Benjamin Netanyahu, red-faced and happy, sits next to Donald Trump in a gold Roman-style litter. The ancient vehicle is being carried by big-nosed Orthodox Jews, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a voluptuous woman and a few Israeli soldiers — marked with large Israeli flags on their chests. A speech bubble comes out of Netanyahu’s mouth, saying “Finally!”
The image I just described was published in Sweden’s largest-circulation daily paper, Dagens Nyheter, as a political cartoon, commenting on Trump’s victory in the American presidential election. It’s a bizarre mishmash of people and symbols, where IDF soldiers and a robed clansman are celebrating Trump side by side, and wildly stereotypical Orthodox Jews are hanging out with a pinup girl next to Israel’s security barrier. But the logical fail not withstanding, it reeks of anti-Semitic imagery and messaging, and it is the next step in normalizing something that has been underground for quite some time. One would assume the paper would realize this and issue a thorough apology. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the paper doubled down and defended the cartoon, saying that it was merited by the fact that Netanyahu celebrated Trump’s victory, despite Trump being supported by anti-democratic forces and white power movements. No mention of the fact that Netanyahu’s support of Trump extended only to the courtesy shown to a president-elect by any and every national leader or that Jews rarely stand shoulder to shoulder with the Klan, but just that Netanyahu “celebrated” Trump — as if the Israeli prime minister had thrown Trump an opulent party.
Dagens Nyheter calls itself an independent, liberal publication, and in the past year, it has taken a clear stand against Trump, saying he has made the world more extreme and xenophobic. Editor-in-Chief Peter Wolodarski has used his editorials to ride a very high moral horse, and his decision to run that particular cartoon is a fascinating portrait of the division between the right and wrong kinds of racism and bigotry.
What the cartoonist, known as “Bard,” is saying by this crude drawing is not only that the Jews and Israel orchestrated and celebrated the Trump win but also that the evil hook-noses side with anyone to get their way, including organizations known for wanting their annihilation.
Now, for the sake of entertainment and folly, let’s imagine another drawing: a cartoonish Barack Obama sitting in a golden carriage with a sweaty Mahmoud Abbas, being carried by big-nosed ISIS terrorists, voluptuous virgin brides and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Imagine that it was published by a country’s most popular publication and that the editor-in-chief defended it by saying that Obama had been supportive of Abbas and therefore, the imagery was fair game.
Do any of you, dear readers, think this would happen? Does anyone think that if it did, it would be go largely unnoticed and accepted? No, me neither, and I know this because we have an example of this very thing. When Charlie Hebdo was attacked and journalists were murdered in cold blood over their criticism of Islam, people still said that the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad was inexcusable and unacceptable, and remained on the fence after the very heart of freedom had been ripped to bits. Famous writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Junot Díaz and Michael Ondaatje protested Charlie Hebdo receiving the PEN award, and were supported by a wide array of liberals all across the globe who called the French satirical magazine racist.
So what is really fair game — what racism is allowed and celebrated in today’s society? We know that portraying Israel as the leader of a Zionist conspiracy that elects presidents is fine, as is literally painting anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews side by side with white supremacists in a dog whistle loud enough to give you tinnitus. That elicits a few angry and summarily ignored letters from Jews, whereas similar imagery and messaging about any other group might close down the publication, if it were to survive the inevitable terrorist attacks.
Some of my friends filed a complaint against Dagens Nyheter, but I didn’t bother, as it is the activist equivalent of drawing a picture of a sandwich to feed the starving. Our voices mean little when others stay silent, and it is because of this silence that the largest paper in the land can go full Der Sturmer and no one even bats an eye.
In this Thursday, Nov. 10, 2016, file photo, high school students protest in opposition of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in San Francisco. Thousands of high school students have taken to the streets in cities across the country.
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and some of our history class dropouts are at least getting the lesson they missed in seventh-grade civics.
The ill wind blowing across the fruited plain is teaching all those dropouts how America elects the president, and they’re having trouble with the idea that when you have winners and losers somebody has to lose.
There’s abundant bitterness everywhere over this election because nearly everyone expected Hillary Clinton to win it. It was her moral right, after all. The “legacy” media threw away all its long-held traditions of objectivity and joined the Democratic campaign not as observers but as participants.
Donald Trump met several television news personalities Monday at Trump Tower, ostensibly to talk about press access to the president in the new administration, and instead the TV notabilities got the remarkable dressing down from the Donald that they should have got long ago from their editors and managers for the way they all jumped into the tank to swim with Hillary.
Losing was not always like this. The late George McGovern, a thoroughly decent man who offered thoroughly wrong ideas about how to transform America and lost 49 of the 50 states in 1972, told with a wry chuckle how a man and his small son approached him at an airport a fortnight or so after the election to commiserate.
“I was heartbroken when you lost,” the man told him, “and I’m glad to have the opportunity to thank you in person and to shake your hand for all you’ve done for America.”
Mr. McGoo, an authentic American hero who flew dozens of combat mission as a bomber pilot in World War II, returned the thanks, and the boy put out his hand, too. “You shouldn’t feel bad,” he told Mr. McGoo. “Second place is still pretty good.”
Well, close is only good in horseshoes, and losing always hurts plenty. But the Democrats stayed out of the streets, nursed their hurt the way grown-ups always deal with their disappointments, and soon returned to the sound of the guns to fight on another day. They eventually won again. That’s how it’s done.
But the aftermath of this election is different, if not necessarily unique. The left, including many of the merely liberal, thought Hillary Clinton was entitled by right to win the election. She won more than a million more popular votes than Donald Trump, which is impressive but not unprecedented, and the Donald won more electoral votes (and by an impressive margin). Those are the rules, and both candidates knew the rules when the campaign started.
In the homestretch of the campaign of 2000, Al Gore and the Democrats felt the race tightening, as it usually does, and calculated that they might win more electoral votes but fewer popular votes than George W. Bush. Mr. Gore rightly reminded everyone in several late speeches that it was the electoral votes that count. In the event, it was he who won the popular vote and George W. the electoral vote.
When that happened this year the grumbling started quickly because most voters are ignorant of how things work. The only thing most Americans know about the Electoral College is that it must be in the Western Division of the Southeastern Conference, the toughest in all of college football, and might be the only college that could beat Alabama.
So naive are many of these voters that some of them are writing to the 290 Republican members of the Electoral College (or 306 if the popular vote in Michigan holds up) to urge them, occasionally under threat of death, to put aside their sworn allegiance to Donald Trump and vote for Hillary Clinton instead. A petition seeking this highly unlikely result has so far acquired more than 4 million online signatures. It’s legal, though in certain cases such an unfaithful elector could be sentenced to prison and fined besides.
In the nation’s history only 157 faithless electors declined to vote for the candidates they promised to support, and 71 of those cast an unexpected ballot because their man died before the Electoral College met in session. No elector has been “faithless” since 2004, when an elector, promised to John Kerry, voted instead for his running mate, John Edwards (and misspelled his name to boot).
The dead-enders trying to deprive the Trump-Pence ticket of their promised electors imagine their task is not so hard; “all” they have to do is persuade 37 of the 306 Republican electors to switch their votes, which would deadlock the election at 269 to 269. That still wouldn’t change the final result because it would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would cast one vote. The Republicans would likely still win. It just wasn’t a Democratic year.
In 2011, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to use “some old fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” against those whose exercise of free speech “we abhor.”
At the time, she had in mind specifically perpetrators of what the OIC, the Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamic supremacists and their enablers on the Left call “defamation of Islam.” But the same playbook – in the tradition of Mrs. Clinton’s mentor, Saul Alinsky – is now being followed with a vengeance against what is abhorred by the cabal best described as the Red-Green Axis.
Much in evidence among such “old-fashioned techniques” now being employed is what’s known as “the Big Lie.” It entails the endless repetition of outrageous falsehoods to defame, and ultimately silence, one’s political opponents.
Three good men Donald Trump has selected for key strategic and national security positions are currently getting the Big Lie treatment: his White House Counsel Steve Bannon, Attorney General-designate Senator Jeff Sessions, and incoming National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Michael Flynn. They are being relentlessly vilified as “racists,” “bigots” and “haters.”
I feel these able public servants’ pain. Indeed, I know what it’s like to be subjected to the Big Lie. For years, the Islamists and their allies on the hard Left – notably, the discredited (for example, here and here) Southern Poverty Law Center – have used character assassination and vitriol against me (for example, here, here and here) to protect what they otherwise cannot defend: the totalitarian program its adherents call Sharia. The false assertion last week that I had been asked to serve on the Trump transition team sent these rogues into fresh paroxysms of hateful denunciation, repeated like a mantra by their media echo chamber (for example, here, here, here and here).
I am hardly alone in being diagnosed by such charlatans with the made-up condition of “Islamophobia.” Indeed, I am proud to be included in the company of men and women being pilloried for what Islamic supremacists and their enablers would have us believe is “defamation of Islam.” In fact, it is simply informed, astute and courageous truth-telling about the global jihad movement and threat it poses. Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions and Mike Flynn are under assault for doing the same in this and other contexts.
It seems that critics are particularly unhinged by the clarity of these three men and the president they will serve about the fact that Islamic supremacism is not simply a menace overseas. The Red-Green types are determined to prevent Donald Trump from operationalizing the plan of action he described in a major address on the topic on August 15, 2016. Among its highlights are the following:
Our new approach, which must be shared by both parties in America, by our allies overseas, and by our friends in the Middle East, must be to halt the spread of Radical Islam. All actions should be oriented around this goal….Just as we won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of Radical Islam….
In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today. In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law. Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country….
Finally, we will pursue aggressive criminal or immigration charges against anyone who lends material support to terrorism. Similar to the effort to take down the mafia, this will be the understood mission of every federal investigator and prosecutor in the country. To accomplish a goal, you must state a mission: the support networks for Radical Islam in this country will be stripped out and removed one by one. Immigration officers will also have their powers restored: those who are guests in our country that are preaching hate will be asked to return home. (Emphasis added)
In short, the Red-Green Axis is having conniptions because the American people have now chosen to lead them a president and an administration that will not just be sensible about this threat. It is also determined to do the job Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and their minions have adamantly shirked: protecting us against, rather than accommodating, Sharia. So the Big Lie and “other techniques of shaming and peer pressure” are now being applied with abandon to outstanding public servants in the hope of reducing their effectiveness and that of the presidency they will serve.
The transparent falsity and political agenda being served by such lies should, instead, discredit their perpetrators. For that to happen, however, the so-called “mainstream press” will have to stop lionizing the Big Liars and uncritically promoting their handiwork.
For years, Republicans and conservatives have charged that President Obama has shielded embarrassing intelligence and other information regarding Iran in order to limit opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and Obama’s conciliatory approach to Tehran. The charge seems well-founded. After all, it took Sens. Tom Cotton and Rep. Mike Pompeo to discover secret side agreements attached to the nuclear deal.
Eli Lake suggests that the Trump administration may well stop covering for the mullahs. Certainly, as Lake argues, Trump’s early high level personnel picks suggest so.
Trump’s nominee for CIA Director is none other than Mike Pompeo. Not only did he and Sen. Cotton uncover side deals to the nuclear agreement, he also pressed hard for answers about the cash payments the U.S. delivered to the mullahs in exchange for the release of hostages.
Pompeo wrote to Attorney General Lynch asking for answers as to how the cash payments were approved by the Justice Department. Lynch stonewalled him. Perhaps Jeff Sessions will be more cooperative.
Mike Flynn is the other key appointment for purposes of airing Obama’s Iran secrets. Lake points out that in 2011 General Flynn ran a team at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that reviewed the troves of material captured in the 2011 Osama bin Laden raid.
Under Obama, only a small fraction of these documents have been declassified and released. After he retired from the military, Flynn charged that the disclosures were selective.
Flynn noted, for example, that some documents captured in the bin Laden raid show a much tighter relationship between Iran and al-Qaeda than previously disclosed. In The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (written with Micheal Ledeen), Flynn states: “One letter to bin Laden reveals that al-Qaeda was working on chemical and biological weapons in Iran.”
Given Obama’s desire to deal with Iran and, indeed, for a rapprochement, you can see why the administration shielded such intelligence. Given the well-deserved contempt by Pompeo and Flynn for Obama’s Iran policy, you can see why they might want relevant facts to come to light. As a general matter, these are facts the public has a right to know.
If such facts are made public, Obama won’t have much standing to complain. Lake reminds us:
Obama himself in 2008 campaigned against the sitting president’s policies on waterboarding and enhanced interrogation. One of the first things his government did when he took office was to declassify and release the legal memos that justified and revoked these practices.
It looks like the Republicans are about to return the favor.
Israel, Jordan and Syria have embarked on secret discussions for the stabilization of their borders in southern Syria by restoring the status quo ante that reigned on the Golan prior to the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
This is reported exclusively by DEBKAfile from intelligence, Washington and Moscow sources.
The incoming Trump administration in Washington and Russian President Vladimir Putin are in the picture; so is the United Arab Emirates ruler, Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Although still at a preliminary stage, the talks have produced their first tangible result: A vanguard of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has arrived on the Syrian side of the Golan. It has taken up position at its former Fawwar Camp base 4km east of Quneitra, which it evacuated during the Syrian fighting. The main body of the force, around 1,000 UN soldiers and 70 observers, is expected soon, to take up the task of reconstituting the former demilitarized zone that separated Israel and Syria under the 1974 armistice agreement.
This DMZ runs 80km along the Hermon range up to the Lebanese border in the north and down to the Israel-Syrian-Jordanian triangle in southern Syria up to the Jordanian border. In the 25km long Golan strip, between half a kilometer and 10 deep, the IDF and Syrian army were originally limited as to the number of soldiers and types of weaponry they are allowed to maintain. The strip will revert to Syrian civil administration under UNDOF control, and the Israeli-Syrian border crossing point will be reopened in the Quneitra area under the joint supervision of UN, Israeli and Syrian officers.
The military arrangements are still in discussion and changes may be introduced to this format.
The main obstacle to the return of pre-Syrian war conditions to this sensitive border region is the presence of radical Syrian rebel forces in southern Syria, mainly the Khalid bin Walid Army, whose leaders have sworn allegiance to Islamic State commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
These forces will face the option of accepting the authority of the Syrian army or fighting a win-or-die battle.
Israel has an additional, compelling interest in restoring the disengagement zone with Syria in that it leaves no room for the grab for a military presence opposite Israeli Golan and Galilee that was made in recent months by Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hizballah, for the purpose of opening a new front for terrorist attacks against Israel – as DEBKAfile was first to reveal. .
An indirect clue to the secret diplomatic talks ongoing came from the Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in an interview he gave on Nov. 16 to a Portuguese radio station, when he said: “If –if – he [Trump] fights the terrorists, it is clear that we will be a natural ally, together with the Russians, Iranians and many other countries who want to defeat the terrorists.”
The parties with varying degrees of involvement in the restoration of the UN-controlled DMZ on the Golan border are, therefore, the incoming Trump administration, Moscow, Damascus, Amman, Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem. Russia, Jordan and the Emirates have gained relevance for the first time as a result of changes in the strategic balance engendered by the Syrian war.
(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!
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.”
#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.]
“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.”
“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:
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.
[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.
At the end of 2008, I worried that the Obama administration would do great damage to America–correctly, as it turned out. But no one considered my misgivings to be newsworthy.
The case is different with respect to the incipient Trump administration. Criticisms by his opponents–the ones who just lost the election–dominate the news. The Associated Press, once a respected news organization, headlines: “Trump’s staff picks alarm minorities: ‘Injustice to America.’”
Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for leadership posts threaten national unity and promise to turn back the clock on progress for racial, religious and sexual minorities, civil rights leaders and others said Friday after his nomination of Alabama U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.
That’s a remarkable beginning for a purported news story!
Sessions, a Republican, was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 after hearings in which he was accused of making racially charged remarks as a U.S. attorney. According to transcripts, Sessions was accused, among other things, of joking that he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was OK” until he learned its members smoked marijuana and of calling a black assistant U.S. attorney “boy.” During the hearing, Sessions denied making some of the comments and said others were jokes taken out of context.
Is it too much to expect them to come up with something within the last 30 years? Apparently so.
Black Lives Matter activist and Campaign Zero co-founder DeRay Mckesson said Sessions’ “documented racism and previous ineligibility for public office make him unfit to be the standard-bearer for the nation’s justice system.”
The AP cites one extreme left-wing source after another, as though they were reputable experts whose judgments are worthy of credence. In addition to the Black Lives Matter activist, the AP turns to unindicted terrorist co-conspirator CAIR for comment:
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said, “Unfortunately, these very important picks in his administration send a troubling message indicating that the bigotry we saw expressed in the campaign will continue.”
The Associated Press deems representatives of a pro-terrorist group and a violent, racist movement to be mainstream commentators, while Jeff Sessions–former U.S. Attorney, Attorney General of Alabama and Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, a Senator so respected that when he ran for re-election in 2014, the Democrats did not field a candidate against him–is portrayed as an outlier, a marginal, suspect figure. That gives you a good idea where the Associated Press lies on the ideological spectrum.
The AP retails the usual nonsense against Trump adviser Steve Bannon:
Bannon led the Breitbart website, which has been widely condemned as racist, sexist and anti-Semitic.
Really? By whom? Why? This is the lowest form of smear.
The AP goes on to quote someone named Daniela Lapidous, as though her views were particularly noteworthy:
Daniela Lapidous, a 22-year-old Jewish woman who works to fight climate change…
I am sure the humor is unintended.
…called Bannon a “misogynist and anti-Semite and an anti-climate extremist.” She said she never before felt the need to fight anti-Semitism but now thinks that she must.
“I’ve been somewhat convinced that anti-Semitism isn’t a thing in the United States anymore, but this past year, with Trump and Bannon, it’s made me scared about that for the first time in my life,” said Lapidous, who lives in San Francisco.
Why does the AP inform many hundreds of thousands of readers about Ms. Lapidous’s opinion of Steve Bannon? Has Lapidous ever met Mr. Bannon? Not as far as we know. Does she cite any basis for her opinion that Bannon is an anti-Semite? No. In fact, while Bannon likely does disagree with Ms. Lapidous about global warming–I certainly hope so!–the assertion that he is anti-Semitic is disgusting. Andrew Breitbart was strongly pro-Israel; our own Scott Johnson once toured Israel with him. Breitbart News, under Bannon’s leadership, has continued to be enthusiastically pro-Israel.
This is not hard to understand: a person who is anti-Israel is not necessarily an anti-Semite, although a great many are. But no anti-Semites are strongly pro-Israel. That combination simply doesn’t exist. Which means that Ms. Lapidous is ignorant, and raises the question: why is the Associated Press sharing with us the uninformed opinion of a foolish left-wing ideologue who is all of six months removed from college? Has the AP called you lately to ask for your opinion about prominent Democrats? Probably not.
I could go on for a long time; this AP story is a target-rich environment. Instead, let’s add just one more observation. The AP pretends that it would be a terrible thing to have a racist Attorney General. Jeff Sessions, of course, would be no such thing. But we have had a racist Attorney General, just recently: Eric Holder. Holder made it the policy of the Department of Justice to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws in favor of some ethnic groups, but not others. That is textbook racism. Did the Associated Press protest? Of course not. Holder was of their party, and shared their agenda.
America’s largest Muslim advocacy organization urged President-elect Donald Trump to cut ties with a national security adviser the group described as an “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist.”
The Hill doesn’t mention the Hamas ties and opposition to counter-terror efforts of “America’s largest Muslim advocacy organization.” The “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist” in question is Frank Gaffney. Considering that the source of this label is CAIR, it’s a compliment to Gaffney. Islamic supremacists and their leftist enablers are now quaking in their boots at the mere thought of Trump in the White House — all the more because he is surrounding himself with strategists who support freedom, democracy and Israel. CAIR’s gig as flourishing unindicted co-conspirators may well be drawing to a close.
Frank Gaffney
“Muslim group to Trump: Drop ‘anti-Islam conspiracy theorist’ as adviser,” by Mark Hensch, the Hill, November 18, 2016:
America’s largest Muslim advocacy organization urged President-elect Donald Trump to cut ties with a national security adviser the group described as an “anti-Islam conspiracy theorist.”
“Discredited conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney should not come within 100 miles of any administration that seeks to maintain credibility on the world stage or uphold longstanding American values of religious diversity and inclusion,” Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement Wednesday.
“With these kinds of associations, President-elect Trump is dividing America at a time when we are most in need of unity.”
Reports emerged Tuesday that Trump’s transition team has added Gaffney as a national security adviser.
Gaffney, who served in the Pentagon under former President Ronald Reagan, is now a radio host and founder of the Center for Security Policy.
Reports added that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and former Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) also joined Trump’s transition team alongside Gaffney. The trio was brought on after former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and lobbyist Michael Freedman were fired earlier this week.
Gaffney reportedly backed the theory that President Obama is Muslim and born outside the U.S. The former Reagan administration official has also insisted the government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, describes Gaffney as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes.”
Gaffney told Breitbart News Daily the day after Trump’s White House win the billionaire should focus on curbing Muslim Brotherhood influence on the U.S. when he takes office, saying an early goal should be “stopping, designating, rolling up the Muslim Brotherhood in America as the terrorist organization it is.”
“It’s going to be vital to everything else he’s trying to do. We’ve got to stop taking counsel from them, direction from them, and allowing them to operate in our midst subversively, and that’s what’s been going on for some 50 years now,” he said…
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