I think I have figured out the main reason why social media sites and establishment “news” outlets have gotten completely brazen in their censoring of conservatives and blocking any and all news that is detrimental to Democrats and the narrative. Perhaps you have heard that Twitter and Facebook are now banning people for showing the injuries they received from Antifa and BLM. Here is Isabella DeLuca showing pictures of her face after deranged leftists attacked her. Instagram and Facebook piled on and suspended her. Philip Anderson, a black man, had his front teeth knocked out by Antifa members for daring to participate in a free speech rally in San Francisco. Twitter and Facebook again piled on and kicked him off their sites for daring to show graphic evidence of what the left is actually doing at these “peaceful protests.” Congressman Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who is a dentist, offered to help Anderson get his smile back.
Social Media sites and many in the establishment press have largely figured out that their behavior has become so obviously ugly and egregious that, if Republicans win, those outlets are facing deadly scrutiny and legal jeopardy. They have already lost in that scenario, so they figure if they can just frantically gaslight for a couple more weeks and Democrats win, the peril goes away. Thus, they are now completely shameless – for they know they are in genuine mortal peril this time.
You may think an established press outlet is, ultimately, invulnerable. I have personal experience in this. In 1989-90 a 50-year-old local media company knowingly slimed me for a year when I was running for a little local county board seat. I was the tip of a very large spear in the county that did not fit their narrative. They were determined to destroy me, certain that my status as a legal “public figure” would protect them from any consequences. (It is extraordinarily difficult for a “public figure” to prevail in a libel case. The press can tell almost any lie they want about “public figures” within a very constrained set of rules.) When I decided to sue, all manner of friends and allies told me I must never get in a spitting match with people who buy ink by the barrel. I sued anyway. The settlement didn’t break the company – but publications treat settlements in such cases like a vampire treats Holy Water…and I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t trying to get rich, just get a large enough settlement that it could not be styled as a “nuisance settlement.” The paper’s libel insurance shot through the roof. It became very close to uninsurable. Within a decade, it folded entirely because it could not afford – (and struggled to obtain) – insurance under the existing ownership.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, if Trump and Republicans win big, many publications and broadcast sites – and all the social media sites – are going to be systematically dismantled. Those that fight will go bankrupt, some will go to jail for actual crimes they committed in furthering a massive conspiracy against the public – and the only realistic outcome for many will be to sell their news properties to new owners who have not discredited themselves. I know that many who think spouting conventional wisdom is actual wisdom will tell me this will never happen. Thanks, but I have done it before – and it will happen. The reason the press and social media are fighting frantically as if this is a fight for their very survival is, very simply, because it is.
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These last few days, I find myself unexpectedly somewhat sympathetic to Hunter Biden. The evidence that is piling up (and it is documented and solid) is that he did NOT cynically use his father’s position to enrich himself. Rather, his father, Joe Biden, used Hunter as the bagman in one of the largest, most corrupt influence peddling schemes in American history. It is almost cynical enough to make the Clintons blush. Several observers have said that Joe pimped his son out – and that is not an inaccurate statement. In one email, Hunter complains of having to give half of everything he makes to “Pop.”
I once considered Joe Biden a somewhat comical figure due to his repeated plagiarism, false boasts, gaffes, and policy errors. The new revelations show him to be one of the most cynically corrupt figures ever in American life. He really is the equivalent of the head of a crime family. At least it explains how he became such a big multi-millionaire living on a government salary all his life. I am rarely shocked, but the depth of depravity revealed by Hunter Biden’s hard drive has left me shocked.
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I use a different template for political analysis than anybody I have ever known. I respect data and traditional methods – and certainly take good advantage of them. But my fundamental method is to identify the fundamental theme that is running either overtly or subliminally in the public conscious – and then assess how parties and candidates are taking advantage of or being duped by that theme.
The plus side of this method over the years is that it has generally helped me to be more accurate than the polls – and to sniff out trends that everybody else is ignoring. In 1994, I predicted on air on my radio show in March that the Republicans were a dead lock to take over the House of Representatives after almost five decades in the wilderness. The day before election in 2016, I told a Christian broadcaster at dinner that I expected Donald Trump to win the presidency rather handily. The downside is that my fundamental method is based on a subjective judgment of the public mood – so when I am wrong I tend to be wildly wrong. Fortunately, those wild errors happened mostly when I was still local and gave me the chance to refine my technique. The only time I was caught completely flatfooted since assessing and being involved in national politics was in 2018. I did not ever see or suspect the massive shift in suburban alliances. In fact, I thought the bloody hearings over Brett Kavanaugh would illustrate clearly that Democrats were not to be trusted with power. While many times I had hoped and pushed for things to be different in certain cycles, I was never surprised until 2018.
A problem I have always had to correct for is that I am rarely wrong in seeing trends develop, but I am often two to four years ahead of the general public in seeing them. I also tend to give people more credit for discernment than they have earned. It was shocking to me that people could watch the smearing of Kavanaugh and still vote en masse for Democrats. Alas, a lot of those suburbanites deceived themselves that the viciousness of the left would only be deployed against heavyweights like Kavanaugh and Trump – and they would never personally be targeted. It is a sad consequence of the “me generation.” Fortunately, I suspect the eruption of Antifa and BLM violence and the rise of “cancel culture” has disabused suburbanites of that delusion.
The denizens of each party at the leadership level suffer from certain characteristic weaknesses. Republicans generally are timid – and desperate for an approving nod from establishment media. It is kind of pathetic – and has helped them snatch defeat from the jaws of victory many times. In the last 40 years, the biggest Republican victories have come when their key leaders were not burdened by such timidity. Ronald Reagan changed America’s political landscape – but though he is remembered reverently now, he was absolutely savaged by the country club Republicans who did not care for his plain speech and commitment to victory rather than getting along with people who were antithetical to liberty. Newt Gingrich was not the least bit intimidated when leading the charge to take over the House of Representatives – and never did give a hoot what the New York Times or the Washington Post said about him. He won one of the most smashing upsets in Congressional history. If ever there was a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” candidate, it was Donald Trump. (Well, actually, Andrew Jackson fully fit that profile, too, but few Americans have even a passing familiarity with actual American history these days.) The “play it safe” crowd in the Republican Party – and usually it is the majority of the same – never delivers safety and rarely delivers victory. On the rare occasions when they are victorious, it is usually because Democrat pathologies in a cycle have been even more dominant than Republican pathologies.
Democrats always over-estimate their persuasiveness. They are so convinced they are on the winning end of the “arc of history” that they persuade themselves that every transient victory is a permanent realignment, then overplay their hand and are shocked when ordinary people repudiate their over-reach. They rely heavily on bullying tactics and ridicule to get their way. They have never figured out that convincing people to shut up is not the same as actually convincing them. Perhaps I am succumbing to the Democrats’ characteristic pathology, but I think they may have permanently discredited themselves with the wild over-reach these last two years. Democrats have a really weird predilection for disseminating propaganda they have crafted and then believing their own propaganda. They do an amazing job of gaslighting themselves. But that puts them at a disadvantage, even if it is not immediately obvious: they are almost always dealing with bad information. Garbage in, garbage out.
I think the imperative driving this cycle is voter anger at the authoritarian instincts and totalitarian aspirations of the ruling class. A large number of minorities have figured out the left does NOT care about them, but only wants to leverage them to obtain absolute power. As I said earlier, I think suburbanites have figured out the left is not just coming for Kavanaugh, Trump or Barrett, but is coming for them, too. Even some prominent leftists have been shaken by the imperial intolerance of the woke storm troopers of the left. I think Trump and Republicans will win a landslide victory of such epic proportions that it may signal the end of the Democratic Party, to be replaced ultimately by a liberal party that is not barking mad. Complicating all this is the frenzied certainty on the left that this is their breakthrough moment. That means the rioting, looting, arson and violence they have so fondly embraced are likely to play out after the election in an even more intensified form than the rest of this year. Even if we win so hugely at the ballot box that it is an unmistakable repudiation of the madness, we will have to fight for our liberty.
Of course, massive vote fraud is planned and already being mounted. But even if Democrats manufacture 15 million fraudulent votes I think they will be stunned to find it is not enough. Perhaps I am wrong and a plurality of Americans have become so lazy and degenerate that they are agreeable to being ruled. I am not agreeable to it. So if the left prevails – either by hook or by crook – I will imitate the founding generation of this country and refuse to submit. Constitutionally, in America, the people are sovereign. I know it has not played out that way in practice for about a hundred years now. But patriots will not go meekly into the dark night the left has planned for us. I think they are about to find the truth behind Kurt Schlichter’s admonition that Trump is not the right’s last chance; he is the left’s last chance. They will stand down or reap the whirlwind they have sown.
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In Colorado we have a retention ballot for sitting judges. They do not face a contested election, but they must gain 55% of the vote at designated cycles after they have been appointed to keep their seats. We had a similar system in Illinois when I lived there. It is rare for a sitting judge to be ousted by these means. He really had to mess up badly somewhere along the way.
I did something I have never done before this cycle. I voted “no” on every judge who is either a Democrat or appointed by a Democrat. I am sure that some of them are fine people. But I have had it with the left talking about comity and such whenever a Democrat judge is involved – and bringing out the sharpened spikes, hot pokers, and the rack for even the gentlest Republican judges. Democrats must reform their party from within. I used to collaborate with a lot of Democrats. Right now, that once great party resembles a pack of snarling, rabid hyenas. If a person is content to remain in that party, seeing that on a daily basis, they are beneath my contempt. Should even a few work seriously for reform – to extend civility at all times and to all people, rather than just demanding it be offered to fellow rabid hyenas, I will consider them. But until I see that, I will go out of my way to find the partisan affiliation of every person on every ballot, including non-partisan races. No Democrat will ever get my vote again unless they completely overhaul and reform their party. I don’t like snarling, rabid hyenas – and I especially don’t like them in positions of power.
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I know that these unprecedented times in our world are matched by unprecedented times in our Catholic Church. Pope Francis completely lost me last year at the Amazon Synod when he decided Christ must make room at the altar for pagan and pantheist deities (Pachamama). He doubled down by having the Vatican issue a Pachamama commemorative coin. His encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is feckless, deceptive and would be a profound break with Catholic tradition and teaching if it were allowed to stand. Yet I think the challenge of the times is to us – and most intimately to the Bishops of the world. The question is how do we live fidelity to Christ and the hierarchy He established under the governance of a Pope who has clearly made himself an opponent of the faith. I am not ignoring it, but I am thinking and studying long and hard on it. I will have a piece on this critical subject up in the next couple of weeks. A year ago, I thought the offering to Pachamama accepted on the altar by Pope Francis was the “abomination which makes desolate.” If we have chased Christ from His altar, well, that would explain a lot about this insane and desolate year.
Image credit: The Destruction of Sodom – Pieter Segart
