The Trump Derangement Syndrome shows no sign of stopping. The alleged meeting between Russians and Donald Trump Jr is reaching a new level of fever.
The anti-Trump mainstream media is buzzing with news that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian American lobbyist and veteran of the Soviet military, attended the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post insist that Akhmetshin’s presence “adds to the potential seriousness of the Trump Tower gathering that is emerging this week as the clearest evidence so far of interactions between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests.” I think they mean the only evidence.
But now does the attendance of this lobbyist add to the “potential seriousness” of the “gathering”? If it was inappropriate for Trump Jr. to meet with one Russian lobbyist with probable Kremlin connections, the attendance of a second doesn’t make the meeting more inappropriate.
The hysteria shows no sign of abating. What comes next ?
“Resist” marches all over the country bring out thousands of leftists and feminists.
Tens of thousands of LGBTQ folk and their allies marched through Hollywood and West Hollywood on Sunday for the Resist March, a protest which this year replaced the colorful and over-the-top celebratory atmosphere of a Pride parade.
The event was billed as non-partisan, but unmistakeable was the heavy presence of marchers bearing anti-Trump signs, speakers decrying the administration’s immigration, healthcare and civil rights policies, and Democrats calling for a burst of activism to channel into the 2018 elections.
Richard Fernandez has some thoughts on where this might go.
Our trust hierarchies have collapsed. As with Soviet Russia, the “official” media sources are now distrusted as purveyors “fake news”. To fill the gap a peer-to-peer grapevine, similar to the “friends and family”, a samizdat is emerging to pick up the slack. Sonya Mann at Inc uses a startup to illustrate the growing division of society into trust groups. “Pax Dickinson wants to fund the revolution. Not a blood-in-the-streets revolution, but one where hardcore right-wingers can economically secede from the parts of society they vehemently dislike. “We need parallel everything. I do not want to ever have to spend a single dollar at a non-movement business.”
That’s the right, the alt-right if you prefer.
The left has already shown their willingness to boycott any business that does not follow their script.
Brendan Eich recently stepped down as CEO of Mozilla, developer of the Firefox Web browser. It may be more accurate to say he was forced out in the wake of a rising boycott against him. The backlash against Eich is related to his position on gay rights, but many feel that the campaign against him is its own form of discrimination and intolerance.
His crime was to quietly donate $1000 to the Proposition Eight ballet initiative, which resulted in over 7 million yes votes and a 60% margin of approval. The proposition was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge who promptly married his gay lover.
California’s AG declined to appeal his ruling. That’s a pretty effective boycott.
Nationally, we have seen a small Christian bakery driven out of business for declining to bake a custom wedding cake for a gay (lesbian) couple on religious grounds. The couple were prior customers and had been served happily in the past but not the wedding cake.
The left has been quite successful in getting people like Bill O’Reilly off the air and Roger Ailes fired for alleged sexual harassment.
Male college students have been driven from campuses until men are only 40% of college students.
There have been calls for states to secede from the Union.
Last May, the Texas Nationalist Movement came within two votes of adding Texas independence language to the state’s Republican platform.
Even California wants to secede although what it would gain is a bit hazy. Naturally, Donald Trump is suspected of supporting a secession.
I observed, the people presently working to bring about a “Cal-exit” by gathering signatures for a 2018 ballot measure that would start the secession process are pitching their efforts in language designed to appeal to the state’s progressives––and tapping into the anger that many Californians feel toward the president. “Californians are better educated, wealthier, more liberal, and value healthcare and education more than the rest of the country,” Marcus Ruiz Evans, one of the leaders of the Yes California Independence Campaign, declared in one op-ed. “Our views on education, science, immigration, taxation and healthcare are different.”
The left has pretty much won the culture war and now they seem to be going across the battlefield shooting survivors.
What can conservatives do ?
Our trust hierarchies have collapsed. As with Soviet Russia, the “official” media sources are now distrusted as purveyors “fake news”. To fill the gap a peer-to-peer grapevine, similar to the “friends and family”, a samizdat is emerging to pick up the slack. Sonya Mann at Inc uses a startup to illustrate the growing division of society into trust groups. “Pax Dickinson wants to fund the revolution. Not a blood-in-the-streets revolution, but one where hardcore right-wingers can economically secede from the parts of society they vehemently dislike. “We need parallel everything. I do not want to ever have to spend a single dollar at a non-movement business.”
In conversations with Inc., Dickinson explained that he sees CounterFund as the linchpin of a parallel far-right economy. The alt-right movement shouldn’t fund or depend on platforms that are hostile to their goals, he believes.
“America 3.0” James Bennett’s and Michael Lotus’ book postulated an eventual reorganization of states according to shared interests and values.
The Trump Derangement has now moved into real lunatic territory as Serious columnists allege family guilt in Trump’s ancestors.
Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich emigrated to the United States when he was 16, in 1885. He ventured west to seek his riches and finally settled in Seattle, where he opened a restaurant that, according to family historian Gwenda Blair, likely included a section for a bordello.
Gold fever hit the Pacific Northwest, and Grandfather Trump moved up to Bennett, British Columbia. It was a fast, raucous, money-grabbing atmosphere and Trump opened the Arctic Hotel, which had a bar, a restaurant and, according to an advertisement in the Dec. 9, 1899, edition of The Bennett Sun newspaper, “private boxes for ladies and parties.” Each box apparently came equipped with a bed and a scale to weigh the gold dust that was used to pay for the services offered in it.
“The sins of the fathers” seem to linger in David Brooks’ feverish imagination.
A Constitutional Convention seems far fetched but maybe it will get to that.
In 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton settled their bitter political feud with a pistol duel that took Hamilton’s life, but Article Five of the Constitution offers a more civilized resolution – a Convention of the States.
I don’t know but it seems that the hysteria that followed the loss of the election by Hillary/Obama has not abated
Maybe an internal secession might be less traumatic. It didn’t work for David Koresh or Randy Weaver but Bill Clinton is not president right now.
Tags: Democrats, economics, politics, Republicans
Separate but equal silliness.
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