MSNBC – “They see themselves now on a crusade for Donald Trump… What I heard overwhelmingly from the people that were against [Liz Cheney], she did not vote for Wyoming when she voted to impeach, and therefore she has to go”
Every day they remind Republicans why they rioted.
According to a memo outlining the results, 73 percent of Republican voters and 62 percent of all voters in Wyoming expressed an unfavorable view of the three-term congresswoman. Just 10 percent of Republican primary voters and 13 percent of general election voters said they would vote to reelect her. The survey of 500 likely voters, which was conducted Jan. 25-26 by Trump pollster John McLaughlin, also presents [Liz] Cheney as profoundly weak in a Republican primary. The congress member trails 54 percent to 21 percent in a head-to-head matchup against one of her announced opponents, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard.
A stunning survey just released by Morning Consult has revealed part of the extent of the devastation caused by COVID-19 lockdowns and other wealth and health destroying restrictions.
The remote work economy is functioning perfectly well for people who have already established themselves with robust income streams. For those still struggling to obtain the American dream – not so much.
Americans who were already earning six figure salaries have reported an increase in income for 2020, while those making between $50k-$100k reported a drop in income. Tragically, respondents earning under $50k have been absolutely hammered by destructive pandemic policies, reporting by far the largest income drop among their peers.
With Orange Man Gone, many of those restrictions are being lifted — oddly enough.
Shock poll: Trump ‘Patriot Party’ would win almost quarter of voters, drop GOP to third place.
hypothetical “Patriot Party” led by former President Donald Trump would win the support of almost a quarter — 23% — of the electorate, bumping the GOP down to third place with just 17%, according to a new Just the News poll with Scott Rasmussen.
The startling survey result comes amid reports that Senate Republican support for convicting Trump in an impeachment trial is fast eroding.
Not shocking to anyone paying attention.
POLL: Trump approval quietly nears 3 year high
The most incompetent white supremacist riot ever.
According to an affidavit signed by FBI Special Agent Riley Palmertree, Jackson was one of the first to gain entry through the Capitol doorway at the Senate Wing entrance on the West side around 2:48 p.m. after the violent crowd overpowered police officers.
Prior to this, Jackson is seen on surveillance footage making a fist and repeatedly striking a U.S. Capitol Police officer while attempting to forcibly enter the building.
Always the last to know: Now the Washington Post Admits Trump Did Not Incite the Capitol Riot
Inside the Blue Zone: “Nothing says ‘normal, legitimate election’ like a swearing-in behind 12 feet of razor wire and 25,000 troops that you’re not sure you can trust.”
I’m old enough to remember when calling in the National Guard was a stunning federal intervention.
Update @Cernovich: An incoming administration is purging members of the military for having insufficient loyalty to a political office holder, but tell me more about coups.
When “white supremacy” is surprisingly diverse, and a leftist academic struggles with the obvious.
The author of what follows, Ms Cristina Beltrán, is “an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University.” Her areas of expertise are needless to say sweeping and numerous, extending from “feminist theory” to “Latinx, and race & gender politic,” because “Latinx” and “politic” is how we do things now. Being a leftist academic, Ms Beltrán is of course mystified by the existence of non-white Trump supporters and, by extension, non-white people who dare to deviate from her own leftist assumptions.
Antifa supporter Daniel Alan Baker was arrested for plotting to murder Trump supporters and police on Inauguration Day.
He trained in Syria in 2017 with the YPG, was featured on VICE, and in 2020 participated in the CHAZ insurrection in Seattle, per DOJ documents.
@JackPosobiec — Daniel Alan Baker wanted to stockpile AK-47s and build bombs in CHAZ to start “the revolution”
The alleged plot to round up Trump supporters and police for execution has gone unreported in the mainstream.
Uber hides ad featuring left-wing activist charged in Capitol riot
“Call me whatever you want, I’m not going to participate in this.”
In a recent long-form essay on New Discourses (newdiscourses.com/2020/12/psychopa…totalitarianism/), James Lindsay explained the origins of totalitarianism in a single word: psychopathy. There, he explained that totalitarianism arises from people who cannot cope with reality as it is, and yet who are content to manipulate others, constructing a “pseudo-reality” in service to a vision of the world that serves their needs. That pseudo-reality holds as its North Star a Utopian vision that aligns with artificial resolutions to their inability to cope with reality as it is, and it thereby attracts others who have similar issues. By constructing a false logic (a paralogic) and a false morality (a paramorality) to define and enforce the pseudo-reality, they can gather supporters in a cult-like fashion. In the end, those ensnared lose the ability to distinguish reality and pseudo-reality almost entirely and become functionally psychopathic, and if they gain enough social, cultural, economic, and political power, they can hold hostage entire societies that are, in effect, on the march to totalitarianism and, eventually, total catastrophic collapse.
[…] in this podcast, he begins the process of linking the concept of “ideological pseudo-reality” to more familiar examples, not least Wokeness. Critical Race Theory, for example, is a pseudo-reality that positions racism as the ordinary state of affairs in society, not an immoral aberration from them. Queer Theory is a pseudo-reality in which being normal with regard to sex, gender, and sexuality is a problem while being in some way deviant (which is not the same as being gay or even trans) is elevated as normal. Communism is a pseudo-reality that deems socially engineered command economies as effective and efficient ways to maximize human flourishing. Covid-19 is a pseudo-reality built to enact control around a genuine and serious virus called SARS-CoV-2. These topics and more are presented in this episode of the New Discourses podcast to help people understand and, hopefully, able to see reality for itself again.
Grab a coffee. You’ll recognize much of what he describes immediately.
h/t RP
A first hand witness account from J Michael Waller, Senior Analyst for Strategy, Center for Security Policy. I’ve added it to the previous post, but it deserves its own;
A very few didn’t share the jovial, friendly, earnest demeanor of the great majority. Some obviously didn’t fit in. Among them were younger twentysomethings wearing new Trump or MAGA hats, often with the visor in the back, showing no enthusiasm and either looking at the ground, or glowering, or holding out their phones with outstretched arms to make videos of as many faces as possible in the crowd. Some appeared awkward, the way someone’s body language inadvertently shows the world that he feel like he doesn’t fit in. A few seemed to be nursing a deep, churning rage.
They generally covered their faces with cloth masks, as opposed to the pro-Trump people, few of whom wore masks at all. They walked, often hands in pockets, in clusters of perhaps four to six with at least one of them frequently looking behind. These outliers group looked like trouble. I presumed that these fake Trump protesters were Antifa or something similar. However, that entire afternoon I saw none of them act aggressively or cause any problems. At least, not from my vantage point.
A second outlier group also stood out. While many marchers wore military camouflage shirts, jackets, or pants of various patterns and states of wear and in all shapes and sizes, here and there one would see people of a different type: Wiry young men in good physical condition dressed neatly in what looked like newer camouflage uniforms with black gear, subdued patches including Punisher skulls, and helmets.
They showed tidiness and discipline. They strode instead of walked, moving at a more rapid pace than most of the people, sometimes breaking into a short jog, and generally keeping to the left side of Constitution Avenue in pairs of two or small groups of three. Unlike others in old military clothes who tended to be affable and talkative, these sullen men seemed not to speak to anyone at all. As we would see, they were the disciplined, uniformed column of attackers.
Read it all.
Related arrest: Mr. Mostofsky is a 34 year old registered Democrat and the son of a New York Judge. He is seen in the picture above dressed in fur, carrying a stick and wearing a bullet proof police vest he had stolen. Mostofsky is standing beside the man who carried a Confederate flag into the event. This indicates they possibly knew each other and both appear to be outsiders and leftist demons plotting to smear Trump supporters. (h/t burton)
Republicans across the U.S. are siding with President Trump over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — big time — according to a new Axios-Ipsos poll.
The state of play: A majority of Republicans still think Trump was right to challenge his election loss, support him, don’t blame him for the Capitol mob and want him to be the Republican nominee in 2024.
Catherine Herridge, formerly of Fox News and more recently with CBS News, reports investigators think those pipebombs found at the RNC and DNC on January 6 may have been intended to divert law enforcement away from the Capitol itself at a crucial moment. That would also suggest somebody with a command and control structure for the planned riot.
Herridge also notes that the crucial window for understanding the timeline of January 6 events is between 12:45 and 1:15, before President Donald Trump finished his speech to the gathered protestors. If that is true, and there are abundant reasons to think it is, then it’s difficult to ascribe to Trump responsibility for inciting the riot.
Proving again the first rule of breaking events: nobody knows anything.
Update: Center for Security Policy;
The deadly riot at the US Capitol bore the markings of an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress.
A small number of cadre used the cover of a huge rally to stage its attack. Before it began, I saw from my vantage point on the West Front of the Capitol, what appeared to be four separate cells or units…
Related: Our ruling class really wants us to be like China.
“We did it, we did it. We showed them that this is our house.”
This is essential viewing for a full understanding of what happened at the Capitol on January 6th. The interview lasts over 2 hours, and covers a number of topics. It’s helpfully timestamped by topic at the Youtube page. (Click on the description).
Jeremy Lee Quinn is an independent investigative journalist who describes himself as center-left and was in the crowd that breached the building. You can view video at Public Report, including this one.
Related: Analysis of Ashli Babbit Video Suggests Coordinated Actions
Those who voted for Trump saw his electoral victory denied in 2016 by numerous loud voices calling for “resistance” as if the President elect were an invading foreign army – voices eagerly relayed and magnified by mass media, emphatically including pro-Tump media.
Then they saw his victory sullied by constantly repeated accusations of collusion with Russia from chairmen of Intelligence committees, and immediate ex-intelligence chiefs who habitually signalled that they were accusing Trump of being Putin’s agent because they had secret information, which, alas, they could not disclose. What they did do was to deplore Trump’s “subservience” to Putin on a weekly basis for four years, while refusing to entertain the possibility that in a confrontation with China it might be a good idea to overlook Putin’s sins, just as Nixon embraced Mao to counter the Soviet Union.
Edward Luttwak is author of ‘Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook’.
James Lindsay; (Twitter thread, collated)
In no regard does “coup” apply here. Disruptive? Yes. Illegal? Yes. Bad? Yes. Violent? Yes. But they didn’t even have a coherent plan to stop what would have been their main target (certification of a vote, which could have happened again later anyway). It’s not even close.
The totality of evidence does not bear this out. Some of Trump’s rhetoric and some of his expressed views are favourable to those views, but he hasn’t ever actually applied any of that or gave any indication that he wanted to, even with a pandemic in his lap to justify it.
I spent years incorrectly arguing Trump was a tyrant. You’re not likely to convince me using arguments I’ve already worked through and seen for being wrong in myself. You’ll need real evidence, which I suppose could still arrive, but it hasn’t yet.
My own opinion remains that every single person in the United States who participated in riotous activity, say in the last 12-24 months (if we want limitations) should be prosecuted appropriately under the law, regardless of political affiliation or rationale.
If Justice isn’t blind, it isn’t Justice.
I said something similar today too. The form we’ll see today will look a lot more like what we presently see in China, but more advanced. Social credit will be the primary mode of social control. Wrong politik will get you bad credit, as will wrong travel and wrong association.
Five years ago, the media launched a campaign to define conservatives as “racists and white supremacists.”
Five days ago, they changed the terms to “seditionists and domestic terrorists.”
The first is to dehumanize the opposition; the second is to justify their repression.
It’s pretty important that you learn to see this “discourse engineering,” or, as Lyotard had it, “legitmation by paralogy,” when and where it occurs. The media is high enough on its own supply now that it believes it can do it more or less without limitations on its power.
The most dangerous part of believing they can do it without limitations on its power is that that is dangerously wrong and will therefore be “fixed” by using increasing amounts of force and coercion. This is what the slide into totalitarianism and atrocity looks like.
Another parallel example of exactly this is when radical Islamists (not all Muslims!) insist that Islam is “a religion of peace,” wherein what they mean is that when everyone believes THEIR NARROW THEOLOGY and submits to it, there will peace. Same, same, or very close.
The asymmetry is a crucial point to observe here too. They’re using Repressive Tolerance (link) as part of their paralogy. They’re going to “induce national calm NOW” by silencing their enemies and continuing to force their pseudo-reality onto everyone.
A related article here.
h/t RP
Daily Mail: Twitter saw its shares drop by 12 per cent Monday as the company braced for pro-Trump protesters outside its San Francisco headquarters.
It rebounded, but is still down 5+ and shaky.
Twitter shares are off 6.6% in Monday morning trading, while Facebook shares are down 3%. Shares of Apple Inc. AAPL, -1.92% and Alphabet Inc. GOOG, -1.52% GOOGL, -1.50%, both of which pulled right-wing social-media app Parler from their app stores citing lax moderation policies, are off 2.2% and 1.7%, respectively. Shares of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.03%, which booted Parler from its AWS web-hosting platform, are down 1.4%.
A portion of a Mike Cernovich thread collated, and slightly edited.
When Charlottesville happened, I begged guys not to go. They did what young men do – mock me as a weak old guy. I said they’d ruin their lives, and I’ve watched one after another get caught up. Some bad actors, and a lot just showed up not really understanding the implications.
It was like beating my head up against the wall. Warning people that events often sweep people away. “Caught up in the game” is a term you hear in law. Wrong place, wrong time. You’re maybe just curious, but you end up getting swept up in events. And then it’s over for you.
But from the young guy’s perspective, what’s the answer? There’s no escape value. It’s all, “Oh you’re broken because you’re a man. You have toxic masculinity.” The only socially offered fix is for men to become less like men and more like women.
Otherwise, they’re diseased.
I saw political violence coming because I understand men. ANTIFA is largely white men. That’s been proven over and over again. You’re a man, you want to live out Fight Club, and ANTIFA is a way to do this and basically get a free pass.
The counter to that is the Capitol.
Extremist researchers from Muslim world know that you have to offer a moderate solution, an off road. That when you call men terrorists, you drive them into radicalized groups. That research is being tossed out now in the West. Every man who has alternative view is a terrorist.
The incentives are to create more problems, that drives funding into “extremism research.” To raise money, you need more extremists! And yet that’s how you summon more of what you’re supposed to be militating against. The researchers know this, and they don’t care. It’s money.
I’ve said this consistently since at last 2015 – terrorism will become a way of life in the U.S. It’ll be like parts of Middle East. Because everything we learned about Islamic terrorism, that you don’t attack *all* Muslims, that you build up moderates, is being thrown away now.
The biggest mistake a society can make is to confirm the righteousness of zealots. That started with “Punch a Nazi,” where Nazi predictably grew to mean every Trump voter. Capitol rioters watched attacks and riots celebrated by media, and now they feel righteous, too.
The U.S. is poised for a post-911 crackdown on civil liberties – which was a disaster then and will be a bigger disaster now. You cannot enforce authoritarianism against 40% of the country. To do so is to incite a “civil war,” which won’t be what people think.
Capitol LARP’ers watched too much Bravehart and 1776 stuff. They are in an old model of war.
A current model of war will be 4GW, which is the worst possible way of having a war, because it never ends. You end up not with Balkanization, but the cartelization of society.
We are in unbelievably perilous times. Just as people who didn’t see Trump’s rise and dismissed it, because they know it all, think they can just put the boots down the necks of 40% of the country.
I just can’t believe what I am watching, and what will *obviously* happen. It’s not the Q people or fat LARP’ers I worry about. It’s that the oppression becomes so severe that you get what happened in Mexico. A Special Forces Group says, “F*ck this.”
Then what?
There is 0 reason to believe It Can’t Happen Here. We are not special. I won’t go into tactics, not only for reason to not educate bad people, but for others.
If you watched the Capitol storm you no doubt asked, “What if these weren’t fat LARP’ers, lost young men, and Q dummies?” What if this had been *real* guys?
If the attack on the Capitol had been real guys instead of fat middle aged men and Q boomers and aimless young men, it would have been *hundreds* of dead Congress members. That’s how vulnerable an open society is. That’s how fast civil society can disappear.
The Scalise attack, the Capitol attack, all of this shows that – thank God – it’s simply the case that real guys don’t want to do violence and domestic terrorism.
Anyone anything about solutions must start from there. As of now, real guys don’t do that. How do we preserve it?
I don’t have a lot of answers on how to preserve civil society, but I do know one fact. You *do not* preserve society by turning the state against 40% of the country.
This isn’t Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Mao’s China.
You should read the whole thing, while you still can.
Ben Shapiro interviews J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy.