the bastards' last stand

The shooting of Renee Good is the most obvious example of Americans living in two separate realities offered in recent history. In the now viral videos of her interactions with ICE agents she is ordered out of her vehicle, stopped perpendicular across one lane. After quickly reversing she is shot by the agent now in front of her SUV after placing the SUV in gear and revving the engine forward. Depending on the reality in which you reside, the ICE agent either committed murder or justifiably defended himself from a deadly multi-ton weapon. The reality one inhabits seems to depend heavily on how one feels about the fulfillment of President Trump's political promise of mass deportations. The only real question that may be shared between the realities is whether we can come to enough of a consensus to prevent this from becoming a regular occurrence or if this is the first of many. The further apart those two realities remain, the more likely that Good is just the first casualty. There ...

No one could have guessed that when they started saying "words are violence" in the mid-2010s that the left meant it as a warning of their intent. Words are now sticks and stones that justify violent self defense. It does not matter how factually correct the words are. If the words create a negative resonance for the left, that discomfort acts as a device, which creates the permission structure that justifies the exercise of political violence. While there is an impulse to spin this political violence as an issue of both the left and right, this particular strain of violence based on memeification is unique to the left. It is based on a constructed narrative completely independent of the facts. It reflects a groupthink of the entire left with regard to President Trump and the right as a whole. To the degree there is violence from the right, the reasons are personal to the individual. The difference matters in how we choose to address the violence. While I remain unable to ful...

In its reflective reaction to everything Trump and Republican, the left continues to display its casual racism in ways that would be embarrassing with even a smidgen of self-awareness. They lack self-awareness because they always unquestioningly start with the conclusion that anything they support is good. Relevant to this piece, the left has come out in opposition to the Trump administration fighting crime--especially if it is primarily perpetrated by and against black urban residents. They also support our national museums that promote "whiteness" as an intrinsic bad. President Trump has dispatched the National Guard and temporarily taken over policing in Washington, D.C.--in the nation's top 10 highest murder rates. He has also begun removing DEI and what he calls divisiveness from the Smithsonian. It is worth noting that the Smithsonian portrays hard work and rational thinking as aspects of this inherently bad whiteness. With this in mind, the left's approach to c...

The phrase "grasping at straws," from Sir Thomas More's proverb, "A drowning man will clutch at straw," captures a desperate, futile attempt to avoid an inevitable end. It evokes a person falling off a cliff, frantically grabbing for anything to halt their doom. In cinema, this creates tension as the hero snatches a sturdy shrub at the last second. In politics, it signals a refusal to face reality. The Democrats' new $20 million Speaking With American Men (SAM) initiative to attract male voters is a textbook example. This effort is less substantial than straw, likely pushing men further away. It delays confronting the obvious: the party's positions alienate men, offer little to women beyond abortion, and oppose the interests of native-born Americans-- also know as voters. A late May New York Times article by Shane Goldmacher highlights the Democrat's struggle to recover from Trump's re-election. He notes, "Democratic donors and strategists ...

Democrats, seemingly resigned to political irrelevance, have shifted from principled opposition to obstructionism. They are seeking to stall or block the Trump administration's fulfillment of voter will.  In the face of popular demand for mass deportation of illegal aliens they have positioned themselves as self-appointed experts on due process. Their demands for due process might hold greater totemic power if not undermined by apparent hypocrisy, having supported limited due process for January 6 defendants. The demand for due process is desperate political opportunism driven by faulty political calculus. This explains why a US senator and congressional representatives traveled to El Salvador over a single deported alien. They are demanding that illegal aliens receive more vetting for deportation than they received on entering the country under Biden. In 2016, 38% of Americans supported deporting all undocumented immigrants. Today that number is 56% . There is nothing quite like i...

It has been somewhat difficult to place the opposition to Trump in a context where it all makes sense. The simplest explanation behind the difficulty is that there is no sense behind it. This is not to suggest that there is no sense in opposing Trump, although there is an argument to be made. There are no rational goals behind the opposition. His platform is more popular than he is. This opposition is not a response to what he is doing meant to generate support for Democrats. It is sound and fury, which may come to signify far more than is wished.  Instead of considering the opposition to DOGE, his sex recognition, DEI, and deportation Executive Orders as separate, it is better to see it all as a continuous spectrum. The most consistent element is that the opposition, lacking any principle, reacts to everything as if it is the one thing that will finally bring Trump down. In so doing, they select positions that are overwhelmingly unpopular. Being met with apathy seems to only ...