Exactly

The smartest thing I've read about the massacre in Christchurch, from Andrew Klavan:

When tragedy or atrocity strikes — as it just did with the mosque shootings in New Zealand — thoughts and prayers are not just an expression of compassion. They are, more importantly and more wisely, an expression of humility and helplessness. They are a way of saying: “There is nothing we can do in the face of this wickedness but we stand in solidarity with the victims and ask God to comfort their families in their sorrow.”

Almost every other reaction is absurd. To suggest you have the solution to the eternal problem of evil in the form of addressing your pet peeve or of blaming and attacking your political opponents is disgraceful. It is to use the bodies of the slain for a soap box. It degrades you and insults the victims.

When I pray, I am asking for God's help. I'm not necessarily asking for His help for me, but in the main what I'm really asking for is help in understanding the greater meaning of what I've experienced. In my own experience, I don't always get the answer I want, but I invariably get an answer, even though it can take a while to sink in. That's the nature of discernment.

From what I have read about the massacre and the incoherent series of beliefs put forth in the killer's manifesto. Klavan gets to that, too:

It is likewise absurd to extrapolate from the murderer’s philosophy in order to condemn philosophies that may have something in common with it. There are psychopaths on the right and left. I assume that, right and left, we all stand against them. I am a small-government, classical liberal American conservative. I think the Democratic party has lost its collective mind. But I am more than willing to stipulate that Ted Cruz and Chuck Schumer, Jim Jordan and Nancy Pelosi can all agree that murdering innocents at their prayers is bad. This is not where our disagreements lie.

We'll have plenty of time to discuss our disagreements in the next few years. But thoughts and prayers are still in order.

Paragraph of the day/il miglior fabbro

Ann Althouse makes a smart observation:

Or did something else happen that drove the [Northam] story out of the news? Was it just big news — Trump's "emergency"? Or something that specifically offset the Northam story — maybe the Jussie Smollett  story: Maybe some people don't want to think about why Northam made himself into a fake black man if we're worried that Jussie Smollett made up some fake white men.

Stand up or give up.

Get your hate on

Victor Davis Hanson, once again, explains the larger forces at play:

[Rick] Wilson was not original in his smear of the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump. He was likely resonating an earlier slander of Politico reporter Marco Caputo. The latter had tweeted of the crowd he saw at a Trump rally: “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.”

Was the point of these stereotypes that poor white working-class people who supposedly voted for the controversial Trump understandably ate improperly, did not practice proper dental hygiene, or did not visit dentists—or all three combined?

When challenged, Caputo doubled down on his invective. He snarled, “Oh no! I made fun of garbage people jeering at another person as they falsely accused him of lying and flipped him off. Someone fetch a fainting couch.”

Peel him a grape, too. There's more:

Caputo’s “Garbage people” was also a synonym for the smears that two career FBI agents on separate occasions had called the archetypical Trump voters.

In the released trove of the Department of Justice text communications involving the Clinton email probe, an unidentified FBI employee had texted to another FBI attorney his abject contempt for the proverbial Trump voter and indeed middle America itself: “Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS [“pieces of sh*t”].” In fact, Trump in 2016 received about 90 percent of all Republican votes, about the same ratio as won by both recent presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In the now notorious text communications between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, fired FBI operatives on Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, Strzok right before the 2016 election had texted his paramour Page: “Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.”

If you want to know why the government shutdown, and the plight of our noble public servants as they struggle with temporary cash flow issues, doesn't seem to be getting much traction, you might want to consider Page and Strzok, and their great love for those they serve.

So if you are a self-proclaimed paragon of tolerance, why the hate? Back to Hanson:

These outbursts were all voiced from highly educated elites (Caputo has a journalism degree from the University of Miami, [Donny] Deutsch graduated from the Wharton School, [Sarah] Jeong from Harvard Law School, Strzok received a master’s degree from Georgetown, Wilson attended George Washington University). And all engaged in vicious and cowardly stereotyping of a demographic in a manner that they assumed involved no downside. Rather, the smears were delivered on the expectation of winning approbation from their peers. And they did in twitter-fueled competitions to find the crudest pejoratives.

 Cue the Dobie Gray:

I'm in with the in crowd 
I go where the in crowd goes 
I'm in with the in crowd 
And I know what the in crowd knows

Hatred can wear academic regalia, or it can wear the cloak of professionalism. But at bottom, it's all the same. Hanson:

Those who slander the deplorables and irredeemables assume that they can say almost anything and expect no pushback, given the white working classes lack the romance of the poor and the supposed panache of the elite. A race to the bottom develops in which the more the hatred, the more the clicks and the media exposure. Minority critics expect their own identity politics affiliations to shield them from criticism. Wealthy white elites virtue-signal their disgust for those without privilege as a way of ensuring that those like themselves, who most certainly enjoy privilege, are rewarded with ideological exemptions for it.

Finally, we are learning that the entire idea of political correctness was never much about universal ideas of tolerance of the other, or insistence that language and protocols must not stigmatize individuals by lumping them into stereotyped and dehumanized collective groups.  What we are witnessing, instead, is that it is fine to demonize millions, from their appearance to their purported hygiene and smell to affinities with feces and apes—if it serves political or cultural agendas.

In sum, cultural progressivism is about raw power, not principle.

It's also the realization that, no matter how many degrees and credentials one obtains, we all will revert to junior high social norms when we can get by with it.

il miglior fabbro

The shorthand criticism of last week's beatification of John McCain was that it culminated with a Wellstone Funeral. It was certainly a partisan event, although not by party. Rather, it was an event in which our betters celebrated their superiority. Writing for the Asian Times, David "Spengler" Goldman gets to the marrow:

Senator John McCain’s funeral was the most ostentatious that Washington has accorded except for a president, and much grander than the 2006 funeral of Gerald Ford, for example. The American Establishment took the opportunity to mourn a world that it imagined but never inhabited.

The eulogies for the Arizona senator, to be sure, were a convenient occasion for the Establishment to show its dudgeon at “the pointedly un-invited President Trump,” as the New Yorker noted, calling the event “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

McCain’s daughter Meghan contrasted what she called her father’s “real greatness” with the “cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice,” a reference to Trump. Politics, though, were less important than the American elite’s collective exercise in self-consolation after the catastrophic failure of its policies and its repudiation by the voters in the 2016 election.

Do you remember the week-long series of events upon the death of George McGovern, who fought with great distinction in WWII, became a senator, ran for president and lost, then continued on in the Senate for many years thereafter? McGovern died in 2012. You don't remember the show? Heck you may not have even heard he died. But as you suspected, this really wasn't about John McCain, either. Back to Goldman:

By civility and bipartisanship, the Establishment refers to the policy consensus that squandered America’s dominant position in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. America had no military competitors of importance when George W. Bush took office in 2001, and an edge in high technology that made the American economy seem insuperable.  Since then:

• China has taken America’s place as the leading exporter of high-tech equipment;
• America faces credible military competition from China;
• Real median household income hasn’t grown since 2000;
• The civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 67% in 2000 to 63% today;
• Productivity growth has languished at 1% a year since the global financial crisis;
• US federal debt has between 2000 and 2018 has doubled as a share of GDP;
• The American economy became “cartelized, corrupt and anti-competitive,” dominated by a handful of tech monopolies who combined to crush competition.
• Bush, supported by Senator McCain and the Republican mainstream, spent $5.6 trillion chasing the phantom of democracy in the Middle East, not to mention more than 6,700 American dead, more than 50,000 wounded and millions of lives disrupted.

That is why American voters elected Donald Trump in 2016. The bipartisan Establishment had circled the wagons to protect itself from accountability for its blunders. The same pool of public officials managed a failed foreign policy, and the same revolving door of bankers and regulators bailed out the banks.

The establishment intends to take it all back in November. And they want you to know it's going to happen. Get your mind right.

There's a whole lot more at the link, including a meditation on the straight line from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush. You should read it all.

There's a place for us

You hurry to a spot that's just a dot on the map.

           -- Frank Sinatra, "The Tender Trap"

When I was younger, I used to joke that my hometown, Appleton, Wisconsin, was a suburb without the city attached. The eternal joke about Appleton concerns one of its most famous sons, Harry Houdini:

Q. What was Houdini's greatest escape?
A. Getting out of Appleton.

I got out, too, but it wasn't an escape, really. I just didn't come back after I graduated from college. First I made my way to Chicago, then after Mrs. D and I were married, we came to the Twin Cities, over 25 years ago now. This is a major metropolitan area and almost 3.5 million people live here. But if you believe Bill Kristol, we're nowhere:

Earlier this year, Bill Kristol, editor at large at the Weekly Standard, tweeted ahead of the Super Bowl that it was too bad two Acela Corridor teams, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles, had to play their matchup “in the middle of nowhere.”

It was a reference to the host city of Minneapolis’ location in the Midwest, far from the "civilized worlds" of Boston and Philadelphia – the assumption being that unless you are on the East Coast, your town’s sophistication and glamour could not live up to the modern amenities of a cosmopolitan city.

Kristol has been busy sneering at nowhere for a long time now, as the author of the linked piece, Salena Zito, knows. For her part, Zito has been trying to understand all the nowheres that sent Donald Trump to the White House. She discusses one such place, Lost River, West Virginia, in her article:

The tale of the enigmatic vanishing of a flowing river that seemingly disappears underground only to reappear elsewhere is the stuff that holds visitors or children spellbound as the tale of subterranean passages explain away the naming of this town.

Lost River is one of four unincorporated towns along West Virginia state route 259 that attracted America’s frontier families for its rich resources; surveyed by 16-year-old George Washington, this area has never had much population, never had the commerce to keep enough people here long enough to make it boom, but just long enough to make it stick with tourists.

Today, it attracts them in droves from Washington, D.C., and is considered a destination point for gay travelers. The population is still small, and career opportunities are limited. And like the river that vanishes and then reappears as part of a larger, more important river, its pattern is very much like the pattern of the lives of people living in Middle America.

Zito's point is simple enough -- the people in these small towns haven't vanished, but they are rarely observed. In the past month or so, I've stopped in a few of these small towns -- Waverly, Minnesota, and Plainfield, Iowa. As we travel again later this month, I'll likely stop in a few more, perhaps in Indiana or Ohio. And we need to see the towns. Back to Zito:

In my estimation, there is no patch of geography in this country that is the "middle of nowhere." This is America; everywhere is the middle of somewhere.

Whether it is Tightwad, Mo., Mooresville, Ala., Hyder, Alaska, Oatman, Ariz., or right here in Lost River, W.Va., every place, large or small, depressed or thriving, or down to one mailbox on one lonely road, is somewhere.

We are all equals; we all contribute to the culture, diversity, dialect, and importance of this country. We build things, we serve in our communities, we serve in our military, we create families, businesses, and technology no matter where we are – we find a way to make each village and town and city a unique snapshot of this country.

As regular readers of this feature know, I've been taking pictures for almost half a year now and posting them on social media, sometimes here. These places are worth noting, because they matter. It took me a long time to understand that Appleton, Wisconsin mattered, and I had to leave it to really understand why. Some people don't want to understand the places they avoid. Back to Zito:

It is an idea and an ideal that Hillary Clinton not only got wrong in the last election, but is still getting wrong; her remarks in India in March reinforced that.

"If you look at the map of the United States, there's all that red in the middle where Trump won," she said. "I win the coast, I win, you know, Illinois and Minnesota, places like that."

She went on to say that where she won, America is thriving: "I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's gross domestic product. So, I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, 'Make America Great Again,' was looking backwards."

Clinton is not the only person to hold that contempt. Many of her supporters have gone on to agree with her and to hold those same strident positions – and their condescension for half of the country has only deepened since November 2016.

Letting go of contempt is difficult. I went all ad hominem on a high school kid in these pages not long ago. But I'm trying. As Zito makes clear, we all need to keep trying. Her piece is well worth your time, so read the whole thing.

Home truth

John Hayward:

Lost in all this political maneuvering is the lesson Americans really should learn from the sexual harassment meltdown: the dangers of centralized power.

This is not a scandal that coincidentally just happened to affect entertainment media, journalism, and politics. Those are the three pillars of centralized power in the United States, and they are symbiotic. They depend on each other for story content, influence, political contributions, access to newsmakers, and the ability to silence accusers. In what other industries would so many politically active, outspoken, charismatic, and financially secure women keep quiet about a tidal wave of crimes that strike at the very heart of feminist convictions?

Yep. And there's more:

Power is the bait that lures victims, the fuel for arrogance, and the milk that nourishes the sense of childish entitlement displayed by so many of the men who walked out of the shower naked in front of female subordinates, or pushed buttons to lock them in offices until they paid proper tribute to the big star. Power is the prize that makes influential people abandon their principles in pursuit of some greater good.

Power long ago became the substitute for personal honor and moral judgment in our political class, which most definitely includes top journalists and the culture-makers of Hollywood. They share a common belief that policy positions are the true measure of morality. As a “feminist” infamously put it at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton was entitled to a few blowjobs for keeping abortion legal. To this day, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, some insist that Democrats with solid left-wing voting records simply cannot be misogynists or racists. There is a reason Harvey Weinstein’s first response to the exposure of his misdeeds was to declare war against the National Rifle Association.

More, a lot more, at the link.

I Wanna Destroy You

First, a little musical number:

We're into destroying things, and people, lately. In discussing the latest round of sexual harassment mongers, Victor Davis Hanson noticed it:

So what are the common pathologies to all these male icons — who are falling as fast as Confederate statutes a few months ago, in our earlier manifestation of collective moral frenzy?

I get nervous when collective moral frenzy gets rolling. It's pitchforks and torches all the way down these days and the capriciousness of it all is troubling. I hold no brief for any of the people accused; I'll also admit I am amused to see nasty, sanctimonious people like Al Franken get their indiscretions broadcast to a less-than-adoring public.

But still. . . ought not a moral imperative be involved? Is there a moral imperative involved? Are we sure? It's striking that Minnesota Public Radio hasn't just removed Garrison Keillor from its airwaves; instead, MPR and its parent company are wiping out any references to Keillor they have. It's the same notion as pulling down a Confederate statue; ought we be in the business of pretending things we now find unpleasant no longer can be mentioned?

Back to our song, written around 1980. Does this stanza ring out?

A pox upon the media
And everything you read
They tell you your opinions
And they're very good indeed

 That almost perfectly captures the argument of any critic of the MSM. I don't have a problem at all with calling down a pox on the poseurs and charlatans who tell me my opinions off their teleprompters. At the same time, can we find any coherent set of principles currently on offer? Or are we all about power -- taking it and using it? Because if we are, there's more to the song:

I wanna destroy you
And when I have destroyed you
I'll come picking at your bone
And you won't have a single atom left
To call your own

Personally, I don't have too many atoms other people would want to have, but still. If the only thing that matters is will, we're in a dangerous place.

Two things

The muse didn't show up for work, so I'll refer you elsewhere.

First, Gino on Roy Moore.

Second, Victor Davis Hanson on the Baby Boomers. One pull quote:

What caused this societal meltdown among our Boomer custodians?

It was not material want. Our inheritance ensured we were the most affluent and leisured generation in history. Rather, excess led to hubris. We masked incompetence with snazzy technology and the elite’s ability to travel and acquire at will — and to sound hip and “with it” in speech and diction.

Our generation also, inevitably, became divorced from both nature and the muscularity of the physical, desperate ordeal of surviving. The result was a vicarious romance about the wild and an ignorance of and disdain for those who must fight the wild to produce our food, wood, steel, concrete, and fuel. The result, again, is a vicarious life. Silicon Valley grandees pontificate about open borders, “undocumented migrants,” and “sanctuary cities,” but beneath their noses are streets lined with tightly parked Winnebagoes in which thousands of poor Mexican nationals sleep, live, eat, and prep for another day servicing the masters of the universe. To suggest that the geography of the Bay Area is still vast and its open spaces ripe for affordable housing is the heresy of “how dare you even suggest getting near my Portola Valley estate”?

Our culture and financial elite are primarily a coastal tribe, cut off from both the poor and the material conditions that face the poor. They find penance and exemption for their privilege in loud but empty virtue-signaling and in easy contempt for the supposedly grasping middle class. But what we wanted from them was excellence, competence, and leadership; yet they had neither the education nor character for any of that.

And I'm one of them. In both cases, hit the links.

Everybody must get zoned

Back in the early 1990s, before we moved to to the Twin Cities, I lived in the Chicago area and worked for a big law firm in Chicago that had over 300 attorneys. Much of the firm's work was in real estate, including big real estate deals for properties like shopping malls. One of the attorneys at the firm was an expert in zoning and he was proud to tell anyone who would listen that he was going to be helping the city of Houston develop its first zoning laws. I don't think he got very far.

Houston has been in the news because it took a huge shot from Hurricane Harvey. As you may know, among the many features of Houston is that the city doesn't have the sorts of zoning laws that you find in other areas. This has always bothered the bien pensants of the world, who equate Houston with being benighted and profligate, the embodiment of urban sprawl and bad carbon footprints, like that. And because Houston suffered so much damage from Harvey and had so many problems, the bien pensants are blaming Houston's lack of zoning for exacerbating the problems. Here's a typical example from the website Quartz.com:

Largely unobstructed either by rules or by natural features such as mountains, the Houston area sprawled. Between 1992 and 2010 alone nearly 25,000 acres (about 10,000 hectares) of natural wetland infrastructure was wiped out, the Texas A&M research shows. Most of the losses were in Harris County, where almost 30% of wetlands disappeared.

Altogether, the region lost the ability to handle nearly four billion gallons (15 billion liters) of storm water. That’s equivalent to $600 million worth of flood water detention capacity, according to the university researchers’ calculations.

Sounds bad, right? But would it have made much difference? The invaluable Joel Kotkin doesn't think so:

Much blame for Harvey has been linked to development on the fringe, a major component of the region’s growth. Over an 18-year period, Houston lost about 25,000 acres of wetlands, which took away about 4 billion gallons of storm water detention capacity. In contrast Harvey dumped about 1 trillion gallons, meaning those wetlands could have only absorbed about 0.4% of Harvey’s deluge. Many flooded roads were consciously designed to hold storm water temporarily when there is nowhere for it to drain.

And would zoning have helped? Kotkin is skeptical:

The zoning argument is, simply put, bogus. Cities in the area that were heavily zoned, like West University, or intensely planned like Sugarland, got hit as hard as more haphazard areas. Harvey, it turns out, was an equal opportunity devastator. Similarly, Sandy dropped barely one-third the rain from Harvey, yet overwhelmed a dense and very zoned area. New Orleans before Katrina was dense and zoned; a lot of good it did them.

There can be advantages to zoning; I wouldn't want my neighbor to sell his property to someone who turned it into a micro-sized oil refinery, nor would I want to move my house a mile or so north so I'd be downwind from the telephone pole yards. But rules and rulemaking aren't what make a city work. It's the sense of people in the community itself, the commitment to making the community a place where you can live and thrive, that makes the difference. Back to Kotkin:

In the decades before Katrina, as southern cities like Houston and Atlanta were burgeoning, New Orleans stagnated. Joel Garreau in his Nine Nations of North America described the Crescent City as a “marvelous collection of sleaziness and peeling paint.” The aristocracy enjoyed the city’s unparalleled culture while many ambitious people from its neighborhoods migrated elsewhere. Without a strong, engaged business community and middle class, there was little attempt to fix the infrastructure. This weak civic culture has left a city with huge economic challenges that a regenerated local business community is now gamely trying to address.

Houston performed very differently during Harvey. Mayor Turner and the Harris County Judge, Ed Emmett, epitomized level-headed leadership. Gov. Abbot, unlike Louisiana’s dithering Gov. Kathleen Blanco, swung immediately to action. Local volunteers pitched in, so much so, notes Houston-based analyst Tory Gattis, that many found themselves unable to participate because each Facebook call for help spurred more volunteers than could be accommodated. Houston can also count on something New Orleans lacked: a strong, and philanthropically inclined business establishment who are pouring millions into recovery efforts.

We won't be talking much about the recovery in Houston in a year or so, because the people there will be making it happen without commentary. We're still worrying about the fate of New Orleans a dozen years after Katrina. You can plan all you want, but if people aren't buying the plan, it won't matter.

il miglior fabbro

You like your hot takes with a touch of Rickles? Take it away, Kurt Schlichter:

This new breed of Nazis - for whom breeding doesn't seem to be in the cards - is less menacing that the originals. Instead of schmeissers they pack Tiki torches - for reasons no one seems able to explain. The old Nazis invaded Poland and wouldn't leave; these invade their moms’ basements and will never leave. But apparently these 300 or so misfits and malcontents are a potent peril to our republic. 

He's talking about the dorks in Charlottesville, who apparently have powers far beyond the ability of what one can actually see. They can cause total strangers to remove statues all across the country, for example. But there's more, as Schlichter gives the Arizona senatorial delegation the ol' what for:

It's also got the usual suspects of the wuss right activated. That's why you see needy Fredocons like Mitt Romney being retrieved from their well-deserved obscurity and sent out to dance eagerly for the nods and nickels tossed his way by the same media that said he gave people cancer. I don’t know, but assume the guys vying to replace John McCain as the leader of the Blue Falcon wing of the GOP, Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, competed vigorously to see who could ignore violent leftists in order to signal the most solemn rejection of Nazis in a manner that validates the lying liberals’ premise that the Republican Party harbors Nazis. 

If you like red meat, the linked column is like a trip to Fogo de Chao. Plenty more at the link.

I hope they've stopped beating their wives

I don't write about the Second Amendment all that often. We have a number of excellent organizations in Minnesota who are dedicated to ensuring that those who would render the Second Amendment a dead letter are held in check. And the most prolific blogger in Minnesota, my friend Mitch Berg, is eternally vigilant on the matter.

We also have feckless and dishonest organizations in Minnesota who would disarm the population if they could. Among these organizations is Protect Minnesota, the latest iteration of a long series of groups under the same general umbrella. These folks have a tendency to periodically rebrand themselves, because they are, in the main, feckless and dishonest.

Protect Minnesota had an astonishingly dishonest post out there on Facebook yesterday, which they subsequently changed. Fortunately, Facebook allows users to see the edit history of a post, so check out what they originally posted, versus what appears now:

Slander

In the original post, Protect Minnesota insinuates that Second Amendment defenders would have knowledge of whoever was responsible for bombing a mosque in Bloomington, and an affirmative responsibility to share what they know with the FBI. Let's think about this. Why would Protect Minnesota assume that GOCRA, to use one example, would know about the bomber? Are Second Amendment protectors known for bombing mosques? Is there any evidence that GOCRA has abetted bombings, anywhere? Is it because GOCRA members are fearful and violent? What evidence does Protect Minnesota have to back up that assertion?

We don't know much about what actually happened in Bloomington over the weekend, but it's clear that local and federal law enforcement will devote ample resources to find out and the individual (or individuals) responsible will be called to account. What we do know is Protect Minnesota is willing to issue baseless attacks to further its agenda. Why anyone takes them seriously is quite another matter.

Yep

Angelo Codevilla, summing up the current state of affairs in Washington:

The deepening levels of corruption in our legal system and our politics may be seen in what appears to be the disregard that the media, the legal system, the Trump administration itself, and the Special Counsel’s charge are showing for the one and only violation of law that has occurred: namely, the revelations of communications intelligence operations as well as of results therefrom, by unnamed but authoritative intelligence officials, to such as the Times’ Michael Schmidt and the Post’s Adam Entous.

Since the number of those who possessed the information in question is small, ascertaining the identity of those who divulged it poses no problem to serious investigators. Since Messers Schmidt and Entous could not help but know that communications intelligence is protected by a strict liability statute, they could also be held responsible for their participation in the crime.

Instead, we have a ruling class, led by the Democratic Party, that is trying to reverse the effects of an election that repudiated it by alleging a conspiracy―evidence for which is limited to the allegation itself. We have a Republican Party and President so frightened of their political enemies that they play along, in the forlorn hope of being granted legitimacy. Hence, both sides play at politics and law. But contending on the basis of insubstantial allegations while tolerating flagrant crime kills respect for law. It augurs a future in which the only punishable crime will be to stand with the less bloody-minded side.

A lot more at the link. A depressing but necessary read.

Gino explains, yet again

Our friend Gino explains, yet again, the motivation:

Trump may go down, as the Press, the DNC and the GOP all plot against him... but these issues will still remain.
See, you keep thinking it's about Trump. And for for those who oppose him, it is.
But it's not.
We didn't vote for Trump, The Man.
Trump, The Man came to us... offering deliverance.
A deliverance that nobody else believed we deserved.
Why is that?

Click on the link to see the reason. His conclusion rings true:

We have ceased to be a democracy and have become a mobacracy.
The strongest mob runs the show.
Unfortunately, the ones who voted for Trump, we who drastically need the change in policy, are too busy working overtime while trying to provide for our families, to 'mob up' and cause trouble... until the day arrives, when we decide that there is nothing left to lose...
(when we decide to act like college students, you won't soon forget it.)

It's taken me a long time to understand what Gino is saying. My worldview comes from a half-century of living and a sense that I should aspire to get beyond the provincialism and paper mills of my hometown. That I should be a person of culture and learning, a person who has read the Great Books and grappled with the Big Ideas of western civilization. The joke's been on me, though -- the institutional keepers of those traditions have been gone for a long time. If you look to academe today, you see a bunch of shrieking harp seals who are more into intellectual parlor games and raw power mongering than in the life of the mind. It's been a thoroughgoing betrayal. It's been an ongoing project for nearly 100 years, but you have to stand apart from it to see it. We've gone from Julien Benda to Jacques Derrida and the applause has never ceased. You don't have to necessarily know who these two very different French philosophers are to understand the process, and I don't have enough time this morning to explicate it, but you've experienced it. And the ruin is everywhere.

Gino, and people who share the challenges that Gino faces, have had just about enough. We need to be listening.

ESPN starts to fade

I was going to write about what's going on at ESPN, but my friend, the estimable Brad Carlson, is on the case. A taste:

Speaking for myself, I have a cable package which includes NFL Network, MLB Network, NBA TV and NHL Network. If I want to see highlights/analysis within a particular sport, any of those aforementioned channels fulfill that specific need. As such, I don't have to endure, say, NCAA Lacrosse highlights while awaiting footage of the latest Twins game. 

Bingo. It's very easy in 2017 to get the sports news you want, when you want it, rather than to sit through a mishmash of other things you don't care about. The witty banter of SportsCenter in its heyday is long past. The SJW crap is annoying, but it's hardly the most important reason for ESPN's problems. Brad has more at the link. You should hit that link and get what you want, when you want it.