Luke Ford

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* It will keep going and going and going. Russia will be the major issue at the next elections. You can sell anything for any amount of time.

And why shouldn’t they? What’s the penalty? You’re treating the press like gentlemen from the past who, when shown to be wrong, would retire from the discussion voluntarily. Who knew when to stop lying just because there’s a line one does not cross. Who had a sense of shame that would itch unbearably when they went too far.

It’s the current year, Steve.

* Yeah, the thing that gets me about this Trump-Russia supposed connection is that it just doesn’t make any sense, given the guy Trump.

People on the left seem to have no theory-of-mind. They seem to reason like this: it would be very, very evil to collude with Russia, and Trump is an very, very evil-doer; therefore, Trump colluded with Russia.

But whatever Trump’s faults may be, sneaky conspiratorial behavior is hardly among them. He can hardly keep his mouth shut. He’s going to go off on a grand utterly secret conspiracy with any number of people including a bunch of Russians? Why on earth would he attempt to do this? Why would his inclinations lie in that direction?

You could sort of see Richard Nixon trying to pull something like that off. But “if-it’s-in-my-head,it’s-out-of-my-mouth” Trump, for God’s sakes?

* My guess is that the half-life of the “Russia brouhaha” on the left is going to be very, very long, essentially infinite. They’re never going to let it die. It’s basically going to be this decade’s 2000 Florida recount, mixed up maybe with “Bush did 9/11.” Or, to put it another way, it’ll be Birtherism for Democrats. Even in the absence of evidence, it will just, at worst, dwindle down into the realm of “serious questions having been raised,” or a “cloud over the process” in public conversation, and an animating foundational legend for the Democrats going forward, to be used all at once to motivate their own partisans, discredit Republicans, and absolve themselves of any responsibility for losing in 2016. Basically, it will become the Democrats’ Dolchstoßlegende. The political and psychological appeal of having an immortal, unprovable but thus also un-disprovable conspiracy theory that implicates your enemies in a nefarious and monstrous act of perfidy that completely explains all your misfortune is considerable, too considerable to be abandoned.

* We also have the counterpart to the Megaphone: The Underphone.

People like Sailer scribbling away in relative obscurity being secretly read by major players. Quiet whispers between Deplorables in places like this and the halls of power. ShitPosters on the internet rattling cages everywhere they can. All passing on the secret knowlegde that 2+2=4.

* They run “stories,” which amount to nothing more than innuendo, in their mainstream news outlets — “This raises questions!” — “Russia: The story that won’t go away!”

And why is it “story?”

Well, because it’s in the newspapers that’s why! It “won’t go away” because they keep running stories about it.

Repeat and rinse.

* Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice says “I leaked nothing to nobody” when asked about the Obama Surveillance Scandal. That means she leaked like a beer hound on a bladder-busting bender. Susan Rice is the monkey, and Obama is the organ grinder. President Trump will not punish the monkey and let the organ grinder go. President Trump will go after Obama.

Obama was the one who authorized the opening of the floodgates of raw electronic information. Obama was the one who did this for political reasons. Obama was sneakily using the power of the electronic eavesdropping ability of the United States to further his political goals.

We all know that Obama famously said he wanted to “transform” the United States. Obama’s “transformation” of the USA included the racial transformation of the USA into a third world hellhole. Obama used the advanced electronic surveillance system of the USA to make sure his “transformation” of the USA went on without interruption. Obama failed, President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.

I want Al Pacino to play Susan Rice in the upcoming movie of the Obama Surveillance Scandal. I can’t wait to see how Pacino will deliver this line: “I leaked nothing to nobody.” Pacino might just underplay it to increase its dramatic impact.

Pacino, because he is such a studious craftsman at the job of acting, will even put the blue makeup under his lower eyelid like Susan Rice does. Al Pacino will do what he must to convincingly play his part. Richard III to Susan Rice; Pacino can do it.

* The point is that Trump isn’t having the predicted effect: he isn’t moving the culture in his direction. If anything, he’s moving it in the opposite direction. Progressives who would have hated the CIA for its spying on American citizens two years ago think its justified today. Sanctuary cities are probably more supported today than they were three months ago.

In other words, there has been a lot of ‘things are about to burst’ talk. The revelations regarding Rice are ‘about to break the whole thing wide open.’ But it doesn’t appear that way. The public are continuing to forgive the Obama administration; controversies aren’t weakening support for him; they’re strengthening distaste for Trump.

Unless things change, post Trump is not going to be a renewed Nationalism: its going to be progressivism on steroids.

Dennis Prager writes:

According to The New York Times, 10 moderates, 15 conservatives, and eight other Republicans would have voted against the Republican repeal and replace Obamacare bill. So, then, 15 or so conservatives made it impossible to pass the bill favored by nearly every other Republican and by President Donald Trump. If that is the case, what we have here is another conservative example of purism and principle damaging another major opportunity to do good.
The first purist conservative example were the Never-Trumpers, who believed it was better for Hillary Clinton to be elected president and for the Left to have four more years of presidential power than for Donald Trump to win.
There were valid reasons to wonder whether Donald Trump was a conservative, and valid reasons to oppose him in the primaries. There were no valid reasons to oppose him in the general election. I said all these things then, and have thus far been validated beyond my wildest dreams.
In terms of policy, Donald Trump is a conservative dream. From appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, to approving the Keystone XL pipeline, to weakening the fanatical, hysterical, and tyrannical EPA, to appointing an ambassador to the United Nations who has moral contempt for that immoral institution, to backing Israel, to seeking to reduce economy-choking regulations on business – indeed essentially everything conservatives would wish for in a president – Donald Trump is almost too good to be true.
But he’s still not good enough for those conservatives who remain Never-Trumpers or good enough for the House members of Freedom Caucus, at least with regard to the repeal and replace Obamacare bill that President Trump worked so hard to have passed.
It is quite possible that I and most other conservatives who supported the repeal bill agree with just about every criticism of the bill that House conservatives made.
But, just as in the general election the question wasn’t whether candidate Trump was our ideal, the question now wasn’t whether the bill was our ideal. The question during the election was: What will happen if the Democrats and the Left win the presidency again? And the question now was and remains: What will happen if the Republicans don’t pass a bill favored by all but 25-30 Republican Congressmen and, most important, by President Trump?
But purists don’t ask such questions. They live in a somewhat different world than the rest of us who actually agree with them on everything. Because we don’t ask what is ideologically pure and true to our principles. We ask: What is closest to our ideology and to our principles?
Or, to put it another way, we have one larger principle than even the conservative ones we share with the purists – defeating the left because that is the No. 1 priority of those who cherish Western Civilization and regard America as the last best hope for humanity.
The conservative Never-Trumpers and conservatives who voted for Trump had everything in common except for that overriding principle. Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.
Passing even a tepid first bill to begin the process of dismantling the crushing burden of Obamacare would have been an important first step in weakening the left – not only by beginning to repeal Obamacare but by strengthening the Trump presidency and the president’s ability to go forward with tax-reform and other parts of his conservative agenda. The president is now damaged, and the Republican Party looks ludicrous – what other word can one use to describe the party that passed 60 resolutions in seven years to repeal Obamacare and then can’t pass a bill to repeal or replace Obamacare when it is given the House, the Senate, and the presidency?
Make no mistake, ye of pure heart, this may well be the last time in your lifetimes that Republicans control both Houses of Congress and have a conservative president. And understand that time is not on our side; there are congressional elections in a year and nine months.
Providence or luck made it possible to have a conservative president. Act accordingly.