent protest is justified when you're woke and pure of heart. That you can intimidate, threaten, and even injure people if your cause is just. Hmmm. 

Now normals have decided that their own cause—protecting themselves, their families, their businesses and their cities—is even more just. And since the police are absent, they've decided to form their own vigilante 'mob' to take care of business. The Dems don't like this one bit. After all, the rules only apply when the woke benefit. 

Vigilantism isn't a good thing, but I completely understand why it's happening.  After all, rules are rules.

FOOTNOTE:

*   e.g., Six Democrat Mayors in blue collar areas of Wisconsin have announced they are supporting Donald Trump in the upcoming election.

Not Alone

Now that the political conventions are over, the battle for power begins in earnest. But the real battle may come down to personalities, rather than competence or accomplishment. On one hand, we have a cognitively disabled candidate, who his party wants you to believe is a moderate "Mr. Nice Guy." Joe Biden has had over 40 years to correct all of the ills his party delineates on a daily basis. He has failed miserably and become a prototypical swamp creature, playing fast and loose with ethics and enriching his family along the way. He hasn't worked in the private sector in four decades and has little if any understanding of its challenges. He will be a puppet of the Left.

Donald Trump is a bombastic, often crude, combative narcissist who gets stuff done. The four constituencies—the democrats, the media, #Nevertrumpers in the GOP, and most of the deep state—hate, hate, hate him because he doesn't play their game, he isn't what they view as presidential, and most important, he doesn't kick the can down the road when tough decisions must be made. Before his election, they worked (illegally, we have come to learn) to ruin his campaign, and after his upset victory, and throughout his four years a president they have done everything possible to destroy his presidency and remove him from office. Despite that, he gets stuff done.

For the four constituencies, words are all that matters. Say the right things, project what they characterize as empathy, go along and get along. If you're a GOP president and your opposition lies, turn the other cheek. If they say they care and then act differently, don't mention it. If they call you names, smile and move on. If they throw a punch, take the blow, but never punch back. Obviously, that's not Donald Trump.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal (never fans of the Donald) outline Trump's successes and his flaws—there are plenty of both. They write:

... it’s impossible to assess Mr. Trump’s behavior outside the context of the often unhinged opposition. We will never know how his Presidency might have gone without the Russia collusion accusations. But we do know the FBI, and the Obama Administration, knew early on that there was no evidence for the claims. They nonetheless fed the media stories to cripple him.

Before Election Day in 2016, we wrote that the biggest gamble of a Trump Presidency wasn’t the fantasy that he was a Mussolini from Manhattan. It was that he’d face a hostile press and bureaucracy that his inexperience and erratic management would be unable to navigate. So it has often been, and in 2018 the resulting tumult cost Republicans control of the House.

Americans now know Mr. Trump isn’t going to change, but then he isn’t running only against himself. He has a chance to win another four years if voters conclude that his disruption is less risky than the Biden-Sanders Democratic agenda.

The Biden-Sanders agenda is dangerous. It will elevate the administrative state to a level of suffocating control that will stifle economic growth, reduce personal freedom, dampen free speech, diminish innovation, use government as a weapon, dismiss historic allies and elevate adversaries. That's what history tells us socialism does.

A WSJ commenter, "Jeff Murray" speaks for the tens of millions of Normals (a.k.a. "deplorables") when he writes:

"I don't like being told what to do.  I don't like being called a racist simply because I'm a Republican.  I don't like being taxed to death in order to support people with too little education to support themselves.   I don't like being lectured on income inequality by people in office with more money than some small countries.  And I don't like Donald Trump's Tweets but they make more sense than Joe Biden's speeches."

He's not alone.

Revenge of the Normies

The Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media would never voice it publicly, but the fact that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got absolutely no polling bounce after their party's convention is cause for major concern. In fact, it's a not-so-subtle indicator that the Dems may not be able to convince the relatively small percentage of undecided voters to move in their direction.

Caught up in the fever swamps of Trump hatred and Blame America First rhetoric, the Dems keep telling the rest of us Normals that Donald Trump is a "threat to democracy" and that a "systemically racist" country must be fundamentally transformed. Throughout their convention they painted a picture of the country that would result if Trump were re-elected—sick with the virus, racist, fascist, ratcheted by riots, unhappy, poor ... damn ... it is a dark image. The problem for the Dems is that image just doesn't resonate with the majority of Americans of all colors, religions, and backgrounds who kinda think our country is a not-so-bad place to live their lives. 

Glen Reynolds of Instapundit picks up on exactly that when he writes:

Thinking about last night’s Republican Convention today at the gym, I realized that Trump isn’t just running for re-election: The story he’s telling at the RNC is also about saving America from the race war that the left is trying to foment. The left wants it to be black vs. white, immigrant vs. native, etc. Trump’s making clear that it’s about people who are constructive, productive, and generally happy, vs. people who are destructive, parasitic, and generally miserable, and that that difference transcends things like race. This is a huge, under-appreciated — and very traditionally American — message. By promoting it at this crucial time, Trump may very well be saving America.

The Left and their media hamsters failed miserably to destroy Trump's presidency through the promulgation of an outright hoax followed by an evidence-free impeachment. They're crazed because of those failures ... and as a consequence, they're making mistakes.* Even CNN (a once respected news network that has now become a propaganda channel) is voicing concern that the "mostly peaceful protests" and the resulting rioting, arson, and violence is inadvertently helping Trump, particularly because far too many prominent, leftist Dems refuse to distance themselves from it. That leaves Trump with a huge opening, and he's taking it during his convention.

Mathew Continetti comments further on the RNC:

Trump sent many reporters and commentators into a fury when he pardoned a former convict and presided over a naturalization ceremony in the middle of the convention. But the whole thing worked, both as political theater and as campaign strategy. Trump's interactions with normal Americans humanize him and allow him to display rarely seen compassion and to utilize his self-deprecating sense of humor. And the men and women highlighted in these two segments are living rebukes to the critical narratives surrounding Trump on race and immigration. Trump's exchanges with each of the new Americans were charming and amusing. After he finished reading aloud the resume of a new U.S. citizen from Lebanon who is a multilingual psychologist, Trump quipped, "In other words, she can figure me out." Everyone in the room laughed.

Trump welcomed the new citizens to "the great American family." They fit right into this vast, bumptious, diverse, energetic, incomprehensible place. So far, the RNC has served as a reminder that for all of the ravages of the coronavirus, the economic fallout, protests that turn into riots, political correctness, and rising crime, most Americans remain proud of their country. They are eager to work to better their condition. And they are uninterested in the social and cultural agendas of the progressive left.

At the RNC's midpoint, Democrats have reason to worry. The convention has gone more smoothly and winningly than conventional wisdom anticipated. President Trump has stayed on message. The race, already close in the battlegrounds, is sure to tighten. The revenge of the normies may be at hand.

Heh ... personally I prefer the phrase "pushback is coming" but "revenge of the normies" works just as well.

FOOTNOTE:

*  For example, Kyle Peterson notes that "... at the Democratic convention last week, they had John Legend, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Billie Eilish. Republicans don’t have that, but they do have a cop, a metalworker and a small-town mayor. Which sounds more likely to convince the Rust Belt?"

Criminally Irresponsible

It appears that those of us who warned against the near-hysterical reaction to COVID-19 in March (e.g., here, here, here, here, and here) have been vindicated. We were correct in suggesting that the resulting draconian economic and societal shutdowns would do far more harm than good. Throughout the last weeks of March (remember the "Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve" meme) we warned that a continuation of the shutdown would accomplish little and cost a lot. Although there were only 1,900 reported COVID-19 cases in the USA at the end of March, researchers now estimate that there were in fact well over 100,000 infected people already in the USA, far more than could be controlled by a hard shutdown. Greg Ip reports:

In response to the novel and deadly coronavirus, many governments deployed draconian tactics never used in modern times: severe and broad restrictions on daily activity that helped send the world into its deepest peacetime slump since the Great Depression.

The equivalent of 400 million jobs have been lost world-wide, 13 million in the U.S. alone. Global output is on track to fall 5% this year, far worse than during the financial crisis, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Despite this steep price, few policy makers felt they had a choice, seeing the economic crisis as a side effect of the health crisis. They ordered nonessential businesses closed and told people to stay home, all without the extensive analysis of benefits and risks that usually precedes a new medical treatment ...

“We’re on the cusp of an economic catastrophe,” said James Stock, a Harvard University economist who, with Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina and others, is modeling how to avoid a surge in deaths without a deeply damaging lockdown. “We can avoid the worst of that catastrophe by being disciplined,” Mr. Stock said.

Stock and Mina along with many, many others are now suggesting that the lockdown-free approach used by Taiwan, Sweden, Hong Kong, and other countries is the most sensible and least damaging strategy when faced with a pandemic. Ip looks at Sweden:

Sweden took a different approach. Instead of lockdowns, it imposed only modest restrictions to keep cases at levels its hospitals could handle.

Sweden has suffered more deaths per capita than neighboring Denmark but fewer than Britain, and it has paid less of an economic price than either, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Sweden’s current infection and death rates are as low as the rest of Europe’s. That has prompted speculation that it is pursuing herd immunity—the point when enough of the population is immune, due to prior exposure or vaccination, so that person-to-person transmission declines and the epidemic dies out. There is no consensus on where that point is, in Sweden or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, many other western countries reacted differently. Our rush to a lockdown occurred because deeply flawed epidemiological models predicted that millions would die, even as early data indicated that nothing of the sort would happen. In the ensuing panic, absolutely no organized risk analysis was conducted. Health care "experts," a dishonest and biased media, and the politicians who made shutdown decisions were all too ready to believe bad models that predicted catastrophic outcomes. After all, many of those same politicians and media types readily quote climate change models that repeatedly have been proven to be grossly inaccurate, yet are continually cited as reasonable drivers for public policy.

Ip goes on to quote the go-to media oracle on the subject:

“The virus is going to determine when we can safely reopen,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in April. The Federal Reserve said in late July that “the path of the economy will depend significantly on the course of the virus.”

As Alex Berenson, one of the few honest and thorough media analysts reporting on COVID-19, says: "Virus gonna virus." We can no more stop it than we can stop a tsunami, and suggesting that we keep our economy, our schools, and our society closed until the virus abates is astonishingly irresponsible. Yet, members of Team Apocalypse insist on that course of action. 

Some of this can be attributed to simple hysteria, but a non-trivial percentage of it is much more sinister. The Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media have decided that the virus is their path to the White House and power (think: the non-stop drumbeat blaming Trump for virus deaths at their convention), so they need to encourage fear, uncertainty, and doubt throughout the public.

At first their strategy seemed to be working, but like many things that come out of the Left, their ideas are unsustainable. Now the public has had it. Sure, catastrophists will remain hidden in their basements, but the rest of us are out and about, stores are getting busy, traffic is picking up, the world is re-starting. 

It's only Joe Biden, cheered on by his Democrat supporters, who suggests that he'd close it all down again if "scientists" suggested he should. I don't blame Joe—he's cognitively disabled and cannot process information well—but the mere suggestion of another shutdown is breathtakingly stupid. Worse, from what we now know, it damn close to criminally irresponsible.

Blame America First

It'll be interesting to compare the vapid audience-free, recorded programming presented during the Democratic National Convention and the programming to be presented during the GOP version. 

Roger Kimball comments on the reason for this vapidity:

Last week’s Democratic National Convention—four nights of taped hectoring and inadvertently hilarious exercises in politically correct sermonizing—showed how difficult it is to make a virtual event seem like an actual celebration. 

The "sermonizing" by most Dem speakers, including the headliners, had a recurring theme—(1) Donald Trump is a "threat to democracy" because (2) he brings out the inherent racism, misogyny, and other bad traits that are common among the 'deplorables' who support him. Besides he's responsible for the pandemic and, and, and ... he's a meany.

Here's MSNBC's Donny Deutsch as related by Paul Bedard:

[Deutsch]:  “How do 1 in 3 Americans still believe this man about corona or anything, and the answer is only one thing: 1 in 3 Americans are racists. One in three Americans are terrified that this country by the year 2040 is not going to be majority white — that the black man or the brown man or the yellow man or woman are going to come and take their jobs and take away their suburbs and scare them. And it’s no coincidence yesterday Trump brought up Kamala Harris and the whole birther thing. That is the only explanation. Because you can’t even bring up the economy anymore. That is it, that 1 in 3 Americans are racists still in this country.”

The overarching take (exemplified by Deutsch's comments) is the Left's smug arrogance—the notion that they, and they alone, define what is moral, and anyone who disagrees or criticizes their often deranged assertions is somehow deplorable.

But it doesn't stop with Deutsch. With the intellectual luminosity that rivals a single, small birthday candle in a cupcake, a modern leftist 'star' makes comparisons between the United States and ... get ready for it ... Nazi Germany. Here's The Atlantic's Jemele Hill just two days ago:

If Hill actually believes that, she's monumentally stupid  and historically illiterate. Her hatred of her country is evident in her tweet. There is no equivalency—NONE—between the United States (even at the time of the civil war) and Nazi Germany.

These examples and hundreds like them, provide the basis for a strong argument that the 2020 Democrats have veered hard-left (spare me the specious argument that a cognitively impaired presidential candidate or his opportunistic running mate are "moderate") and have begun to rely on an old trope that the Left has used for half a century—"blame America first." It oozes out the speeches given by the many leftists who took over the virtual convention stage, and remains unchallenged by the few moderates who remain in the Democratic Party.

The 2020 Dems believe that the country suffers from "systemic racism." They claim the United States was founded as a slave state (the despicable canard promoted by the NYT's "1619 Project"). Its history elevates the rich and suppresses the common man. It's out to get brown people around the world. It is, not to put too fine a point on it—Bernie Sander's or AOC's view of our country. Secretly, I suspect that more than a few will agree with Jemele Hill's tweet.

Mary Eberstadt comments:

Jeane Kirkpatrick delivered one of the most electrifying political convention speeches in American history to Republicans gathered in Dallas on Aug. 20, 1984. Its theme was that the left wing of the Democratic Party had fallen into the habit of “blaming America first” for the nation’s foreign policy challenges. A Georgetown political scientist, a longtime Democrat and then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kirkpatrick hit the point repeatedly and hard. Whether the issue was Soviet aggression, Iranian theocracy or relations with our allies, she argued, the answer from the left was always the same: more unproductive criticism of America.

The self-flagellating impulse that Kirkpatrick identified remains a political force today. But its target is no longer American foreign policy. It is instead the U.S. at large: its history, its institutions and its place in the world ...

Consider the barely controlled schadenfreude embedded in headlines like the Atlantic’s “Trump Is Turning America Into the ‘Sh—hole Country’ He Fears” and “How the Pandemic Defeated America” or Rolling Stone’s “How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era.” Or consider the speaker lineup at the Democratic convention. Former First Lady Michelle Obama, surely one of the most blessed women in American history, emphasized on Monday night that she “loves this country with all my heart,” despite having complained in 2008 that she was proud of it “for the first time in my adult life.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes she lives under a “fascist presidency.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and found much to admire there, has also heaped praise on Fidel Castro’s Cuba, both times implicitly criticizing his home country by comparison.

Blame America first’s staying power during the decades since Kirkpatrick’s speech has had its consequences. Relentless and hypercritical harping on the country’s flaws likely helped set the stage for Donald Trump’s ascendancy—especially among the “bitter clingers” and “deplorables” who tend to think that America is still a pretty good place. The tendency to blame America first may now be taking a different kind of toll on the left itself. In the latest Gallup poll, only 24% of Democrats reported themselves “extremely proud” to be Americans, as opposed to 67% of Republicans.

In an age when national introspection abounds, will the left’s ingrained habit of finding the beam in America’s eye—and only America’s—finally summon scrutiny?

I think it will. A Democrat message that implies that the rest of us Normals are "racists" and "privileged" and generally bad people has become as tiresome and it is wrong.

We'll see what the GOP response to all of that is this week.

UPDATE:

During the first night of the GOP convention, we didn't hear a lot about how Americans are the perpetrators of "structural racism" or how we're environmental criminals because many don't support the "green new deal," or how we don't care about "safety" because we refuse to do yet another mindless COVID-19 "lockdown" (supported by the Dem candidate). Instead John Podhoretz provide a few highlights:

Most effective was Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, whose speech concluded with these words [talking about his grandfather]:

“Growing up, he had to cross the street if a white person was coming. He suffered the indignity of being forced out of school as a third grader to pick cotton, and never learned to read or write. Yet he lived to see his grandson become the first African American to be elected to both the United States House and Senate. Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime. And that’s why I believe the next American century can be better than the last.”

Nikki Haley, child of Indian immigrants, elaborated: “America isn’t perfect. But the principles we hold dear are perfect. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America….We seek a nation that rises together, not falls apart in anarchy and anger.”

If Trump can turn this election around, it will be because these ideas resonate with the Americans the media have lost the power to hear and to whom they no longer even attempt to speak.

Resonate ... it's a good word. 

The Revolution

At first blush, the antifa and BLM rioters (a.k.a. "mostly peaceful protesters") who have accosted Portland, Seattle, New York, Chicago and to a lesser extent, a dozen other cities in the U.S are hard to take seriously. They are, some say, ideological fanatics, but that's all.  They create chaos, destruction and even violence, others lament, but it'll dissipate. They'll burn themselves out or self-immolate. They are nothing more than angry, America hating leftists. 

Maybe.

But there's an equal chance they're much more dangerous. In an in-depth article that explores the origins of the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions (this is a classic, read the whole thing), Abe Greenwald writes:

The battle for the survival of the United States of America is upon us. It has not come in the form of traditional civil war. There are no uniformed armies, competing flags, or alternate constitutions. The great showdown is not being fought within the physical limits of a battlefield. It is instead happening all around us and directly to us. It defines our culture, sustains our media, and gives new shape to our public and private institutions. In this fight, there is no distinction between what was once known as the culture war and politics rightly understood. The confrontation stretches through time and space, reframing our distant past even as it transforms the horizon, erupting from coast to coast, and constraining our lives in subtle and obvious ways. And it’s happening too fast for us to take its full measure.

Greenwald's opening paragraph seems overwrought—until you read on. He describes the conditions the players, and the strategies that led to the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions and draws concerning parallels to the same characteristics that are evident in today's United States.

Greenwald calls this "the great unraveling" and describes it this way:

As of this writing, Portland, Oregon, has endured more than two months straight of anarchist violence directed at federal buildings and employees. In other cities—New York, Los Angeles, Richmond, Omaha, and Austin, to name a few—mob violence continues to erupt regularly, always connected to cries for justice and sometimes resulting in death. Accelerating the general dissolution, police forces have been successfully hobbled in response to the killing of George Floyd, and the resulting spike in murder and violent crime shows no sign of abating. All the while, armchair lynch mobs have continued to claim the scalps of those who veer from or merely stumble on the path to social-justice enlightenment. It is the full-time job of any American with a public presence to bow down before the identity cult. Professional athletes have mutated overnight into a congeries of Kaepernicks. As for the public, 62 percent of all Americans, according to a poll by the CATO Institute, now say they’re afraid to voice their political views lest they be punished professionally.

Leading media organizations, as they did from the start, lend their approval to all of it. After months of defending chaos in the streets as “mostly peaceful,” the media elite is openly covering for a movement whose defining features are intimidation and mass violence. 

After discussing characteristics of the great unraveling in a historical context ,he suggests how it can be defeated:

[Defeating it] will be accomplished, if it is to be accomplished, as Americans outside the revolution’s burning core come to grips with what it is; as its wreckage exceeds its justification; and as the gap between revolutionary claims and reality becomes too great to ignore. Metropolitan liberals may be passionate about social justice, but they won’t want their cities forever blighted by crime. Americans of faith may feel compelled to support a movement claiming to speak for the oppressed, but they won’t abide Bibles in bonfires.2

At the moment, the elites are stunned. The revolution’s instantaneous appearance amid a larger national crisis took them by surprise. They have scrambled to get on the side of the supposedly righteous. But as more Americans endure the noxious consequences of the unraveling, elected officials responsive to their needs will be compelled to change course. Let us not forget that after the immediate upheavals of the 1960s, busing, quotas, and spiking crime all came under attack by the American public—despite an elite atmosphere that sought to discredit the response as an explosion of racist rage. Even with the strength of that criticism, busing was ended, the use of quotas in hiring was curtailed, and punishment for criminal action became tougher.

The revolution’s most exploitable weakness is that it is wrong. To be sure, catastrophically mistaken revolutions have succeeded in the past. Most revolutions are in fact terrible affairs all the way through. But even so, they grew out of intolerance for states and systems that deserved contempt. Louis XVI’s France was a deeply corrupt country, already undone by war debt, aristocratic privilege, and a mode of inequality that would be science-fictional by current Western norms. Much the same applies to czarist Russia, too, which was a punishing hell for displaced peasants and industrial workers. The current revolutionaries, on the other hand, are fundamentally wrong. As a factual matter, America is a vigorous democratic republic—the freest and least prejudiced country of this or any time. 

The Left's "blame America first" policy is a combination of dishonesty, failed thinking on both human and political levels, and outright nonsense. It will fail, and the first signs that it is failing will come in November.

Sarsour and The Platform

Noted anti-Semite and pro-palestinian activist, Linda Sarsour, has been a fixture within the hard-left wing of the Democratic party. Embraced by the likes of Ilhan Omar, AOC,and other Squad members and quietly tolerated by party leadership, she has spewed her anti-Israel venom for years. Now, recognizing that Jewish donors and supporters have begun to ask hard questions about Sarsour, Joe Biden has "condemned" her. I have to wonder if a cognitively challenged Biden even knows who she is.

The Dems and their trained hamsters in the media are trumpeting Biden's "condemnation" of Sarsour, hoping it will assuage concerns about the Dems anti-Israel trajectory over the past decade.  If that were true, their party platform for 2020 would reflect a degree of moderation that somehow appears to be missing. The party's 2020 platform positions on the Middle East provides a clear indication of just how extreme the Dems have become. Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon comment:

For the past week or so [written prior to the convention], Democrats purporting to be "pro-Israel" have been laying the groundwork for release of the party's official 2020 platform. Their spin has been that they held the line against their party's ascendant anti-Israel progressive base.

They needed that spin. Many lifelong Democrats who recognize Israel as a valued U.S. ally, who appreciate the existence of the world's only secure Jewish state and who oppose the unremitting terror campaigns of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas had grown concerned.

They know that much as they may have admired the Obama-Biden administration on other grounds, its "daylight" doctrine had been an unmitigated disaster for Israel. In a stark, stunning and explicit departure from decades of bipartisan U.S. policy promising "no daylight" and "no surprises" between the allies, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry revealed Israeli intelligence, sabotaged operations and engaged in stealthy diplomatic attacks on the Jewish state—culminating in the notorious UNSC 2334 declaration that the mere act of Jews living in Judea is criminal. The party's progressive base has made no secret of its desire to pocket 2334 and orient American policy in directions increasingly antagonistic towards Israel—and increasingly dangerous to Jewish life. The purported "pro-Israel" Democrats needed a pro-Israel platform for assurance.

But the Democratic National Committee released a platform 180 degrees off from the spin. It's so pro-Iran that the National Iranian-American Council, the de facto Iranian regime lobby in Washington, immediately "applauded" the DNC "for its forward-leaning platform commitments on issues of importance to the Iranian-American community." It demonstrates that President Obama's curious preference for the supremacists running the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than our traditional regional allies, has become mainstream Democratic ideology.

After going over the Israel plank in detail, Abramson and Ballabon (read the whole thing) write:

With this Israel plank in its platform, Joe Biden and the 2020 Democrats have effectively adopted the terrorists' creed, excusing, justifying and encouraging the murder of Jews, denying history and law, and promoting the continued rise of global anti-Semitism. While the platform committee may have allowed the purportedly "pro-Israel" operatives to remove the word "occupation" from the text, its substance reaffirms the Democrats' commitment to the unspeakably anti-Semitic and anti-American notion of "judenrein" territory—the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their historic homeland. Selected details and linguistic niceties cannot spin away the platform's substantive anti-Jewish reality.

So ... despite its new anti-Sarsour stance, it looks like the Dems want to continue Obama's attempted abandonment and demonization of Israel. At the same time, they'll make nicey-nice with Iran, one of our most dangerous adversaries in the Middle East. As a consequence, should the Dems and Biden's puppet masters retake control of our foreign policy, the chaos that pervaded the Middle East during the Obama years will look calm by comparison.

UPDATE (8-24-2020):

For those who think Biden's "condemnation" of Sarsour somehow cleanses the Democratic party of it's on-going support for anti-Semites, The Trump Campaign provides a few additional examples of Biden supporters who appeared or attended the DNC Convention:

Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., AKA the rapper “Common”: In 2018, Lynn was featured on a music compilation project released by [notorious anti-Semite, Louis] Farrakhan. He also promoted a clip of Farrakhan speaking, saying, “Wise words being spoken!” He encouraged people to listen to Farrakhan in 2014, posed for photos with Farrakhan in 2006, appeared at a Farrakhan-organized concert in 1997, and praised Farrakhan’s organization in 1995.

 

Freddy Haynes: In 2017, Haynes promoted a photo he took with Farrakhan and called him a "wonderful and great man." Haynes said it was a "great honor to be in the presence of The Minister." In 2015, Haynes called Farrakhan "a prophetic leader of our time" and voiced support for Farrakhan's "Justice Or Else" movement.

 

Tamika Mallory: In 2018, Mallory attended an address by Farrakhan in which he labeled Jews “satanic” and called them his “enemy.” After his remarks, Mallory called him the greatest of all time. Just last year, Mallory refused to denounce Farrakhan when challenged on ABC’s The View.

 

Linda Sarsour: A strong proponent of the anti-Israel BDS movement, Sarsour spoke at a 2015 rally organized by Farrakhan. She also compared progressive Zionists to white supremacists, asking how they could support a state like Israel “that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else?”

 

Rep. James Clyburn: In 2018, Clyburn refused to condemn Farrakhan, who he has consistently supported for decades. In 2011, Clyburn shared a stage with Farrakhan, where he said, “I want to thank Min. Farrakhan for offering up a number of precepts that we ought to adhere to.”

 

Sen. Cory Booker: Last year, Booker told a questioner that he’s “very familiar with” Farrakhan’s “beliefs,” has heard his “speeches for a lot of my life,” and would meet with him.

As some have stated elsewhere, following the lead of notorious U.K. anti-Semite and politician, Jeremy Corbyn, the "corbynization" of the Democratic Party continues.

UPDATE (8-25-2020):

The Dems never cease to amaze in their craven attempts to keep their hard left base from scattering to the winds. In the aftermath of Biden's "condemnation" of Linda Sarsour, a few things happened. Jonathan Tobin reports:

The Biden campaign’s distancing itself from Sarsour was roundly denounced on the left. The Moveon.org activist group defended her as a “leader in the fight for justice.”  Extremist Muslim groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) claimed that denouncing Sarsour was an insult to all Muslim voters.

But while this might have been a Sister Souljah moment for Biden in which he successfully distanced himself from the most irresponsible elements in his party, that good impression was erased within days.

On Sunday, some of the Biden campaign’s most important players walked back the denunciation of Sarsour. In a private call, a tape of which was obtained by the Middle East Eye website, Ashley Allison, the campaign’s national coalitions director said she was “sorry” for what had been said about Sarsour.

More importantly, Tony Blinken, the candidate’s top foreign policy advisor who has been leading efforts to reassure Jewish Democrats and supporters of Israel that Biden could be counted on, also apologized to Sarsour and her backers.

Dem supporters in the Jewish community (in fact, in every community) should be disgusted by this hypocrisy. Imagine for just a moment, the media reaction if after Donald Trump condemned Joe Biden's buddy, Robert Byrd, a senior official in the RNC apologized to the late KKK member's family. Instead, crickets.

YLL

Why is it that most of us feel that it's a far greater tragedy when a young person, say, a 12-year old or a teenager, dies than it is when a octogenarian passes. The reason, even if we're not conscious of it, is a metric that is well know in the public health area—years of lost life (YLL).  This metric "estimates the years of potential life lost due to premature deaths. YLL takes into account the age at which deaths occur, giving greater weight to deaths at a younger age and lower weight to deaths at older age."

The calculation for YLL is somewhat more complex than my explanation, but overall, it implies that we should be very concerned when diseases attack young people, pulling out all the stops to protect them. After all, if young people die in large numbers due to some disease, the cumulative YLL is enormous. 

You'd think that public health experts like Team Apocalypse member,  Dr. Anthony Fauci, would have factored YLL into his recommendations and decision-making when early data about COVID-19 provided a strong indication that those over 80-years old in nursing homes were the most likely to die from the virus, and those who were under 25 had near zero risk of death. In fact, within a month of the first reported COVID-19-related deaths in the West, we knew that close to 40 percent of those who died fell into the 70-plus category. That number has been revised upward to just over 50 percent.

An 80+ year old in a nursing home has an average life expectancy of between 0.5 and 1.5 years (because that person invariably has health problems). Any recommended policy associated with COVID-19 should have focused on protecting the elderly, bolstering nursing home defenses and otherwise suggesting that seniors isolate themselves from the population at large. But businesses, schools, and most other activities should have gone on as normal.

Why? YLL, that's why. 

Anyone under 40 - 50 years old has a tiny probability of dying from the virus. It would have been far better to have allowed the virus to spread through that population, so that we could have achieved herd immunity more rapidly. That's essentially what Sweden did, and it worked just as well as countries that shutdown. Only one difference. Sweden didn't wreck their economy and put millions out of work. We did.

Incredibly, Joe Biden has indicated that he would again shutdown the country should COVID-19 re-emerge next winter. He blithely suggests that he'd "follow the science" (a recurrent Dem mantra). Unfortunately, the Dem members of Team Apocalypse have been doing anything but following the science since April. Their decision-making and consequent actions run counter to international public health data, to science, and to reality itself. But there has been a political purpose to it.

I wonder whether Biden's suggestion that he would shutdown the country yet again would fly if the Dems were in control. I suspect not—because the last thing they'd need is an angry public and an even more crippled economy.Their trained hamsters in the media would play along. Death scoreboards and "case" counts would magically disappear.

But Joe says he'd shut it all down. That position, in and of itself, is more than enough for any thinking person to vote against the Democratic contender. His cognitive deficit  apparently makes him unable to learn from past mistakes (and yes, the shutdown was a mistake).

Dark

Last night, a cognitively impaired presidential candidate for the Democratic party told the nation that if elected, he would lead the country out of a "season of darkness." That's an interesting characterization of the past four years. It's hard to see how "darkness" pervaded a society in which the middle class and the working poor along with people of color saw significant gains in both employment and wages, or a nation that that had destroyed an Islamist enemy (ISIS) and was working hard to extract itself from wars gone on for far too long, or a government that had a coherent foreign policy that rewarded our allies and punished our adversaries, or an administration that reduced taxes for everyone and eliminated regulation that strangled businesses.

But on the other hand, there was darkness. The cognitively impaired candidate's political party would not accept the outcome of an election and as a consequence, worked to destroy a duly elected president. Darkness pervaded their worldview.They created a true hoax that characterized the elected president as a traitor and roiled the nation in a failed attempt to destroy his presidency. Racial strife was amplified by the Democratic party in a cynical attempt to gain political advantage. Congressional hearings were conducted with the sole intent of destroying people's reputations and lives. A impeachment was conducted and failed because there was no cause. And now, desperate because they failed to destroy their opponent, the Democrats have concocted ye another hoax, this one involving the USPS, so ridiculous, it would be laughable if it weren't part of a broad pattern of dishonesty.

So, yeah, there was darkness, but the irony is that Joe Biden's party insisted on leading us into it.

If the leftist base of the Democratic party can get  Biden elected, they will take over the party permanently and "transform" our country and its policies. Biden will be nothing more than a cognitively-impaired figurehead. The real power will be in the hands of leftist politicians and unelected hard-left supporters who believe that our country is grievously broken, and only they can fix it. The problem is that their "fix" will lead not to the utopia they and Biden promise, but toward: 

• a failed economy in which individuals and businesses are crushed with higher taxes; 
• increased regulation that will suffocate innovation; 
• a government-run healthcare system that will be both ineffective and massively expensive at the same time;
• federal bail-outs of blue cities and states that have become more and more dystopian as the years pass;
• an elevation of political correctness and cancel culture that will stifle free speech; 
• an academic, media and entertainment complex that will spew even more propaganda than it already does, and 
• a foreign policy that emphasizes appeasement.

Yeah, I know, that's pretty dark. And yeah, I know that the Dems are promising us that they'll be "moderate" and all that. They won't.

After years of lies going back to the Obama era (e.g., the weaponization of the federal government agencies against their opponents) and forward into Trump's term (the Russian collusion hoax and the now proven 'soft coup'), the Dems believe they're bullet proof. Their media hamsters won't question a thing they propose or do (after all, the hamsters agree with all of it), and the result will be hardly moderate. Their platform provides a first glance at the reality of the new Democratic party and that reality is ... dark.

UPDATE - 1:

---------------------

Historian Victor Davis Hansen sees as equally dark future, should the Left gain control:

What should we expect then if Biden wins and either steps down or more or less is left as a diminished figurehead controlled by the hard Left?

First, there is one theme that unites “the Squad,” Black Lives Matter, the globalist technocracy, and the international Left: unapologetic anti-Semitism. We will see overt anti-Semitism in a way this country has not seen since the early 20th century, all couched in ideological and politically correct attacks on “Zionists” and “the rich” and “Wall Street”—and why Israel has no business being a “Jewish state.”

It has already begun with an NFL player voicing Hitlerian tropes and praising Louis Farrakhan, and then being seconded by an array of rappers, woke Black Lives Matter activists and “Free Palestine” demonstrations. To smear “the Jews” no longer is grounds for an immediate and expected apology, but more “So what are you going to do about it?” Anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within the DNA of the BLM movement—and professional sports as well, as we saw recently from the warnings of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Charles Barkley.

“Eat the rich” sloganeering and plans for a wealth tax, and jacking up capital gains and income tax rates, all seem like they are aimed at the super-rich. But don’t think weaponizing the tax code, the government bureaucracies, and the culture itself will do much to the immense wealth of Jeff Bezos, the heirs to Steve Jobs, the Google zillionaires, George Soros, the Walmart fortunes, the lesser tech billionaires, the Facebook clan, or Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet. None of them will be touched. 

I'm well aware that Democrats suggested a different dark future when they considered a Trump win in 2016, none of which came to pass despite their hysterical protestations that a "facist, racist dictatorship" was upon us.  Instead, we saw an significant successes despite a Tsunami of hate coming from the Dems and their trained hamsters in the media.

Could the same thing happen in reverse? Could a Biden presidency be a golden era in which things truly do get better? Sadly ... no. The left is too authoritarian, too hubristic, and too certain of its moral superiority to moderate its positions. Hansen is correct, should Biden win, dark times will follow. 

UPDATE - 2:

Talk about "darkness." Throughout their convention, the Dems tried to convince Americans that Donald Trump is responsible for COVID-19 and for the deaths it has caused. Kim Strassel comments:

Is it reasonable to blame a single politician for the spread of a highly infectious virus, especially in a free country with 50 states and 330 million people? Joe Biden is lucky that wasn’t the standard a decade ago.

If the Democratic convention produced one theme it’s that Donald Trump is personally at fault for every coronavirus death. The message is that crazy, that blunt. Kamala Harris: “Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives.” Barack Obama: “Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe: 170,000 Americans dead.”

Democrats even claim Mr. Biden saved lives in 2014. Michelle Obama: “Our leaders had worked hand in hand with scientists to help prevent an Ebola outbreak from becoming a global pandemic.” Ms. Harris last week: “Remember that pandemic? Barack Obama and Joe Biden did their job. Only two people died in the United States.”

Ebola is a terrifying disease, but outbreaks tend to happen only in very poor nations, and if caught early the virus is difficult to transmit outside hospitals. Anthony Fauci said in 2014 that a U.S. outbreak was “very, very, very unlikely.” Mr. Obama told Americans to chill out: “Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu.”

The Ebola example is designed to divert attention from a more relevant comparison: the H1N1 swine-flu outbreak of 2009-10. Democrats don’t like to talk about H1N1, because it didn’t go well. If it had been as deadly as Covid-19, the toll would have been catastrophic. The history is a powerful reminder that governments can’t stop a virus—although they can make epidemics worse.

In a devastating reconstruction of the Obama-Biden response to H1N1, Strassel points out the Dems' utter hypocrisy and cynical political posturing with regard to COVID-19. Read the whole thing.

Ironically, at least the Obama-Biden do-nothing strategy for H1N1 didn't create the economic devastation that the COVID-19 shutdown strategy—championed by the Democrats and their media hamsters—caused in 2020. But then again, the Dems needed a wedge issue and the shutdown gave them one, destroying a robust economy and creating fear, uncertainty and doubt among the citizenry. BTW ... H1N1 was far more virulent that COVID-19 among children and under Obama's watch, it killed 528 of them. Funny that not a single Republican accused Obama of killing them.

Omertå and Sturmabteilung

In its heyday, the Mafia survived and prospered because of omertå—the code of silence. 

Omertå has been adopted by the main stream media who over the past decade have become nothing more than Democratic Party operatives. They hide behind the phony patina of "journalism" to suggest that they are unbiased, objective, and honest. They are none of those things.  They remain largely silent whenever news that conflicts with the prevailing progressive or Democrat narrative occurs.

For example, had mail in ballots been suggested by the GOP and opposed by the Dems, the disastrous results of mail-in ballot elections in NY, NJ, and VA would be headline news. But because the Dems desperately need mail-in to have any chance at winning in the fall, the media has imposed the omertå code when it comes to reporting on the results of those mail-in elections. The Dems and their trained hamsters are also aggressively promoting the mail-in ballot hoax.* If Donald Trump wins, all we'll hear for the next four years is that Trump subverted the vote by stealing mailboxes. It's so ridiculous it would be funny, if it wasn't so cynical and dishonest.

But it's far more than just the upcoming election. Roger Simon falls in the trap of using Nazi metaphors, but he's on to something when he writes:

For those who have had an, alas, typical American education and are unfamiliar with Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) when Hitler’s paramilitary “Sturmabteilung” (SA), literally Storm Detachment, broke a lot more than windows on Nov. 9-10, 1938. Here’s just a few words of description from Wikipedia:

“Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.”

Though lasting but two days, what happened was horrifying. Then, as we know, it got worse. Unchecked, these things tend to.

America has been in its own version of Crystal Night for many months now from broken windows to looting to destruction of myriad stores and other places of business, police stations, and government edifices, not to mention considerable physical harm to persons.

Although not yet of Nazi (i.e., National Socialist) proportions, it’s pretty bad and doesn’t seem to be getting better.

For the most part, nothing is being done about it, especially on the state and municipal levels. As in Nazi Germany, it is unchecked.

I think at some subliminal level, the vast majority of Americans recognize that the "mostly peaceful protestors" who have besieged places like Portland, Seattle, NYC, and Chicago are neither "mostly peace" nor overcome with their desire to see past racial prejudices eliminated. They are leftists and anarchists who want to create chaos as a precursor to their dreams of revolution and transformation. Worse, these leftist thugs are being covertly supported by many Democrats (and most media types) who are afraid that their woke credentials will be tarnished if they call them out.

It's inaccurate to compare groups like antifa or BLM to the Sturmabteilung. But that doesn't mean they're not dangerous and don't pose a long-term threat implied by Simon. Imagine for a moment that Biden and the Dems win in November. The "mostly peaceful protesters" will view that as validation of their "mostly peaceful" riots. After all, arson, theft, and violence would be seen as effective strategies by the crazies. As a consequence, it's likely  we'll see much more of it over the following four years. After all, their "revolution" has not yet arrived and they certainly won't stop just because a cognitively disabled president is at the reins. Vive la révolution.

From now until November, the media's code of omertå will be applied to every news story that might hurt the Biden-Harris ticket. That will undoubtedly include new about "mostly peaceful protests" that occur in blue cities, Joe's rapidly accelerating cognitive decline, and the whiff of scandal that follows Biden and Harris.  It will also include any news that might convince the public that the COVID-19 threat has passed and life can begin to return to normal. The Dems desperately need to keep schools closed, businesses shuttered, and people masked and uneasy.

But you know what? Even though the trained hamsters in the media will remain silent about anything that might hurt their Democrat candidates, I don't think the broader electorate will do so on November 3rd. 

Pushback is coming.

UPDATE:

In the words of Instapundit's Glen Reynolds: "It's really kind of impressive how [the Dems] shift seamlessly from one hysterical conspiracy theory to another."

Here's one of the people who will gladly support the leftists who will control Joe Biden's every move should he be elected:

Absolutely insane, but then again, I'm certain Rep. DeFazio is convinced that the Russians are hiding under Donald Trump's desk, that there was no attempt by the FBI to subvert Trump's presidency, and that keeping schools and businesses closed is the right course of action because ... "safety." 

The Cheshire Cat smiles.

Football

I suspect that many progressive members of Team Apocalypse* shrug off the fact that a number of high profile college conferences have cancelled the fall football season because ... COVID-19.  Possibly recognizing the lack of science that supports this decision, catastrophists argue, We MUST keep players safe ... and besides, one never knows what heinous after effects may ensue among players who contract COVID-19. Yeah, that would be the same players who statistics indicate would exhibit absolutely no symptoms today and are VERY unlikely to exhibit after effects in the future. The same players, BTW, who play a reasonably dangerous sport in which serious physical outcomes are statistically more probable that any serious outcome due to the virus.

Subliminally recognizing this, catastrophists become shrill as they virtue signal. Their voices,  muffled by their N95 masks, and tell us that it's only a game, and "safety" is paramount, so cancelling the season is the best course of action. 

Actually, it isn't. It's a symbol of a far more serious and unfounded capitulation  to fear and ultimately to hysteria.

John Freeman writes:

John Bohnenkamp at Sports Illustrated notes a recent letter from parents of University of Iowa players, which takes on one of the Big Ten’s claims:

Conference officials... noted that... athletes who have the COVID-19 virus could suffer from myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

In the letter, the parents stated, “Everyone testing positive MAY have an increased risk of this condition... Dr. Andy Peterson, Iowa’s team physician, states, ‘There are other viruses that cause myocarditis, like winter-time flu and things like that.’

“Football players, as well as all athletes of all contact sports, are well aware of the risk involved. They are educated on those risks and accept the consequences of those risks when they step on the field. Risks such as paralysis, infectious disease, cardiovascular and respiratory issues are listed by the CDC. Further risk include concussions that lead to depression, anxiety, aggression, personalty changes, increased risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, CTE and other brain disorders. Yet the individuals accepting those risks — our sons — were never consulted, heard from, or even considered in the Big Ten’s decision to cancel the season. No medical findings or opinions of experts have ever been shared.”

Fortunately for all of us, America’s college football families are demanding the serious consideration of costs and benefits, risks and rewards that has been sorely lacking at so many U.S. institutions this year.

Serious "consideration of costs and benefits, risks and rewards" has been a pretty novel activity as we wander through Wonderland (and here). Activated by media driven fear, uncertainty and doubt (along with a completely dishonest presentation of virus data), our major institutions have made bad decision after bad decision. College presidents are no exception.

If the players do play, it's likely that some will get COVID-19, just like kids that age get the flu every year. It's important to note that the affects of the common flu and COVID-19 for an 18- to 22-year old are virtually the same, except that many kids that age show no symptoms whatsoever after they've contracted COVID-19.

Fortunately, some collegiate conferences have rejected the catastrophist narrative and showed some courage and common sense. They're playing. 

Good for them.

FOOTNOTE:

*  Most of whom have taken the week off to watch the Zoom version of a hackneyed political convention in which the Democrats have already blamed Donald Trump for the edge-case death of a 65 year old man from COVID-19 much like GOP candidate Mitt Romney was blamed for the death of a grandmother from cancer. Staying classy as always.

It's Happening Again

Our manufacturing and e-commerce business ships thousands of packages each month. Around this time of year our shipping carriers, UPS and Fedex, send out notices to all of their customers. The notices inform us that shipping in the period around the Christmas holidays will likely be delayed (this year, UPS tells use that they're going to raise their rates a bit as well) and that we should plan accordingly to be sure we get orders to customers in the November-December time frame. They're being honest with us, and unless you're delusional or a conspiracy theorist, you would never assert that either carrier is trying to ruin Christmas or our business.

Yet over the past week, another major carrier, the USPS, has also sent out a notice that warns states to plan any mail-in ballot campaign (a horrendously bad idea in any event) accordingly because the USPS cannot adequately handle the volume implied by this last-minute plan, cobbled together with chewing gum and bailing wire by the Democrats. Yet the Democrats and their trained hamsters in the media assert that these notices and scheduled modifications of certain equipment and post boxes are "voter suppression" and a "threat to democracy" (they love both phrases). In the long tradition of the Russia Collusion hoax, the Dems have created the mail-in ballot hoax. The editors of the Wall Street Journal comment:

News broke Friday that the U.S. Postal Service has warned dozens of states, via letters from USPS General Counsel Thomas Marshall, that their deadlines “for requesting and casting mail-in ballots are incongruous with the Postal Service’s delivery standards.” On cue, Democrats and the press portrayed this as evidence of Trumpian sabotage and voter suppression.

In reality, it’s closer to the opposite: an attempt by the USPS to forestall state election failure. The letters were planned before the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, took the reins on June 15. Mr. Marshall sent nearly identical advice to election officials in a May letter posted at USPS.com. Strange public conspiracy.

“To account for delivery standards and to allow for contingencies (e.g., weather issues or unforeseen events), voters should mail their return ballots at least 1 week prior to the due date,” Mr. Marshall wrote in May. The same rule, he added, should apply to blank ballots: “The Postal Service also recommends that state or local election officials use FirstClass Mail and allow 1 week for delivery to voters.”

These guidelines are worth reiterating, given how states have bungled their recent primary elections. New York voters can request an absentee ballot using a mail application, which is valid if postmarked a week before Election Day. As a result of this lax deadline, plus a deluge of applications, roughly 30,000 ballots weren’t mailed to voters until June 22, a day before the primary election.

That seven-day deadline “is unrealistic,” Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, testified in court last month. The state board has argued for moving it back to 14 days, in line with the USPS suggestion of allowing seven days for delivery each way. Is Mr. Kellner complicit in postal sabotage?

Throughout the Trump years, the Dems have adopted a "by whatever means necessary" strategy to regain power. If that means promoting blatant lies, if it means sullying the reputation of both private citizens or public officials, if it mean co-opting an already biased media to do their dirty work for them—so be it. The mail-in ballot hoax is a perfect example. 

In addition, the Dems get the added benefit of deflection. The hoax allows them to avoid very real questions about the efficacy (and danger) of the mail-in ballot scheme. It also allows them to deflect attention from their cognitively disabled candidate, Joe Biden, who remains hidden from the media** and refuses to answer any probing question. Perfect!

So the next time you hear the Dems or one of their hamsters breathlessly tell you that you won't be getting any mail because ... Donald Trump, just remember that the same people who are telling you that, told you that Trump and Putin colluded to defeat Hillary, when in fact, we now know it was Hillary who colluding with the Russians and rogue FBI executives to ruin Donald Trump. Unbelievable ... yet it's happening again.

FOOTNOTE:

** Not quite. Joe Biden did grant a 'hard-hitting' interview to rapper Cardi B. Not Chuck Todd or Jake Tapper or Chris Wallace—Cardi B! 

Okay then ...

UPDATE - 1:

Byron York adds a comment on deflection—the Dems attempt to blame the probable failure to adequately process, validate and count mail-in ballots, not to their rushed and inadequate plan, but to their delusional assertion that Trump has sabotaged the USPS:

There are, of course, compelling examples of [mail-in ballot] election dysfunction, most notably the mess New York made of some of its congressional primaries this summer. But rather than representing a Postal Service problem, that was because some states are unprepared for a dramatic increase of voting by mail. The states have to prepare the ballots, address them, and process and count them when the Postal Service delivers them. That is the focus of the entirely legitimate fears of a possible vote-counting disaster this year. But it's not the Postal Service.

The latest Democrat hoax says otherwise, Byron.

UPDATE - 2:

OMG!!! The hoax has now become a full-blown mail "crisis." It's almost as if members of COVID's Team Apocalypse have been drafted to become crisis managers for the USPS. Rick Moran comments:

That dastardly Donald Trump is at it again. He is either the evilest man ever to hold the office of president or the dumbest. He is either a Machiavellian genius manipulating the media and his hypnotized followers or a bumbling know-nothing idiot.

Trump is being accused of sabotaging the November elections because he won’t give the postal unions and incompetent managers in the postal service $25 billion to play with. The money will stave off catastrophe for about a year at the rate the USPS is burning through cash. Without that money, we’re informed by those in the know, thousands — no, tens of thousands — no, millions of voters who wait until the last minute to mail in an absentee ballot might not have their votes counted because, well, Trump.

The procrastinators in America are up in arms and plan a demonstration to show their outrage. But it probably won’t happen until after the election since that’s when they’ll eventually get around to it.

The “crisis” in postal delivery presupposes that, prior to Trump’s shenanigans, the USPS was doing fine — nothing that a few tens of billions of taxpayer dollars couldn’t fix. In fact, that’s what the postal unions are saying. In a statement released on Saturday, the letter carriers and postal workers’ unions assure the public that even without the money, they can do the job.

So ... if that's the case, what exactly is the problem? The USPS can and will deliver the mail. The problem isn't them ... it's the idiocy of a last minute voting scheme, spawned in the fever swamps of Democrat strategy sessions, suggesting that state governments that have never done universal mail in ballots can magically create a distribution, collection, verification, and counting infrastructure that has not previously existed and do it in an accurate and timely fashion that uncovers fraud, double voting, and vote harvesting. They can't ... if recent experience in NY, NJ and VA is any indication. That's why the hoax/crisis has been manufactured by the Dems.

UPDATE - 3:

And this rather obvious tweet—at least to everyone outside the fever swamps of the Democratic Party—on why we should be very worried that fraud and abuse will be the stepchildren of any widespread universal mail-in ballot approach.

UPDATE - 4:

Of course, omertå is in place (see tomorrow's post for more details), so the media refuses to report on how other developed countries view universal mail in balloting. In the abstract of a paper titled, "Why Do Most Countries Ban Mail-In Ballots?: They Have Seen Massive Vote Fraud Problems," John Lott writes:

Thirty-seven states have so far changed their mail-in voting procedures this year in response to the Coronavirus. Despite frequent claims that President Trump’s warning about vote fraud/voting buying with mail-in ballots is “baselessly” or “without evidence” about mail-in vote fraud, there are numerous examples of vote fraud and vote buying with mail-in ballots in the United States and across the world. Indeed, concerns over vote fraud and vote buying with mail-in ballots causes the vast majority of countries to ban mail-in voting unless the citizen is living abroad.

Most developed countries ban mail-in ballots unless the citizen is living abroad or require Photo-IDs to obtain those ballots. Even higher percentages of European Union or other European countries ban mail-in ballots for in country voters. In addition, some countries that allow voting by mail for citizens living the country don’t allow it for everyone. For example, Japan and Poland have limited mail-in voting to those who have special certificates verifying that they are disabled.

France has made an exception this year to the ban on mail-in ballots to those who are sick or at particular risk during the Coronavirus pandemic. Poland and two cities in Russia have adopted mail-in ballots for elections this year only, but most countries haven't changed their regulations.

France banned mail-in voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and voters cast multiple votes. Mail-in ballots were used to cast the votes of dead people. Examples for other countries are provided.

You'd think the media would think this information might be of interest, but hey ... it runs counter to the current hoax/crisis narrative.