So it seems like the ‘screaming children snatched away at the border by the heartless minions of the Trumpenfuhrer’ narrative of last week is kind of collapsing in one direction – because just about all the most egregious examples of minor children being separated from the adults accompanying them in their illegal passage across a national boundary and subsequently held in durance vile, date from the previous administration … and secondly, because the usual screaming hair-on-fire activists are using the matter as an excuse to harass and threaten members of Trump’s cabinet, Republican holders of public offices, employees of national law enforcement agencies such as ICE, and conservatives generally. So the Social Justice Warriors, who never rest nor sleep have opened another front, it appears – a front of ostracism and harassment, most plainly led by the intellectual shining jewel of the Congressional Black Caucus, Generalissimo “Mad Maxine” Walters. Mad Maxine, (possibly the homeliest woman in national public life today), has enthusiastically urged her followers to hound conservatives (not all of whom are Republicans, let me note) from all public venues; restaurants, gas stations, movie theaters, grocery stores and the like. Apparently, to Mad Maxine, such as we are not worthy, and pollute the righteous by our very presence. Enough members of the public appear to agree with her and have joined in enthusiastically in this enterprise. Gee, I wonder if we should now ask for separate facilities. You know – conservative-only drinking fountains, bathrooms and movie theaters. Maybe conservatives ought to be forced to wear armbands with a brightly-colored and distinctive shape on it, and live in specific neighborhoods, as well. Somehow, I think Mad Maxine would be perfectly OK with that.
Even more alarming than the harassing of certain members of Trump’s cabinet or prominent and recognizable associates at their homes and places of business, are the threats against and harassment of law enforcement personnel employed by ICE as well as other agencies – to include threats against families. There have also been threats against the operators of a non-profit network of shelters in Texas where many of the illegal alien minor children are being housed; employees of the shelters have had their license plates photographed at work and reported being called and threatened at their homes.
This kind of harassment, if continued and intensified – which seems to be a given – is absolutely not guaranteed to end well. We already have had the example of Congressman Steve Scalise and members of the Republican congressional baseball team being deliberately gunned down by one James Hodgkinson, a Bernie Saunders partisan and apparently motivated by more than the usual amount of partisan anger. In 2012, one Floyd Lee Corkins II brought a gun and a bag of Chic-fil-A sandwiches to the headquarters of the Family Research Council with the object to shooting as many employees as possible and rubbing the sandwiches in the faces of the dying. His motivation for mass murder appears to be tangle of resentment over the FRC’s support of traditional marriage, and severe butt-hurt over an otherwise innocuous fast-food sandwich chain not feeling any particular pain over their owner’s support of the same. Rather obviously, young Mr. Corkins was not wrapped all that tightly. Still, he conceived a plan to mass-murder, and but for his own ineptitude and the courage of the FRC’s security guard, would have carried it out. The shooter at the Capitol Gazette yesterday turns out to be an obsessive freak of a related kind, motivated by personal animus against the newspaper itself, which is what I thought upon first hearing news about the shooting – that or a very bitter ex of a newspaper employee.)
I’d venture a guess that among the not-tightly-wrapped, the mis-educated, resentful and longing-to-belong-to-the-heroic-Trump-Resistance-eleventy!!! – there are many more Floyd Corkins. They wait their opportunity for action in the manner in which the voices in their heads urge, and the various deranged media voices suggest. Some – indeed, I fear that many of these not-to-tightly-wrapped – will act in the coming months, either in public in a black mask and armed with a bike lock, a club, a Molotov cocktail, an amateur-constructed but brutally-effective bomb, or a gun. And when that happens … it will be what some among the conservative side have taken to calling a Rubicon moment.
When that Rubicon event happens, I wonder if the establishment national media will take any responsibility for having set the whole bloody pageant in motion; I think not. In their way, they have been playing their part in whipping up the mob outrage – in part to assuage their own outrage that Trump and not Hillary is president, and because they want, more than anything else, to be the one blaring the blood-soaked headlines. Outrage is what the national media loves, dirty laundry is what they live for. “You know the boys in the newsroom, Got a running bet, Get the widow on the set, We need dirty laundry.” A larger and larger segment of the news-consuming public has become wise to this and correspondingly resentful; witness how CNN’s obnoxious Jim Acosta was heckled by attendees at a recent Trump rally. Comment and discuss, as you will.
A Rubicon is a nice clean boundary.
Popcorn doesn’t start roaring all at once. It starts with the outliers. One weak kernel pops, then another, then two at once, and one, three … When the dangers from group A become obvious you start getting retaliations by group B, and then preemptive strikes, and then things go all to hell.
There’s a little window of opportunity for backing off. I’m not hopeful, but I notice that the anti-fa thugs vanished for a while, so maybe somebody in the background has been playing chicken, and is playing again.
Indeed, James … and it is entirely possible that we have been seeing weak kernels pop? Corkin was an early one, Hodgkinson another … and in the next year or so, they will begin bursting with a vengeance? The Antifa idiots taste for playing chicken is probably not appeased, either.
These are nothing. The rhetoric is soaring to ever-great heights of dehumanizing the Evil Other — that is,anything that might be considered mainstream and wholesome at any point in the last half a century — but to say we’re headed towards some kind of Rubicon is merely your frustration and anger speaking. These aren’t even precursor events.
We have had three previous fratricidal slaughters on American soil. Two were triggered by state-sponsored violence. The third was a violent sustained reaction to tribal primitives with no civil law, no Golden Rule, and no impulse control. The Somalis and Syrians and inner-city hoodlums are a long way from bringing back the brutality of the Indian Wars, so that leaves us with state-sponsored violence. Watch for more lawfare in the form of gun control and riparian water rights in any blue-held area, even in red states. That’s where the ugly organized violency stuff will flare up. The entire Pacific Northwest is ripe for it.
The Rubicon is by no means a nice clean boundary. Not any more in any case. It’s exact location is obscure and the various unimpressive ditches and creeks that seem fair candidates are pretty wimpy.
Enough time goes by and only slogans remain, the actual Rubicons get forgotten…
T. Wolter
I’m fairly certain back in 1860 there were a lot people saying the Yankees (or the Rebels) wouldn’t fight.
The people making the most noise are harmless. You can be really sure that when Moore talks about putting bodies on the line, it’s not his body he’s talking about. I haven’t seen much evidence of sustained organization.
If such organization exists, I’m not confident that the Feds have the manpower to spare from their constant lookout for evangelical terrorist cells to notice. There’s probably money available from the usual suspects but reliable personnel are lacking so far.
On the other side, organization has been mostly concerned with things like porta-poties and trash pickup not counter-sniper teams. Reliable professional law enforcement is lacking in some places, especially the coasts.
A single, resourceful individual can do terrible harm as we saw in Las Vegas. I don’t think it’s possible to eliminate this possibility. Anti-Fa might be surprised on their next outing. I don’t recall them coming to Texas for some reason.
I hope the pessimists are wrong. I expect ugly incidents, and hope for no pitched battles. Things don’t seem likely to calm down anytime soon. Right now, I don’t think the donks would be satisfied if Trump nominated Holder. Unconditional surrender is the only acceptable response.
thanks
MCS: Maybe you’d be less sanguine if they were threatening your children.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-arrested-on-charges-of-threatening-to-kill-fcc-chairmans-family/
This sort of dangerous bullcrap is becoming a daily occurrence.
Although I just turned teenaged in 1970, this reminds me of then. The difference is median age: 28 years old then vs. 38 years old now. And while the population is bigger, I just don’t think there’s anywhere near the critical mass of radicals now as there was back then. Angela Davis, Bill Ayers, and Abbie Hoffman had an audience because there were a whole lot of young, angry people who identified with them. Mad Maxine just doesn’t have the customer base (nor the sense.)
In an case, back then the result was Nixon 520/McGovern 17. I expect similar results, if not in a couple of months then in 2020.
In the 1970s, Bill Ayres was a dilettante. The dangerous radical was Bernadine Dohrn, who later married him. He was a rich kid who did a lot of talking. Several of the radical blew themselves up because they were not very competent.
“Days of Rage” is an excellent book.
As PDT would say, there were some bad hombres back then. I remember riding in the family car back in the late-60s and my dad checking each overpass on the Dan Ryan expressway for people dropping big rocks on the top of the cars as they passed by.
It was much more tense back then, at least in Chicago. Today’s antifa, parents’-basement-dwellers are snowflakes in comparison.
Not that sanguine, I certainly wish the bloviating loons would come to their senses before before they egg some nut into more actual violence. And while I’m at it, it would be nice if the MSM would call out the clear incitement that is taking place. I just don’t see it happening.
I probably wasn’t clear. I am concerned that there are people that will attack without the posturing and histrionics allow them to come to the attention of law enforcement. I don’t have a very high opinion of their intelligence, but it only takes one or two that forego advertising their intent.
This is still a long way from a civil war. The pro migrant demonstrations will come and go, the trash left behind will far outlast any concrete commitment from the participants. The only thing that will last until Monday will be soreness from patting themselves on the back. Maybe one of these leftist movements will catch fire, until then, the only violent organization I’ve seen is anti-fa and their effectiveness seems to be mostly surprise. Where police were prepared and willing to enforce the law, they fizzled. You can’t have a civil war without an organization that will put troops in the field.
MCS said:
“Where police were prepared and willing to enforce the law, they fizzled.”
That is the rub.
In the areas controlled by the Left, the Clinton Archipelago, the police are most definitely neither prepared nor willing to enforce the law, at least against Leftists. Basically, those Leftists are their bosses and they have been ordered to stand down.
On the Federal level, as far as LEA’s and Intel organizations are concerned, they are acting as if Obama is still the President and the elections meant nothing, and they are laying the groundwork for the return of the Left to power by any means necessary; legal or otherwise, constitutional or otherwise, violent or otherwise.
Every statement by Leftist politicians and their street thugs reinforces this, and it is the concurrent breakdown of hope that the system can be depended upon to do the right thing under the law that makes a “Rubicon moment” [hadn’t heard that one myself as I am thinking more of a Gavrilo Princip type event] more and more likely.
Let me toss this out there for further discussion. Most of us here, especially those of us south of the Canadian border, are on the conservative/libertarian part of the political spectrum.
Given the masks that have been falling all over our political system since November 2016, how many here believe that if the Left returns to power by any means that they will govern according to the Constitution and the law as passed under the Constitution? Or that they will do whatever is needed to maintain power and to gain individual power and wealth at each others’ expense?
Show your work.
Interesting. Just did a few paragraphs, and NOTHING showed up.
Subotai Bahadur
Stuck in moderation overnight, SB.
At this point, I put nothing past leftists. And if I know one thing more than any other, it’s that the national news media will egg on the violent nutters, and either cheer them on when they do as the voices in their head tell them … or memory-hole the whole incident. Narrative uber alles.
Just finished reading about Portland. The answer is a another march Saturday. Then the Saturday after that and the Saturday after that …
Since it was a rally for a candidate for Federal office, the locals will have a hard time shutting it down/denying permits. Also fast track to Federal Court.
Some nice video of anarchists getting their a**es kicked.
Of course the police attacked the original marchers, not the anarchists.
OK, in moderation overnight. Being a somewhat immoderate sort, it does no harm, albeit it has no effect ;-).
MCS & Mike K.:
Portland proves my point in a rather timely fashion. If you have to assume that law enforcement will work with the enemy despite you having a permit, having committed no violence, being violently attacked by thugs supporting the local Leftists, and being part of a Federal election campaign; you have to assume that you will be violently attacked again and again and be ready to defend and counter, AND that if the enemy achieves power by those means they will not relinquish it for any reason short of death.
Fact of human nature: History is written by those on the winning side who survive.