Wilson, a strong critic of Trump, noted that many of the billionaire’s alternate right fans have “Hitler iconography in their Twitter icons.”
He added, “Most of them are childless single men who masturbate to anime. They’re not real political players. These are not people who matter in the overall course of humanity.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education sympathetically described what was “surely the worst day of [one University of Missouri journalism professor’s] professional life” — November 9, 2015, when hundreds of outraged viewers emailed her after a viral video showed her calling for “muscle” against a student reporter attempting to cover protests on campus.But the Chronicle’s summary of Professor Melissa Click’s emails is grossly misleading. It neglects to mention how condemnation of Click’s behavior was not only understandable but appropriate.It highlights some of the most extreme emails she received as though they were the norm; it describes as “an assortment of angry First Amendment enthusiasts” the scores of current students, alumni, professional journalists, and parents who criticized Click’s call for violence against a student; and it ignores the disturbing radicalism of her supporters.“Overall, I’m OK with actual violence, like actual political violence,” Rob Rasmussen, who unsuccessfully ran for the city council in Columbia, Mo. (the university’s home), last April, explained to National Review after we contacted him for clarification on his November e-mail of support for Click, in which he wrote that she was “100% in the right.”Rasmussen continued: “I’m OK — I’d be fine if we brought back the guillotine and cut off the Koch brothers’ heads. That would be OK with me. I think that would be OK.” He added that protesters occupying public spaces should have the right to shut out the media because “with Occupy Wall Street, a lot of us lefties learned that if you give open access to the media, some people with an agenda will try to find people in your camp who will say ridiculous things and make it look like your whole group [supports those stances].”The Chronicle makes no mention of one racist support email praising Click for “stopping that nasty Asian dude” — student reporter Timothy Tai — “from disrupting your event.” It also neglects to mention a supporter who called Click’s actions “a disservice to both you and to the University” — that is, “of course assuming here that there aren’t circumstances of which I’m [un]aware (e.g., the reporter is from a conservative student newspaper with a history of distortion that rivals Fox News.)”Click’s supporters “are falling all over themselves to somehow justify her actions,” Scheirbecker says. “Even the Communications Department has said that violence is never an acceptable form of communication — so hearing [of support for Click] from professors around the nation scares me, because I’ve maintained to this point that Melissa Click is a symptom of a much larger, more insidious problem at public universities — and that is, it’s OK to resort to physical violence to combat emotional micro-aggressions, which don’t hurt anybody.”The Chronicle also fails to mention how, in late December, 115 faculty members from the University of Missouri signed a letter to the administration in support of Click. These misguided professors call Click’s call for “muscle” a “regrettable mistake” and “call upon the University to defend her first amendment rights of protest and her freedom to act as a private citizen,” but they express no dismay at the violated First Amendment rights of student reporters.They also say that “we believe that Click has been wronged in the media by those who have attacked her personally and have called for her dismissal,” failing to mention how the controversy began when Click wronged the media.
I live in Donald Trump country. Maury County, Tenn. — like much of the South — was dominated by the Democratic party until just a few short years ago. Tennessee’s legislature didn’t flip red until 2008, and my own legislative district in my own “conservative” county was blue until 2010. Tennessee didn’t change dramatically between 2004 (when Democrats were in total control of state government) and 2011 (when control flipped to Republicans), but national politics changed. And — as Donald Trump is proving — they can change again.If there is a consistent refrain among former Democrats (and there are lots in the South), it echoes Ronald Reagan: They didn’t leave the Democratic party; the Democratic party left them. That means many things, but it does not mean that they’re small government, constitutional conservatives. It means that while they may have been attitudinally “Tea Party,” they were never on board with the core substance of the movement.So, what do my Trump-supporting neighbors prioritize? It’s a reasonable approximation of the “three-legged stool” of Reagan Republicanism, but with important philosophical distinctions from true movement conservatives. First, there’s patriotism, but it’s not a patriotism that implies or mandates a particular foreign policy or national-security philosophy. It’s embodied in a deep love for this country and a desire to defeat its enemies, but no particular commitment either to intervention or isolationism. They’re repulsed by the Left’s mindless multiculturalism and elite’s disdain for America, but they’re foreign-policy pragmatists. Fight when it’s smart, and don’t let political correctness get in the way of national defense. As the New York Times noted, a significant portion of Trump’s support comes from “a certain kind of Democrat.”Next, there’s cultural conservatism, but it’s not the cultural conservatism of the evangelical Right. In other words, they don’t really care what anyone else does with their lives, but they’re unwilling to join the sexual revolution either personally or politically. They’re not crusaders in either direction, but they perceive the Left as attempting to draft them into a movement they find personally distasteful. When Bill Clinton said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” he was tapping into this mindset — speaking to those who dislike abortion but aren’t willing to place it at the centerpiece of their politics.Finally, there’s a commitment to economic opportunity, but it’s not embodied by intellectual devotion either to free markets or to small government. You won’t hear former Democrats crying out for social-security reform or changes to Medicare — unless those changes make the system more stable and reliable. And southern voters have proven that they’re more than willing to hand out generous, targeted tax breaks and subsidies to pull manufacturing out of the North or to welcome Japanese automakers to their new, union-free homes in Dixie. Call it “corporate welfare” all you want, but these new Republicans simply don’t care.Immigration is a potent political issue because it hits each of these concerns. The patriot worries about the impact on national security. The cultural conservative is concerned about assimilation and contemptuous of the Left’s reassuring multicultural platitudes. And a flood of low-skill workers depresses wages and limits economic opportunity and stability. Combine these concerns with the South’s (and industrial North’s) longstanding willingness to embrace colorful, larger-than-life political figures, and it’s easy to see why Trump’s support map looks like this:Indeed, as the New York Times noted, a significant portion of Trump’s support comes from “a certain kind of Democrat,” and he currently stands ready to pull up to 20 percent of Democratic support from Hillary Clinton.The GOP underestimated Trump in part because it overestimated the conservatism of its own southern, rural northern, and Midwestern base. It underestimated the extent to which many of its voters hadn’t so much embraced the corporate conservatism of the Chamber of Commerce or the constitutional conservatism of the Tea Party as much as they had rejected the extremism of the increasingly shrill and politically correct Left.And, yes, the size of this population calls into question the very process of building a national Republican electoral majority, but it also threatens Democrats who seem intent on drumming every blue-collar white male straight out of the party. At present, Donald Trump’s greatest electoral danger (at least in the GOP primary) is that his supporters are so alienated from both parties that they disproportionately choose to stay home. But if they turn out, and he can escape with a win in Iowa, the early primary calendar is largely a march through Trump country. America may end up with three distinct ideological movements: the progressive Left, the constitutional Right, and populist core that will now say of both political parties: I didn’t leave you. You left me.
There’s a certain unmistakable craziness afloat these days everywhere along the political spectrum throughout western civilization, and in times like these our temperamentally conservative soul seeks solace in classical history and its constant assurance that our remarkably resilient culture has been through all this sort of thing before. Western history is not altogether reassuring, though, as it also frankly reveals that such times are awful to live through, whatever happy chapters might await some day long past our passing.We were last reminded of this when Europe’s vexing problems with the recent wave of Middle Eastern and North African refugees started washing ashore, and trainloads of unaccompanied minors were crossing into the United States from only slightly more assimilable cultures, and some scholarly fellow reminded us of Edward Gibbons and his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” which described how the Goth invaders welcomed by the Romans “still wore an angry and hostile aspect; but the experience of past times might encourage the hope they would acquire the habits of industry and obedience; that their manners would be polished by time, education, and the influence of Christianity, and their posterity would insensibly blend with the great body of the Roman people.” It seemed an eerily apt description of the western elite’s optimistic multi-cultularism, except that they no longer put in any stock in that Christian influence and no one who’s paying any attention any longer takes western education seriously, and the rest of it also seemed eerily familiar. “Notwithstanding these specious arguments, and these sanguine expectations, it was apparent to every discerning eye, that the Goths would long remain the enemies, and might soon become the conquerers of the Roman Empire. Their rude and insolent behavior expressed their contempt of the citizens and provincials, whom they insulted with impunity.”After that desultory blast from our historical past, a recent round-up of headlines from across Europe will sound discomfortingly familiar. Although the European press was slow to give up its specious arguments and sanguine expectations it now begrudgingly concedes that at a welcoming party for newly arrived “refugees” in Germany the honorees seized the opportunity to grope and sexually assault their hosts, that similar behavior by recent immigrants was epidemic in public squares around the continent during New Year’s Eve celebrations, that rape and other violent crimes by the new arrivals are now common, and that the welfare-dependent new arrivals are expressing their contempt of the citizens and insulting them with impunity, and that they may yet prove the conquerers who usher in the Dark Ages. This is by now apparent to every discerning eye, even in a Europe that doesn’t have a First Amendment and a resulting right-wing press, so the main concern is now with hoping that it doesn’t benefit those awful right-wing parties.So far as we can tell, being here on the prairie and thus so far away from the action and reliant on the heavily-censored press, many of these awful right-wing parties are merely proposing a sensible alternative to cultural suicide. The Fleet Street press is pretty puckish even without a First Amendment, and reading of even their most critical suggests that the dreaded United Kingdom Independence Party merely wants independence from the suicidal European Union and its immigration policies, which seems reasonable enough, and we’re not at all scared even by that Geert Wilders in Holland, who is banned almost in every respectable jurisdiction, and certainly not by Holland’s agnostic Somalian refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who now lives in for fear of her life in America because of those offended by her steadfast defense of of western rather than Islamic values, and who has also been banned from American campuses, and neither do we fear the continuing influence of Pim Fortuyn, the homosexual and secularist and libertarian who was assassinated by a radical environmentalist for launching the “right-wing” crusade against mass immigration. Even in the worst case scenarios, we wonder if any of those “right wing” parties are any crazier than those more respectable parties with their specious arguments and sanguine expectations about the new arrivals neatly fitting in with the churches and gay bars next door and diversity-tained companies next door, and we note that the European press has admittedly been surpassing the facts lest those right-wing parties seem reasonable.
In July 1985, Bernie Sanders traveled to Nicaragua, where he attended an event that one wire report dubbed an “anti-U.S. rally.”...Sanders was being hosted by the Sandinistas as part of a delegation of American “solidarity groups.” He told reporters their decision to show “support” for the Nicaraguan government was “patriotic.”
...
Among other things, during the 1970s and ’80s, Sanders regularly called for public takeovers of various businesses, including utilities and the oil industry. Sanders advocated seizing money from corporations and from one of America’s richest families. And, as a mayor, Sanders made forays into foreign policy that included meetings with representatives of hostile nations, rebel groups and Canadian separatists.
....
In 1979, he penned an opinion column for the Vermont Vanguard Press about another industry he felt was ripe for a public takeover — television.The editorial, titled “Social Control and the Tube,” called for people to “address the control of television as a political issue, and organize to win.” Sanders argued the owners of commercial television stations sought to “intentionally brainwash people into submission and helplessness” through “constant advertising interruptions” and “the well-tested Hitlerian principle that people should be treated as morons and bombarded over and over again with the same simple phrases and ideas.” He said the television industry was designed to “create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy this or that product, vote for this or that candidate, and faithfully work for their employers for as low a wage as possible.” Sanders suggested a public takeover of the airwaves could remedy the problem.“The potential of television democratically owned and controlled by the people is literally beyond comprehension because it is such a relatively new medium and we have no experience with it under democratic control. At the least, with the present state of technology, we could have a choice of dozens of channels of commercial-free TV,” he wrote, adding, “At the moment serious writers are, by and large, not allowed to write for commercial television for fear they might produce something that is true and hence, upsetting to the owners of the media. Under democratic control, people with all kinds of views could make their presentations, and serious artists would be encouraged to produce work for the tube.”
Many people can see with their own eyes how intellectually thin is the brainfood schools serve children now, and research has shown a marked decline in the quality of U.S. K-12 curriculum. This is a big problem, because curriculum rivals teacher quality in its power to help children learn. One study found good curriculum could help children get more than two years’ of additional learning into K-12. This matters because people who haven’t learned anything cannot possibly be good Americans. That requires developing the capacity for self-government, which requires good judgment, which requires actually knowing something that can inform your decisions. Just look around. Does it seem like that characteristic thrives today? If you don’t think so, and you care about reversing America’s decline, then pay attention.
People who haven’t learned anything cannot possibly be good Americans.While rants about bad curriculum surface regularly, almost nobody talks about why we are stuck inside a decades-long cycle of curriculum that a) feeds kids politically correct pablum, outrageous examples of which we see pouring over social media constantly and b) insiders can arrange through taxpayer-funded sweetheart deals that never benefit children.
The two, as it turns out, are related, both to each other and to Common Core. I’m about to argue that the second is the cause of the first. To better understand why, let’s hear from industry insiders who spoke to me (on the record) as I’ve researched Common Core over the past four years. In this installment, we’ll talk about the economic truth that monopolies degrade quality, and see how monopolistic and cartelized is the system that generates what U.S. kids study.
Read the whole thing.Tuesday’s night episode was set in South Carolina, which is an important plot detail. If you’ve been following the story through all it’s twists and turns you know that the lovably cranky and kooky old coot has lately been threatening to beat the wicked witch in both the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, which would seriously complicate the long foreshadowed storyline about the wicked witch’s eventual coronation, and therefore a win in the next-up state of South Carolina is all-important to her chances. There’s always a subtle racial undertone to these Democratic storylines, and those who are hip to the nuances will note that Iowa and New Hampshire are mostly comprised of white people, who seem to especially love the lovably cranky and kooky old coot, and that South Carolina is largely comprised of black people, with its Democratic primary mostly comprised of them, and that the wicked witch is assumed to be more popular with black people. The backstory for this peculiar preference is that the wicked witch once worked for the much beloved Obama, who even in reality is still much beloved by the black people of the land as the First Black President, and her husband was once the much beloved leader of the land, and was especially beloved by the black people of the land as the first First Black President, for reasons that no one can any longer recall, so they’re willing to give her a pass on wicked witchiness, and they’re no so crazy about even the most lovably cranky and kooky old coots from states comprised almost entirely of white people.
Donald Trump, as I tell anyone who asks, defies virtually every political rule I thought I knew.
There's no better encapsulation of Trump's up-is-down-and-down-is-up effect on presidential politics than a new number from the just-released NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
The question asked is a simple one: Could you see yourself supporting [fill in the blank candidate] for the Republican nomination for president? When NBC/WSJ first asked GOP voters that question about Trump last March, fewer than one in four (23 percent) said they could see themselves voting for him.
To say that things have changed since then is an understatement on the level of saying Tom Brady is a pretty decent quarterback. Witness this chart built by the indispensable Philip Bump.
It's hard to overstate how remarkable it is that the number of Republicans who could see themselves backing a Trump nomination rose 42 — FORTY TWO — percentage points in 10 months. It's all the more remarkable when you consider that Trump was already totally known by the GOP electorate last spring, meaning that his gains since that time are almost entirely the result of him changing peoples' minds. And it's something else entirely when you consider how Trump got here — a mixture of bravado and anger sprinkled with a dose of controversial statements and seeming gaffes that would have felled lesser candidate many times over.
Trump's improvement on the "could you see yourself voting for him" question is amazing enough in a vacuum. When you compare his rise on the question to, say, how Jeb Bush has fared on it, you begin to appreciate the true remarkableness of what Trump has done. Again, this chart comes courtesy of Philip Bump.
If you need a single chart that tells the fact-really-is-stranger-than-fiction story of the Republican race to date, that's it.
What a race. I can't even begin to wonder what's coming next month when voters actually start voting.
Donald Trump terrifies Democratic leaders almost as much as he scares establishment Republicans, because they’re starting to come to terms with the possibility he could be the next president of the United States....Republicans say publicly and privately that they’re worried that Trump will win their nomination and then get shellacked in the general election, robbing the party of necessary support in congressional races. The truth, I suspect, is they are also concerned about him winning the presidency, which would empower the tea party wing of the party and marginalize insiders.It’s that latter scenario that suddenly has Democratic elites wringing their hands.For a long time, they seemed content to watch Trump wreak havoc on the Republican primary field. Now, though, it’s clear they’re alarmed at the possibility he could win the presidency.And why wouldn’t they be?Trump’s more open to policies that appeal to Democratic voters than any of the other Republicans in the race. Though he tends not to emphasize them in the primary — for obvious reasons — he holds or has held un-Republican positions on the social safety net, taxes, campaign finance, gay rights and other issues....While his un-Republican positions on these issues won’t win over Democratic activists who are repulsed by his rhetoric on immigration and his inarguably loutish behavior on the campaign trail, they could present a threat to the Democratic nominee holding less sticky Democrats in place. That is, he could fray the Democratic coalition in a general election.
Not until it appears in the mainstream publications and on the broadcast media. They are still in cover-up mode.After the New Years migrant sex attacks, a leading German feminist has said the politically correct “bubble has burst” and Germans should speak out against Islamism. She claimed Cologne police have been covering up Muslim rape for 20 years, and said that sexual violence was now being used as a weapon of war in Germany.By in large, the feminist reaction to the migrant sex attacks has been to either play down the problem or deflect attention on to a non-existent “western rape culture”.As Breitbart London reported shortly after the attacks, a local feminist group in Cologne held a protest in support of further mass migration, and a British feminist publication tried to justify abandoning female victims because the male Muslim attackers were “oppressed”.Alice Schwarzer is a veteran “second wave” feminist who rose to prominence before feminism became preoccupied with apologising for Islamism and misogynistic Muslim culture.She has previously called for a ban on the wearing of the Islamic headscarf in schools or other public settings, and warned of a creeping Islamisation of Europe, which in her opinion would lead to an erosion of human rights, especially women’s rights.She told Die Welt in an interview yesterday that her Cologne based magazine Emma.de has been one of the only voices speaking out for women in Germany over the past 25 years.“Since then, I have in certain circles been cheerfully reviled as a racist by multicultural, Greens, Leftists and converts”, she said, explaining that she has faced “enormous intimidation” for speaking out.“Entire books have been published against me to try to shut me up. But in my case, it has not succeeded.”She also made a startling revelation, which appeared to suggest that Germany police have been covering up the scale of migrant and Muslim rape for more that two decades.“20 years ago, a Cologne police officer said to me: ‘Alice, 70 to 80 percent of all rapes in Cologne go to the account of Turks.’ I was shocked and replied: ‘You absolutely must make it public! Even a Turk is not born as a rapist. There must be causes. What’s going on here? What can we do?’“But the message was clear: ‘No way, that’s not politically opportune’. And it is this kind of political correctness that conceals the circumstances,” she said.She also said that there are in fact many people in Germany who, like her, feel, “critical about the development of so many migrants and refugees in Germany and their failure to integrate”. She said such people “fear the racism accusation”, but after Cologne, “This bubble has now burst”.
The following list was seen on Twitter listing out the most recent terror attacks around the world:
Tuesday - Suicide bomber kills 10 in InstanbulWednesday - Suicide bomber kills 15 in Quetta
Thursday - Suicide bombers kill 14 in Jakarta
Missing from this sequence was important context: president Obama's assertion in his State of the Union speech, uttered just before the Jakarta attacks, that the terrorist threat is overblown. He said:
“In today’s world, even a handful of terrorists who place no value on human life, including their own, can do a lot of damage. But as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands,” he continued, using the administration’s preferred term for the Islamic State group.When situated in this context the list of attacks is trivial. If 14 people die in Jakarata -- maybe 7 according to some reports -- so what? These are small potatoes in a planet populated by billions. It's nothing to get excited about.
The defect in the administration's reasoning isn't the assertion that direct terror deaths are still few in absolute number. The problem it is that he hasn't got a clue about how to contain it. Obama's like a doctor who tells you the tumor in your lung is "still small", in fact just a speck. Shouldn't you be reassured? Every patient knows the size of a tumor is not as important as the doctor's admission in the next breath "but I don't know how to cure it."
The reason why the assurances of the president sound hollow despite the comforting "it's still small! it's still tiny!" is because what is important is the delta, the change in the problem over time. You want it to shrink. You want the disease, while small, to stop spreading and and are naturally uncomfortable with a doctor helpless to even slow it. In fact, Dr.Obama can't even name the disease he's looking at beyond remarking that it's "nothing to do with Islam".
His approach is basically to prescribe painkillers and hope the symptoms go away. This approach was one full display when Iran captured 10 US Navy sailors and John Kerry made five calls to the Iranian foreign minister. Agence Press France reports that "US Secretary of State John Kerry told Iran's foreign minister that Tehran's capture and release of 10 US sailors could be turned into a 'good story' for both countries, a US official said Wednesday." It's all about the management of symptoms.
The good story, from Iran's point of view were images of American sailors kneeling with their hands up and a junior officer apologizing to the Islamic Republic. The "good story" from the administration's point of view was that the sailors were released at all, even though it comes on the heels of an unbroken string of provocations by the regime in Tehran, including rocketing a passing US aircraft carrier and testing ballistic missiles.
John Kerry's "good story" doesn't mean Iran will stop it's provocations. On the contrary. It will almost certainly be back, more virulent and more aggressive than ever.
Fred Hiatt, writing in the Washington Post notes that the president has never been known to say anything but 'take an aspirin and quit worrying'. “The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia,” Obama said. It's just a phase. The only problem is that the upbeat message is belied by the cadaverous appearance of a patient in one Dr. Obama's backrooms: Syria, who believe it or not is almost cured.But in an almost surreal moment Tuesday night, he pointed to Syria as an example of his “smarter approach, a patient and disciplined strategy that uses every element of our national power.”“That’s our approach to conflicts like Syria, where we’re partnering with local forces and leading international efforts to help that broken society pursue a lasting peace,” the president said.
But if that's the cure it's not a dime's worth different from a terminal disease. Syria too once had nothing to worry about. When asked about the threat posed by Islamic State by David Remnick in January, 2014 Obama said that it was only "a jayvee team". In that former middle-income country many are reduced to eating pets and grass soup to survive. The rest have gone in their millions to Europe.
Most patients would feel a whole lot more confident if the doctor could explain the diagnosis more clearly, which is to say articulate a foreign strategy beyond references to 'learning to hope' and 'not fearing the future'. But that is probably beyond the power of incumbent. If he had any more it would have come out in the last SOTU.
But it's no use having regrets. The past is all water under the bridge. In November the world will get a chance to choose a new doctor, though by then the speck will doubtless be bigger. The best one can hope for is that is not too late.
The Trump-a-palooza started little more than six months ago. His announcement was in June of last year so that’s roughly six months. At that time, the mass media was telling us that his appeal was limited to the angry weirdos in flyover country. Once his poll numbers started to climb, they stopped calling his voters weirdos, but stuck with the angry motif. Every discussion of Trump now includes at least a side bar on the “angry voter.”Mass media still has to sell crap so they try not to be too obvious when insulting their customers. The whole “angry voter” bit it just a polite version of “bitter white trash losers.” The reason the white trash losers are angry and bitter is they are stupid and did not go to college. Instead of having glorious self-actualizing careers like being wrong on TV, they are at home munching on oxy, watching Jerry Springer and bitching about foreigners. So the theory goes, least-ways.This made perfect sense as the mass media has always made its money off the middle-class. American news is 10% reporting and 90% proselytizing. That 90% gets old fast unless you have some bogeymen. For as long as I have been alive, working class whites have been treated as life’s losers. In a nutshell, the mass media is “buy this, say that, wear these, do this” so you are not one of those proletarian losers down at the Walmart.There are loads of exceptions, because those proletarian losers have money to spend too. Back in the 70’s, All In The Family was a hit despite the fact the makers thought they were making sport of working class guys like Archie Bunker. Jerry Springer is celebrating 25 years on the air, living entirely off the welfare class that is home during the day watching TV.The truth of the matter is there’s not much of a “working class” culture anymore. That died out in the 70’s when large scale factory work was replaced with service work. The people in my neighborhood are called the “working poor” but there’s not many of them working. In modern America, working class and working poor both mean not working. The life of a welder or car mechanic is nothing like what our betters imagine.None of that matters as the point of painting the Trump vote as angry, toothless peasants pissed off about losing at life is to try and scare the middle-class into going along with the bipartisan fusion party candidate. It is not an attempt to explain; it is an effort to frighten and stigmatize. “You don’t want to be lumped in with those people do you?” is what is supposed to be heard by the viewers, even when the presentation is less explicit.You see this all over conservative media. This piece by Henry Olsen is better than most, but he still clings to the “disillusioned” and “blue-collar” motifs. The image that comes to mind reading this is of a medieval monk looking out at the Vikings sacking Paris, trying to imagine what’s really happening. Again, it is one of the better pieces of late from NR and it is clear Olsen is reading guys like me, but probably not me.Conservative media has been the most prone to the “angry peasant” narrative because their job is to defend the right flank of the party. Many of them have convinced themselves they are tribunes of the people, the vanguard of the conservative movement. Justin Bieber convinced himself he was the next Frank Sanatra so self-delusion is potent stuff. In both cases, reality has triggered a mad lashing out at the haters.It turns out that the bitter clingers are the media people peddling the “angry peasant” narrative. Audacious Epigone points out that the data shows Trump to be quite popular with the mellow elite, as well as the angry losers. In fact, his numbers are amazingly consistent for a primary candidate. Usually, we would see a different favorite for each economic, cultural and demographic group. Trump seems to be winning across the board.Now, it’s possible that all economic and educational strata are populated with “angry” voters. Victor David Hansen has gone with a different angry motif and that is the “angry conservative” voter. The blame for Trump lies with Obama, for being to liberal. The fact that the Republicans did more to help Obama than his own party is conveniently left out of this argument. “Those Trump people are just really pissed at Obama, not us good thinkers in the chattering classes!”I have a lot of Trump people commenting here and I see loads of it on other sites. The word “angry” is never what comes to mind. What I see is “bemused” and “subversive” more than anything. It’s become hip to be anti-establishment, with the establishment being the bipartisan fusion party. It’s what self-described intellectuals like to call Middle American Radicalism.Trump is not tapping into anger. He’s tapping into the sensibility of the great majority. The people look up and see an endless parade of frivolous parasites who defend nothing but their own prerogatives at the expense of everyone else. What’s the point of voting for one party or the other when both sides are colluding against your interests? Why do we have these parties?You don’t throw way something because it makes you angry. You discard that which you see has no value. That’s where the managerial class finds itself today. The people over whom they rule increasingly see no reason for that class to exist. Supporting a guy like Trump is not an act of anger. It is an act of disrespect. The Trump vote is the peasant who refuses to bow to his king. It’s the slave refusing an order from the master. The act is symbolic, not practical.
Police and victims have furiously demanded to know why organisers did not warn them that refugees had committed abhorrent sexual harassment amid speculation such information could have helped avert the sickening attacks on New Year's Eve.
Young women had to flee the welcome event in terror after being groped by gangs of migrant men, even though organisers repeatedly interrupted the music with messages in Arabic urging them to stop their harassment.
The revelations have raised the ugly prospect that some of those refugees were free to go on and commit the twisted sex crimes on New Year's Eve because politically correct council officials did not report them to the police.
Angela Merkel's government is under increasing pressure to come clean over the true numbers of sex crimes linked to migrants after it emerged that authorities deliberately withheld the nationalities of the Cologne attackers for several days.
They also "covered up" similar incidents in other cities including Dusseldorf and Hamburg, Munich and Berlin.
Today the council official responsible for the integration of refugees in the Cologne region admitted organisers knew about the sex attacks at the event but did not want to make a fuss.
She also shockingly said she "cannot remember" whether she advised the women who were attacked to go to the police, but added she felt the event's student organisers "had learned from the situation".
The appalling incident, on November 7, 2015, only became known of at all because one of the victims bravely decided to go to the police in the aftermath of the Cologne sex attacks.
She told the city's Express newspaper how she and her friend were surrounded by migrants at the party, which was held on a boat, and were repeatedly groped despite asking the men to stop.
Two Pakistani nationals were admitted to hospital after six men were attacked by a mob of 20 people near the city's main train station - the scene of the New Year’s Eve attacks - on Sunday.
