Dems Are So 1960s

I've had this post--empty but for the title--sitting in my drafts for at least a week, probably longer. I ended up using the material I was gathering--about Nixon and Watergate--in Turning Over The 2016 Rocks. But just now I was reading Don Surber who quoted Glenn Reynolds' latest: Dems shouldn't be surprised when another election passes them by.

In the course of the article Reynolds makes this observation about "the army of leftist activists whose nonstop craziness is moving moderates into the Trump column day by day":

Like I said, it's fantasy role-play, in this case by people sad that they were born too late for the 1960s. ...

I could go on and on, but pretty much any random day's survey of the news makes my point.

Turning Over The 2016 Rocks

That's the theme of Holman Jenkins' column in today's WSJ: "Who Will Turn Over the 2016 Rocks?" Jenkins, in line with his NeverTrumpism, buys into the idea that James Comey--among others--was "played by the Russians" (re a supposed forged email chain), even while backhandedly acknowledging the difficulties of that position:

"Making further mincemeat of Mr. Comey's rationale [the supposed email chain], the inspector general has revealed that his FBI colleagues judged the Russian intelligence to be 'objectively false' and possibly a Kremlin plant."

Nevertheless, Jenkins finishes off with some big picture observations of the lay of the land facing the Deep State and its Fourth Estate lackeys. I offer them here as food for thought for the Thanksgiving weekend, as we await solid news in the coming weeks:

Wafting above all is an odor of 1963, when the press deliberately ignored Lee Harvey Oswald's communist affiliations in favor of a distracting talking point about right-wing extremism in Dallas. Do I think the republic today can survive a full airing of the US intelligence community's inept actions in the 2016 race? Yes, and with minimal shock at this point. It's the FBI and CIA that are unlikely to survive without undergoing a sweeping institutional housecleaning. 

Which brings us to the latest inspector general's report due in a couple weeks, itself a down payment on a criminal investigation now in the hands of US Attorney John Durham. Because Washington is seldom keen to prosecute even plainly illegal leaks when Republicans are the victims, and because unprofessional credulousness in the face of dubious "intelligence" (like the Steele dossier) is not about to become a crime, the cathartic prosecutions of Obama intelligence officials that some Trump loyalists crave are unlikely to happen. 

Many of us avidly await the coming revelations for a different reason: to see if the mainstream media will finally interest itself in the truths of 2016.  Looming over the fourth estate is a quietly important question: whether continuing to collude in a coverup can remain consistent with commercial survival.

My reactions:

Terrific Read: Conrad Black Goes To Bat For Richard Nixon

As he has done before, Conrad Black comes to the defense of Richard Nixon. One of the core Dem myths is the claim that Richard Nixon was a bad man who got what he deserved and that the progressive jihad against him somehow saved the country. The exact reverse is something like the truth. Nixon's impeachment had a devestating impact on our country, the deleterious effects of which are still with us--more manifest than ever. The truth is that Nixon was impeached for being an outsider, for being a patriot, and for being anti-communist. All faults for which progressives could never and will never forgive him. Oh, and there was another major fault for which Nixon could never be forgiven--he twice defeated progressive standard bearers, the second time by the greatest plurality in US history. Remind you of anyone?

But we can know better. Black's Nixon’s Lessons for the Would-Be Impeachers offers serious lessons for us today, coming from a Canadian:

Only extremely grave offenses should deprive Americans’ right to choose their president. Nixon didn’t meet the impeachment bar. Neither does Trump.

I will simply offer some excerpts from this fine article, and urge you to read it in its entirety.

One thing that will quite possibly be achieved by the nonsensical impeachment investigation being conducted in the House of Representatives is the end of the extreme criminalization of policy differences.

I'm not nearly as sanguine as Black in this regard. In a country that is oblivious to its own history, in which forces that seek to erase our historical memory gain ground every day, prospects are not good.

Draining The Swamp

This morning Scott Johnson at Powerline linked to a review of Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century, by John Marini. The review is by Michael Anton, Draining the Swamp:

Michael Anton (born 1970) is an American former senior national security official in the Trump administration. He is best known for his pseudonymous essays written during the 2016 presidential campaign in which he supported Donald Trump and collaborated on the pro-Trump Journal of American Greatness blog. Anton was named Deputy Assistant to the President for Strategic Communications on the United States National Security Council. [Read More]

It's a long review, and one that may begin a bit slowly for those who aren't up on political philosophy, but it's hard to praise it enough for the insights into, well, The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century. In other words, the big picture of what the Russia Hoax is really all about and how it relates to American history--and America's future. I highly recommend Anton's review for its portrayal of the Russia Hoax and the monumental effort by the Deep State to reject Trump like an invasive foreign body. In particular, his application of Marini's thinking to a comparison between Nixon/Watergate and Trump/Russia Hoax is fascinating. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Here are some snippets: