Anti-American Anti-Heroes

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

When the Barrow Gang was conducting its brutal robberies and murders, socialists found in their exploits an echo of their anti-capitalist cause. So it was small surprise that the release of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 marked the New Hollywood wave in which anti-heroes exposing the facade of American life through acts of dysfunction were to become the new focus of movies.

“Our best movies have always made entertainment out of the anti-heroism of American life,” Pauline Kael, the infamous film critic, gushed in her essay on the gangster film.

The anti-heroes were meant to be the heroes because American life was not heroic, it was anti-heroic, and the mission of the culture was to indoctrinate Americans with that message.

American heroes were not police officers, but the anti-heroes who killed them.

90 years after Bonnie and Clyde went down in a hail of bullets on the watch of Frank Hamer, one of the toughest Texas Rangers ever bred, and a half-century after the counterculture was launched with an appealing cinematic rebranding of the two criminals, a mentally unstable rich kid turned assassin became the new public face of the post-election counterculture.

Luigi Mangione is no hero except to those to whom American life is essentially anti-heroic. Luigi’s admirers are the same socialists who cheered on Bonnie and Clyde for robbing shopkeepers. Bonnie, Clyde and Luigi “made entertainment out of the anti-heroism of American life” and murder is the ultimate form of entertainment for anti-capitalist agitprop.

The three are not heroes because they are virtuous, they are anti-heroes because their admirers see America as evil, a corrupt oppressive capitalist society, hiding behind a heroic myth that must be deconstructed through propaganda, activism and terrorist violence.

A year before filming Bonnie and Clyde, its star Warren Beatty began working on the movie that would eventually become Reds (then titled Comrades) glorifying the Communist Revolution. Reds, unlike Bonnie and Clyde, never became a hit even though it’s beloved by leftists. Americans were not ready to embrace Communists as romantic heroes (unless like Nelson Mandella or other Communist figures, their Communist allegiances are kept secret.).

And that leaves the anti-heroes who are not Communists, socialists or radicals, but unwittingly serve their larger aims of violently deconstructing the American narrative. They’re criminals or lunatics who become popular in the process of assailing some outpost of capitalism. Their actual politics matter much less than the politics that can be attributed or read into their actions.

The anti-hero’s only real requirement beyond that is capturing the attention of the public.

Bonnie, Clyde and Luigi were all adept at media savvy crimes. The two robbers and killers built their reputation through the newspapers, like less anonymous Jack the Rippers, even posing for their own pictures. Like the average mass shooter, Luigi Mangione had his own manifesto, but even long before there was any public manifesto, leftists had adopted him as a class warrior of their own cause. But what Bonnie, Clyde, Luigi and countless school shooters, and leftists, really have in common is a malignant narcissism that leads them to lash out at the world.

Their half-baked narratives, Bonnie’s poems or Luigi’s manifestos, are a lot less interesting than the eagerness of leftists looking for killers who share their politics. Manifestos or messages from killers are symptoms not causes. Bonnie and Clyde didn’t actually steal because they had to, but because they wanted to be famous. Luigi went to great trouble to disguise himself and carry out a professional killing only to slip and give away his identity because he wanted to be caught. Men who truly don’t want to be caught, don’t carry manifestos explaining why they did it.

Killers of this kind, whether they pretend to be terrorists, school shooters, mass shooters or criminals, are narcissists. What they want most is to make their mark on the world. They’re narcissists who fume at the lack of recognition. By spilling blood, they want to make sure that no one ever forgets them. People scour their diaries and writings for clues, but whatever their stated grievances, it all comes down to some variation of, “I am angry at the world.”

The stated ideologies, even when they exist, rarely matter. The ‘incel’ shooters like Elliot Rodges, the supposed victims of bullying like the original Columbine shooters, the transgender shooters like the Covenant School killer, never actually have anything else to really say.

They are malignant narcissists who want to break the world because they’re unhappy.

Other people to them are interchangeable pieces or, in the slang of modern always onliners, ‘NPCs’ who can be smashed or killed to make a point. An entire culture exists around gamifying mass killers down to treating their victims like game scores and turning them into memes.

And that same species of violent narcissism also lies at the raw ugly heart of leftist politics.

Before Bonnie and Clyde hit movie theaters, the first modern mass shootings emerged most decisively in the University of Texas tower shooting. A few months later, the first copycat mass shooting arrived with an attack at a cosmetology school. The media became the vector for creating the copycat killers through its obsessive coverage of these new anti-heroes: the frantic efforts to find social or genetic excuses for their crimes and save them from execution.

The serial killer, in reality fairly rare, became a national phenomenon because he expressed the leftist cultural narrative that American life was not heroic, but anti-heroic, and should be understood not through the best of us, but the absolute very worst of us. Serial killers and mass shooters became the ideal anti-heroes, madmen lashing out at the mad society that spawned them. Exploiting the rising interest in nihilistic criminals as a commentary on a nihilistic society, Bonnie and Clyde reimagined the classic criminal duo and made anti-heroes into the heroes.

From there it was a short hop to A Clockwork Orange and dramas that made nihilism its star.

But that was back when movies mattered. Social media made life into entertainment while movies became special effects cartoons for overgrown children. There is no need to make a movie about Luigi (though one is reportedly in the works anyway) because his story already played out on the news and in social media. Whatever the trial will reveal doesn’t matter.

The Left successfully made Bonnie and Clyde into a referendum on banks (even though banks were not at issue) and it similarly made Luigi Mangione into a referendum on health care. And underneath both is the “anti-heroic” narrative of American life as a struggle against capitalism.

Glamorizing Luigi is not only about defending his crime, but inciting copycats to kill some more.

Reeling from catastrophic election defeats and the abandonment of the working class, leftists see in Luigi an opportunity to reboot their movement around a counterculture of class terrorism. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

 

Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left tells the untold story of the Left's 200-Year War against America . And readers love it.

Placing The Blame For Europe's Energy And Economic Crisis

October 08, 2022 By Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Over in Europe, things are looking bad for the economy, largely driven by a rapid increase in household and business energy bills. In the UK, average household energy bills have recently risen to about triple where they were just a year ago; and Bloomberg reports that “tens of thousands” of UK businesses are at risk of closure due to soaring energy costs. In Germany, KAKE reports on October 7 that energy costs are “savaging German industry,” with natural gas prices in particular up 400% from January to September 2022.

So how did they get into this mess? You might think, that’s easy to understand. Obviously, they pursued “Net Zero” carbon emissions programs, building weather-dependent wind turbines and solar panels that produce nothing most of the time, while closing reliable coal power plants, banning fracking, and otherwise suppressing fossil fuels, with the sole exception of imports of natural gas. When the gas market spiked, they had no other backup for the wind and sun, and their energy prices soared. For their exit strategy from the mess, they need to diversify reliable supply, start fracking, and get over the idea that intermittent wind and solar can power a modern economy.

On the other hand, if you work for the New York Times, it’s possible to look at the exact same set of facts and draw entirely the opposite conclusions. The lead op-ed in today’s Times is written by a guy named Sam Bright, and has the headline “They Wanted to Blow Up Britain’s Economy, and Liz Truss Let Them.” Read the piece, and you will learn that the UK’s current economic crisis has nothing to do with failed renewable energy schemes or spiking natural gas prices. Instead, it is all the result of the nefarious plot of new PM Liz Truss — in office just one month today — and a shadowy group of “libertarian” think tanks, with a plan to “blow up” the UK economy.

Under Ms. Truss, once nicknamed the “human hand grenade” for her ideological obduracy, the libertarian right has detonated the British economy. The cost, for all but the richest, could be incalculable.

Yes, according to Mr. Bright and the Times, the policies of the last two decades to suppress reliable energy production, subsidize unreliable renewables that don’t work most of the time, and make the UK totally dependent on a volatile international natural gas market, have little or nothing to do with the current troubles. Instead, it’s all the fault of the guys who just came into power a couple of weeks ago — when the crisis was already under way — and who supposedly have been able to ruin everything in a matter of mere days, probably just for their own sadistic amusement.

Most of Bright’s piece devotes itself to identifying the real bad guys, who are a group of shadowy “libertarian” think tanks all based in the Westminster area of London on one short street, Tufton Street:

Set in a maze of streets flanking the Palace of Westminster, the red brick townhouses of Tufton Street are anonymous; no corporate logos attempt to catch the curiosity of passers-by. In fact, the street itself is usually deserted. But this sleepy facade conceals a welter of activity. For the past decade or more, Tufton Street has been the primary command center for libertarian lobbying groups, a free-market ideological workshop cloistered quietly in the heart of power.

It seems that this little street is infested with a “battalion” of “libertarian” shock troops, who have now moved into Downing Street with well thought-out plans to destroy Britain in a matter of days if not hours:

This battalion of free-market thinkers has now been welcomed into 10 Downing Street. Five of the new prime minister’s closest advisers are Tufton Street alumni, including Ms. Truss’s chief economic adviser and her political secretary, and at least nineTufton Street alumni are scattered across other major government departments.

According to this narrative, just by getting “welcomed” at Downing Street, they have been able to “blow up” Britain’s economy almost instantly, before even any new legislation has been passed.

The Times then provides a picture of the nerve center of this nefarious movement, a townhouse on the street in question:

Wait a minute! 55 Tufton Street is the headquarters of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the organization of which I serve as the President of the American Friends affiliate.

My question is, can anybody really believe this incredible spin, that attempts to absolve people who have been creating this mess for twenty and more years, and shift the blame to the people who have been in the wilderness that whole time?

There isn’t an election currently going on in Britain to enable us to assess the extent to which the public may fall for such spin. But meanwhile over in Germany, there is an election going on, in the state of Lower Saxony. No Tricks Zone reports today in a piece titled “Germany’s Green Party in Dire Straits, Isolates Its Hapless Leader.” It seems that the German public has figured out that the Greens and their renewable energy obsessions are substantially responsible for the energy crisis:

The German Greens, who are partners with the SPD socialists in Germany’s government, are sinking dramatically in the public opinion polls as it becomes clear Green Party leader and Economics Minister Robert Habeck is driving the country’s economy into the ground at a dizzying speed.

NTZ says it has gotten bad enough that the Greens are hiding Habeck from the public during the election, not letting him show his face for campaign events:

Blackout News reports reports that the Greens are “hiding” Habeck from the public in order to control the damage, and so far he has “had only one campaign appearance”. . . . “In the polls, Robert Habeck has already experienced a significant plunge in the popularity of German politicians in recent days. So it’s no wonder that the Greens are literally hiding their once most popular politician ahead of the election in Lower Saxony,” reports Blackout News.

NTZ concludes:

Once the darlings of politics, the German Greens have seen their popularity plummet spectacularly over the recent weeks as Germany’s economy crashes due to excruciating energy shortages and price inflation.

It appears that at least the German voters are not as dumb as Bright thinks they are. But then, the vote hasn’t taken place yet, so we’ll have to wait for the final result.

 

Nazis were Socialists, just like Marxist-Leninists were, and pre-WWII Progressives Supported both

By Dr. Alexander Nussbaum ——Bio and Archives--April 7, 2021

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When a socialist calls someone a Nazi today, as they are wont to do if anyone disagrees with their agenda, they are actually calling them a fellow socialist.

Socialism is another word for collectivism, the doctrine that an individual life has no value, that an individual is owned by the collective and lives only to serve the state or group. This is an apt description for both Marxist-Leninist socialism and National Socialism.  The term “Nazi” was coined as a derogatory abbreviation for the proper name, “Nationalsozialist” (National socialist), short for “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Nobel Prize winning economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, rightfully considered Nazism to be socialism.

Both National Socialists and Marxist-Leninist socialists rejected laissez-faire capitalism in favor of total state planning. Prior to World War II, western progressives supported both Hitler and Stalin. “Utopianists” were socialists and socialists were dedicated eugenicists...........To Read More....

Democrats & Velociraptors

By Bob Hoye ——Bio and Archives--April 7, 2021

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 In liberating the White House Democrats became the equivalent of Jurassic Park Velociraptors. Dems have always been blatantly racist, economically destructive and the party of war (WWI, WWII and Vietnam as examples). But now with the White House and a media made up of activists posing as journalists, the Velociraptors have discovered how to pick locks and open doors.
 
Very dangerous in a strange attempt to repeat the socialist record of destroying a very prosperous Venezuela in less than twenty years. Strange because in the first half of the 1900s each intrusive experiment was conducted by naïve busybodies convinced that socialism would really create a perfect society. Strange now because everyone knows that socialism creates disaster. Eventually even for the governing classes............To Read More....

 

HUD-Nominee Marcia Fudge: Treating Everyone the Same 'Is Not Always Fair'

By Susan Jones | January 29, 2021

"What is the difference between racial equity and racial equality?" Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Rep. Marcia Fudge, the woman nominated to lead President Biden's Department of Housing and Urban Development.  "From my own perspective," Fudge responded, "the difference is that one just means that you treat everybody the same. Sometimes the same is not equitable," she explained:.........To Read More...

My Take - Mary Rose Oakar was a big promoter of comparable worth, where the federal government would decide how much people should make based on gender, not on what they did.  

As an example they didn't like the idea men who worked on dangerous jobs made more than a secretary, so they would in turn decide what the "comparable worth" was to society and determine how much women would be paid in comparison.  

How do you make that kind of comparison?  What are the rules.  What are the parameters?  Who makes those rules and decisions?  Clearly an open ended system for abuse and political persecution, of which something leftists are always guilty, and are demonstrating it now.

Even the Democrats thought this was a "loonytoon idea".  Not any longer though,  because this is the same kind of irrational tyrannical government overreach as was comparable worth, with all the same potential abuses, only now they're openly demanding the imposition of censorship, economic tyranny, and big government abuse.  

Another Biden consequence.    

Living on the Edge of a Volcano

By Alan Caruba,  Originally Published on Thursday, December 5, 2013  

Living on planet Earth these days is much like living on the edge of a volcano that can erupt at any time and which rumbles ominously all the time.

After three decades in which the United Nations and countless “environmental” organizations have tried to convince everyone that “global warming” and then “climate change” (the rebranding that occurred when the former reversed itself into a cooling cycle) was occurring, the effort to use this hoax to redistribute wealth from developed to undeveloped nations is pretty much at an end. Meanwhile, billions have been squandered at home and in other nations on “renewable energy” and all manner of “research”, largely based on phony computer models, complete with claims of a “consensus” that never existed.

Every so often a volcano erupts and the people are told to evacuate. Only, on planet Earth, there is no place to run because the systems developed to move money around are so rigged and so flawed that the systems are now in serious trouble. It portends default and collapse, something that nations try to avoid but which occur with regularity, along with recessions.

The present example is the printing of money backed by nothing more than the "full faith and credit of the United States" by the U.S. Federal Reserve bank which it then uses to purchase U.S. debt.

The United States is a volcano whose many social programs, all devoted to the redistribution of wealth by the government, are reaching a point of such an eruption; insolvency. Their need for reform is widely known, but there is no political will to make such reforms.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration keeps expanding them in the form of disability payments, food stamps, and, of course, Obamacare, the takeover of one sixth of the nation’s economy. It is such a huge disaster that no one can ignore it. The only solution is to repeal the law, but that is not going to happen for at least three more years while an incompetent narcissist and pathological liar remains in office. The progressive agenda is being pressed by the Democratic Party which is now just another name for the Communist Party.

As if problems at home were not so serious, the efforts of the President to downsize America’s role in the world is causing other nations to sense weakness and, of course, seek to take advantage of it. China, whose landmass is 3,705,407 square miles, has recently announced that it wants to expand its territorial outreach to include some islands that Japan has long maintained as part of its territory. The response has largely been tepid at this point, but if China’s claims are granted, it will expand on them. Treaties in effect would require the U.S. to go to war to defend Japan’s interests.

Other global problems include the expansion of Islamic fascism beyond the Middle East to include a more vigorous effort in North Africa, the sub-Sahara, and other nations to include Somalia. The threat is manifest enough for Muslim nations to engage in the effort to eliminate groups like the stateless al Qaeda. In recent times, some nations have seen the overthrow of dictators who have plundered them. They include Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. In some cases this has created opportunities for the Islamists. Egypt has responded by outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood.

The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran has just increased by several factors when the United States led a group of European nations, plus Russia and China, in an effort to stop resisting Iran in favor of opening up its economy to various business deals that the sanctions imposed by the United Nations have deterred. It’s short-term self-interest versus a predictable nuclear holocaust. Previous efforts with North Korea failed.

Largely unknown to the world’s population is the way globalization has put every nation at risk should any of the world’s nations default on their debt. This has happened in the past, but not in the way a future default—particularly by the United States—would plunge the world into a financial crisis that no one can even imagine.

The U.S. is already seriously in debt with a gross domestic product (GDP)of some $14 trillion annually versus debt of various descriptions that range from $17 trillion in borrowed money to many trillions more in “unfunded” debt in the form of its social programs in which the U.S. collects money from its employed population and redistributes it to those unemployed. Unfunded obligations are now estimated to be around 90 trillion dollars. The so-called “trusts” of these programs is a fiction. The federal government has used that money to pay its on-going debts.

The current actual and estimated debt will affect the lives of today’s children, grandchildren, and future generations. It will take a hundred years to dig out from such debt.

U.S. budgets do not reflect “events” that can and will occur such as natural disasters. Wars break out when one least expects them. 9/11 was such an event. It drained ten trillion dollars from the economy. The various Wall Street “bubbles” collapse. The budgets are in many ways works of fiction.

The largest population the Earth has ever known, seven billion and growing, is perhaps the biggest volcano of all. Much of the population continues to live in actual or relative poverty. Much of it is aging at the same time fertility rates worldwide decline. Intellectuals keep calling for reducing the population by allowing as many as possible to die by denying them medical care.

Vast numbers of the population are voting with their feet. They migrate to wherever jobs and more freedom exist. The U.S. has not secured its southern border. Europe is under siege by migration from the Middle East and Africa.

The volcanoes of population and weakened economies are rumbling louder these days.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

It Appears Bernie is Out! Biden is In! Both are Crazy!

By Rich Kozlovich

On Mar 10, 2020 Matt Vespa posted the article, After Being Brutally Whipped, Bernie Isn't Speaking Tonight. And There Could Be a Huge Announcement Soon. saying:

Former Vice President Joe Biden just finished addressing his supporters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He didn’t gloat. In fact, as CNN’s Dana Bash noted, he offered many olive branches to the far left of the Democratic Party. Bash also noted the tone: Biden spoke as if Bernie was already out of the race. Is he? Well, we don’t know. Sen. Bernie Sanders isn’t going to speak tonight. He’s pulling a Hillary Clinton and not making an address................There are rumors that Sanders could drop out tomorrow or Thursday. Sanders has said that he isn’t a masochist, he will drop out if there is no path. The problem is that he’s a politician. They lie.......He's bold.  He's maybe a little insane.  

He's bold and may be a little insane?  Maybe he's bold because he's a total nut case.  From what I've read he demonstrates all sorts of emotional problems.  First, he's an amazingly horrible boss, abusing his campaign staff with temper tantrums, outrageous demands and no ideas as to how to accomplish what he demands.

On March 9, 2020 Daniel Greenfield posted the article, Bernie's Hotel Rooms Must Be 60 Degrees, and Someone Must Stand In Them Even When He Isn't There.

 He comments: The list, distributed to aides in his entourage and shared with hotel employees, stipulates that his room must be kept at an arctic 60 degrees. That he needs an oscillating fan. Other wish lists have requested that written materials be removed. That the room must be at least five doors away from the ice machine and from the elevator, though the walk to the elevator must not be too long. The morning before he was to arrive a hotel in Las Vegas, his staff summoned the hotel engineer to jury-rig the air-conditioner to the required temperature. There was one more problem: Someone had to stay in the room to keep a motion sensor from kicking the thermostat back to 72 degrees.

Greenfield makes this personal observation:

Assigning someone to stand in a hotel room so the temperature is just right for Bernie sounds like the worst job in the world. But any job interacting with Bernie is the worst job in the world. 

He goes on to quote those who've actually had to work for this lunatic saying:

 "As a supervisor, he was unbelievably abusive," says one former campaign staffer, who claims to have endured frequent verbal assaults. The double standard was clear: "He did things that, if he found out that another supervisor was doing in a workplace, he would go after them. You can't treat employees that way."

"Bernie was an asshole," says a Democratic insider who worked with Sanders on the campaign trail. "Just unnecessarily an asshole.

"He yelled in meetings all the time," says one of Sanders' former Senate staffers. "He'd yell, 'I don't want to hear excuses! I want to get it done!'"

And we're surprised?  Bernie is like all leftists.  He's never seen a burden so great he couldn't put it on someone else's back.  As for sanity?   How could any sane person say the things he says?  Praising some of the most murderous monsters of the 20th century!  Would any sane person do such things?

That leaves Biden to walk to the nomination. 

I really didn't think the convention would go this way.  I, like many others, thought it would be a brokered convention, with Hillary just tugging at the bit in the background.  Few, if any, believed Biden could make it, or that Bernie would be so overpowering the back room boys would step in and force everyone to become good soldiers by bowing out and endorsing Biden, Warren notwithstanding, but in most cases their campaigns were already in the dumper. And when you think back of how many were running and what they promoted, we can thank Bernie.  He forced them to expose just have far left they all are.

They're job is to deceive the voting public, and once in, then they can impose socialist schemes slowly.  Just as has been done in America's system of education, from kindergarten through higher education, going back to the 1890's and John Dewey. And guess where he was from? Vermont!  And we wonder how Bernie kept being elected from that state. 

As David L. Rosenthal once observed :

Public education has become an institutionalized form of child abuse. Rather than being a tool used to prepare children to become productive adults, public education is being used to indoctrinate them to believe what powerful interest groups wish them to believe. This process is designed to transform America into a place unfit for human habitation, in which rights are suppressed, powers of government are unlimited, and traditional faith-based values are rejected.........

As for Biden? He's as almost obnoxious and deranged as Bernie. As Andrea Widburg points out in her piece, After Biden verbally abuses a voter, the Democrats celebrate him, saying:

The former were wowed by how manly and powerful a stuttering, incoherent, factually incorrect Biden appeared as he berated a factory worker in front of dozens of other workers. Meanwhile, the latter were deeply worried that Biden, the Democrat frontrunner, is showing increasing signs of cognitive impairment, not to mention the revolting arrogance of the permanent political class.

In another article she goes on to demonstrate these problems of mental impairment and obnoxious behavior.

As for the back room boys?   Actually, they're all in favor of all the things Bernie promotes, that's who the Democrat party is.  They just hate anyone who actually tells the world what they really believe, at least when running for President.

What these wolves in sheep's clothing has done to education in America, and the western world, they've been doing to America for over one hundred years, and almost 225 years in Europe, starting with the French Revolution.

Their goal?

Destroy the American identity, the American culture, the American economy, the United States Constitution, and replace it with a socialist system of worldwide governance administered by the United Nations, the most corrupt and incompetent organization the world has ever known.

Bernie isn't the only one in that group that's "maybe" a little crazy?  But Bernie is a clear representation of who they are and what they want, and what they want now is to obfuscate the facts of who they are and what they want. Biden is the best they can piece together as a candidate, and he's clearly mentally impaired.  Perfect Democrat.

Bernie Has Faded, but Socialism Is Still a Threat

March 5, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I would like to think that the election results from Super Tuesday signify a rejection of the evil and destructive ideology of socialism. After all, despite promising the most handouts, Bernie Sanders was defeated in most states and quickly went from being the front-runner to a long-shot candidate.

This chart shows how political betting markets have dramatically changed in the past couple of days. Crazy Bernie (in green) has collapsed with Biden (in blue) has skyrocketed.

Moreover, the other explicitly hard-left major candidate, Elizabeth Warren, saw her support collapse even earlier.

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal opined today on the implications of this week’s political earthquake.

Before the voting began Tuesday it was conventional wisdom…that something called progressivism was on the march in the U.S., sweeping aside decades if not centuries of belief, history and tradition with a new agenda of wokeness, identity politics and socialism. …Guess what? The voters still get the last word. …Progressives, however much they dominate the culture, keep losing big, competitive elections. …Joe Biden, hardly a commanding presence, is a proxy for Democratic voters’ pragmatism and their doubts about Mr. Sanders, socialism and the American left.

By the way, it’s not just that Crazy Bernie got trounced.

As reported by the New York Times, many hard-left congressional candidates also are being rejected.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez previously suggested that Democrats who were not sufficiently loyal to an emergent brand of progressive politics should have others like her run against them in a primary. She is now suggesting that, exit polling be damned, Mr. Biden’s latest string of successes is because of the strong-arming of corporate lobbyists, something Mr. Sanders has underscored by repeatedly calling Mr. Biden the establishment candidate. But the results speak for themselves. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez threw her weight behind Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez in her Senate primary campaign in Texas to defeat the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s chosen candidate, M.J. Hegar. Ms. Hegar ended up easily outpacing a crowded Democratic field.

All of this is very encouraging, but I’m still worried.

There are three reasons why I’m not brimming with optimism.

First, as explained by Annie Lowrey for the Atlantic, a non-trivial number of young people are enamored with the evil ideology of socialism.

A striking generational divide has emerged. Older people still see socialism and communism as dangerous, authoritarian political systems, whereas younger people are more likely to see them as economic systems, and to care far less one way or another. For millions of potential voters, the Red Scare is no longer so scary. …The simple passage of time explains a lot. Millions of Millennials and Gen Zers were never exposed to the threats of the Soviet Union; they did not live through the fall of the Berlin Wall… A recent poll conducted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation showed that 36 percent of Millennials have a favorable opinion of communism, as do a quarter of Gen Zers. Roughly half of the members of those two generations have a favorable view of socialism and thinks the government should act as an employer of last resort. One in five Millennials thinks the Communist Manifesto better “guarantees freedom and equality” than the Declaration of Independence and thinks society would be better off if the government abolished private property.

I’ve shared plenty of additional data to confirm this worrisome trend.

Second, older Democrats may not embrace the socialist label, but they have shifted in that direction.  I previously wrote about how even prominent folks on the left agree that Joe Biden is far to the left of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

This graphic from the New York Times illustrates how the rest of the Democratic establishment (as measured by party platforms) has also veered toward statism.

For what it’s worth, the “Median party” line shows the average position of the world’s other political parties, so the takeaway is that America’s Democrats (and the U.K.’s Labour Party) are now further to the left than some of the world’s socialist parties.

Third, while the Republican Party hasn’t moved to the left based on its platforms, I fear that the GOP isn’t motivated today by a Reagan-style belief in limited government and individual liberty.

It’s not just that Trump is a big spender (and a protectionist). Every major Republican in the post-Reagan era has expanded the burden of government and rejected the principles of classical liberalism.

The Communist Plan to Overthrow America from Within

By John Eidson —— Bio and Archives--March 3, 2020

The 2020 elections will determine whether our Republic survives or falls from within to single-party socialist rule

In his best-selling book “The Naked Communist,” former FBI Special Agent W. Cleon Skousen revealed the 45 communist goals to overthrow America, not by a foreign invasion, but via stealth, infiltration and deception carried out by American citizens who have quietly moved to the side of the hammer and sickle. As you read the following partial list of those goals, ask yourself which political party most closely aligns itself with these profoundly un-American objectives.

• Eliminate prayers and any expression of religion in schools.
• Infiltrate churches and replace true religion with “social” religion.
• Discredit the U.S. Constitution and America’s Founding Fathers.
• Infiltrate and gain control of the labor union movement. 
• Infiltrate and gain control of teachers associations.
• Use schools as transmission belts for socialist indoctrination.
• Break down traditional cultural standards; discredit the family as an institution. 
• Infiltrate and gain control of the press, radio, TV and the entertainment industry. 
• Use the courts to weaken basic American institutions.
• Promote the UN as the only hope for mankind; demand that it be set up as a one-world government. 
• Infiltrate and gain control of one or both political parties. 

Given the undeniable socialist-cum-communist leanings of progressive environmentalism, the labor movement, academia, the mainstream media, the religious left, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and one of the country’s major political parties, the communist plan to overthrow America from within has made monumental strides over the last half-century. Communist doctrine has been methodically infused into our society by the post-1960s Democratic Party and its progressive allies throughout the popular culture. I don’t say that to be inflammatory. I say it because it accurately describes what has happened.

n one of his most revealing quotes, Lenin said, “The goal of socialism is communism.” The idea that creeping socialism should precede outright communism is an acknowledgment that totalitarian rule is so frightening to people in free nations that it must be quietly slipped into those societies in bits and pieces. It is through that incremental process that socialism serves as an under-the-radar, transitional gateway to the unrelenting oppression of full-blown communism..........To Read More.....

A Star Is Born in the Battle Over Trump’s Tax Returns

Editorial of The New York Sun | October 11, 2019

A star is born. The big news in appeals court ruling in the House’s subpoena for President Trump’s tax records is not that the court supports it, though that’s no small thing. It’s the dissent by the newly minted appeals judge on the D.C. Circuit, Neomi Rao. She reckons that the way House is going after Mr. Trump violates the constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder.

Brava, your honor. The chief editorial writer of the Sun has been singing this song since Senator Biden and his Judiciary Committee colleagues launched their attack on Justice-to-be Clarence Thomas. The prohibition on bills of attainder, in which a legislature condemns an individual, are flatly prohibited, both to the state and federal governments. They’re as un-American as titles of nobility.

Judge Rao cuts through the House’s humbug about how this investigation is being made pursuant to the legislative power — as if what the House wants is better laws regulating the president. If that had been its interest, of course, the House would have been trying for generations to pass laws cramping our presidents. The judge gets that the claims to a legislative purpose are gossamer..........To Read More.... 

My Take - Does all of this remind anyone of anything?  Try thinking in terms of the show trials of the Soviet Union.  But, take a look any of the socialist governments that have ever come into being, from the French Revolution to today, they create predetermined show trials to eliminate their opponents, for having the audicity to disagree with their tyranny.   

One more thing. Fascists and communists are both socialists, right along with progressives and modern liberals and the Democrat party.

Also, I think it advisable to add this explanation of Bill of Attainder. 

A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of pains and penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them, often without a trial.  

As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person's civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself. Bills of attainder passed in Parliament by Henry VIII on 29 January 1542 resulted in the executions of a number of notable historical figures.  

The use of these bills by Parliament eventually fell into disfavour due to the obvious potential for abuse and the violation of several legal principles, most importantly the right to due process, the precept that a law should address a particular form of behaviour rather than a specific individual or group, and the separation of powers............ 

The United States Constitution forbids legislative bills of attainder: in federal law under Article I, Section 9, and in state law under Article I, Section 10. The fact that they were banned even under state law reflects the importance that the framers attached to this issue.

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Why Libertarians Are Unwitting Enablers of Socialism

Libertarians have become pawns of the progressive Left in America, and in an ironic twist, both of them have been co-opted by globalist corporate interests. When everything is privatized, rationed and metered, corporate rent seekers gain new revenue streams.

Edward Ring October 2nd, 2019

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”– John Rogers, “Ephemera 2009,” Kung Fu Monkey

Libertarians are handing America over to socialists. That’s not what they want, but that’s what’s happening. How can this be? After all, if you want limited government, you’re a libertarian. So where’s the problem?   The problem, as John Rogers suggests in his unforgettable quote, is with the “real world.”

In the real world, America is a two party system, and if a strong libertarian candidate shows up, he take votes away from other candidates who also—despite all their other impurities according to libertarian lights—oppose socialist candidates.

When the anti-socialist vote is split, the socialist wins.........To Read More....

Reflecting on the Imminent Dangers to the Republic on Constitution Day

By Dennis Jamison

Today is Constitution Day, and if one considers what has happened in the United States since the beginning of the new millennium, it is amazing that the U.S.Constitution still stands. America has been attacked by foreign and domestic enemies again and again. Just last week, Americans remembered the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedies and commemorated Patriot Day to honor those brave men and women who risked their lives for the sake of others on September 11, 2001. And since Americans annually celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution on September 17th, these two days are forever entwined on the calendar. But there is a deeper significance that binds these two days of remembrance. ............ To Read More....

Socialist Scenario May Pose Risk For Democrats

By IRA STOLL, Special to the Sun | September 2, 2019

 

Call it the socialist scenario — the risk that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could combine forces to defeat Joseph Biden in the Democratic primary.

The RealClearPolitics polling averages have Biden leading Sanders and Warren nationally and in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. These same polls, though, show the “not Biden” vote represented by Senators Sanders and Warren to be larger than the level of support for Vice President Biden.

If that vote were combined rather than split, the socialist scenario suggests, it could result in a Democratic presidential nominee who is either openly socialist, like Senator Sanders, or an ideological ally of Mr. Sanders, like Mrs. Warren, who says she is a capitalist but who is campaigning with a call for an annual wealth tax and for what she calls “big, structural change.”

The possibility is generating concern from Americans who are more cautious about “big, structural change.” The concern is heightened because Mr. Biden is old enough that he can seem vulnerable rather than inevitable.........To Read More.....
 

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell is either an ignoramus or a liar

July 20, 2019 By Thomas Lifson

For someone ostensibly in the “news” business, Andrea Mitchell is remarkably uninformed. Or perhaps, she is peddling a fiction that she thinks will benefit the Left. It’s really hard to say which disqualifier from her job is the real one, but in either case, she should not be spewing propaganda to the viewers of MSNBC. Oh, wait. That’s her job, just like the rest of the staff there. Mitchell claimed about the four members of The Squad:

"None of these members of Congress are socialists, but that is the way the Republican leadership wants to frame this election face-off,” Mitchell told the panel. "There’s not a single member of these congressional representatives who are avowed socialists, so I don’t know where that is coming from other than opposition research.” ...

Joseph A. Wulfsohn of Fox News could not resist informing her otherwise:.......To Read More...

The Brains Behind AOC

By Rich Kozlovich

It was clear to me from the beginning she didn't develop the New Green Deal. It was clear to me from the beginning she had some powerful people behind her orchestrating her actions, otherwise she would never have been able to get away with all the stupidity she spews out.  In days gone by Pelosi would have slapped her down, hard. 

Then it became obvious Pelosi was afraid of her.  Remember, she was a bartender.  Pelosi was afraid of a bartender?  What she really is, is an actress!  An actress who auditioned for her job, and who has to follow the script of the scary people behind her. 

The Democrat party is now in the hands lunatics, incredibly scary people behind the scenes who, as this video points out, with no term limits as the power behind the candidates.  We will be seeing even more insane changes in the Democrat Party as a result.

The Democrat debates are already a good indicator as to how insane they are willing to get, and how afraid the long term Democrats are of these behind the scenes puppet masters.  Make no mistake about this; they will comply with the people behind OAC, along with the other far left people they managed to get elected, because soon these loons are going to be the Democrat party.  As for the old party members, especially the old white ones; they'll be gone, no matter how much they cave in to these socialist lunatics.

Conspiracy theory? How about conspiracy fact?  Please enjoy!

 

Nancy is no longer in control of the Democrat message, the Radicals are

May 10, 2019 | Posted by George McClellan, Historian, Political Observer |                               

Daily, we are entertained by the apparent implosion of the Democrat Party in their hysteria at their failed multiple schemes to oust Donald Trump from the Presidency. Especially hurtful to Democrats was the conclusion of the Mueller report, a peripeteia which, like Hillary Clinton was unable to do in 2016, they can’t do now, accept defeat and move on. They don’t want to move on but, the non-issue has taken our eyes off the ball, their true goal, the control of the Congress.

 

Nancy Pelosi, titular head of the House and the Democrats that abide therein, speaks effortlessly with her hands but articulates in a nearly undecipherable ‘congressese’ using terms and ideas that have long lost their luster and appeal. Other old time Democrats, now committee chairmen like Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and John Lewis, spout complete impeachment nonsense about further prosecuting the failed Mueller Report because “there has to be something in there that was missed.” The clue words in that sentence is “old time.” 

 

These “old time” Democrats may or may not be aware of what’s coming because their egos and age, cloud their eyes, but they are being replaced, one congressional district at a time, by young socialists. In their eyes, Republican challengers are to be brushed aside as well. They are pushing the Socialist message, one, because of the heavy indebtedness of college students, two, because they believe government should supply health care and wages and, three, Capitalist hold all the money, and they don’t. Laugh if you will but those ideas are taking hold...........To Read More....

Spain goes left — and probably off the rails

April 29, 2019 By Silvio Canto, Jr.

We learned that the socialists won in Spain, but it won't be easy to put a government together, as we see in this report:

Spain's socialist prime minister says he will consider talks to form a new government only with parties that respect the constitution and promote social justice.

Pedro Sánchez declared his party the winner in Sunday's general election, a ballot in which the far-right made inroads for the first time since Spain returned to democratic rule.

Sánchez hinted at a preference for a left-wing governing alliance but his stress on the constitution also sent a warning to Catalan separatists even though he may need their support to be elected by Parliament's lower house to a new term as prime minister. Translation: Spain is a mess.........To Read More.....

The Democrat Party, Now Undeniably a Communist Party, Still Has a Serious Problem!

Apr 25, 2019 by George McClellan, Historian, Political Observer

A bevy of Democrat wannabe presidential candidates are revering up full throttle to position themselves as the best Progressive who can beat Donald Trump in 2020. Their singular focus is to beat Donald Trump before he actually drains the swamp as he promised. Good Luck on that! To be best, one needs to stand on a record of achievement, not merely spew out rhetorical talking points that hides past failures, promises the impossible and has never worked. Never!

Progressives have spent decades undermining, in the name of ‘Democracy’ the fabric of American cohesiveness, the Christian church, the Constitution, the nuclear family and American education.

The current crop of candidates, all socialists, have NO plan that restores American greatness for anyone, but collectively fosters divisiveness, hate, envy, and reliance on mother government. We deserve the government we’ve got because we weren’t paying attention. The government we’re going to get, if we don’t wake up, will be shoved down our throats. 

 

The Democrat party, now undeniably a communist party, still has a serious problem. That albatross of lies, deceit and incompetence still hangs around their neck and it’s getting heavier. All the wannabe’s, each and every one of ‘em, like that carton of eggs I used as a metaphor recently, are in lockstep, moving America far Left into the snake pit of Socialism.

 

Americans are not socialists and don’t really want to be socialists except perhaps, for those ignorant products of Americas institutions of higher education who don’t know any better. They cling to the belief it is their manifest destiny to save the world from a dangerous America and, that Americans, meaning that vast crowd of “deplorable’s” who live in “fly-over” land, don’t really know what’s best for them or the country, while they do. Their best example is that redneck rube from New York, Donald Trump. Yes Virginia, even NY has its rednecks too.....................

 

Venezuela is an exact copy of Orwell’s 1984 scenario, 90% of the population in poverty while the “elites” endure the noises from the streets from behind the walls of gun protection......To Read More....

Cartoon of the Day!

The Democrats’ Crack-Up Turned Blow-Up

by Paul Kengor March 15, 2019

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., venerable founder of this august publication, posted an important piece on Wednesday, titled, “The Left-Wing Crack-Up.” Tyrrell there revisited a term he popularized decades ago, captured in books such as The Liberal Crack-Up and The Clinton Crack-Up. It reminds of another apt phrase he popularized, “The Death of Liberalism,” also the title of one of his books.

For a fun stroll down memory lane, I recommend that readers click these Tyrrell interviews with C-SPAN on February 6, 2011 and May 24, 2012. One particularly memorable Tyrrellism was his assertion that “there are more nudists than liberals, more birdwatchers than liberals, and more nudist birdwatchers than liberals.”

A prophetic point it was, made all the more obvious as the renowned Democratic Party diminishes into a smog of radical leftism. Ask yourself: How many true liberals are there in today’s Democratic Party? Of course, it depends on how you define a liberal, which is never easy. How many progressives are there in today’s Democratic Party?

Well, it depends on how you define a progressive, which is likewise elusive — though more and more liberals prefer the progressive label. But here’s a more telling question: How many self-described socialists, or “democratic socialists,” are there in today’s Democratic Party? The answer is a rapidly increasing number, particularly among the party’s leaders and celebrities, from Bernie Sanders (who received 13 million votes in the Democratic Primary in 2016) to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez...........We are right now living through the death of the historic Democratic Party as you knew it...........To Read More....