My daughter and I have done a handful of long road trips over the last few years, especially after Texas sensibly lifted the most onerous COVID restrictions. For many of these trips we preferred to take country roads; various two or four-lane routes which meandered through miles of Texas back country, hopscotching past small ranches and passing through small towns of varying degrees of prosperity. One thing we often noticed in passing was a scattering of Trump banners, many of them weathered and obviously left over from the 2020 campaign. It was a hard-fought campaign; obviously many Trump supporters out here in flyover country remained sore about the steal. Also rather obviously, residents in rural Texas aren’t worried about random retaliatory vandalism to their property or vehicles by displaying such political partisanship.
Leftism
Some Observations from the DNC
I don’t spend alot of time following political conventions, but I did catch some of the DNC this week and some things stuck with me.
First, what happened to the protests?
They were expecting massive protests with 100,000 people coming to town. “Make it Great like ’68!” Chicago prepared for the impending riotpocalypse with boarded-up buildings and a scheme that left the United Center, with its perimeter fencing and ID requirements, better defended than either our border or electoral system.
It sounded about right given the pro-Hamas heat over the past ten months. So what happened?
Monday’s protest at Union Park? Organizers were expecting 30,000 to 40,000 and maybe got 10% of that number. There were pictures of hundreds of unused protest signs littering the park grass (only Tea Parties clean up after themselves).
Tuesday? Even fewer protesters marched on the Israeli consulate and when they became violent the police squashed it with 55 arrests made. However even that in reality was a bit anti-climactic. Wednesday? 2,000. Thursday? The last and biggest night of the DNC? About the same.
So again, what happened? Few protesters and those who showed up were from the fringe Trotskyite microsects. I know it was midweek but couldn’t they get some buses down from Dearborn? I mean even the WNBA draws better than this.
The scuttlebutt is that since the Spring protest encampments, the Dems have been desperate to avoid similar optics for the DNC and have been making calls to that effect. I’m guessing somebody (finally) picked up the phone on the other side and the parties cut a deal for a nice, quiet convention. So what was in the deal? I think we have to wait until the day after the election to find out.
Second, don’t ever doubt the power of the corporate media.
There’s a lot of schadenfreude on the Right about both the cratering level of public trust in the media and its declining business model, but that misses the point. The power of the media is in that it sets the Overton window for can and cannot be discussed and inserting and withdrawing issues from public discussion. You may not believe what they say, but good luck in getting opposing views to be aired
Over the past two months, the media has gone from Biden’s Praetorian Guard, to pushing him to leave the race, to calling for a mini-primary, to then just appointing Kamala (who for the past 3 ½ years no one thought was a viable presidential candidate). All of those about-faces were done with a precision that would have made a parade ground gunnery sergeant proud.
The Democrats have (so far) pulled a minor miracle in jettisoning Biden, avoiding a party collapse in finding a successor, and leaving the DNC roughly tied with Trump. They never could have pulled this off without having the media act as their PR auxiliary. Can the Democrats and the media keep this whole phantasm going until November? I doubt it but I’m impressed (and horrified) by what they have accomplished so far.
I have a question. How does the actual coordination with the media happen? What’s the 2024 equivalent of JournoList? Is it Zoom, Slack channel, volcano lair?
Third, the arrogance of the Obamas.
The Democrats are still Obama’s party and he makes no bones about it. The tradition used to be that immediately upon leaving office, the departing president would then leave town. The now ex-president left his successor’s inaugural and proceeded directly to Union Station and took the next train. Now of course they get a final ride on Air Force One. Not Barry, he just moved a few miles up the street to the Kalorama neighborhood and continued to pull strings. That’s arrogance.
It’s also arrogant for his wife to get up and make a speech at the DNC stating that she was taught by her parents to be “…suspicious of those who took more than they needed.” Of course, her family owns four mansions and is worth nearly $100 million, all based on leveraging their time in politics. I’m surprised she didn’t quote in her speech a famous community organizer who once said “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
Btw… she looked fabulous in that $3,000 pantsuit. Wonder how long that $3,000 would feed a family of four. I couldn’t find a word in the media about the stunning hypocrisy; however, I did find a lot of stories praising her fashion sense.
Fourth, I have a real sense of dread.
Just watching the video from the DNC and feeling the vibes, and all that joy I smell hysteria and desperation. Desperate people do desperate things, desperate people with power do catastrophic things.
Differences Between Left and Right Political Viewpoints
A friend of mine writes with the following thoughts, which I’ve edited for readability:
This election is highlighting a lot of the distinction between the way people on the Left and people on the Right think and feel. For the people on the Right, this election is about whether there will be a world war, whether the economy will be ruined, whether the southern border will be secured, what material steps need to be taken so that bad things will be prevented and some positive things happen. It’s about policy being implemented and government power being used in positive ways and not being used in damaging ways.
The Left is much more about personality and feelings. Identifying with Harris because she’s black and a woman, and feeling that she in some ambiguous but nonetheless important way represents some vague ideal that people care about. I have a friend whose daughter is voting for Harris, and he asked her why, and she said: Because she’s black and a woman and she’s not Trump; I don’t need to know what her policy views are.
It’s a completely different way of looking at the world. Frankly, it’s female, and I don’t like it, and it’s destructive if it’s given political power. The idea of this type of female mindset operating a system where people are arrested or people with guns show up at the door is terrifying. Such a system would be based on arbitrary female sentiments, and gestures of submission, rather than some agreed-on set of rules.
Dancing the Minnesota Walz
I think the most purely risible, ‘laugh out loud and roll on the floor’ headline of the current presidential campaign must be this one: Tim Walz’s Masculinity Is Terrifying to Republicans
This unintentionally hilarious take has been committed by one Frances Wilkinson, in an opinion piece for the entity known as Bloomberg.com. I do not know anything about Frances Wilkinson, but will venture a couple of guesses here: one, that she doesn’t really know any Republicans personally; two, that she is as acute a judge of what constitutes masculinity-fearing-Republicans as Rachael Gunn (the notorious Raygun of the Australian Olympic breakdancing team) is of break-dancing technique; and three, who the heck is terrified by the masculinity of a guy who looks like a live-action movie version of Elmer Fudd anyway?
Best Eaten Cold
Revenge, as the old saying has it, is a dish best served cold. And revenge may not be the only – or the most dangerous – platter best dished up chilled. That would be the dish of anger – that ice-cold, sullen reservoir of fury in the hearts of every right-of-center, non-elite, law-abiding flyover-country middle American with Tea Partyish inclinations … a dish of anger ready to serve up in the wake of a just-barely unsuccessful political assassination attempt this last weekend.
You see, there is a considerable difference between hot fury and cold. Hot fury is impulsive, immediately violent, reactive and more often misplaced. It’s the unthinking destructive fury of the mob, lashing out indiscriminately. Cold fury, on the other hand, does not manifest itself in such spectacular fashion. Cold fury is focused, calculated, unspectacular; it takes its time, waiting for the optimum moment. Cold fury usually can’t be appeased, once unleashed. As I wrote some time ago, regarding the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance –
“The image of a “vigilante” most usually implies a disorganized mob; lawless, mindlessly violent, easily steered but ultimately uncontrollable. The Vigilance Committee was something much, much worse than that. They were organized, they were in earnest, they would not compromise – and they would not back down.”