David Frum Profile picture
Aug 17, 2019 10 tweets 2 min read Read on X
So a thought about "AntiFa" ... 1/n
Years ago, I was sitting in a waiting room about the time of an international conference in Uruguay. The waiting room TV was set to Fox. I was reading and didn't pay much attention, but I gradually became aware of a scene of mayhem: protesters hurling Molotov cocktails, etc
The subliminal scene became alarming enough that I closed my book and watched the TV. It took a moment, but I realized that I was watching the same single man throwing the same Molotov cocktail on an endless loop over and over again as the TV folk chatted.
But wait, there's more. The Uruguayan police had formed a line around the protest zone. The molotov man started running about 100 feet from the line, hurled his little firecracker at 50 feet, so it crashed and burned just on the SAFE side of the line from the cops, who ignored it
The whole thing was a total kabuki show, all made for TV. And of course all involved had to know that, from the molotov man down in Uruguay to the video editors in NYC. The whole point was to convert a non-event into the appearance of something upsetting
So that's what's going on in Portland, isn't it? Why is breaking windows the paradigmatic anti-fa crime? It creates a big mess, but it's a misdemeanor offense and one that won't upset the cops too much.
It's all a show, everybody knows it. And if it stops being a show - Portland alone employs 1000 police, the state of Oregon many more, plus there's the national guard. Plus again, all those involved are surely well known to the police, who can find and lay charges if they want
Meanwhile (2) women in the US are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by a partner than women in other developed countries, according to the Giffords Center
I have zero sympathy for street hooliganism of any kind, for any professed motive. Break a window, go to jail. But on this anti-fa business, we are all being scammed in a way so blatant that I have to believe it offends truly professional scam artists (END)

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More from @davidfrum

Aug 5
Elon Musk posted this after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023. 1/x Image
Musk allies, sidekicks, and wannabes spread the message of panic after the SVB failure, some genuinely fearful - others eagerly excited - that the US economy trembled on verge of collapse. 2/x
Instead, this happened 3/x Image
Read 8 tweets
Aug 1
GW Bush's top communications aide Karen Hughes was walking along a beach one day when a plane appeared overhead, pulling an advertising banner behind it. The banner read, approximately, "Jill, come back. I am miserable without you. Jack." She thought ... 1/x
She thought: "Bad message Jack. Too much about you; not enough about her."

The Trump campaign's evident decision to campaign on the message that "Kamala Harris isn't black enough" reminds me of the doomed Jack-and-Jill banner.

WHO IS THIS MESSAGE FOR?

2/x
You can understand what the Harris campaign is trying to accomplish with its message, "Trump and Vance are creepy weirdos."

But does Trump imagine there are voters who might have voted for Harris but will switch to Trump if they learn that her ethnic background is mixed? 3/x
Read 4 tweets
Jul 29
"Weird" is code for "expresses obsessive hostility to women, including the women in his own personal life" - and because MAGA Republicans don't get the code, they don't understand why they are losing the argument.
That's why it doesn't help when Don Jr. posts video of Kamala Harris greeting a flamboyant drag queen. Yes, the drag queen is "weird" in the sense of "exhibiting highly unusual behavior." But he's not weird in the sense that is draining quarts of blood from the GOP ticket.
I say this as a man who is currently entertaining himself by reading a nearly 1000 page definitive history of US tariff policy. Which is a pretty weird thing to do, but not in the way that is so urgently politically relevant.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 27
For two years of our early married life, @DCrittenden1 and I lived in a Manhattan apartment owned by a successful psychiatrist. He kept his office on the ground floor of the same building. Hour after hour, limousines idled at his curb waiting for his patients to emerge. 1/x
I once asked the psychiatrist:

"You seem to specialize in treating rich and famous people. Do they present many different problems?"

He replied, "No, it's almost always some variant of the same problem. They feel like frauds on the inside." 2/x
I recall that exchange when I wonder why the wealthiest men in public life seem aggrieved, bitter, and resentful. You'd think they'd be enjoying their money on a tropical isle or in an Italian palazzo. But no ... they're MAD AS HELL - and they want the world to know it. 3/x
Read 9 tweets
Jul 22
When Charles Evans Hughes ran for president in 1916, a politically ally of Woodrow Wilson's wrote a lengthy pamphlet arguing that Hughes was ineligible because his father was a British national at the time of Hughes' birth on US soil in 1862. That ally went on to notoriety ...
That ally of Woodrow Wilson's went on to serve in the US State Department during the Franklin Roosevelt administration where he implacably resisted issuing emergency visas to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/art…
You can read Long's pamphle here. It didn't stop Republicans from nominating Hughes in 1916. Nor would it have stopped Hughes from becoming president if Hughes had won California's electoral votes. highlanderjuan.com/wp-content/upl…
politico.com/news/magazine/…
Read 9 tweets
Jul 18
Donald Trump's fourth year in office was the most catastrophic final year of any president since Herbert Hoover's in 1932.

Joe Biden's fourth year in office is the most secure and prosperous since - when? Ronald Reagan's in 1984? Calvin Coolidge's in 1924?
Republicans are selling nostalgia for one of the worst years in US economic history.

Democrats cannot sell satisfaction with one of the best years in US economic history.
Trump wants credit for the economy he inherited - but no blame for the economy he bequeathed. The Trump economic record is like the Trump business record: "Rich until the inheritance ran out."
Read 4 tweets

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