Posted tagged ‘Europe and President Elect Trump’

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The Death of the Leftist Project (at Least for Now)

November 26, 2016

The Death of the Leftist Project (at Least for Now), PJ Media, Michael Walsh, November 25, 2016

deathvalleyWelcome to Death Valley. You may be here a while (Shutterstock)

The real “leftist ideal” was the European superstate known as the EU, a more benign form of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that collapsed in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although the Washington Post quoted here doesn’t see it that way, everything since then has been a gradual dissolution, as the Americans — and now, the somnambulist Europeans — have awakened to find a void at the center of their existence.

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Goodbye, so long, auf wiedersehen, farewell —

When Donald Trump shocked the world with an upset victory in the U.S. presidential election this month, much of Europe was aghast. But in at least one critical sense, the result couldn’t have been more European: Across the continent, parties of the center-left that have dominated politics for decades — and that have given Europe its reputation for generous social welfare systems — now find themselves beaten, divided and directionless. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are just the latest members of a beleaguered club.In Germany and Britain, once-mighty center-left parties have been badly diminished, locked out of their nations’ top jobs for the foreseeable future. In Spain and Greece, they have been usurped by newer, more radical alternatives. And in France and Italy, they’re still governing — but their days in power may be numbered. The rout of the center-left has even extended deep into Scandinavia, perhaps the world’s premier bastion of social democracy.

Overall, the total vote share for the continent’s traditional center-left parties is now at its lowest level since at least World War II. Like the Democrats, these parties have been marginalized, with little influence over policy as the right prepares to place its stamp on the Western world in a way that could endure for decades.

“If the left and the center-left don’t get their act together, then we’re looking at a period of very unstable right-wing hegemony,” said Alex Callinicos, a European studies professor at King’s College London.

Good. The cultural Marxist threat I outlined in my recent bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace — on sale at the link this Black Friday weekend! — has at last begun to recede; now the challenge is to restore Western civilization’s cultural confidence again in the primacy if its message: political freedom, artistic creation, technological advancement, radiant spirituality for all who welcome it. The culture of death and decay — quintessentially satanic — is being roundly rejected around the precincts of goodness.

As recently as a decade ago, the picture was very different. Britain’s Tony Blair was at the vanguard of a generation of European center-left leaders who had emulated Bill Clinton’s pragmatic Third Way politics and seemed poised to ride their marriage of social democracy with market liberalization to an unlimited future of electoral success.But the Great Recession — and the bumpy, deeply unequal recovery that followed — fundamentally changed that.

“With the economic crisis, and the negative effects of globalization, the socialists couldn’t convince the populations in their respective countries that the future lies in a liberal Europe,” said Gérard Grunberg, a historian of socialism at Sciences Po in Paris. “This is the end of the European utopia.”

Even better. The “European utopia” was always a daemonic fantasy, born of bloodshed, guilt, mass murder, and displacement, and protected by the American nuclear umbrella.

That “utopia” emerged in the aftermath of 1945, when politicians across war-torn Europe banded together to build a new continent that would never repeat the grave mistakes of the recent past. This was the genesis of the European Union: an economic union that was meant to become, at least in theory,committed to the common cause of social justice, largely a leftist ideal.

The real “leftist ideal” was the European superstate known as the EU, a more benign form of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that collapsed in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Although the Washington Post quoted here doesn’t see it that way, everything since then has been a gradual dissolution, as the Americans — and now, the somnambulist Europeans — have awakened to find a void at the center of their existence.

Let’s just hope it’s not too late.

Categories: 2016 elections, Europe, Europe and President Elect Trump, European "democracy", European establishment, European left, European Union, European Union - disintegration
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Europe Begins to Take Immigration Seriously

November 23, 2016

Europe Begins to Take Immigration Seriously, Counter Jihad, November 22, 2016

seriously

The victory of Donald Trump cements the fear among European elites that was first stoked by Brexit. Can they change quickly enough for their voters?

The Prime Minister of France says that both his nation and Germany are in danger, and the European Union may fall apart.  The hazard?  Governments refusing to listen to their people’s concerns about immigration and Islamist terror.

Immigration was one of the main drivers of Britons’ vote to leave the EU, and Valls said the bloc, which more than a million migrants entered last year, had to regain control of its borders.

He said the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election victory showed how important it was to listen to angry citizens, and that politicians scared of making decisions were opening the door to populists and demagogues.

Valls is worried chiefly about France’s National Front party, which has a number of similarities to the forces that recently won stunning come-from-behind victories in the United Kingdom and the United States.  In the United States, the election of Donald Trump came in large part because of his frequently repeated promises to get tough on immigration.  In the United Kingdom, the so-called “Brexit” campaign struck a blow for Merry England.  Though there are significant security challenges associated with Brexit, in all the results have so far been reassuring to those who backed the Leave campaign.  Voters in that nation reasserted control over their national destiny and character, with the result that in the wake of this election concerns about immigration fell to a recent low among English citizens.  Though immigration concerns remain the single largest issue for Britons, it has in the wake of Brexit fallen to the level of an ordinary political concern — only a few more citizens are very worried about it than are very worried about poverty, for example.

In Germany, however, concerns about immigration are still sky high.

On the other side of the scale are nations like Germany, where a grand total of 15 per cent of residents are immigrants and 38 per cent express concern, and Sweden where 14 per cent are immigrants and 36 per cent are worried.

Also high among German concerns is worries about crime and extremism. Thirty-five per cent of Germans told interviewers they were worried about terror, 28 per cent about extremism, and 36 per cent about crime and violence.

The result has been the repeated success of political movements in Germany at the local levels.  Even Angela Merkel has begun to take notice.  During her recent trip to Niger, the German leader cautioned refugees not to come to Germany.  Ostensibly she is worried about the rate of drownings associated with refugee ships crossing the Mediterranean sea.  However, like Valls, she has to be feeling the pressure of the electoral wave.

Merkel’s shift puts her in good company.  Self-described “liberal” politicians in Germany are also now demanding a new crackdown on immigrants, especially those who — as these politicians phrase it — “reject our state and act against our social order.”  It is pretty clear to what that coded language intends to refer.  However, if anyone doubts that the issue is radical Islam, they need only look to the proposed policy solution:  “an expansion of faith-led Islamic classes, which they say should be taught under state supervision in German, by teachers with full training.”  (Emphasis added.)

That move to take direct government control of how Islam is taught represents a solution far too radical for Americans, whose First Amendment protects the church from any such government intervention.  Nevertheless, that such solutions are even under discussion should go a long way to demonstrating that the public’s patience with governing elites is largely gone.  A political community is not just a market, as Aristotle said, but a group bound by shared values and common beliefs.  That basic idea, as old as ancient Greece, is being restored to its central role in public life by another Greek idea:  democracy.

Categories: Europe, Europe and BREXIT, Europe and President Elect Trump, European "democracy", European establishment, European Union - disintegration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation
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Donald Trump and the Return of European Anti-Americanism

November 21, 2016

Donald Trump and the Return of European Anti-Americanism, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, November 21, 2016

European criticism of Trump goes far beyond a simple displeasure with the man who will be the next president. The condemnation reveals a deep-seated contempt for the United States, and for American voters who democratically elected a candidate committed to restoring American economic and military strength.

The primary cause of the global disorder is the lack of American leadership at home and abroad. A series of feckless decisions by Obama to reduce American military influence abroad have created geopolitical power vacuums that are being filled by countries and ideologies that are innately hostile to Western interests and values.

For the past seven decades, the U.S. has spent millions of dollars annually to guarantee German security, although Germany steadfastly refuses to honor a NATO pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defense spending. Germans are now offended that Trump is asking them to pay their fair share for their own defense.

Although President Obama’s foreign policy missteps have made Europe much less safe than it was eight years ago, European elites have overlooked Obama’s mistakes because he is a “globalist” who seems to favor recreating the U.S. in the European image. Trump, by contrast, is a nationalist who wants to rebuild the U.S. in the American, not the European, image.

European anti-Americanism is certain to escalate in the years ahead, not because of Trump or his policies, but because “globalists” appear desperate to save the failing European Union, an untransparent, unaccountable, anti-democratic, sovereignty-grabbing alternative to the nation state.

 

European anti-Americanism — which was on the wane during the presidency of Barack Obama, who steered the United States on a course of globalism rather than nationalism — is back with a vengeance.

Europe’s media establishment has greeted Donald Trump’s election victory with a vitriol not seen since the George W. Bush presidency, when anti-Americanism in Europe was at fever pitch.

Since the American election on November 9, European television, radio and print media have produced an avalanche of negative stories, editorials and commentary that seethe with rage over the outcome of the vote.

European criticism of Trump goes far beyond a simple displeasure with the man who will be the next president. The condemnation reveals a deep-seated contempt for the United States, and for American voters who democratically elected a candidate committed to restoring American economic and military strength.

If the past is any indication of the future, European anti-Americanism will be a pervasive feature of transatlantic relations during the Trump presidency.

Although European opinion-shapers have focused much of their indignation on the threat Trump allegedly poses to global order, the president-elect will inherit a world that is significantly more chaotic and insecure than it was when Obama became president in January 2009.

The primary cause of the global disorder is the lack of American leadership — leading from behind — at home and abroad.

A series of feckless decisions by Obama to reduce American military influence abroad have created geopolitical power vacuums that are being filled by countries and ideologies that are innately hostile to Western interests and values. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and radical Islam — among many others — have all been emboldened to challenge the United States and its allies with impunity.

European elites have been mostly silent about Obama’s foreign policy failures, but are now lashing out at Trump for pledging to restore order by “making America great again.”

As during the Bush administration, anti-Americanism in Europe is once again being driven by Germany, a country that was effectively rebuilt by the United States after the Second World War. The Marshall Plan granted West Germany some $1.5 billion ($15 billion in 2016 dollars) in reconstruction aid between 1948 and 1951.

For the past seven decades, the United States has spent millions of dollars annually to guarantee German security, although Germany steadfastly refuses to honor a NATO pledge to spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defense spending. Germany spent only 1.16% of GDP on its own defense in 2015 and 1.15% in 2016. German officials are now offended that Trump is asking them to pay their fair share for their own defense.

Following is a small sampling of recent European commentary on Donald Trump and the United States:

In Germany, the Hamburg-based newsmagazine Der Spiegel, one of the largest-circulation publications in Europe, published a cover with an image of a giant meteor in the shape of Trump’s head hurtling towards the earth. The headline reads: “The End of the World (As We Know It). The issue includes more than 50 pages of related content, including an article by Dirk Kurbjuweit entitled, “One-Hundred Years of Fear: America Has Abdicated Its Leadership of the West.” He wrote:

“For 100 years, the United States was the leader of the free world. With the election of Donald Trump, America has now abdicated that role. It is time for Europe, and Angela Merkel, to step into the void….

“Trump, who wants nothing to do with globalization; Trump, who preaches American nationalism, isolation, partial withdrawal from world trade and zero responsibility for a global problem like climate change….

“We now face emptiness — fear of the void. What will happen to the West, to Europe, to Germany without the United States as its leading power?

2062In Germany, Der Spiegel, one of the largest-circulation publications in Europe, published a cover, after Donald Trump’s election victory, with an image of a giant meteor in the shape of Trump’s head hurtling towards the earth. The headline reads: “The End of the World (As We Know It)”.

In an article, “Trump’s Victory Ushers in Dangerous Instability,” Spiegel commentator Roland Nelles wrote:

“It really happened. He did it. Donald Trump proved all experts wrong…. A man who… preaches hate and snubs America’s most important partners will run the most powerful country on Earth. It is a political catastrophe.

“Crude populism has triumphed over reason. Trump’s success is a shock for all those who had counted on the political wisdom of American voters….

“The world, and America, is now threatened by a dangerous phase of instability: Donald Trump wants to make America ‘great’ again. If one believes his pronouncements, he will proceed ruthlessly: He wants to throw 11 million migrants out of the country, renegotiate all major trade agreements and make important allies such as Germany pay for US military protection. That will trigger significant conflict, incite new rivalries and spur new crises.”

In an opinion article, “An Absurd and Dangerous President,” Spiegel commentator Klaus Brinkbäumer wrote:

“The United States has voted for a dangerously inexperienced and racist man — one who was swept into the White House by an army of disenfranchised white working- and middle-class Americans. It is a movement that now threatens democracy around the world….

“In other words, 60 million Americans acted stupidly. They cast their votes for xenophobia, racism and nationalism, the end of equal rights and social conscience, for the end of climate treaties and health insurance. Sixty million people followed a demagogue who will do little for them.

“Those who have lived in New York or experienced dinner conversations in Georgetown and debates at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, know how brilliantly intelligent and worldly Americans can be…. Once you get outside such circles, such cosmopolitan thinking isn’t nearly as widespread.”

The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, in an article, “Trump’s Foreign Policy: What This Election Means for the World,” stated:

“The man who politicians around the world called ‘scary,’ ‘ignorant’ or ‘irrational’ will move into the White House. The uncertainty around the world is great. If cartoonists are to be believed, Donald Trump’s idea of the world is very simplistic. Africa is the birthplace of Barack Obama. Russia is a country that was made great again. Great Britain is a no-go area.”

The Hamburg-based Die Zeit, in an article, “Trump and How He Sees the World,” wrote:

“Wow. The West crumbles before our eyes. What is going on here can be explained by two data points: On November 9, 1989, the wall fell in Berlin…. On November 9, 2016, exactly 27 years later, a man has been elected to the White House whose central election pledge was the construction of a wall.

“The ideas of the new president are neither contradictory nor confused. His demands can be easily summarized on the cap of a beer bottle: integrate Putin, keep Mexicans out and treat American allies as the customers of a security service. There is only protection if one pays cash, even in NATO.

In a commentary, “The End of the Enlightenment,” Zeit essayist Adrian Daub wrote:

“Donald Trump is a remnant of a dying America…. He has turned the country from a multicultural lighthouse into an isolated island of white people who are afraid of their own shadow.

“The idea of American exceptionalism, the lighthouse, was already present at the foundation of the nation…. The idea of American radiance is one with the ideas of the Enlightenment that came from Europe to the colonies. Ideas like universal values or the human striving for truth.

“Trump’s election means the end of this project. The United States is no longer a lighthouse, but a flaming fire of tired shadows armed to the teeth. No trace remains of its prototypical character, its imitability. It is defiant, closed to the world. The nationalism of isolationism… the tumultuous tribalism… are shaking the foundations of the Enlightenment.

“The US upheld the values of the Enlightenment — humanism, an optimistic image of man, human dignity and civil rights — when Europe deviated from them in the thirties. It used humanism as a weapon in the struggle against fascism, its universality as a counterpart to nationalism, and with its re-importation after the Second World War has contributed to the reestablishment of the European project. Today, these values are once more in trouble in Europe, but the view across the Atlantic will not be reassuring as of January.”

Other German headlines include: “Trump has the Charisma of a Drunken Elephant,” “Donald Trump: A Horror Clown as a Security Risk,” “Trump: How Could this Happen?,” “Plans of the New US President: How Trump Wants to Poison the Air,” “Donald Trump: A Blow to Open Society,” “America Chooses the Great Divider,” “Donald Trump: A King Without a Plan,” “Donald is not Ronald,” “Donald is not Churchill,” “Can Trump also Happen in Germany?,” “How to Prevent a German Trump,” “Who Can Stop Trump Now?,” and “Will Berlin Have to Pay More for Defense?”

In Britain, the Guardian published an editorial, “The Guardian View on Trump’s Foreign Policy: A Threat to Peace,” which stated:

“The victory of Donald Trump shatters the notion that the US can be counted on by its allies not just for defense guarantees and economic cooperation, but even as a defender of liberal democracy, rather than a threat to it. It calls into question the traditional US role as a protector of a UN-based global architecture of multilateralism….

“For Donald Trump, politics — like business — is about deal making. He thinks man-to-man talk with dictators can instantly dissolve problems, and approaches foreign affairs as zero sum game in which making America great can mean demeaning its traditional friends. His election makes the world a more dangerous place and also a more uncertain place, for it is too early to say precisely how those dangers will materialize — or how the next US president will face up to them.”

The Guardian, in an essay, “A Win for Trump was a Win for Bigotry,” columnist Owen Jones wrote:

“Hang on a minute: who am I as a Briton to interfere in the internal affairs of a foreign country? The problem is the entire world is now subject to the writ of the leader of the last superpower. We are all, to a degree, under his dominion….

“Trumpism is, by nature, an authoritarian movement that regards democratic norms as dispensable if they fail to serve political ends. The aspiration — whether realizable or not — is clear: authoritarian societies such as Putin’s Russia, Erdoğan’s Turkey and Orbán’s Hungary that maintain certain democratic trappings as a convenient front.

“If the American people simply accept the legitimacy of this president, and they normalize this would-be tyrant, it will only embolden him…. Civil disobedience should be employed where necessary. Don’t just do it for yourself, America. The fate of the rest of the world will be determined by your choices.”

Other British headlines include: “Will Donald Trump Destroy America?,” “Why President Donald Trump is an Even Bigger Disaster than You Thought,” “Donald Trump’s Victory is a Disaster for Liberal Values,” “Donald Trump’s Victory is a Disaster for Modern Masculinity,” “Privacy Experts Fear Donald Trump Running Global Surveillance Network,” “Terrifying Trump Will Turn into Tamed Trump? It’s an Illusion,” “The Magnetic Pull of Trump, King Narcissist,” “Will Donald Trump Make School Lunches Unhealthy? Doctors Warn the President-elect’s Penchant for Burgers and Fried Chicken Could Hit Meal Trays,” “In the Age of Trump, Why Bother Teaching Students to Argue Logically?,” and “Donald Trump Believed to be Direct Descendant of Rurik the Viking who Established Russian State.”

In Spain, where anti-Americanism has held sway for many decades, the newspaper El Paíspublished an essay, “Declaration of War against Stupidity,” which showcases the contempt many Europeans have for ordinary Americans. The newspaper’s long-time essayist, John Carlin, wrote:

“The victory of Trump represents a rebellion against reason and decency. It is the triumph of racism, or misogyny, or stupidity — or all three things at once. It is the expression of the poor judgment and bad taste of 60 million Americans, the vast majority of them men and women of white skin who own homes, cars, firearms and eat more than citizens of any other country on earth.

“This is where you see with perfect clarity the stupidity, frivolity and irresponsibility of those who voted for Trump. For all of Clinton’s defects, they are trivial compared to those of Trump, whose ignorance, zero principles and zero experience in governance are joined by all forms of personal vices that every person in their right mind at any latitude of the world considers deplorable.

“I know the kind who voted for Trump. I met them when I made reports in Texas, Montana, Arizona, Oklahoma, Alabama and other typically Republican states. They tend to be kind, religious and honest people, decent in their reduced social orbit. But after sitting down to talk with them for a while I always reacted with the same perplexity: how is it possible that we speak the same language? Their words are familiar to me but their brain circuits operate differently. They are people of simple faith, oblivious to the irony; people who choose their truths not based on facts but on their beliefs or prejudices; people who live far from the ocean and the rest of planet Earth, of which they are afraid. I’ve never experienced a similar sense of disconnection in Europe, Africa or Latin America. Just inside the United States.”

In Austria, Kronen Zeitung published a headline entitled, “Nuclear Suitcase: In 72 Days Trump Could Annihilate Civilization.” Also in Austria, Kurier published a story entitled, “Trump Victory: Boon for Suicide Hotlines.” In France, the newspaper Libération featured a cover with Trump and the words “American Psycho.” Another headline read: “United States: The Empire of the Worst.” L’Obs asked, “With Trump, the Beginning of De-Globalization?” Le Figaro wrote: “Donald Trump: From Clown to President,” and “Europe Paralyzed by the Trump Shock.” Le Monde wrote, “Donald Trump’s Victory: A Brexit for America.” In the Netherlands, Telegraaf declared, “Trump is a Nightmare for Europe.”

How is one to interpret the resurgence of anti-American sentiment in Europe?

Although President Obama’s foreign policy missteps, especially those in the Middle East, have made Europe much less safe than it was eight years ago, European elites have overlooked Obama’s mistakes because he is a “globalist” who seems to favor recreating the United States in the European image. Trump, by contrast, is a nationalist who wants to rebuild the United States in the American, not the European, image.

European anti-Americanism is certain to escalate in the years ahead, not because of Trump or his policies, but because “globalists” appear desperate to save the failing European Union, an untransparent, unaccountable, anti-democratic, sovereignty-grabbing alternative to the nation state.

Europeans have time and again overestimated their ability to make a fragmented Europe act like a single unified actor. As it turns out, anti-Americanism is a powerful ideology that has wide appeal across Europe — not just among the elites.

In the past, European federalists have tried to make anti-Americanism the basis of a new pan-European identity. This artificial post-modern European “citizenship,” which demands allegiance to a faceless bureaucratic superstate based in Brussels, has been presented as a globalist alternative to the nationalism of the United States. In essence, to be “European” means to not be American.

As the European Union comes apart at the seams, Europe’s political establishment can be expected to try to exploit anti-Americanism in a desperate attempt to use it as a glue to hold a fractured Europe together.

Whether or not that succeed depends, ironically, on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. If he can demonstrate that he is able to govern the United States and produce tangible results, especially by growing the economy and curbing illegal immigration, Trump is certain to energize support for anti-establishment politicians in Europe, many of whom are already polling well in a number of upcoming general elections.

Commenting on Trump’s victory, Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, wrote: “America has just liberated itself from political correctness. The American people expressed their desire to remain a free and democratic people. Now it is time for Europe. We can and will do the same!”

Categories: Britain, Contempt for America, Europe and President Elect Trump, Europe and President Reject Obama, European establishment, Globalism, NATO
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Trump Won Fair and Square. Get a life.

November 20, 2016

Trump Won Fair and Square. Get a life. Dan Miller’s Blog, November 20, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Democrats, the lamebrain media (but I repeat myself), academics (Opps!  I repeated myself again) and others who should know better are protesting — often violently — against Trump’s victory. Trump Derangement Syndrome is upon us.

Trump won fair and square. He did not rely on non-citizens or others who are barred from voting. As President, he intends, with the help of Congress, to make changes in U.S. policy. Horrors!

recall

Reflections via Gilbert and Sullivan

Thank Zeus that Hillary won’t be the Monarch of the Sea President of the United States. The Monarch of the Seas, as depicted by G&S, certainly behaves and sounds like Hillary.

Here is Hillary on the day after her defeat.

Here’s how less-than-normally-judgmental Hillary supporters and Never Trumpers see Trump:

So much for Gilbert and Sullivan.

Here are Hillary’s supporters:

Here’s another meltdown. The linked article had a video, but YouTube says “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” I wonder why. Oh well. This is how Jonathan Turley describes it:

In an appearance on MSNBC (which seems at times to be moving through the stages of grieving of Kübler-Ross), McInstosh insisted that the problem was with sexist, self-hating women: “Internalized misogyny is a real thing and this is a thing we have to be talking about as we go through and see.” She added “We as a society react poorly to women seeking positions of power. We are uncomfortable about that and we seek to justify that uncomfortable feeling because it can’t possibly be because we don’t want to see a woman in that position of power. As we go through these numbers, as we figure out exactly what happened with turnout, it seems to be white college-educated women . . . We have work to do talking to those women about what happened this year and why we would vote against our self-interest.”

And then there are these no less delusional “feminists.”

gender-climate-1

Daniel Greenfield wrote at Front Page Magazine about the Trump Derangement Syndrome.

#NotOurPresident on Twitter quickly gave way to riots in major cities. Democrats in the affected cities decided that the riots were a great idea even though it was their own police that were being attacked.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York City’s radical leftist boss, claimed that “more disruption… will change the trajectory of things”. Even though the only trajectory that the protests have changed thus far is New York City traffic. “The more people fight back, the more it takes away his power,” he insisted.

Wiser heads on the left recognized that messing up Manhattan traffic wouldn’t stop Trump from taking office. Instead they decided to abolish the Electoral College. Senator Boxer will introduce a bill to that effect. Bernie Sanders mumbled that it’s time to rethink it. Michael Dukakis fired off an angry email insisting that Hillary Clinton had won and that abolishing it should be a top Democratic priority.

Since Hillary lost, the Electoral College is, according to Slate, an “Instrument of White Supremacy—and Sexism”. And probably Islamophobic and Homophobic too. Time Magazine defaulted to the default lefty attack on anything by accusing the Electoral College of being racist. But if Hillary had won, then any attack on the Electoral College would be racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and claustrophobic.

Rank and filers weren’t interested in waiting to abolish it tomorrow. They skipped right to trying to rig it today. Over 4 million people have signed a petition titled, “Electoral College: Make Hillary Clinton President on December 19”. Because that’s just how they think elections should work.

Efforts were made to contact Electors directly urging them to hijack the election. Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney said that the Electors were being harassed with “insults”, “vulgar language” and “threats”. One Elector reported that his cell, home phone, email and Facebook were targeted.

“They’re just trying to steal this thing,” he said.

The Electoral College is undemocratic. Unless you’re a Democrat asking it to undemocratically hijack the results of a state election while depriving its voters of political representation.

Some Democrats despaired of stealing the election and tried to steal the Supreme Court instead. There were revived calls for a Supreme Court recess appointment. There’s a petition, a Saturday Night Live punch line and a bizarre effort by Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley to move the nomination forward.

Merkley claimed that Trump has “no right to fill” that seat and that the Supreme Court seat was stolen.  “We need to do everything we possibly can to block it,” he insisted.

What does that mean? How about a permanently deadlocked Supreme Court?

A Slate writer urged that, “the only way to answer nihilism is with nihilism of our own.”

“Obstruct the nomination and seating of any Trump nominee to fill Scalia’s seat,” she urged. “We will lose. But that’s not the point now… If Democrats can muster the energy to fight about nothing else, it should be this.”

A permanently deadlocked Supreme Court doesn’t sound like much of a plan. But Trump Derangement Syndrome means embracing nihilism. And it’s downright rational compared to the celebrity meltdowns as TMZ’s finest cope with the blow to their egos of an election that showed they didn’t matter.

Lady Gaga has been yelling at Trump on and off Twitter. Constitutional scholar George Takei demanded that Obama just appoint Garland. Honorary feminist Joss Whedon declared, “This is simple: Trump cannot CANNOT be allowed a term in office. It’s not about 2018. It’s about RIGHT NOW.”

What does that mean? It’s a tantrum. It means that baby wants his power and he wants it now.

And it only gets crazier from there.

The outer reaches of Trump Derangement Syndrome include calls to boycott three brands of toilet paper because they’re allegedly made by the Koch Brothers. Never mind that the Koch Brothers weren’t supporting Trump. Facts, like democracy, only matter when they happen to be on your side.

Then there are the ritual burnings of New Balance sneakers on YouTube and Instagram. Not to mention support for the secession of California from the United States of America.

A man has sued Donald Trump for $1 billion for having inflicted “great emotional pain, fear and anxiety on Election Day and beyond.” Students at Cornell held a “cry-in” to mourn the results of the election.  The University of Kansas offered students therapy dogs. At the University of Michigan’s multi-ethnic student affairs center students took comfort in regressing to childhood with coloring books and Play-Doh.

John Hopkins recommended a healing circle. Stanford urged students to “take care of yourselves and to give support to those who need it.” Vanderbilt encouraged them “to take advantage of the outstanding mental health support the university offers.”

At the University of Maryland, an astronomy test was canceled to help students cope with “a personally threatening election result.” A Yale economics professor made his test optional because students were “in shock” over losing an election.  A dozen midterms were rescheduled at Columbia.

One student complained, “Instead of studying for my exam, I was glued to the election update. It’s not fair to have a test the following day when something so monumental is taking place, especially when this event is threatening so many groups of people in our country.”

Under all the outraged rhetoric is a narcissistic sense of entitlement. Frustrate it and tantrums happen.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is the tantrum that happens when that sense of entitlement bursts. It’s not a new phenomenon. We saw it with Bush and with previous Republican presidents before him. But as the left’s power has grown, its insular ivory towers have become unable to imagine ever losing it.

Obama maintained the illusion that the opposition didn’t matter by ruling unilaterally. Then in one election the illusion collapsed. The left wasn’t really in charge. There were millions of people across the country in places they had never visited or even heard of who got to decide on all these issues.

That warm comfortable safe space of John Oliver and Samantha Bee viral videos, Buzzfeed stories and social media feeds filled with carefully curated people who agreed with them wasn’t reality. It had been an illusion all along. It was an elitist island that had little in common with that vast geography of people who get their say through the Electoral College. After two terms of getting their way on everything, they woke to a world in which they didn’t matter and which was suddenly no longer catering to their whims.

They don’t really want to abolish the Electoral College, to put Garland on the Supreme Court or to burn New Balance sneakers. What they really want is to get rid of democracy and replace it with a dictatorship. Trump Derangement Syndrome is the tantrum of tyrants.

It’s a real threat to democracy. But that’s what the left has always been.

The hysteria of Trump Derangement Syndrome is the flip side of Obama worship. Both reject democracy and embrace power. They are the illiberal attitudes of a totalitarian movement at odds with America. [Emphasis added.]

Yep.

Left wing Europeans had their own Temper Trumptums

“A world is collapsing before our eyes”, tweeted the French ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election. Although he later apparently deleted the tweet, the sentiment expressed in his tweet encapsulates the attitude of the majority of the European political establishment.

Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, described the reaction to Trump’s victory across Germany’s political spectrum as “shock and uncertainty.” Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen described Trump’s win as a “heavy shock.” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: “The world won’t end, but things will get more crazy”.

Green party leader Cem Özdemir called Trump’s election a “break with the tradition that the West stands for liberal values.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said:

“Trump is the trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. … They want a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table. And he who doesn’t keep his mouth shut gets publicly bashed.”

In a fine touch of irony, EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who recently referred to the Chinese as “slanty eyed,” told Deutschlandfunk radio that the U.S. election was a “warning” for Germany: “Things are getting simplified, black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. You can ask simple questions, but one should not give simple answers.”

In France, the media reaction was summed up by the left-leaning newspaper, Libération:

“Trumpocalypse… Shock… The world’s leading power is from now on in the hands of the far-right. Fifty percent of Americans voted in all conscience for a racist, lying, sexist, vulgar, hateful candidate.”

Critics omitted, however, the runaway lawlessness, divisiveness and corruption that American voters declined to reinstate.

President François Hollande described Trump’s victory as marking the start of “a period of uncertainty.” Previously, Hollande had said that Trump made him “want to retch.”

On a very different, but related note, Nigel Farage speaks about the Trump and Brexit revolutions:

Sharyl Attkisson explains in the next video how and why the lamebrain media were consistently wrong about the presidential election:

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim, agrees with Trump’s much-maligned — and grossly distorted by the media — plans for deciding which Muslims will be allowed to enter the United States.

Conclusions

I engaged in a bit of Schadenfreude while writing this, but the problem has its serious aspects.

Many people wanted “feminist” Hillary to continue Obama’s feckless foreign and domestic policies; not enough to win the election for Hillary, but enough to make them believe that they should and would win hands-down. Since they didn’t, they concluded that something serious — they don’t know what, beyond the idiocy of American voters and a “corrupt” electoral system — must have caused “racist, antisemitic, misogynist bully” Trump to win.

Why? Academia — from kindergarten through graduate school — are one big part of the problem and the lamebrain media are another. Most of those placed in charge of them doubtless agree with Obama’s position that His world vision is right and that Populism is dangerous.

Remember the Obama Kids?

Now San Francisco teachers have an anti-Trump lesson plan.

[I]nstead of laudatory songs that praise the new president, a sick new anti-Trump lesson plan that demonizes President-elect Trump and his supporters has already been offered to teachers in the San Francisco area.  High school social studies teacher Fakhra Shah apparently drew up the lesson plan in a fit of spite and rage in the wee hours of the morning of November 9, right after Trump was elected. The school district reportedly has no problem with the plan, which characterizes the new president and his supporters as racist and sexist bigots.

. . . .

[Ms. Shah] warned teachers that some students may lash out at the new president using foul and obscene language. She even encouraged this because it is how kids living under white supremacy lift themselves up and fight oppression at school. Or something.

“I know that they might curse and swear, but you would too if you have suffered under the constructs of white supremacy or experienced sexism, or any isms or lack of privilege,” she wrote.

This is not “empowering” or “uplifting.” It is seriously deranged and destructive. The songs of Obama praise were disturbing and inappropriate, but this kind of propaganda is just plain evil. Instead of helping students deal with an election that maybe didn’t go the way they wanted, they are encouraging them to wallow in anger and self-pity and branding over 60 million Americans as racist and sexist bigots.

America won the election but we still have a big problem. I hope to be able to suggest fixes in a later article, but there are no easy solutions.

Categories: 2016 elections, Academia, Anti-Trump rioters, BREXIT and Trump, Clinton supporters, Contempt for America, Democracy, Democrat establishment, Europe and President Elect Trump, Feminists, Globalists, Media and Democrats, Media and Donald Trump, President Elect Trump, President Reject Clinton, President Reject Obama, Trump Derangement Syndrome
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European Temper Trumptums

November 15, 2016

European Temper Trumptums, Gatestone Institute, Judith Bergman, November 15, 2016

The arrogant claim to the moral high ground by European elites has no basis in reality.

There is no respect for freedom and democracy on a continent where citizens, such as the politician Geert Wilders, are arrested and prosecuted by in a court of law for speaking their minds freely about topics that the authorities find it expedient not to debate in public.

Freedom, respect for the rule of law, and people’s race, religion and gender have never been less respected and protected in Germany during the post-WWII era than under Merkel. German authorities have completely failed to protect women, Christians and others from the chaos unleashed by the mass, unvetted, immigration of mainly Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The rule of law is anything but “respected” in Germany.

Not everyone is “panicking”. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, rejected the invitation and told his colleagues to end their “collective whinge-o-rama” about the U.S. election result.

Critics of the U.S. election omitted, however, the runaway lawlessness, divisiveness and corruption that American voters declined to reinstate.

 

“A world is collapsing before our eyes”, tweeted the French ambassador to the United States, Gerard Araud, as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the US presidential election. Although he later apparently deleted the tweet, the sentiment expressed in his tweet encapsulates the attitude of the majority of the European political establishment.

Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, described the reaction to Trump’s victory across Germany’s political spectrum as “shock and uncertainty.” Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen described Trump’s win as a “heavy shock.” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: “The world won’t end, but things will get more crazy”.

Green party leader Cem Özdemir called Trump’s election a “break with the tradition that the West stands for liberal values.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said:

“Trump is the trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement. … They want a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table. And he who doesn’t keep his mouth shut gets publicly bashed.”

In a fine touch of irony, EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who recently referred to the Chinese as “slanty eyed,” told Deutschlandfunk radio that the U.S. election was a “warning” for Germany: “Things are getting simplified, black or white, good or bad, right or wrong. You can ask simple questions, but one should not give simple answers.”

In France, the media reaction was summed up by the left-leaning newspaper, Libération:

“Trumpocalypse… Shock… The world’s leading power is from now on in the hands of the far-right. Fifty percent of Americans voted in all conscience for a racist, lying, sexist, vulgar, hateful candidate.”

Critics omitted, however, the runaway lawlessness, divisiveness and corruption that American voters declined to reinstate.

President François Hollande described Trump’s victory as marking the start of “a period of uncertainty.” Previously, Hollande had said that Trump made him “want to retch.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the most powerful men in Europe, told students at a conference in Luxembourg, “We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works”. He also claimed that, “The election of Trump poses the risk of upsetting intercontinental relations in their foundation and in their structure.” He added that Americans usually have no interest in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel herself offered to work closely with Trump only “on the basis that shared values, such as democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and people’s race, religion and gender are respected” — the overbearing implication being that Trump cannot be expected to respect these concepts.

Just how hysterical European political leaders’ reaction has been to Trump was manifested in the fact that they felt compelled to hold an informal “crisis meeting” — some diplomats called it a “panic dinner” — on Sunday evening, to deal with the “shock” of the presidential election. “We would never have had a similar dinner if Hillary Clinton had been elected. It shows just how much we’re panicking,” said a diplomat from one of the smaller EU states.

Not everyone is “panicking.” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rejected the invitation and told his colleagues to end their “collective whinge-o-rama” about the U.S. election result.

There is indeed an unmistakable infantility about the reactions of European political elites to the election of the new US president, which are reminiscent of a young child lashing out after being denied candy. More significantly, the reactions reveal an overbearing disrespect for the American people’s free and democratic choice of a leader. Most important, however, is that the arrogant claim to the moral high ground by European elites has no basis in reality. It simply is not true that, as Merkel claimed, freedom and democracy, rule of law and respect for people’s race, religion and gender are at the foreground of European policies.

In fact, there is something deeply ironic about Angela Merkel mentioning freedom, the rule of law and so on. In fact, freedom, respect for the rule of law, and people’s race, religion and gender have never been less respected and protected in Germany during the post-WWII era than under Merkel. German authorities have completely failed to protect women, Christians and others from the chaos unleashed by the mass, unvetted, immigration of mainly Muslim migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The rule of law is anything but “respected” in Germany, where large pockets of Muslims live in parallel societies, or no-go zones, where police are too afraid to enter, where the residents impose their own rules, such as polygamy, and where committing social benefits fraud is rampant while German authorities turn a knowing blind eye.

2046

This pattern repeats itself endlessly in other European countries. In Britain, the police and social workers have turned a blind eye for years to Muslim gangs grooming, prostituting, and raping young white British teenagers in cities such as Oxford, Birmingham, Rochdale and Rotherham. How is that for “respect for the rule of law” and human rights?

There is no freedom, or respect for gender in Swedish women being told not to go out after dark, or German women being told to follow a “code of conduct” because local police authorities can no longer protect them from sexual assault.

There is no respect for religion on a continent where authorities have been unable to stem a tidal wave of anti-Semitism or to protect Christians who flee from the Middle East to Europe, only to experience similar prosecution from local or migrant Muslims.

There is no respect for freedom and democracy on a continent where citizens, such as the politician Geert Wilders, are arrested and prosecuted by national authorities in a court of law for speaking their minds freely about topics that the authorities do not find it expedient to debate in public.

Perhaps Europe can start preaching to president-elect Donald Trump once it gets its own house in order?

Categories: Europe and President Elect Trump, European "democracy", European establishment, European Union, European weakness
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