[American Thinker] "Our democracy is safe for now," she wrote. This was a Facebook post from someone I know, who was gloating over the guilty verdict in the show trial of Donald Trump. It was followed by several gushing comments. Neither my acquaintance nor any of her respondents seemed to realize that railroading an opposition candidate does not augur well for anyone’s democracy. The Herd mentality. I make a concerted effort to avoid it.
Why do people believe what they believe? Why are reasonable people so unreasonably partisan? Why can they tolerate anything other than an opposing point of view?
I began to puzzle over such things when, as a fairly liberal student in the sixties, I first noticed how quickly the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement converged. I remember actually being surprised when posters appeared announcing protests with the joint purpose of advocating civil rights and ending the Vietnam War.
It seemed odd to me. Why couldn’t someone be for civil rights and also support the military engagement in Southeast Asia? What did discrimination against black people have to do with whether or not it made strategic sense to forcefully resist communism in the jungles and rice paddies of Indochina?
But you see, I was trying to work out this problem logically. I didn’t understand that the campus outbursts taking place then (and now) were a manifestation of something essentially tribal and emotional. In time, it occurred to me that people often stake out a position first and do their thinking about it later, if at all.
The position somehow becomes indispensable to the person. It is an emotional attachment, an allegiance, an identity. This is why gay students can clamor vociferously for Hamas, despite the certainty that they would be living under a death sentence in Islamist territory. This is also why someone who has known me for more than a decade as a client and friend could say, "I thought you were a progressive." Before we had ever discussed politics, he just assumed I was a member of the tribe.
Some of this has to do with the fact that thinking people can be far more emotional deep down than they like to let on. But a lot of this also has to do with the herd instinct, which is incredibly strong and affects people on both sides of the political aisle, sometimes to an absurd degree.
I’ll give you an example: I was once on an express train In New York that, for one reason or another, was taken out of service. In fact, the whole "E" subway line was disrupted. Passengers were instructed to transfer to another line on a lower level of the station.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and the train was packed. A couple hundred people paraded en masse through the station and down a rear stairway to the designated platform, crowding it end to end. People were wedged together like Times Square on New Year’s. A mildly populated "R" local then arrived, and a couple hundred people stuffed themselves into it.
Just three passengers—I was one of them—hung back. We three didn’t descend the stairs until that overcrowded local departed. The platform was now deserted. Within minutes another "R" train noised in with plenty of seats for all. A couple of hundred people had an uncomfortable ride on the plodding local ahead of ours.
That’s the herd instinct with a vengeance. Mix well with ideology, hubris, and an intoxicating fifth of self-congratulation, and you get the progressivism of the Democrats. Turn up the heat sufficiently, and you get instances of ideology running wild. The herd loses its collective head—figuratively. Its victims often lose theirs literally.
Tribalism is generally, but mistakenly, associated with primitive peoples and cultures. But, as the Trump travesty demonstrates, it may well be more menacing in its modern guise.
A hundred years ago, an explorer named Gordon MacCreagh (1886-1953) set out on an uncharted tributary of the Amazon. The territory he penetrated was known to be inhabited by a "lost" tribe with a hostile repute. MacCreagh and his associates beached their canoe on a remote slip of sand and set up camp. Before long, movement could be discerned in the surrounding bush. Garishly painted warriors, scores of them, slowly emerged, armed with fearsome weapons.
It was a tight spot, but MacCreagh was a savvy fellow. He had taken the precaution of obtaining a stick from more peaceable inhabitants downriver—a stick carved in a certain way as to constitute a passport. It was, essentially, a symbolic letter of transit.
The stick worked. MacCreagh and his partners were accepted as friends and honored guests. They spent the ensuing months with their jungle hosts and were allowed to witness and participate in the "Devil-Dance" and other ritual observances.
#3
Folks don't like to have their opinions challenged lest they discover their initial opinion was flawed. Better to close your mind and shout it down.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/15/2024 18:51 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[RedStar] Natives of the steppe region, like their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fight on the front line not for glory and regalia, but so that Russia can live!
The officer dynasty of Heroes of the Soviet Union, Colonel General Oka Gorodovikov and his nephew, Lieutenant General Basan Gorodovikov, is honorably continued by their great-grandson and grandson of the special operation guard, Major Alexander Gorodovikov. Continued on Page 49
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Petr Akopov
[REGNUM] Vladimir Putin for the first time put forward the conditions for the cessation of hostilities and the start of negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine, and he did this literally on the eve of the “peace summit” opening tomorrow in Switzerland.
Putin’s proposal is short and clear - Ukraine withdraws troops from the territory of the Russian Federation, that is, four new entities: the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, and announces the abandonment of plans to join NATO.
After this, the president gives an order for a ceasefire and the start of negotiations, an indispensable condition of which should be Ukraine’s acceptance of a non-aligned non-nuclear status with the demilitarization and denazification of this state.
Putin specifically emphasized that this is not about freezing the conflict, but about its final settlement. But if the West and Kyiv refuse the offer, then responsibility for the bloodshed will be theirs.
The reaction to Putin’s proposal is predictable - not only Kyiv, but also the West will declare them an ultimatum, a threat, a desire to consolidate the “annexation” of territories taken from Ukraine. And he will reject it.
However, the president did not expect his terms to be accepted. His goal was completely different.
First, Putin needed to finally bury the West’s attempts to assemble some semblance of a global coalition to force Russia to peace.
It is clear that the summit in Switzerland had already failed even before it began, but now it will be devoted to discussing Putin’s proposal.
If previously the West convinced the Global South that Russia was not interested in negotiations and wanted to take over all of Ukraine, now there is a peace proposal that cannot be ignored. Simple and clear. If you want to stop the war right now, we are ready. On conditions that are more than mild for Ukraine, if we talk about territories.
Moscow does not demand either Kharkov or Odessa - it is enough to withdraw the Ukrainian Armed Forces from those territories that have already become part of Russia and abandon the course of joining NATO.
For the world majority, such a proposal looks absolutely logical and acceptable for discussion. And at the very least, depriving the West and Kyiv of arguments about Russia’s aggressive plans, that is, about the upcoming campaign against Europe after the conquest of Ukraine.
“You tell us that Putin will attack Poland and the Baltic states, but he is ready to give up even Kharkov - does that mean you are deceiving us? — that’s roughly what the leaders of a number of countries in the Global South, who came to the summit in Italy, can ask the leaders of the G7 countries today. “If the main goal of the West is to defend the independence of Ukraine and end the war, why don’t you immediately agree to Putin’s proposal?”
And the collective Biden has no answer to these questions.
Because telling Asian, African and Latin American leaders that it is fundamentally important to punish the aggressor and prevent the revision of borders in Europe is simply ridiculous.
Everyone not only remembers Iraq, but right now they are observing the West’s careful attitude towards the genocidal Netanyahu.
Therefore, for refusing to even discuss Putin’s proposal, the West will have to pay for the further degradation of its relations with the collective South - and this was one of the main goals of the president’s statements.
At the same time, within our country, his initiative caused discontent among a part of society - how can this be, because just recently it was said that Odessa is a Russian city! So now Putin is going back on his words?
Of course not.
The President made an offer to the West and Kyiv that they simply could not refuse. With all its policies and rhetoric, the West (not to mention Zelensky - but it is not he who decides) has put itself in a position in which it cannot accept Putin’s conditions.
This is the paradox - Putin makes an offer that is actually very beneficial to the West and which they are actually dreaming about (and even openly hinting at), but the West cannot accept this offer right now (and this is important). And then it won’t happen again.
But that is precisely why Putin is doing it at a time when he is absolutely sure that the West does not have a single chance to take us at our word and agree to the conditions set out.
This is the art of diplomacy - to exploit weaknesses in the enemy's position and rhetoric.
Diplomacy does not replace or abolish war, but, being its continuation and addition, it can significantly facilitate and accelerate the achievement of military goals. Which remain unchanged - Russia will not allow Ukraine to be anti-Russia.
[BEE] U.S. — Authorities are warning that a con artist is currently on the loose and scamming elderly dementia patients out of billions of dollars. They are urging anyone who sees the suspect to call law enforcement immediately.
"He's very short, dresses in all green for some reason, and has an accent like some kind of Eastern European henchman from a Guy Ritchie movie," said a spokesperson for law enforcement. "Scumbags like this are always preying on confused, senile people who don't know better. People like this make me sick."
Sources confirmed his most recent scam convinced a very old and disoriented man to sign a 10-year, bilateral security agreement for billions of dollars. Authorities suspect the money will be used to fund illegal activities around the globe, including drug trafficking, arms deals, and expensive cars for some guy named "Volodymyr."
"Yeah, once these jerks get their hands on the life savings of the victims, it gets laundered and immediately used to fund criminal enterprises," the spokesperson said. "If I could only get my hands on this sicko before he steals from someone else..."
At publishing time, the suspect had been spotted in Europe scamming several gullible world leaders.
[American Thinker] After New York’s sham "justice" system procured a ridiculous felony conviction against President Trump, a lot of leftist commentators predicted that his supporters would erupt in violent mayhem. When MAGA Americans failed to riot in the streets like Antifa goons and pro-Hamas jihadists, it was easy to sense Democrats’ disappointment. Biden’s campaign has been desperate for an explosive J6 or Charlottesville incident to use to slander Trump’s voters as violent extremists. MAGA did not take the bait.
This was a wise decision. Although millions of Americans are deeply offended by the Democrats’ lawfare tactics and justifiably worried that prosecutors’ political targeting has irreparably damaged the rule of law, they must also avoid stepping into new traps that could jeopardize their freedom. As the Gestapo FBI and the Democrat-led Deep State become more desperate to rig the 2024 election in Biden’s favor, they will seek to create situations that enrage MAGA voters. Not only does Chris Wray’s secret police force have a financial incentive to hunt down Trump-supporters as "domestic terrorists," but also the Biden regime is eager for swing-state independents to forget about how Democrats’ anti-Semitic shock troops recently took over college campuses. It is difficult to paint ordinary Trump voters as "dangerous" when ordinary Biden voters are threatening Jews, toppling statues, and burning down buildings.
Never let an enemy choose the time or place for confrontation.
A lot of Americans learned that lesson the hard way on January 6, 2021. Hundreds of thousands of patriotic, civically minded, and law-abiding citizens showed up in D.C. to protest 2020’s mail-in ballot fraud and demand free and fair elections. What they did not know is that Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats, Mitch McConnell’s Decepticons, and the Gestapo FBI-DOJ were salivating at the opportunity to frame them as "domestic terrorists."
The whole breach of the U.S. Capitol — if one can even use "breach" to describe an event that included Capitol Police officers holding doors open for smiling tourists — was over in a few hours. Still, as if reading from the same bad movie script, everybody from Congress’s Hamas Caucus to President George W. Bush immediately referred to the incident as an "insurrection." It was readily apparent to anyone with a brain that the Uniparty Club had engineered another Russia Collusion—type hoax intended to prevent President Trump from ever running for re-election. By pushing the propaganda of an armed rebellion and a spurious interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the permanent "ruling class" transformed a political protest into a premeditated opportunity to bar Trump from office and tar his supporters as violent extremists. From a distance, the whole disgusting exercise in cognitive warfare resembled a cackle of vicious D.C. hyenas bleeding out unsuspecting MAGA prey.
The U.S. federal government has done some awful things. However, intentionally framing American protesters (including grandparents on pensions and self-sacrificing military veterans) as members of some kind of terrorist cell attempting to overthrow the government in order to distract attention from 2020 election fraud is nothing less than evil. In the years since that staged operation, thousands of innocent Americans have been harassed or arrested for their political beliefs. Hundreds have been intimidated into accepting plea deals that include multi-year prison sentences. Families have been ripped apart and left in insurmountable debt. Too many defendants have taken their own lives to avoid the financial and emotional toll of the government’s malicious persecution. It is atrocious that the U.S. government has inflicted such ruin upon so many Americans engaging in constitutionally protected free speech.
#1
Texas has proved that the reach of the Federal Government into our states is not unlimited.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/15/2024 12:20 Comments ||
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#2
The problem with articles like this is that they use general terms such as "New York's sham justice system", "Gestapo FBI", "Democrat-led Deep State" without actually naming names. Gestapo FBI Director Christopher Wray paid up to $160K per year, New York sham justice system Attorney General Latitia James $109,596 a year, Fulton County DA Fani Willis worh $8 million in assets, etc.. Federal goons are also assigned private jets for business and pleasure at tax payer expense.
[American Thinker] How are the Democrats going to deal with Biden, the tsunami from the pro-freedom right, and the rejection of globalism?
Put yourself in the place of the far-left ruling class. The world is rejecting its globalist agenda, and the people have had enough of the usual lies that never made any sense in the first place. In France, President Emmanuel Macron is dissolving its National Assembly in a surprise move to head off defeat in the face of the pro-freedom right. Elsewhere, it’s the same old story as the people are getting fed up with the globalist far-left ruling class that wants tight control of individual liberty while at the same time having the gall to label themselves "liberals."
And as if on cue, leftists are trotting out the same old lies that have never made any sense, naturally referring to individualists favoring liberty, limited government, and strict separation between the state and corporations, with a term that signifies a collectivist ideology that severely suppresses individual liberty and warrants unlimited government and public/private partnerships — better known as fascism. We’ve been over this many a time and this particular leftist lie has been eviscerated so many times in books, and videos the past few years, it’s hard to believe that they’re even trying to push it anymore. Perhaps instead of running cover for the Biden regime, the Associated Press could try to resurrect its credibility and finally fact-check those forever falsehoods.
The big problem for the authoritarian far-left ruling class is that projection and lies can take them only so far, then the people start to notice that the falsehoods they spew 24/7 all start to ferment and contradict one another. It’s like trying to throw another layer from a stall cleaning on a big smoking pile of manure that eventually catches fire from the heat buildup of the fermentation process.
The national socialist media desperately want to make it seem as though all these movements of the pro-freedom right are isolated and will somehow quickly die out because they’re all disconnected. But that’s where they are wrong.
As much as they don’t want to admit it, the Trump phenomenon is a vestige of people who are fed up with the destruction of the country and our constitutional republic by people who think they know better. This applies here and around the world.
This is why the lawfare isn’t working, in addition to the fact that it was a case with an unexplainable "crime." They threw everything they could think of at President Trump, including the kitchen sink, and the man is still standing.
When you take in the totality of what is at stake, you can easily brush off the ridiculous "convicted felon" label. The far-left authoritarian fascists who clearly want to destroy the country are the "existential" threat, despite the daily propaganda barrage.
As a US Voter and Citizen, all I want to see is those that subverted the US Constitution, violated my Bill Of Rights and openly engaged in Illegal activities are arrested. Then brought to court and given a fact based trial.
#2
I would not get to excited if Trump wins. Lots of lawsuits fighting Trump Executive Orders, lawsuits against firings, lawsuits on use of money allocated during Biden area……. And the worst of all a group of wishy-washy RINOs threatening to block any and all pro-America bills in congress.
#3
^^^^ Maybe Trump can take a page out of Biden's book and issue a bunch of executive orders that will be in effect at least for a year or two while the lawsuits wend their way through the courts.
Posted by: Tom ||
06/15/2024 10:25 Comments ||
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#5
Tom, some court-shopped Hawaiian Judge will place an injunction nationwaide
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/15/2024 10:38 Comments ||
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#6
If Trump is elected, it will be an 8 year fight to achieve significant restoration of some of our rights.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
06/15/2024 12:18 Comments ||
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#7
"Vivek Ramaswamy Predicts Joe Biden Is Getting REPLACED by August"
"The world sees Biden falling apart, but apparently, “the other side actually knows what they're doing.”
"Vivek Ramaswamy says there is a “good chance” the Democrats replace him around August."
Here's why: “If they get another nominee too early, that's enough time for vetting, enough time for the honeymoon phase to fade. But if they're swapping in another nominee in August, say, right around the time of the convention, that's the best-case scenario for them because you get the honeymoon phase with a new candidate without the scrutiny that comes with it.”
“So I'm not saying that's definitely going to happen, but play this out,” Ramaswamy posed.
“This is the earliest presidential debate in American history and the first-ever, to my knowledge, that has taken place before the nominating convention of either party. Ask yourself why they're doing it. And more importantly, ask yourself why the Democrats made it a condition of Biden debating that they place that date that early. You got to skate to where the puck is going.”
[Ynet] Like Cato the Elder, the rational Roman speaker, we must assert: the 100-year experiment has ended in complete failure. The October 7 massacre, endorsed by polls and statements from the Palestinian Authority that praised and promised the cleansing of Jews from the land, has shattered our hopes for human brotherhood.
There is no political solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, who refuse to recognize our right to return to our land. Politician Ahmed Tibi succinctly captured this dynamic with his statement: "No Jews, no attacks."
With support from the ICC and Muslim jihadist sympathizers in Europe and the U.S., the White House's relentless efforts to undermine Israel's right to self-defense and leave the murderous Palestinians at our borders will lead to the demise of the Zionist dream. This cannot happen.
We stand alone, and it is no surprise. Just as it was then, so it is now. When much of the ancient world thought the opposite, we taught the world to choose the right to life and the dignity of man, to fight against the culture of murder and tyranny. Once again, the global wheel of values turns against us. Once again, we are alone. Such is the fate of being a beacon. Stable. Strong. Illuminating for all from afar. But ultimately alone.
Representative of the irrational progressive minority in the U.S., Secretary of State Blinken's actions, ranging from the military threats against Israel to the criminal indictments against its heads of state, seek to force an end to the war while the enemy is on the brink of victory. In other words: Israel has lost.
The masses continue to push Blinken to turn against the country that is fighting for its life and cynically barter the lives of the hostages. Israeli journalists directly manipulated by the White House assist his hand—serving as useful idiots that will leave us stuck in a stalemate with 2 million Palestinians, many of whom desire our destruction—all the while Hezbollah and Iran lurk in the shadow ready for action. This poses nothing short of an existential threat to Israel.
Diplomacy is the art of balance and restraint. To survive in a world complex with good and evil, states must simultaneously convey two opposing messages: one of violent bullying and the other of moral superiority.
WE MUST ONCE AGAIN SHINE LIGHT ONTO THE WORLD
The Oslo Accords and their counterparts held significance during an era of moral superiority. However, faced with a pseudo-enlightened Western secular culture that lost all will to self-defense and serves only to sanctify the enemy’s rights to compassion and assistance, we must once again shine light onto the world and save it from itself. We must move towards an era of violent bullying.
The founding fathers of the Jewish state entrusted and equipped us with abilities to use in our time of existential need. Now that time has come.
Israel must say to the world in a loud voice: You will not leave us stuck alone with 2 million potential murderers (because they were raised to hate), backed by tens of thousands of rockets that surround us from the north and the east. You shut your eyes, support terrorism and murder—and ultimately, hope that Israel will disappear. The opposite will happen. Israel will prosper and win. We have the ability to instill fear of our might in our enemies. In the jungle, they fear the mighty predator, the violent bully. We have the capabilities to deter them. In the Yom Kippur war, it worked. Israel must open and close the curtains of the textile factory in Dimona. Must open and close the shelves of Jericho missiles. Some people do not understand that we are in an existential war. So we will explain.
The murderous Palestinians must become a problem for the entire world. They have never been embraced by authentic Arab countries in the Arabian Peninsula, who yearn for the victory of Israel and the eradication of Iran. The world must bear the cost of the solution, which we too will take part in. If you have constructed for them a narrative that murderers have a right to kill, you must bear the expenses of their re-education.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
