Tag: politics

The decline and fall of Angela Merkel

Germans continue to turn away from Angela Merkel and the CDU:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered a bruising loss in Berlin state elections Sunday while the right-wing populist AfD gained fresh support, capitalising on anger over her open-door refugee policy.

The anti-Islam Alternative for Germany party won over 12 percent, according to public broadcasters’ projections, in the capital which has long prided itself on being a hip, diverse and multicultural city.

The strong AfD result, thanks to support especially in the vast tower block districts in Berlin’s former communist east, meant it has now won opposition seats in 10 of Germany’s 16 states, a year ahead of national elections.

Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won just 18 percent — its worst post-war result in the city, before or after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall — likely spelling the end of its term as junior coalition partner to the Social Democrats (SPD), who won around 22 percent.

It’s not as if things are going to get better for the CDU if they don’t promptly return all of the migrants who have invaded Germany over the last year.

Trump le révolutionnaire

C’est fantastique! Not only has the Master Persuader jujitsued Hillary’s “deplorables” attack, but he’s turned it into a revolutionary campaign banner.


Donald Trump unveiled a new visual campaign theme in Miami on Friday – a mashup of the Broadway musical ‘Les Misérables’ and an epithet Hillary Clinton leveled at his supporters one week ago. He took the stage, introduced by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as the ‘Les Mis’ anthem ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’ blasted through loudspeakers.


The video screen behind the podium flashed to an artistic rendering of ‘Les Deplorables,’ complete with USA and ‘Trump’ flags replacing the French colors, and a bald eagle soaring over the revolutionary scene.


‘Welcome to all of you deplorables!’ Trump boomed as thousands screamed ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’ and ‘We love you!’


This is truly amazing. The US media wanted to free the Democrats of their Communist taint by switching the traditional colors used to denote the two major parties. Now the Republican candidate is openly running as a nationalist revolutionary.

And rick-rolling the treasonous Fourth Estate while he’s at it:

Whether you support Trump or not, you have to admit he’s pretty amazing at making the media dance along to his tune all while providing hours of complimentary media coverage.  But Trump’s latest stunt has really stirred the mainstream media into a frenzy with CNN’s Jake Tapper declaring “we all got Rick-Rolled” by Trump and Politico’s Glenn Thrush tweeting “this is a f–king disgrace.”


While the media was expecting Trump to make a statement about the “birther” issue and take questions from the press, what they actually got was 30 minutes of endorsements from decorated military generals and medal of honor recipients.  Finally, at the very end Trump made the following statement about Obama’s citizenship and left the event without taking questions:

Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.  President Barack Obama was born in the United States.  Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong again.

The mainstream media, who were all salivating over the opportunity to divert attention from the myriad of Hillary scandals by instead attacking Trump at a live “press conference,” were furious when they realized they had been played. 

Trump, you magnificent bastard! If he handles America’s enemies as adroitly as he has handled his political enemies, he may turn out to be one of America’s greatest presidents.

Germans demand a solution

Albeit not a Final one, yet. The Governor of Bavaria and head of the CSU party has issued something of an ultimatum to Angela Merkel:

Ever since German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened up the country’s borders to refugees in early September of 2015, Horst Seehofer has been using every opportunity at his disposal to voice his disagreement. As head of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party, he is not someone who can easily be shrugged off. The CSU is the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The two parties, which collectively are known simply as the “union,” have a long tradition of campaigning together ahead of general elections and of divvying up cabinet posts should the center-right end up in government, which, for the last 12 years, it has. The CSU has no chapters in any other state while the CDU has no state chapter in Bavaria.

As the rift has widened, Seehofer has begun calling that long partnership into question, even raising the possibility that his party might campaign on its own ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections and put up a CSU chancellor candidate. To avoid that eventuality, he is demanding that Merkel take clear steps toward reversing her immigration policies and adopting a ceiling on the number of refugees Germany is willing to take in, a step Merkel has refused to take, citing potential inconsistencies with the German constitution. Last week, the CSU released a paper, called “Germany Must Remain Germany,” outlining steps it would like to see taken, including the abolishment of dual citizenship and a preference for migrants from the “Christian-Western culture.”

SPIEGEL: We have examined dozens of interviews that you have given in recent months. You talk a lot about refugee policy, but one thing is constantly left ambiguous, perhaps intentionally. What concrete steps does Angela Merkel have to take before you will say: “Okay, now we’ll back off?”

Seehofer: We want a solution to the immigration problem. To do that, we first need a ceiling. We don’t want unlimited immigration like we saw last year and that’s why we need binding measures as a guarantee. When announcements are made that we are combatting the root causes of flight, then they must be combined with concrete measures. When it is said that those who don’t have a right to asylum will be sent back, then we together with the federal government must enact a detailed, binding repatriation program. We want a clear system of rules that clearly and credibly reduces immigration to a reasonable level.

SPIEGEL: So you are sticking to your demand for a hard ceiling of 200,000 immigrants per year despite its potential inconsistencies with the guaranteed fundamental right to asylum?

Seehofer: Yes. We want a policy that safeguards this ceiling. We also, by the way, already changed the constitution to make this possible 23 years ago. With the support of all parties. Our constitution does not require us to take everybody who appears at our borders and demands asylum. And when someone comes from a safe country of origin, we can immediately repatriate them. The ceiling will work and it is consistent with the constitution.

SPIEGEL: The chancellor and several other CDU politicians have repeatedly insisted that they will not accept a ceiling. If the approval of such a ceiling is the prerequisite for an agreement, then there won’t be any agreement.

Seehofer: We’ll see. We will not back away from the 200,000 ceiling. It’s about our credibility, plain and simple.

SPIEGEL: Given that anything seems possible at this point, is a situation conceivable whereby the CDU enters the campaign with Merkel as its candidate for chancellor and the CSU says: We won’t support her?

Seehofer: We as a party will make personnel decisions in the first quarter of 2017. German history is full of serious mistakes pertaining to premature personnel decisions.

SPIEGEL: Last weekend, CSU leaders presented a paper containing the party’s refugee policy demands and it is full of odd sentences. Such as this one: “We are opposed to our cosmopolitan country being changed by immigration or refugee flows.” How cosmopolitan can a country be if it doesn’t want to be changed by immigration?

Seehofer: The paper’s title is: “Germany Must Remain Germany.” The chancellor has used almost the exact same formulation. When she says it, it’s considered liberal and future oriented. When we say it, it’s seen as reactionary and backwards.

SPIEGEL: Merkel never said that immigration cannot be allowed to change the country.

Seehofer: Look, Bavaria is a dynamic, cosmopolitan state. Those who don’t adapt fall behind. But we need ground rules. In every governmental speech I give before state parliament, I say: Bavaria will remain Bavaria. That’s not a contradiction.

SPIEGEL: Another question about your paper: In rejecting dual citizenship, the paper says that it is impossible to “serve two masters.” We always thought that it wasn’t citizens who served their state, but the other way around.

Seehofer: You aren’t asking why we are opposed to dual citizenship. Instead, you are quibbling over locution. The sentence is true and completely okay. I am allergic to this paternalism and censorship.

I thought it was particularly interesting that DER SPIEGEL was particularly interested in undermining the CSU demand for banning dual citizenship. Dual citizenship is one of the least defensible aspects of globalism, so it is something of a weak link that nationalists will do well to attack.

Notice that despite the headlines and the various outrages, the German establishment is considerably to the right of the the American establishment on immigration. Seehofer is openly saying things even Donald Trump wouldn’t dare, and he’s not only an elected politician, he’s one of the most powerful men in the country. And he’s a moderate compared to AfD.

Chickenhawks can do flips

As evidenced by (((Ben Shapiro)))

Five weeks later….

Jack Greer explains:

Jack Greer ‏@15Midichlorians
according to @benshapiro #NeverTrump means “never Primary Trump” but Ben likes the stability and presidential-ness of General Trump


Ah, so “never” for varying values of the term. Well, rats only swarm a winning ship. This is just an early sign of the coming Trumpslide. Let’s all welcome (((Ben))) aboard the #TrumpTrain!

The incipient Trumpslide

I believe we are now beginning to see the signs of a preference cascade that are necessary if there is to be the predicted Trumpslide in November:

Donald Trump’s lead over Hillary Clinton in the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times national tracking poll grew to nearly six percentage points on Thursday, his largest advantage since his post-convention bounce in July.

The biggest reason appears to be an increase in the likelihood of Trump supporters who say they plan to vote, combined with a drop among Clinton supporters on that question. The nominees are now roughly equal in the voting commitment of their supporters, erasing an advantage previously held by Clinton.

The poll shows Trump leading Clinton, 47%-41%.

Yes, it’s just a national poll. But the state polls are showing a distinctly Trumpward direction as well.

  • Florida: CNN/ORC Trump +3
  • Florida: CNN/ORC Trump +4
  • Ohio: CNN/ORC Trump +5
  • Ohio: Bloomberg Trump +5
  • Nevada: Monmouth Trump +2 

Keep in mind that as recently as August 21, Clinton was +5 in Ohio. That is a ten-point swing in three weeks. If the trend continues, Trump won’t just win, it will be a Trumpslide. I’ll be interested to get dh’s read on this, if he stops by the blog today, as he’s more up on the state polls than I am.

The Flight 93 election, revisited

Publius Decius Mus is taking a considerable amount of flak from conservatives because he is directly over the target, which is the staunchly pusillanimous way in which they have betrayed America and Americans for at least 50 years, and the way some of them are still trying to do so:

Conservatives have shouted since the beginning of Trump’s improbable rise: He’s not one of us! He is not conservative! And, indeed, in many ways, Trump is downright liberal. You might think that would make him more acceptable to the Left. But no. As “compassionate conservatism” did nothing to blunt leftist hatred of George W. Bush, neither do Trump’s quasi-liberal economic positions. In fact, they hate Trump much more. Trump is not conservative enough for the conservatives but way too conservative for the Left, yet somehow they find common cause. Earlier I posited that the reason is Trump’s position on immigration. Let me add two others.

The first is simply that Trump might win. He is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.

Which points to the far more important reason. I urge readers to go back through John Marini’s argument, to which I cannot do anything close to full justice. Suffice to say here, the current governing arrangement of the United States is rule by a transnational managerial class in conjunction with the administrative state. To the extent that the parties are adversarial at the national level, it is merely to determine who gets to run the administrative state for four years. Challenging the administrative state is out of the question. The Democrats are united on this point. The Republicans are at least nominally divided. But those nominally opposed (to the extent that they even understand the problem, which is: not much) are unwilling or unable to actually do anything about it. Are challenges to the administrative state allowed only if they are guaranteed to be ineffectual? If so, the current conservative movement is tailor-made for the task. Meanwhile, the much stronger Ryan wing of the Party actively abets the administrative state and works to further the managerial class agenda.

Trump is the first candidate since Reagan to threaten this arrangement. To again oversimplify Marini (and Aristotle), the question here is: who rules? The many or the few? The people or the oligarchs? Our Constitution says: the people are sovereign, and their rule is mediated through representative institutions, limited by written Constitutional norms. The administrative state says: experts must rule because various advances (the march of history) have made governing too complicated for public deliberation, and besides, the unwise people often lack knowledge of their own best interests even on rudimentary matters. When the people want something that they shouldn’t want or mustn’t have, the administrative state prevents it, no matter what the people vote for. When the people don’t want something that the administrative state sees as salutary or necessary, it is simply imposed by fiat.

Don’t want more immigration? Too bad, we know what’s best. Think bathrooms should be reserved for the two biological sexes? Too bad, we rule. And so on and on.

To all the “conservatives” yammering about my supposed opposition to Constitutional principle (more on that below) and who hate Trump, I say: Trump is mounting the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation. He may not see himself in those terms. I believe he sees himself as a straightforward patriot who just wants to do what is best for his country and its people. Whatever the case, he is asserting the right of the sovereign people to make their government do what they want it to do, and not do things they don’t want it to do, in the teeth of determined opposition from a managerial class and administrative state that want not merely different policies but above all to perpetuate their own rule.

If the Constitution has any force or meaning, then “We the People” get to decide not merely who gets to run the administrative state—which, whatever the outcome, will always continue on the same path—more fundamentally, we get to decide what policies we want and which we don’t.

Conservatism as we have known it since Reagan is dead. Whether the Alt Right or NeoTrumpism or something else will ascend in its place is presently unknown, but we can be fairly certain that conservatives will never win another national election, thanks to the demographic transformation they supported, and, in many cases, still support.

Shed no tears and spare no pity for them. Like every ideology that stands in opposition to observable reality, their eventual irrelevance is assured, it is merely a question of time.

That dark magic

Needless to say, the meme magic has the Hillary campaign, or what is left of it, running scared.

Hillary Clinton has officially declared war on Pepe the Frog, a popular Internet meme.
The embattled candidate has dedicated an entire page on her campaign site about the cartoon frog she believes is “racist.”
“That cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realize,” declared HillaryClinton.com. “Pepe is a cartoon frog who began his internet life as an innocent meme enjoyed by teenagers and pop stars alike. But in recent months, Pepe’s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists who call themselves the ‘alt-right.’”
Additionally, the Hillary campaign linked Alex Jones and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos to Pepe the Frog, implying they are also “white supremacists. Yiannopoulos in particular is a predominant commentator on the alt-right who’s often mislabeled as its leader.

If I was Horde, I would say “kek”.

Everyone not us is the same

Nothing more clearly demonstrates the clueless myopia of the left-center mainstream than this piece from the American Interest:

The alt-right is more diffuse, and diverse in its tactics and objectives, than the PC left. It encompasses sophisticated neo-reactionary Silicon Valley engineers like Curtis Yarvin, 1990s-style white nationalists like Jared Taylor, and legions of race-baiting online trolls with Pepe the frog as their Twitter avatars. But they are united by their contempt for pluralistic liberal democracy, their view that Western Civilization is in a profound and perhaps irreversible state of decline due to the empowerment of women and minorities, and their open embrace of white identity politics, and even white separatism, as the only solution.

This is a precarious cultural moment. How can it be that it is impossible to really understand the 2016 U.S. presidential election without reference to anti-liberal ideologies developed in the dark corners of 4chan and the inner sanctums of once-marginal campus bureaucracies?

Many commentators have observed that the radicalisms of the right and left feed on one another, teaming up to suck the liberal center dry. On the one hand, excessive left-wing speech policing and cultural brinksmanship on issues of race and gender was bound to make Milo-style ideological transgression more appealing. On the other hand, the alt-right’s newfound cultural power seems to vindicate some of the assumptions of the PC left: that racism and misogyny are deeply embedded in America’s cultural fabric, just below the surface, ready to erupt unless controls on thought and language are continuously tightened.

But what if instead of thinking of the campus left and the alt-right as mortal enemies, each bringing out perpetually heavier firepower in a long-running war of attrition, we thought of them as allies in a battle for the fate of liberalism? Because despite what they might say about each other, the radicalisms of 2016 actually align with one another more than they align with the Anglo-American Enlightenment tradition that has always occupied the American political center.

The Alt-Right is no ally of the campus left and never will be. What’s really happening is that the campus left, long coddled by the left-liberal center, is starting to scare the mainstream thumbsuckers. And starting to scare them nearly as much as the Alt-Right does.

There is no space left for the Weimar Republicans and Social Democrats. Their age of playing touch football with each other are over. They’re going to need to learn how to put on pads if they’re going to play according to the new rules.

Even unto the fifth generation

In which it is observed that immigrants, the children of immigrants, and even the great-great-grandchildren of immigrants cannot be trusted to vote in the interests of their new country. A reader comments at John Wright’s site:

As a Republican who has tentatively decided not to vote for Trump (tentatively because it is foolish to bind yourself with oaths before the vote; who knows where my conscience might lead me come November?), I read the article as per your advice. I sympathize with the author, but I do not agree for the most part. I suppose I am either a fool or a conservative intellectual, because I do not believe Trump is worth trying.

The author admits that Trump is to the left of Hillary on most every issue except immigration, and immigration is quite frankly the issue I care least about. I understand the concerns of my fellow conservatives, but I am not afraid of immigrants. We are a country of immigrants: my great-great grandfather was an immigrant who came from a people and culture that many (perhaps most) Americans at the time thought was too stupid ever become proper citizens. Later they were considered dangerous, and it was said that they had come from a culture that was too radical and subversive to ever assimilate. Yet assimilate they did, and I stand here because of it. I am hesitant to close the door that my ancestors came through, and I have faith enough in assimilation and the melting pot, even if the Left does not.

Even after five generations, this particular US citizen cares less about “his” country than he does about his native identity. Because, by his own admission, he still identifies more with those who are not Americans than those who are, and is still more concerned with the well-being of those who are not Americans than those who are.

I found the statement “I am not afraid of immigrants” to be particularly fatuous. Because, of course, one high-performance immigrant from Germany is the same as 600 million immigrants from Mexico, China, or Nigeria. There is neither quantity nor quality, neither newcomer nor native, because all men are created equal.

Remember this solipsistic virtue-signaling if you’re ever tempted to regret the decline and fall of the United States, or find yourself asking “why”?