See, I was right and I told y'all!

Whilst it is always a pleasure for me to go back over my many wise words recorded on this blog - don't say it! - but, alas, I haven't the time right now.  Suffice to point out that many a time and oft', I have urged my Yankee-doodle friends to obliterate their totally corrupt and useless Dep. of (non)Justice.  It has been obvious since the wretched days of 'Obama-rama' that the entire stinking, rotten collection of festering, fanatical Leftists who inhabit the building were a "clear and present danger" to the Constitution of the United States.  Now we have the proof in the words of one of the main culprits, the former deputy chief of the FBI, Andrew McCabe who admits that steps were taken to do whatever it took to overthrow the President.

I have wondered why 'The Donald' has not acted sooner to clear this festering rats' nest but perhaps he was wise to give them time to convict themselves out of their own 'stoopid' mouths.  But now is the time to act, Mr. President, so go to it!  And when you have finished, turn to your State Department, you know, that bureaucratic monolith whose pen-pushing 'pecksniffs' spilled out onto the concourse to cheer and clap 'HillBilly' when she was appointed by 'Obama-rama'.

Time for some stable-cleaning, Mr. President!

 

Comments

[Bob]

Yes, and while he's at it Trump should get rid of the entire Congress and Judiciary too. The whole democracy thing has been a yuge loosah. Oligarchic collectives are where it's at, baby.

[Whitewall]

We know the Deep State does exist now. It has acted in conspiracy with the known players to over turn a presidential election. Trump needs to keep the spot light on this cabal of people who are traitors to their oaths of office. He needs to let the new Attorney General Barr take this criminal act of sabotage and prosecute. If not, the same type of players will act this brazenly again. Or, failing investigation and prosecution, other players may conclude that there is no justice and certain people can be outside the law. That can get ugly fast. Tic tock.

[Malcolm Pollack]

"The whole democracy thing has been a yuge loosah."

Yes -- and in exactly the way everyone gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 (indeed, every student of history since Polybius) understood and feared it would be. The Founders would be sad to see what we've come to, but not surprised. They did their best to inoculate their new system against the inherent and lethal liabilities of democracy -- and we certainly had a good run! -- but even their genius was insufficient to achieve what, in the end, simply cannot be done. "Rust never sleeps", and democracy is institutionalized rust.

Mencken:

It remains impossible, as it was in the eighteenth century, to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude, in the man at the bottom of the scale – that inferiority, by some strange magic, becomes a sort of superiority – nay, the superiority of superiorities. Everywhere on earth, save where the enlightenment of the modern age is confessedly in transient eclipse, the movement is toward the completer and more enamoured enfranchisement of the lower orders. Down there, one hears, lies a deep, illimitable reservoir of righteousness and wisdom, unpolluted by the corruption of privilege. What baffles statesmen is to be solved by the people, instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition. Their yearnings are pure; they alone are capable of a perfect patriotism; in them is the only hope of peace and happiness on this lugubrious ball. The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

Mencken again:

I find myself quoting yet a third German: he is Professor Robert Michels, the economist. The politician, he says, is the courtier of democracy. A profound saying – perhaps more profound than the professor, himself a democrat, realizes. For it was of the essence of the courtier’s art and mystery that he flattered his employer in order to victimize him, yielded to him in order to rule him. The politician under democracy does precisely the same thing. His business is never what it pretends to be. Ostensibly he is an altruist devoted whole-heartedly to the service of his fellow-men, and so abjectly public-spirited that his private interest is nothing to him. Actually he is a sturdy rogue whose principal, and often sole, aim in life is to butter his parsnips.

...

Out of the muck of their swinishness the typical American law-maker emerges. He is a man who has lied and dissembled, and a man who has crawled. He knows the taste of boot-polish. He has suffered kicks in the tonneau of his pantaloons. He has taken orders from his superiors in knavery and he has wooed and flattered his inferiors in sense. His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretences. He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him. I do not describe the democratic politician at his inordinate worst; I describe him as he is encountered in the full sunshine of normalcy.

[Bob]

There's no reason in making the theoretically perfect the enemy of the practical good. The American founders were mostly from the upper crust themselves and made sure to include layers of governmental mechanisms to guard the country from what they considered "the mob".

America has survived Buchanan, Harding, Andrew Johnson, civil war, disastrous foreign policies, participation in 2 world wars, and countless other challenges. It will also survive Donald Trump, who is currently ranked near the disastrously failed presidents above by historians across the political spectrum.

Trump is as characteristically American as P. T. Barnum, Huey Long, Joe McCarthy, Robert W. Welch, Bernie Madoff, and so on down a very long list. He too shall pass, and it's worth keeping in mind he was elected with a minority of the popular vote. He already has a challenger for the Republican nomination, and there will likely be more.

[JK]

"[A]nd it's worth keeping in mind he was elected with a minority of the popular vote."

That's grown woeful tiresome Bob ... And where's pray, the states (our foreign friends might well take the presumed 'majority' as meaning the same thing "the majority of states swung their votes away from Trump")

Anyway Bob, from whence did that majority of "Popular vote" come; a single state? Two perhaps? Ten?

To keep banging on about his "being elected by a minority" is, besides misleading, giving too much credit to too few precincts.

As if those precincts haven't already given evidence their good sense is, and was, sorely lacking. The now canceled high-speed rail system they'd voted for themselves being merely one example. Voting themselves policies which set the stage for their public officials to be reservoirs of pathogens not rife since feudal times another.

[JK]

https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-founding-fathers-gave-us-electoral.html

That's to the benefit of the foreign friends just above - Bob and his would have it the US would be even, unto today still in existence had that device not been created. I would posit were it not for that our Republic would still be operating as a Confederacy.

[Bob]

No, JK, more to the point the electoral college itself was one of the founders' devices intended to blunt the political effect of mobs. Sorry you're tired of the fact Trump is a minority president, but it's not going to change a thing.

[JK]

Re-read the 12th Amendment Bob.

Then recall, the numbers 306 and 232.

Lastly recall (or look it up on Wiki) the 'Pledge of Allegiance' to find the word preceding, "for which it stands."

[JK]

Or...take a knee.

[Bob]

JK, I re-read the 12th Amendment. It specifically defines elections to not be by popular vote. What point am I'm missing?

The Pledge of Allegiance was written as a youth/school ceremony. It doesn't define the government in any way:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-man-who-wrote-the-pledge-of-allegiance-93907224/

[JK]

"Sorry you're tired of the fact Trump is a minority president, but it's not going to change a thing."

That I'm "sorry" Hillary's not President.

[Bob]

JK,

You asked what I believe a while ago. It's not the kind of question that can be answered in a comment section, but I'll say this: I'm not a political operative and am not rich. I can't influence votes the way professional propagandists and many rich people try to do. I have one vote for president out of about 130 million. I voted for Hillary even though I didn't like her and have always avoided party politics. Trump was just obviously unfit for the job, other than being a talented salesman. I'm not one of those people who's just mad as hell at Washington and want to give everyone there a big, orange middle finger with a wad of lint stuck under the nail. I wasn't surprised Hillary lost and think it should be a lesson to the Democratic Party. So I can't say I'm sorry either. It's just the way it is, and it won't mean the end of the republic.

[Timbo]

Bob, how’s your 401k doing?

[Timbo]

The answer to the tedious repetition of the complaint that Trump did not win the popular vote is, “so what?”.

If a simple majority of votes were the determination of the election, I would think that his campaign would have taken that into account and acted accordingly.

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bob,

The cyclic picture you offer suggests that in the long run there is no linearity here, no monotonic change, no movement along a historical life-span.

Rome also survived bad rulers, bad foreign policy, civil wars, etc. -- in the course of which it existed variously as a republic, a dictatorship of emperors worshiped as gods, and, finally, a decaying corpse overrun by hungry barbarians.

Everything survives, one way or another, until it doesn't.

[Bob]

Timbo, my 401k is holding steady.

Malcolm Pollack, you are quite the pessimist, aren't you?

[Malcolm Pollack]

Bob,

Malcolm Pollack, you are quite the pessimist, aren't you?

Well, I certainly didn't start out as one. Unfortunately, sometime in middle age I started paying attention, and began to have an uncomfortable feeling that much of what I thought I knew was wrong. After that, I suppose I could say, "the rest is history."

As for the prospect ahead, I hope you're right. I'd be pleasantly surprised to see us move forward into "broad sunlit uplands".

No, that's not quite right. A better word would be "astonished".

[Bob]

Malcolm Pollack,

Even the Roman Empire lasted over 400 years, and its people and politics were generally even worse than ours. Steven Pinker has written a book that might restore some of your faith in humanity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

I have to admit that because of its length and detail I've only been able to read it in small chunks and haven't finished it after a year. But he makes his point fairly quickly. Add to that the positive scientific advances, especially in medicine, and things don't look so bad. Not that there aren't real dangers.