What I Saw at the Revolution.

by

Zulu Dawn

News from the front today. First, Glenn Reynolds explains where Trump came from.

The thing is, we had that movement. It was the Tea Party movement. Unlike Brooks, I actually ventured out to “intermingle” with Tea Partiers at various events that I covered for PJTV.com, contributing commentary to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Examiner. As I reported from one event in Nashville, “Pundits claim the tea partiers are angry — and they are — but the most striking thing about the atmosphere in Nashville was how cheerful everyone seemed to be. I spoke with dozens of people, and the responses were surprisingly similar. Hardly any had ever been involved in politics before. Having gotten started, they were finding it to be not just worthwhile, but actually fun. Laughter rang out frequently, and when new-media mogul Andrew Breitbart held forth on a TV interview, a crowd gathered and broke into spontaneous applause. A year ago (2009), many told me, they were depressed about the future of America. Watching television pundits talk about President Obama’s transformative plans for big government, they felt alone, isolated and helpless.

Bingo !

Now, we have Act Two. Will Hillary’s “Thin Blue Line of rust belt states hold ?

Lt William Vereker, on a routine patrol from the British camp at Isandlwana looked down into the Ngwebeni valley to find it boiling with the hitherto unseen main Zulu Army of 20,000 men.

As in 1879 the political scouts are rushing back to inform the camp of the unanticipated development. Shocked but still undaunted, the pundits remain confident that the threat can be stopped by the Democrat “Blue Wall” in the industrial and upper Midwest. There, media artillery and the technologically superior liberal ground game are expected to hold the line against the angry white voter.

Read the rest, as Glenn says.

Now, we have the horrified GOPe. To Peter Wehner, Trump is the scary black face in the forest.

It is stunning to contemplate, particularly for those of us who are lifelong Republicans, but we now live in a time when the organizing principle that runs through the campaign of the Republican Party’s likely nominee isn’t adherence to a political philosophy — Mr. Trump has no discernible political philosophy — but an encouragement to political violence.

Mr. Trump’s supporters will dismiss this as hyperbole, but it is the only reasonable conclusion that his vivid, undisguised words allow for. As the examples pile up, we should not become inured to them. “I’d like to punch him in the face,” Mr. Trump said about a protester in Nevada. (“In the old days,” Mr. Trump fondly recalled, protesters would be “carried out in a stretcher.”)

OMG! What happened to “hit back twice as hard!” or “Bring a gun to a knife fight?” Rudeness will not be tolerated in the GOPe.

The antidote to this threat, Lincoln argued, was to cultivate a “political religion” that emphasized “reverence for the laws.” Passion was our enemy, he warned; it had to be contained. “Reason — cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason — must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.”

Lincoln was a keen student and great interpreter of the founders, and of course the founders also thought deeply about how a self-governing people could restrain political passions. In his book “Madison’s Metronome,” the scholar Greg Weiner points out that James Madison’s lifelong concern was that majorities would be governed by emotion rather than reason, the “cool” faculty. In Mr. Weiner’s words, Madison “portrayed passion through metaphors that suggested rapid and uncontrolled spread, including those of fires, fevers, pestilence and contagions.”

And now that “reverence for laws” has gone with Obama’s executive orders and BLM’s cop hatred, echoed on college campuses ? What now ?

The trouble is that Hillary’s choice may already have been pre-empted by events. They’re going left. Activists maddened at the very idea of Trump’s candidacy “blocked a main highway leading into Fountain Hills where Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump held a campaign rally Saturday.” Acting with an unshakable sense of ideological superiority, “the protesters parked their cars in the middle of the road, unfurling banners with anti-Trump slogans and chanting ‘Trump is hate.’ The disruption caused a lengthy traffic backup, and drivers honked their horns in frustration.” Like Col. Pulleine on that fateful date in 1879, Hillary has no choice but be dragged where they go. Sanders’ troops, Hillary’s personal Colonel Durnford, are off to teach the natives a lesson in an independent and uncoordinated action.

“Natives,” of course, being white men and a few blacks who had cast off their chains.

For Mr. Trump, this is all of a piece. His entire campaign, from its very first moments, has been built on stoking anger, grievances and resentment against people of other races, religions and nationalities. Mexicans coming to America are rapists and drug dealers. Muslims hate America and need to be barred from it. Syrian refugees are “Trojan horses.”

Yes, San Bernardino was extreme “workplace violence” and the mass rapes Europe is seeing from its “Syrian refugees” are not to be considered in a genteel party.

Max Boot, a Republican Trump critic who was a foreign policy adviser to Marco Rubio’s campaign, says that he has never experienced as much anti-Semitism as he has since the start of the Trump campaign.

Well, that depends on how many Muslims are around.

The following videos are sequential clips that an AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference attendee and lawyer, Joel Griffith, posted to his Facebook page. He simply asks for more information from some of the pro-Palestinian protesters, and gets assaulted and threatened. The police officer standing right there doesn’t even do anything.

Must be Trump’s fault alright.

32 thoughts on “What I Saw at the Revolution.”

  1. >> The police officer standing right there doesn’t even do anything.

    The officer was black. Trump is running as a Republican. He’s sees the guy asking questions as pro-Republican. So fuck you in the heart. You can see it on his face.

    Question: What is Mr Wehner doing writing anti-Trump op-eds in the NYT? Who is the audience? Certainly not conservatives. So what does he hope to gain? To demonize Trump among the Left, as if he needed to stoke the fire? Again, why? Does he hope to stir up violence toward Trump? Why? Is he that big a threat to insiders gravy train of graft? I assume they perceive him to be, but to my eyes Cruz is the bigger threat. Do the GOPe feel they may be able to ‘handle’ Cruz but not Trump? Fascinating, the enemies he has.

  2. Mr. Trump has no discernible political philosophy — but an encouragement to political violence.

    What did these morons believe they were doing to the country when they were governing. On a number of fronts there were committing violence against the people.

    They transformed a stable and very successful society from 90% white to 60% white and instituted all manner of offenses against liberty in order to make this society work.

    They decimated the middle class.

    They instituted an intrusive surveillance state because now we have unAmerican enemies within America.

    The old America had buy-in from all sectors of society because America worked for them. When you destroy an order which is working and replace it with a new order which only benefits some, but benefits them greatly, then this violence that you’ve done will not stand free from threat.

    The antidote to this threat, Lincoln argued, was to cultivate a “political religion” that emphasized “reverence for the laws.”

    Again, this doesn’t work if the law, which we are to revere, has been corrupted and coopted to serve those who reformed America to benefit their own interests. If you want reverence for the laws, then restore America to the conditions which exited in the 50s. That seems like an eminently fair trade to me. Get crackin, Wehner, but first admit your culpability for destroying what once worked quite well and the violence needed to do this deed.

  3. TangoMan, agreed. The guy is a tool and a hypocrite. But who’s tool and what is the end goal?

  4. There is a lot of power, wealth and influence for those in the elite under a new order than there was under the old order. So long as they can maintain a whip hand, they’re golden. As their power comes under threat, the probability of a French or Russian Revolution increases.

    We’re transitioning, slowly, to a neo-feudal system. People are figuring this out.

    It’s long been known that free trade develops economic efficiencies and that the gains and losses from free trade are not uniformly delivered. What I’ve seen taking place over the years is a big push to capture those efficiencies, deliver them to those who benefit and absolutely no effort expended to provide mechanisms by which those who lost from free trade can be made whole. Even now we’re seeing calls for more tax cuts for the elite. When those elite need an army of voters to give them legitimacy, don’t they ask themselves why the plebes should vote in favor of elite interests. As Adam Smith noted, there is a lot of ruin in a nation and this economic slack worked to insulate the plebes, just enough, for them to be bought off with efforts expended on gun rights, defense of marriage, abortion battles, but now that the wealth slack has mostly dissipated the plebes are worried about stable jobs, they’re not big into the “gig economy” and they’re really not big into the “part-time barista, with a BS in Biology economy” either.

    There used to be an implicit contract in effect – go to school, do well, work hard, and you will have a good life and in exchange you accept that others will do very well for themselves and not go all communist on them. That still works for some people but more and more people are not seeing their contract terms being honored, so if this is the case why should they honor their obligations?

    I don’t understand why this type of analysis escapes our betters. Are they really so insulated that they’re blind to everything outside their bubble? I suppose this actually is the most parsimonious explanation, maybe tied with the argument that they knew what they were doing but gambled that they could contain everything and keep on doing business as usual.

  5. Again, I go back to the Michael Barone article in the Washington Examiner. Trump has 50% unfavorable. He is simply not electable. Cruz is 50-50 with Hillary and Rubio beats her handily. You have no idea what Trump’s platform is. Who is he going to nominate to the Supreme Court? My guess is 50/50 between Obama and Judge Judy. This is the Obama Age where people say whatever to get elected and then do what they will. Therefore, character matters.

    Trump hits every Democrat talking point. Old White Male who talks disparagingly of minorities. Racist. Check.
    Old White Male who changes wives like pants and harasses women news announcers. Sexist. Check.
    Billionaire out of touch with the public. Inequality. Check.
    Violence. Check.

    The media have yet to really go to work on Trump but you can hear the talking points on NPR where they are checking them out. See above. All those Trump “Democrats” you keep talking about will evaporate in the general when the press goes to town. You will also lose the Wehner’s of the world. So you will be left with a small corps of true believers and get trounced. What do you do then? Recruit the Kardashians for ’20?

  6. “What is Mr Wehner doing writing anti-Trump op-eds in the NYT?”

    I suspect it might have been solicited. I described him as “a tame Republican.” There are quite a few of them.

    ” He is simply not electable.”

    Cruz is less likely to defeat Hillary because he is very unlikely to get the cross overs that you dismiss.

    “So you will be left with a small corps of true believers and get trounced. ”

    I guess we will see. Meanwhile Trump is expanding his governing team. I guess not everyone agrees with you.

    By the way, Slate doesn’t like Trump’s team members.

    According to Adam Serwer, who wrote a long investigative piece on Phares in 2011, former colleagues described him as, in Serwer’s words, “one of the group’s chief ideologists, working closely with the Lebanese Forces’ Fifth Bureau, a unit that specialized in psychological warfare.” As one former militiaman told Serwer, “There is a problem with Islam. … If you want to follow the Koran by the book you have to be like [Osama] bin Laden. It is a reality. And Walid Phares knows this reality. He’s lived here.”

    Can’t have that.

    And Brussels blew up this morning.

  8. The Lebanese Forces is now a political party with many members serving in the parliament. The party actually gets bankrolled now by Saudi Arabia.

    Talk about beating a dead horse. The war ended 26 years ago, and this is best they can do. Notice they don’t ever seem to care that Hillary’s top aide Huma used to work for the Muslim Brotherhood. This is how it goes for the Left – Christians bad, Muslims good.

    Here’s a good one:

    She says Phares believed that the civil war was the latest in a series of civilizational conflicts between Muslims and Christians.

    Shocking.

    Except it’s completely true. There was a Christian civilization and a Muslim civilization. They were always separate, and they always fought each other. Where’s the debate? It’s bad enough that the Christians lost, both to Muslims and international secular humanists, but every few years these dopes dredge up this stuff.

    Like many Maronites at that time, Phares believed that Lebanese Christians were ethnically distinct from Arabs. (This has since proven to be without scientific basis.)

    Except is hasn’t. Crusaders ‘left genetic legacy’

    The researchers found that some Christian men in Lebanon carry a DNA signature hailing from Western Europe.

    Four crusades came through Lebanon between the 11th and 13th Centuries – the first, second, third and sixth. The bulk of the crusader armies came from England, France, Germany and Italy; many of the men stayed to build castles and settlements, mixing with the local populations.

    The scientists also found that Lebanese Muslim men were more likely than Christians to carry a particular genetic signature. But this one is linked to expansions from the Arabian Peninsula which brought Islam to the area in the 7th and 8th Centuries.

    So now we get to the real reason Leftist journalists hate Middle Eastern Christians. They only exist because they are the result of “terrible deeds in the name of Christ”. They don’t deserve to live in the eyes of the Left. They must certainly be stopped from any involvement in government.

  10. Are they really so insulated that they’re blind to everything outside their bubble?

    Yes. They also have so much to gain. And they are not Americans first. They are part of a global elite that is very much smarter and more moral than everyone else. The plebes simply do not have their global perspective because they are not looking at things from the commanding heights. When you are better than everyone else, you don’t have to listen to anyone else. God Save The Kings.

  11. Trump’s got another interesting name on the list – some Greek kid named Papadopoulos

    His points in all of them boil down to this: Israel should use the natural gas it has found in the giant Leviathan field offshore in the eastern Mediterranean to build bridges to Greece and Cyprus – and avoid dealing with Turkey at all costs. Any extra gas could be sent to Egypt, which Papadopoulos said already has liquefied natural gas plants for importing gas.

    Papadopoulos also wrote in January 2014 that, “Israel and Greece’s robust military relations have redrawn the political map of the region. The U.S. would be wise to shift its policies, and resources, towards improving relations at all levels with its stalwart allies in the region, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, to contain the newly emergent Russian fleet, and malignant jihadist forces operating around Israel’s borders.”

    I don’t know whether Trump is going to be good or bad as president, but I think things are definitely going to be different

  12. Michael Kennedy: “And now that “reverence for laws” has gone with Obama’s executive orders and BLM’s cop hatred, echoed on college campuses ? What now ?”

    Yes. The law is supposed to protect people from the power around them. Opposing factions support the law and restrict their own actions in their enlightened self-interest, because the alternative is raw power and violence.

    Obama has cut down the law and has weakened appeals to law and restraint. The Supreme Court is obviously a political clique on the big issues. We are reduced to arguing over one justice appointment to determine the vast transformation of the US.

    Factions will use more direct power. The turmoil and bloodshed will again teach people that tribes must restrain themselves from attacking and stealing from the other tribes.

    This is a brilliant exchange from the movie “A Man for All Seasons (1966)”
    ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes )
    === ===
    William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

    Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

    William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

    Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
    === ===

    This also comments on the current authoritarianism, where the government is giving itself regulatory, surveilance, and arrest powers, supposedly to protect us. Well, it is all being done under “the law”, but this is cutting down the personal freedoms which used to be the assumed and natural law governing free people.

    To mangle a phrase, if you think that the society is violent now, just wait until it is disarmed and pacified by the authoritarian state.

  13. “If you want reverence for the laws, then restore America to the conditions which exited in the 50s. That seems like an eminently fair trade to me.”

    OK, I’m to blame. It was us scuzzy hippies that broke your ridiculous culture of stupidity, that the 50s exemplified. We gave you a good option to embrace diversity and change. Too scary.

  15. I generally let the hippies off easy due to their musical contributions. I really blame the Modernists for their solution of the planners


    The despot is not a man. It is the Plan. The correct, realistic, exact plan, the one that will provide your solution once the problem has been posited clearly, in its entirety, in its indispensable harmony. This plan has been drawn up well away from the frenzy in the mayor’s office or the town hall, from the cries of the electorate or the laments of society’s victims. It has been drawn up by serene and lucid minds. It has taken account of nothing but human truths. It has ignored all current regulations, all existing usages, and channels. It has not considered whether or not it could be carried out with the constitution now in force. It is a biological creation destined for human beings and capable of realization by modern techniques.

  16. “Ahhhh, PenGun is an ex-American draft dodger. That explains a good deal.”

    Nice try. I was born in England to Canadian parents just after the war, and so was a Canadian citizen. I grew up on army bases in Europe, Nigeria and England, then came to Canada permanently in 1959.

    My first best friend was my father’s cook’s son Suli, who was so black he could disappear in a deep shadow. My father, a Captain in the British Army at the time, was entitled to a house and about 16 servants who lived in a little village at the end of the grounds.

  17. ” I grew up on army bases in Europe”

    A renegade army brat. Almost as worthless as a draft dodger. My British Army friends are very proud of their service and ancestors who served.

  18. “A renegade army brat. Almost as worthless as a draft dodger.”

    Well thank you, I know a few draft dodgers, invariably fine people.

  19. ” I know a few draft dodgers,”

    I don’t doubt it a bit.

    Andrew, I was thinking of that scene before I scrolled to you comment.

    Robert Bolt had a way with words hard to describe.

    Bolt was educated at Manchester Grammar School, went on to Manchester University and entered the RAF a year later, where he served from 1943 to 1946. After National Service he returned to the university, went on to further study at Exeter, and then taught for three years at Millfield School.

    Sadly, he later became a communist but that can be forgiven in an artist, I suppose.

  20. Bolt was indeed wonderful. A Man for All Seasons became a classic in his own lifetime. I went through maybe 10 of the videos of the reconstructions of the Lawrence of Arabia movie, I’m a terrible pirate, before I picked the one I have now. The colour is so well done it’s worth looking through a few at least.

    Anyway, you remember the war against Vietnam as a glorious part of American history, well worth the rather immense sacrifice you paid? Not me.

  21. I thought I would drop by and check it out.
    Nice article. The spinners got to spin and they’re desperate to stop Trump.

  22. “Anyway, you remember the war against Vietnam as a glorious part of American history, well worth the rather immense sacrifice you paid? Not me.”

    And the roughly half a million Vietnamese who lost their lives to violence, work-to-death camps, or “trying to escape” at the hands of the “Vietnamese” after the are just chopped liver to you? It’s several times higher than the number of US casualties in that war.

    I keep trying to come up with a better name for the left’s various omissions of truth than ‘Omerta’ and failing.

  24. Anyway, I think of it as a tragedy. A great tragedy, made worse by the fact that all the Iagos are still with us to this day.

  25. “And the roughly half a million Vietnamese who lost their lives to violence, work-to-death camps, or “trying to escape” at the hands of the “Vietnamese” after the are just chopped liver to you? It’s several times higher than the number of US casualties in that war.”

    I’m not sure what your point is. You are making mine rather well.

  26. Anyway, you remember the war against Vietnam as a glorious part of American history, well worth the rather immense sacrifice you paid? Not me.

    The USA has fought against tyranny and oppression for a long time. The world would be a much sadder, darker, poorer and tyrannical place if we hadn’t. I think you ingested far too much communist propaganda along with the LSD back in the 60’s. Maybe a clearer reading of the history of 20th century would give you more perspective.

  27. A false flag war, to prevent a domino game getting out of hand, defines Vietnam well. The less stupid among you came to Canada, not surprising.

  28. “I’m not sure what your point is. You are making mine rather well.”

    Those are the people who died at the hands of the people YOU say were the good guys AFTER they won their glorious victory for “independence,” whose deaths you ignore or furthermore lie about.

    As I said, it’s a Shakespearean tragedy, kinda like a version of Othello where Iago got to write a lot of history books, and the rest of us are stuck with him posting to ChicagoBoyz from Canada and talking about how smart he is.

  29. “You are making mine rather well.”

    Poor PenGun who can’t even admit what Joan Baez said. That her and the left’s campaign against he war killed millions, Vietnamese and Cambodians. PenGun will say we started it but that just illustrates his ignorance.

  30. As you mentioned Cambodia, I’m reminded of a bizarre scene at a Massachusetts court house I witnesses some years ago. As we waited for our case to be called, a number of Asian men were brought into court through a side door and led into a big cage that had been placed to the left of the bench. I had noticed the cage earlier, and wondered.

    I leaned over and quietly inquired with the attorney as the shackled, sneering, seemingly unconcerned crew were seated in cell. He whispered, “Cambodian gang members, big problem up this way” I kind of smirked, and he continued, “no, seriously, many are Khmer Rouge, who got in here as refugees, they continue to terrorize the same people they did back there” Here’s a stereotypical Globe tear-jerker, but one can read between the lines:

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/01/27/cambodian-americans-confronting-deportation/MK3TQy80UJyG2HjfKKtEIO/story.html

    Perhaps with the current “Brutal Dictator Tour” we’ll get a Pol Pot retrospective?

    confronting deportation, bwaahhaaa!

  31. Wow. I have no love for anyone in particular. I was simply pointing out the stupidity of your pitiful war in Vietnam that really was about dominoes falling.

    You lost that war and it solved nothing. That the Vietnamese were less than nice people has nothing to do with it. Those who fought for America were fools. One could say that about subsequent wars as well.

    That I am somehow a traitor, to something, because I was an army brat, is just stupid.

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