How French leadership responds to threats versus how US leadership responds to threats:
After a man is beheaded in France by an Islamist, the French respond by affirming their culture, projecting Charlie Hebdo cartoons on a building guarded by police... 1/
...as a kind of middle finger to the enemy. "We are French, we are proud, come and get it."
In the US, on the other hand... when statues are toppled and cities are burned, Republicans and Democrats respond with basically bribes, promises of affirmative action.... 2/
...by proposing making Juneteenth a national holiday (Trump proposed this), Rich Lowry at National Review pens his 50th article exhorting Americans to abandon Confederate statues, with prayers for the barbarians (Jacob Blake prayer at RNC), reparations (Democrats)... 3/
...Repubs introduce legislation to condemn their own voters (QAnon), Repubs propose legislation to erase European & Christian history (Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin proposed abolishing Columbus Day), the list goes on, but you get the point. 4/
The difference between French leadership and our leadership is that it seems like they have more dignity, for which we tend to make fun of them, the caricature of the "haughty French." But I would love more haughty American leaders... 5/
...who respond to threats not with a shrug or empty rhetoric and a bribe but with indignation and a will to live 6/
Great piece by my friend @PiatakTom. "Two conclusions seem inescapable: 1) Biden thinks that the Democratic Party walked away from Polish Americans, and 2) Biden does not number Polish Americans among 'the really smart people.'" 1/ intellectualtakeout.org/joe-biden-s-po…
"In talking this way about Polish Americans, it is unlikely that Biden meant to exclude descendants of the other Eastern European ethnic groups who came to America in large numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." 2/
"Indeed, the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, where Biden grew up, has a higher percentage of its population that traces its ancestry to Eastern Europe than just about anywhere else in America." 3/
The Miles Taylor revelations of things Trump proposed but never came to fruition refutes the 4D chess people that claimed Trump couldn't be based in the first term because "optics." Trump had great ideas, but subversive staff and little to no external push back from the Right 1/
So Trump wanted to do some awesome things, but he was undermined by Taylor, Rollins, Kushner, Liddell, etc, who coordinated with the media to cover and help themselves 2/
And because conservative media has been so in the trenches against leftism and the Democrats, the polarization probably helped these people evade the notice they deserved 3/
The Copenhagen School of Security Studies defines political threats as challenges to the legitimacy of the political unit relating to ideologies that define the state. In other words, threats that undermine an existing or desired political order... 1/
...like a news story informing Americans of a certain presidential candidate’s history of corruption, or information relevant to public safety that is offensive or harmful to the narratives they favor 2/
Twitter and Facebook do not operate as mere “businesses,” but rather act more like nonstate actors, essentially as competing points of sovereignty -- who is in charge here? 3/
This is a cope. Mainstream conservatism can't conserve anything because it just copies whatever the opposition does and sells it as a different product. The Left, at least is creative enough to create culture that affects politics 1/
Which is why these people try so hard to copy them. If they were serious, they would want to use the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities to support and fund a counterculture from the Right. But that's too hard, too serious 2/
Note also I said that rapper endorsements are not a problem themselves, but that the problem is our leaders act as if they have just landed on Mars. So just telling them that a rapper's endorsement is neat, but not a world-historical event, makes them upset 3/
Yes. Immigration, in general, is bad for the Republican Party, and the ends of conservatism, insofar as conservatism intends to conserve a way of life. It doesn't matter if they come from Mexico or Germany, immigration means change. You can argue pros/cons, but you can't deny it.
I should say a particular kind of life. It's also harder for immigrants to assimilate when they live in areas that basically become linguistic-ethnic enclaves. Why learn English when everyone around you speaks Spanish?
On the other hand, I can't help but feel bummed when I know socially conservative, basically normal immigrants come to America and are ruined by what passes for our "culture" today. There is a reason Nigerian immigrants basically don't want their kids to assimilate.
Oh, cool, because only Hispanic families need help putting their kids in better schools. I'll let me poor white neighbors with Trump flags on their porches know that we will be taken care of simply because we are a "Hispanic family," but their kids won't because they're white 1/
I'm voting for Trump, but I can't properly express without a lot of expletives how angry this makes me, in part because it is so dishonorable. Trump won't even acknowledge the existence of a huge part of his base that also needs a lot of help 2/
White Americans are the biggest victims of the opioid crisis, of deaths of despair, and, ironically, of interracial violence and discrimination. Under different circumstances, this would be obnoxious but not infuriating. All things considered, it is infuriating 3/