Writes David French in "There Are Monsters in Your Midst, Too" in the NYT.
My ellipsis makes the repetition of the word "direction" seem awkward, but I wanted to highlight directionality.
Since I'm quoting so little of that column, I'm expending one of my gift links on it so you can see the context.
Posts
123 comments:
I guess you can grow angrier than cheering the death of those you hate. Maybe that is a direction both sides are headed, but not hard to see who is further along that vector.
David French is a dishonest, grifting, hack, and that "both sides" crap ain't flying anymore. Sure, your typical NYT reader still buys into this alternative reality, but your average, non-political, centric voter clearly recognizes who is to blame for Charlie Kirk's death. French can get bent.
Is it really possible for the left to grow more angry? I doubt it.
... and the center progresses the consensus in literary diffusion. Perhaps it's more of an Ouroboros phenomenon than a normal distribution. Or musical chairs. King/queen of the hill?
French hates Trump. So is he calling for the left to apologize? No. He wants the right to shut up. Well the left shut up Charlie Kirk fatally. So no we will not shut up. We know where the blame falls. Cultural totalitarianism The Democrats have and will kill us because we disagree. They tried for Trump , they succeeded on Kirk.
I might scan the article later, but French is not high on my list. He gives it away in the summary: A sense of false equivalence, pouring the rationalizing oil onto the choppy waters away to smooth them.
But, to use another analogy: What do the wooden beads above the billiard table say about the dollar value of riot destruction, and the body count, the squandering of the social contract? They say that the left has been racking up the tab, without being made to settle their debts to society, or even make the vigorish.
This line of thinking leads in one direction — rationalizing extreme measures in response.
Why is it, then, that all of the political violence comes from the left? Floyd riots, BLM riots/lootings/arsons, multiple assassination attempts on Trump, Kirk assassination, leftist agitators turning the peaceful January 6th protest into a (still almost totally peaceful) "riot" in which the only ones getting assaulted were the protesters, Scalase shooting, Ryan beating, etc.
I think we can all agree... #HateLovesAbortion
By the way, the Left is seriously trying to gaslight us into believing that the Kirk killer was a right-winger, because his parents go to church.
Which side’s policies work to protect and grow our nation, which side’s policies work to dismantle and destroy it? The intent behind the political violence matters.
All of that faux olive branch waving just so he could hammer home, again and again, how the Republicans (And Trump! Always, Trump!) are still worse? Right...
Maybe he needs to review who the people are out there, all over social media, laughing at an assassination, saying the victim had it coming, excusing and/or praising the shooter, and even publicly hoping for new violence against a widow and two children. It's all been bravely done.
Or maybe he has seen it. That's why he's making this lame plea for "turning down the heat" while being still unable to resist taking potshots at the other side.
There is only one side whose political leaders call their opponents existential threats to our way of life. They have done this repeatedly and for years. They have done it long enough now that there are young adults who grew up hearing that over and over and who take them at their word. They are now acting accordingly. I am sure Mr. French knows people on the political left who are nice people - to him. He should look beyond his circle of friends at the wider issue. If he's capable of self-examination and self-awareness, he might be surprised to realize what he has embraced.
I guess I didn’t catch the news of all the violent riots by conservatives following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Perhaps Mr French can point those out to us.
What’s changed, Mr. French, is our willingness to accept your Civility Bullshit argument. YOU still think you’re civil but we know you’re full of bullshit because when the Media blames the right, say for the Giffords shooting, there are no cheerleaders on our side and we don’t revere the shooter the way leftist ghouls do. There is no bothsides argument that will ever find purchase in normie America ever again.
I think that if Mr. French had been writing in 1943 he would have been using the "both sides" argument.
a believer is murdered, and this is the codswallop, French comes up with, one could recite that verse about vomit, but it is close to lunch hour,
the Times has been the enabler of Stalin, Castro Ho Chi Minh and a host of other demons, small and large
There is still time to reverse the trend of political violence. The most effective way to reduce it is for leaders to unequivocally condemn it, especially when perpetrated by individuals associated with their own political side.
The US is the most heavily armed nation in the world. It is time to stop pointing fingers and instead acknowledge that rising political violence impacts everyone—left, right, and center.
America has the capacity to move beyond mutual recrimination and prevent its potential escalation into something worse. However, without leadership from the nation's president, such progress is difficult to envision.
“ then the answer lies in reconciliation, not domination.”
Disagree. The Left has to be totally crushed at the polls. The Dems need to be reduced to a tiny minority in the Senate and the House. Maybe then the Dems will realize that American voters reject their failed policies.
consequence culture, if you encourage violence, you get consequences,
As usual, the comments over there are LIT!
I read the essay, and it's classic D. French. I don't know how that guy ever got away with calling himself a conservative.
Erika Kirk has pledged to continue the conversation. Freedom of Speech Matters (FSM)
No sticks or stones, nor guns or knives, nor literary diffusion in ethical virtue.
Baby Lives Matter (BLM)
It’s funny how David French imagines that he is somehow not part of the hate factory producing two minute hates of his political opponents everywhere, all day every day.
He can’t even see it because he agrees with it, but go on YouTube and see the hatred of Trump and his followers that cascades forth unbidden.
French hates Trump because he is immoral. I want to know how many women Bill Clinton fucked.
Oh, and he's still trying to pin the Minnesota killings on the right, and assert that Kirk's killer was a Groyper.
all of those encouraged the disarming of the people, the destruction of Churchs, Synagogues and Mosques,
hes a syme, when the revolution comes, he would be consumed
I see what you did there Kak.
President bitter clinger and Dark Brandon had ample opportunity to do just that and poured gasoline instead.
From the article:
"We screen out negative information about our side because we so desperately want to see ourselves as good people, fighting hard in a righteous struggle. It’s not just that we believe our ideas are better, but that we are better — we possess higher character and better values than the people on the other side."
This sounds far more like a motivation on the Left than the Right. All people think they are 'the good guys,' but the desire to FEEL like they are good is much much more common on the Left. This is probably why even the Left criticizes the Left for 'performative' actions, because the Left are more likely to do things that don't really accomplish much if anything but let them feel like they the good guys.
I take small doses of idocaine, like Inigo Montoya,
The bothsidesism makes me angry, as does the implication I’m interested in an eye for an eye…
…I was struck by the Ed Markey stuff about his frustration at his side inability to neutralize Trump. Despite the overwhelming evidence they are unpopular at the polls, in the polls, and that they’re ability to control the narrative has failed there’s still the unshakable confidence his side will be able to ‘do something’ to stop him.
Tl;dr Kak: Trump is to blame for not telling his hateful and violent supporters to calm down and accept what we have planned for them or their leaders are going to keep getting killed by our side.
Biden should face imprisonment or the death penalty as punishment for what Kirk described as "crimes against America," framing it as a legal consequence through the justice system. ~ Grok
Yes, Charlie Kirk called for Joe Biden’s execution. But he called for it in the right way.….
"This line of thinking leads in one direction.." French inadvertently speaks a truth here. In the past we had a give and take between conservatives and liberals. Both long standing, worthy philosophies. Conservatives have not changed. Hey, its a characteristic of being conservative! But now we've replaced Liberality with Progress. Progressives see a one way street. Forward Comrades!
He also comes surprisingly close to a good idea. Want leaders to condemn political violence? Start with every Democrat who used the terms "fascist, Hitler, Nazi" to apologize and promise to never do so again. A few might, and there could be the core of a new party. But most fear "the groups". Be they trans, pro-Pal, or whatever other crazies the current elderly apparatchiks need to cling to power. And fear them they should.
Cowards.
Yes, yes yes ... of course Democrats NOW want a truce. After the successful mission to delete another prominent Republican.
It's a guerilla war, and there are partisans in the media. Guerilla embeds helping the war. Keeping passions on the Republican side just below where an actual war they would lose breaks out.
It's a perfect game-theory enhanced strategy. And they are winning this war.
Donald Trump must outlaw the Democrat Party, just the same as we have done before. Suspend habeaus corpus if necessary, as Lincoln did and as the Supreme Court said Lincoln could do. Arrest the leaders of the criminal party masquerading as a political party.
al Qaeda wasn't a political party. It was a terrorist organization. They couldn't win at the ballot box, so they kill instead to get what they want and the Democrats are no different.
We've had to kill American Democrats before. 600,000 of them in the previous conflict. It's time again to cull their herd.
Donald Trump needs to grow some balls. But I suspect he will never be a wartime President. He's going to leave Vance a hell of a mess. But the reward sits there on Mt. Rushmore for the next President willing to do the needful.
What’s the left have left? “You are not just literally Hitler, you’re a double Hitler!” Ohhh, sick burn. The Left has been raging for years. The right has not yet begun to rage
in the modern era, they would have killed buckley,
The talking points are out. I’ve seen this same list of “both sides” are violent before:
First they ignore all the violence from the left. The BLM and Antifa riots. The specific targeting of conservative politicians and attacks on conservative rallies.
Second they say the right is responsible for most political violence based of mass shootings perpetrated by racist trying to start a race war.
Then they list the horribles committed by conservatives:
Gov. Whitmer fednapping
J6
“Reign of terror” against local school boards.
Typical NYT and leftist propaganda.
"I want to know how many women Bill Clinton fucked."
(Raises beer.) Well ... THAT escalated quickly.
But seriously, the better question is how many little girls Bill Clinton fucked on Epstein Island and on his Rape Plane.
F that AI bull-kaka. Produce an actual quote from Mr Kirk or STFU
David French has no credibility on the right. He wags his tail to gain approval from NYT World. He gives no hint that he knows that his masters would abandon him if he ever stopped. He ought to take a lesson from Bill Maher on courage.
French poses as if he is above the fray. He isn’t.
He also doesn’t explore the reasons given for each side’s supposed anger. But let’s do that briefly. What, essentially, is the grievance of the left, and is it grounded in truth? Or put another way, they’re angry because of…what, exactly?
In case anyone is unsure. Kak is a lying piece of shit. After 4 days of desperate searching for any quotes by Kirk that they can use to justify his murder. This is the best they can do. Lie.
“ Jacobin article: An article published by Jacobin magazine after Kirk's death stated that he "called for former president Joe Biden to be put in prison, to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, even to be given the death penalty". The magazine did not, however, provide a specific instance or quote where Kirk called for Biden's execution.”
The last leftie to debate Charlie Kirk (pbuh) came out of hiding and said “ the point that I was trying to make is how peaceful the left was. Right before he got shot.”
https://apple.news/A-aAs_3Q7QVSod64_cCMsTQ
CC, JSM
I'm not sure I want to thank our host for sharing that link to David French. After I read it I felt kinda like I needed a shower.
What Joe Bar said at 10:07!! Those commenters are clinically insane — they have managed to convince themselves that Kirk was shot by a Republican, and that the mainstream media are controlled by sinister right-wing forces. Crazy!!
The left ae corrupt. The democraic left built a hate machine.
There is no equivalence from the right.
Right now- we have vigils instead of riots.
FLC: “ the better question is how many little girls Bill Clinton fucked on Epstein Island and on his Rape Plane.”
Eh, I think Bill preferred grown women. He got a sick thrill from making women’s-libbers revert to concubine status. He’s famous for Monica, but at the time he was a prisoner of the WH and pickings were slim. I bet he wanted to get his hands on Ghislaine’s experienced, relaxed body. CC, JSM
You can't fix stupid, now the Times peanut gallery is something else
Is there anyone more worthless than David French? For years he lied about being some sort of "True Conservative" who championed McCain and Romney because we had to "beat those Goddamn Democrats and save the Republic". And then flipped on a dime, put "country before party" and supported Hillary, Biden, and Harris.
Now, he's giving us the "dont get angry rightwingers. Don't give into the cycle of violence". Yeah sure Frenchie. Where do you say that about Gaza-Israel or Ukraine-Russia?
You can be sure of one thing, no political extremist is going to waste a bullet and shoot David french. No one cares enough. EIther on the Left or the Right.
peter wehner but he doesn't even show himself anymore
Dave Begley said...
“ then the answer lies in reconciliation, not domination.”
Disagree. The Left has to be totally crushed at the polls. The Dems need to be reduced to a tiny minority in the Senate and the House. Maybe then the Dems will realize that American voters reject their failed policies.
Exactly correct. I wish for nothing more than a crushing political defeat for Democrats at every level. I want the defeat to so total that the few sane, non-criminal people left finally reject the lunatic radicals, after perhaps 20 years or more in the political wilderness.
Leftists call us every vile name in the book, and then tell us to calm down when one of theirs kills one of ours. Sorry, but no. We will not calm down. We will organize like never before and work to defeat you politically. We will push for investigations and trials against the criminals in your party. And if some of your crazies come to try and kill us, we will answer force with force.
Although in theory I sometimes agree with French, he just rubs me the wrong way. There's a condescension in his writing that just bugs me.
Kirk was Mr. Moderate Conservative. I doubt he and David French differed on much, except for Trump in 2020 and 2024. Go listen to some Charlie Kirk, he basically gave out Republican talking points and took every opportunity to denounce antisemtism, homophobia, racism, etc. He'd debate any Leftist, but he refused to debate Nick Fuentes. "Too racist" is what Kirk said.
And...it got him murdered. So, you can be as moderate as you want. And you can be as nice as you want. And you can agree with left on racism, sexism, whateverism. BUT..if you disagree with them on something they consider important, they will label you a Nazi and shoot you.
Give us a link to the Kirk quote or stand further exposed as a purveyor of unexamined lies.
Surely Grok provided a primary source.
Well, I'll admit David French is familiar with monsters.
Cannot bring myself to read the article. I am too disgusted by media lies. Usually listen to NPR to hear what the left is pushing. Today there was no mention that Kirk's killer lived with a trans furry. Instead they report that the meme's engraved on the bullet are used on both the left and extreme right - so according to NPR no one has a clue as to his motivation but they strongly hint he was extreme right. Meanwhile media keep mention the arson of Governor Shapiro as "right wing" - again a lie. The arsonist was a mental patient who was fired up about Shapiro's support for Israel. He was pro-Palestine, again a democrat position. Then media keep pushing the Minnesota killer as "right" - there they have the best case they guy may have voted Trump, but still not 100% since he was appointed by Gov Walz to some commission and in his manifesto claimed Walz wanted him to kill these people.
The temperature can't go down while media continue to lie to the public.
I'm getting tired of folks on the left trolling about which side is worse. We're not blind; we can SEE which side has embraced violence as a supposedly legitimate form of political expression. We saw it in the 2020 riots and we're seeing it in the celebrations over Charlie Kirk's death. By contrast, we haven't seen people on the "right," who are mainly normies, either rioting or celebrating any incidents of violence. Left-wing voices trying to turn this into a debate are simply gaslighting nice, liberal women in the hope that they continue clinging to the fairy tale that republicans are the icky bad guys and the democrats are all loving and caring.
Has Ross Doughnut weighed in with his usual "Both sides are wrong, and we need to come together" column yet? Maybe he's saving it for the podcast.
The right wing produces a couple extremists here and there. This violence tends to be targeted and focused. Left wing political violence is much more wide spread, destructive and organized in nature. There is big money behind left wing protests and riots. But, be fair, left wing violence seems to be less less deadly.
I don't have the stats. I know legacy media claims right wing extremists are responsible for most extremist attacks. But liberals have muddied the water. Muslims are included as far right extremists -- even though these guys are aiming for something like communism.
"There are monsters in your midst, too."
But in whose "midst" is French? This Potemkin Republican showcased by the NYT who postures himself as above the fray.
"Confirmation bias is entirely human... we so desperately want to see ourselves as good people, fighting hard in a righteous struggle. It’s not just that we believe our ideas are better, but that we are better — we possess higher character and better values than the people on the other side."
As if to prove the point, one paragraph later he preens that he's morally superior to those in his claimed "midst" while dishonestly eliding the fact that he's already decamped that "midst" and joined another.
"It was a shattering thing for me to realize that the Republican Party had no moral firewalls against nominating a man like Donald Trump. I’d spent years laboring under the false belief that character mattered to Republicans, and — specifically — that it mattered more to Republicans than Democrats."
Evidently, French always thought of the Republican Party primarily as an apparatus to suppress the will of the voters.
I think what the left has trouble understanding in this situation is that the MAGA right view the Charlie Kirk assassination as a Martin Luther King moment for them. The best thing to do is to let the people grieving grieve. Without comment without judgment. Perhaps a little compassion and understanding how much this hurts people.
Sure, sure... no wait. F' ALL the way off.
The left, even the prior POTUS fed us crap like the "good people on both sides" LIE even after it was clearly a lie. And other lefty pols didn't call him on it. MSM didn't call him on it so the "truth" became what the left said it was. Nazi, bigot, existential threat, racist, the right wants our trans kids to DIE, it's open season on black men, Hand Maidens... banish these (and others) from your lips for the next 6 months of so and I'll listen again.
Note that troll David French says "your midst" not "our midst."
I could go into statistics and facts, show how leftist movements from Occupy to BLM have violently taken over city parks and streets and highways, how many police and others have been murdered and injured by them, and add in the deadly statistics of assaults and murders committed by released or not prosecuted criminals by political leftists in DAs offices and Judges' robes, acting on leftist ideology within the state. But why bother? It's just David French.
Aggie said...
I might scan the article later, but French is not high on my list. He gives it away in the summary: A sense of false equivalence, pouring the rationalizing oil onto the choppy waters away to smooth them.
There are several people here that are more worthy of time than David French. There are infinite people in the information space more worthy of time.
There is no reason to read past any except Ann provides. French is just pathetic.
French also misses the mark in trying to analyze what's happening as a function of "anger." Think about how ridiculous it would have been in 1861 to publish a column about which side, the North or the South, was more angry, and how resolving the secession crisis meant somehow diffusing that anger. Obviously, there were actual, substantive political and policy issues in play at the time, and "anger," to the extent it was present, was an EFFECT, not a cause, of what was going on. The same is true now: The left is committed to a certain vision of society that is abhorrent to everyone else, and a large segment of the left has made it clear that they're willing to resort to extraconstitutional means in order to impose their will on the country. That's what this is about.
I. Don’t. Care.
We've entered age of performative nihilism by violent young adults who are trans and/or antifa followers.
Or Hamas-Gaza, Hamas-Jews, Iran-Hamas, China-Tibet, etc.
What's with the pro-Ukrainian, pro-Russian, anti-something sentiments?
The transgender spectrum (e.g. bisexuals) trend with political congruence, equivocation and indoctrination.
The far-left Grifters. The Democratic Socialists. The DEIsts. The human rites fringe. The witch hunters, the warlock judges.
The mix of liberal license and abortive ideation is a toxic stew.
He finds it impossible to not do the thing which he purports are the things that will destroy us. He is the epitome of the things he says are wrong.
Howard said...
I think what the left has trouble understanding in this situation is that the MAGA right view the Charlie Kirk assassination as a Martin Luther King moment for them. The best thing to do is to let the people grieving grieve. Without comment without judgment. Perhaps a little compassion and understanding how much this hurts people.
No. This is far deeper than your juvenile characterization.
I have long pointed out that the left is acting in a historically predictable fashion. They are doing what hundreds of violent tribes have done in the past.
Red Books. Partisans. Brown Shirts. Bolsheviks. Viet Minh. National Liberation Front.
Now Antifa.
This is a rational judgement of actions they have taken and a proven track record of human evil. This is not some bullshit emotional reaction to an isolated event. This is how most of human history has proceeded and there is nothing special about the left in the US.
BLM made Kristallnacht look small and unimportant. But we remember Kristallnacht for a reason. We learn history so we can recognize when something evil takes shape in society.
You do not get to gloss over the last 4 decades of the development of the current democrat party and the unmistakable historical parallels.
People always say if they could go back in history they would kill Hitler. In order to do that you would have had to know history and extrapolate forward in 1932.
That is what we are doing now.
What a liar David French is! From the column:
"And we’ve watched a right-wing mob occupy the Capitol, brutally beat police officers, and attempt to overturn the result of a presidential election because they didn’t like the outcome.
If anyone pretends that the right doesn’t celebrate political violence against the left, let’s remember that none other than the sitting president of the United States would sometimes begin his political rallies with a performance of the national anthem by the “J6 Prison Choir,” a group of people imprisoned because they stormed the Capitol on Trump’s behalf."
There's so much dishonesty in this it takes one's breath away. And its exactly what any liberal/left Democrat would write. Does anyone think French is even a Christian? I'm waiting for the picture of him at the wailing wall with Josh Shapiro.
At least French has abandon the claim that he is a Republican or a conservative by explicitly using "your midst" rather than "our midst". That is progress- he is no longer lying about that.
And as for transgenderism he believes that whoever refuses to accept and celebrate someone who believes they were born in the wrong body are murderers.
Sydney said...
There is only one side whose political leaders call their opponents existential threats to our way of life. They have done this repeatedly and for years. They have done it long enough now that there are young adults who grew up hearing that over and over and who take them at their word.
Correction: There was only one side whose political leaders call their opponents existential threats to our way of life.
Republicans are finally accepting that the left will not stop killing us until they seize power and they kill enough of us to maintain it just like they have in numerous points throughout history.
There is one, very crucial way in which the left and right are thoroughly asymmetric, and that is the reactions of the left and right. Charlie Kirk’s assassination is being celebrated online by lefties (school teachers, government workers, etc.), and Matthew Dowd celebrated it on the air.*.
When 11 people were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue, did any Republicans celebrate? Or were we shocked and appalled? As to the perpetrator, Robert Bowers, he was white, he was a nationalist, and he was an antisemite. Therefore, to French, he must be a right winger. However Bowers seems not to have had any political affiliation (or even a job). And a look around today’s campuses should make it clear that antisemitism in thd 21st century is a left wing phenomenon. I note that Donald Trump visited the synagogue to personally express condolences, and Joe Biden did do only in his imagination.
French also points to the murders of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, by Vance Luther Boelter. Wikipedia labors mightily to tie Boelter to the right wing, and he was apparently anti-abortion. But if we accept Boelter’d manifesto at face value (and I concede that there are reasons not to) then he imagined himself to be an ally of Governor Walz. Again, there is an asymmetry in the response of ordinary people to this crime — who was celebrating it? How many were celebrating it when compared to those online celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk?
__________________
* Based on something I read just yesterday Fowd still can’t see that he did anything wrong.
Thanks for the freebie. I commented at NYT: French exemplifies the illusions of the left. The deluded mass shooter of Gabby Gifford and the Minnesota killer who went after legislators did not mirror the motivation of the cold-blooded assassins who targeted Scalise, Trump and Kirk. The hours-long riot of January 6th, however embellished by Democrats and their catspaws, did not approach the public violence, murder, arson, theft and destruction of the summer-long conflagration of 2020 staged by Democrat consorts. Democrats who evoke Godwin’s Law pretend to be shocked by the consequences. It may sell to occupants of the left-wing silo. The rest of us aren’t buying.
Good one, Wince, but if French could think like that, he would not have his cushy sinecure pretending to be on the right.
So........anyway.......I think it is true that the left and the right both commit political violence. (I condemn anyone who tries to advance a political agenda with violence.) David French makes the same mistake most of the commentors here at Althouse are making. The mistake is coming up with a list of atrocities and then looking over to see if the list is longer or more ugly for this or that side that airquote proves that the other side are terrible monsters.
The length of the list is unimportant. The veracity of the original issue that may have led to violence is unimportant. The spin of media and the weirdness of social media are unimportant. Blowback or after-effects mean nothing. The level of violence or body count is sadly unimportant. This should be a matter of principle.
(I condemn anyone who tries to advance a political agenda with violence.) Its one of those gods of the copybook headings type things. If you can say the sentence above you are in the right. But if you (like French does) just want to review and rehash every incident then you are already losing. Find the ethical principle and follow it.
“So, we’ve got to talk about like what it means when you’re running for president, or you’re running for one of these higher offices, and you go out there and you talk about beating people up, you go out there and you say things like, ‘I could shoot somebody in the middle of the street in New York and I could still win.’”
“We got to talk about, like that, that is next level,” she stated. “Me disagreeing with you, me calling you, you know, ‘wannabe Hitler,’ all those things are like, not necessarily saying, ‘Go out and hurt somebody.’ But when you’re literally telling people at rallies, ‘Yeah, beat them up’ and that kind of stuff, you are promoting a culture of violence.”
Good old Jasmine Crocket. Anyone who is in the same party as Jasmine Crocket is an evil piece of shit.
People always say if they could go back in history they would kill Hitler. In order to do that you would have had to know history and extrapolate forward in 1932.
[chuckle]. @Achilles, a few months ago I read a very short story, the punch line of which had a time traveler returning from 1932 and not understanding how World War II could have happened because he did succeed in killing Schuester.*
“And who is this guy Hitler?”
_____________
* I cannot find the story online just now, so I’m sort of making the name up.
So the Right is supposed to stand down for the good of the country.
And the Left is supposed to ... graciously accept the standing down?
No, no. That can't be it.
Kakistocracy said...
America has the capacity to move beyond mutual recrimination and prevent its potential escalation into something worse. However, without leadership from the nation's president, such progress is difficult to envision.
You first.
If you execute a few thousand people in your party who are dancing on Kirk's grave we might believe you.
You can see them struggling because they know that blaming us for Kirk’s murder is a real stretch, but manfully they continue to to try.
From Grok,
“ The quote, “Joe Biden should be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for crimes against America,” is reported by Media Matters as being from a December 2023 episode of The Charlie Kirk Show. I can’t independently verify the exact wording without the primary audio/transcript…”
So it is from Media Matters to grok,
Here is Dave Rubin asking Cenk from The Young Turks if he's willing to take down any of the misleading and inflammatory posts and videos of Charlie Kirk from his website.
And Cenk refusing to do so, because he knows it will be the end of his business if he does.
The Left has climbed aboard a tiger of hate and can't dismount.
Of course, French is forced to do "both siderism" to not only keep his cushy position of NYTimes cuckold but also to keep the crazy left from shooting him, too.
I would try to find the Dec 2023 video and listen to it but my hearing is not good for computer videos.
Olson Johnson is right! said...
So........anyway.......I think it is true that the left and the right both commit political violence. (I condemn anyone who tries to advance a political agenda with violence.) David French makes the same mistake most of the commentors here at Althouse are making. The mistake is coming up with a list of atrocities and then looking over to see if the list is longer or more ugly for this or that side that airquote proves that the other side are terrible monsters.
The length of the list is unimportant. The veracity of the original issue that may have led to violence is unimportant. The spin of media and the weirdness of social media are unimportant. Blowback or after-effects mean nothing. The level of violence or body count is sadly unimportant. This should be a matter of principle.
(I condemn anyone who tries to advance a political agenda with violence.) Its one of those gods of the copybook headings type things. If you can say the sentence above you are in the right. But if you (like French does) just want to review and rehash every incident then you are already losing. Find the ethical principle and follow it.
Holy hand grenades batman!
Please post here more often. Maybe even introduce yourself!
It seems David French is rolling out the tired old pablum…nothing to see here move along. It may work for his audience, but no one is buying his nonsense outside his bubble. There is a problem and denial is not going to fix it.
"There Are Monsters in Your Midst, Too". Yes, and David French is the Gorilla seen in his own mist.
Also stop saying this please. You are smart enough to do so:
"(I condemn anyone who tries to advance a political agenda with violence.)"
Every political agenda is backstopped by violence or the threat of it. Period.
There can only be truces between political opponents who all mutually agree to forsake violence and to form consensus peacefully by employing a peaceful framework like our constitution.
It must be acknowledged that this only works as long as EVERYONE follows the framework.
The left has decided to work outside this framework of peaceful social engineering and if the rest of us forsake violence they will just kill us and seize power.
When one side is consistently violent and dishonest calls for all sides to remain peaceful are merely rhetorical weapons used against the side that fights back.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk has opened my eyes to the extraordinary number of young people who followed and respected the brilliant young man. The left has no clue what they’ve unleashed, as they have lost their collective mind far more than I would have ever guessed.
Sic semper tyrannis.
p.s. David French is a cuck with zero influence on the right.
I will assume your sentiment is sincere, Howard and I appreciate it.
However, besides my grief, I am dealing with a terrible sense of anger that I really do not know what to do with, at the moment.
The David French types of this world only stoke the anger.
Charlie Kirk was the best of us. He could have been my grandson.
"p.s. David French is a cuck with zero influence on the right."
He's not a "cuck". He was liar and a grifter. Now he's an open and honest liberal/leftist who writes for the NYTs and attacks the Right.
Who cares what the French Davidians think?
The few interesting or correct things they say are said better by others. But you'd have to look past the NYT to find them.
"Every political agenda is backstopped by violence or the threat of it. Period."
That is a lie.
Welcome to Ernst vom Rath, part 2.
Ernst vom Rath was a German diplomat whose assassination in 1938 by teenager Herschel Grynszpan served as a pretext for Kristallnacht, (Night of Broken Glass) a violent pogrom against Jews in Germany. His death marked a significant escalation in the Nazi regime's anti-Jewish policies and is often seen as a precursor to the Holocaust.
But today the targets are transgenders, not Jews. Strangely, no one knows if Tyler Robinson is even a transgender. What we know is that Tyler separated himself from his Mormon MAGA family turning down a Mormon mission and moving out of his family's house. He admits to being anti-fascist.
How can it be a lie, Olson? Robinson is going to face the violence that underlies our society when he is executed in a few years. I think you and Achilles need to agree on a definition of violence.
Of course French begins his article with:
"When my opponents do something wrong, that’s emblematic, Michael said, but when my allies do something wrong, that’s exceptional."
And in closing:
"It was a shattering thing for me to realize that the Republican Party had no moral firewalls against nominating a man like Donald Trump."
He can't even get through a his own article without falling into the trap he purports to warn us against.
That's because he's not serious. Seriousness requires self-reflection. French can't muster up the effort required for proofreading.
Olson Johnson is right! said...
"Every political agenda is backstopped by violence or the threat of it. Period."
That is a lie.
Prove me wrong.
Hypothetical: You live in a neighborhood with 5 houses. 4 Muslim families move into the other houses and decide that the neighborhood will now be under Sharia law.
What stops you from living under Sharia Law?
No one young, left or right, reads David French or know who he is. What he says is irrelevant.
"How can it be a lie...?"
Because this is not Lord of the Flies. We are an orderly society that has rules and due process and elections and our government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
Loudmouth cunts who are in their limp-dick phase of life are the stupid ones who love to saber rattle and talk about the tree of liberty being watered with blood, and that might is what backs up right. We the People have delegated some violence in a limited way to the Police and Armed Forces. But no way is our political landscape dominated by violence or killings or riots. Only the angry and impotent are the ones to grab the gun.
"It was a shattering thing for me to realize that the Republican Party had no moral firewalls against nominating a man like Donald Trump. I’d spent years laboring under the false belief that character mattered to Republicans, and — specifically — that it mattered more to Republicans than Democrats."
And your party had no firewalls against nominating Obama, Crooked Hillary, Dementia Joe, and another drunk grifter, Harris. There very little democratic in the installation of the latter three.
The Left is angry because Trump won an election. The normals are angry because the Left is perpetually violent and deadly.
I think that the MLK parallel has some merit. The response worldwide, especially with Gen Z, by the millions, has been candle (or camera flashlight) vigils, and not violence. Turning Point has applications enough to more than double the number of campus chapters. This Daniel, willing to walk into the lions’ den of intolerant college campuses, time after time, was brutally slain for reaching out to the other side. And as a result of the overwhelming grief seen around the world, these young adults saw that they weren’t the deviants. They were the majority, and the worst that the violent left could do to them was to kill them, as they had Charlie Kirk. Join his martyrdom. They now have a cause. And the violent left is destined to the dustbin of history.
"It was a shattering thing for me to realize that the Republican Party had no moral firewalls against nominating a man like Donald Trump. I’d spent years laboring under the false belief that character mattered to Republicans, and — specifically — that it mattered more to Republicans than Democrats."
Again, the Republicans elected George W Bush who was called 'Hitler' for the crime of attempting to protect the U.S. from Islamist terror attacks in the wake of 9/11.
The Republicans nominated McCain -- I didn't like him much, but he was decorated former prisoner of war. The Dems trashed him.
The Republicans nominated Romney who was about as fierce and threatening as a caterpillar. The Dems trashed him.
For the Left character has never mattered. Only power. They're furious that Trump won't just roll over for them. They aren't used to it.
Calling for a Democrat to be executed is something people can reasonably and politely disagree about. But accurately quoting Charlie should never be tolerated.
“Because this is not Lord of the Flies. We are an orderly society that has rules and due process and elections and our government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We know that it isn’t true. At least since 2016, the Dems have been seizing and maintaining power through cheating. Probably a lot longer. LBJ was known to have actually helped stuff ballot boxes. JFK’s father complained about having paid too much for his son’s win in Chicago (IL). But it has gotten harder and harder for them to do that, so they have had to become increasingly blatant in their cheating. Everyone here knows that they do it - the leftists here just won’t admit it publicly.
So, where is faith in our elections, or Due Process, when over a thousand J6 protesters (of the very visible election fraud that installed Dementia Joe in the WH) languished in jails and prison for years? Or when the 2020 candidate who would have been reelected that year, if not for the very obvious election fraud (and sanctioned violence by the Dems’ shock troops), is prosecuted by both federal and state prosecutors for made up crimes? It’s gone.
“Will Trump and MAGA Republicans stop labeling their political adversaries as radical left Marxists who hate God, oppose Christianity, despise America, rig elections, aim to replace Americans with criminal migrants, and seek to kill babies? When will this rhetoric end?”
If you don’t want the label, then stop acting like is accurate. Come out and help shut down the violent Marxists and nihilists in your midsts. And replace your politicians that pander to them, and turn their violence on and off, when expedient.
Anyone else here think Former Law Clerk has gone off his meds?
Outlaw the Democrat party? What about "freedom of association"? Yeah, we outlawed the Communist party, but that's because it was considered an agent of a hostile foreign power (the USSR) whose sole purpose was to try to bring down down our republic. And even that move was never enforced.
The Supremes upheld Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus? No, they didn't.
"Ex parte Merryman (1861), was decided by Chief Justice Roger Taney sitting as a circuit judge, not by the full Supreme Court. Taney ruled that only Congress, not the president, had the constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus. However, Lincoln and his administration ignored this ruling."
---AI Claude
But the worst think FLC has written here is to assert that we need another civil war: "We've had to kill American Democrats before. 600,000 of them in the previous conflict. It's time again to cull their herd."
I'm getting a very trollish vibe from these expressions of murderous rage. I hope other commenters here will join me in distancing themselves from them.
"Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Anger isn't the problem. It's how you deal with it. In the Ren and Stimpy cartoon show, Stimpy makes a "happy helmet" for Ren to make him happy. Ren eventually is able to get the happy helmet off of his head and is suddenly filled with anger about it. Then he says, "I've never been so angry in my life! I love being angry! Thank you, Stimpy."
The problem is the rhetoric that encourages people to turn anger into actual violence instead of using anger to motivate non-violent, positive change.
It also should be noted that even though there are a few hardcases on the right who cross that line, the problem is mostly with the Democrats. When it comes to political rhetoric that encourages violence, you have many liberal educators, liberal main-stream media figures and liberal politicans all using this rhetoric that implies that violence is OK to get what you want politically. Heck, even President Obama told the Democrats to bring a gun if Republicans bring a knife.
Retaliation is the key. Until we see it all it's all just talk. The left acts, the right talks.
RELATED: Today is the grand finale of the Vuelta a Espana bike race. It's not supposed to be a highly competitive day - more like an actual tour around Madrid The sprinters compete at the last bit, but that's about all.
But of course the wankers can't leave it alone. The Pali protesters brought the race to a stop multiple times, because of the Israel Premier Tech team. The Spanish authorities must at least sympathize, because out of the three big bike tour countries, the Spanish Guardia Civil are usually the first ones to put hands on spectators for even slightly going out of line. A baton stroke or two would keep these snowflakes off the course, but no.
So the race was called off. Times as of yesterday are the official times. Again, not a huge change - the winner had nearly 2 minutes ahead of the second place guy, so no chance of an upset. But still. It's supposed to be a celebration of cycling and of the host city/country. Foreign fans spent on airfare and hotel rooms to come see a grand tour finale.
Worst part of it all, Israel Premier Tech is changing its name to just Premier Tech. They let the terrorists win. CC, JSM
effinayright said...
"I'm getting a very trollish vibe from these expressions of murderous rage. I hope other commenters here will join me in distancing themselves from them."
Fuck you.
The statistics that French refers to about most deadly political violence emanating from the right is from an ADL report last year, I think. Some Congress member cited the same statistic, and that one was explicitly from this report.
Matt Walsh - mentioned in French's piece - undertook to figure out what was going on with the statistics that claimed that only 4% of fatalities related to political agendas came from the left, and I think it was 76% from the right. He's in Nashville, so he tracked down the incidents that he had readiest access to. And what he found was that when a killer was, for example, a white supremacist or antisemitic, that person was tallied up in the right wing column, regardless of any other views.
On the other hand, even when a killer shared a manifesto that was explicitly left-wing, that person was labeled mentally ill and not tallied in any political violence column. Thus the books were cooked.
I haven't verified Walsh's claim. But since he cited actual examples, it would seem pretty easy to do, and also pretty easy to debunk if debunking it were possible.
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