I’ve been enjoying a respite from online engagement this summer, for reasons given in the previous post. Our daughter, her husband, and their three young sons (one is three-and-a-half, one turned six yesterday, and one is five months old) are staying with us, and the days are a noisy, happy chaos that leaves a bloke of my advanced years far too pooped to post. I thought I’d pop in, though, to share a couple of items having to do with presidential politics.
The first (with a hat-tip to the indefatigable JK) is an article by Michael Anton , in which he “war-games” the coming elections and the possible strategies available for Democrats in their no-holds-barred campaign to exclude Donald Trump, and more importantly his supporters, from political power. (As Trump made clear after his impeachment: “They’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”)
I won’t post any excerpts from Mr. Anton’s article — you should just go read the whole thing, here.
The second item is a fine speech about Mr. Trump by Thomas Klingenstein, the director of the Claremont Institute. In it he takes a position in sharp contrast to the usual “warts and all” defenses of Trump, which tend to focus mostly on the warts, and devotes his seventeen-minute oration to the “and all”: an enumeration of Donald Trump’s uncommon virtues (in the old sense, from the Latin virtus), and why, in his view, they make him a necessary man for this precarious moment in American (and Western) history. It reminds me of Lincoln’s reply to his generals when they came to him to complain about all the things they disliked about Ulysses S. Grant:
“I cannot spare this man. He fights.”
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Roger Kimball
https://tennesseestar.com/2022/08/01/commentary-the-establishments-effort-to-destroy-trump-belies-a-terrible-truth/
https://turcopolier.com/the-passing-of-the-queen/
https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/06/queen-elizabeth-churchill-gun/
Nice of Winnie to loan it.
(But I do find myself wondering if she had to load her own magazines?)
I guess you remember this performance Malcolm (indeed perhaps you were in the audience). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=afifZfUkU8I Come to think of it I suppose the artist wrote often about the New World, from his critical “This is not America” to of course “Young Americans.”
Of course the song here wasn’t original to Bowie but originates from Simon and Garfunkel.
That’s brilliant, Jason. Thanks!
Malcolm,
Hear you’ve got some new neighbors. Might want to road trip to wherever this place is. I’m thing it’s Massachusetts anyway. Never had much of a hankering to ever go there myself but now that the place is enjoying a certain fresh vibrancy it has maybe not enjoyed before
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/florida-flies-2-planeloads-of-migrants-to-martha-s-vineyard/ar-AA11QICl?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ae587a7fd1054e60e3780ad5dae07dcb
Anyway Malcolm, hie thee hither then report back to us and I might, might see if there’s a busline’s got a route to thereabouts. (I’m figuring just now, maybe looking for Amtrak to get me there might be kinda dicey.)
Yeah I realize Malcolm I typed ‘hither’ rather than the more accurate ‘thither’ But it was very early – for me – to be on the computer. (But I have a construction project underway and though everybody is fluent in English … *Hillbillianese anyway, seeing as this is Arkansas after all … However everybody needs some supervision on a construction project if only so as to avoid putting a toilet drain under where the master bedroom suite’s ‘walk-in’ closet is plainly shown on the architectural blueprints.
Ask me how I know of this being a actual *issue owing to language stuff.)
Anyway Malcolm. Doesn’t look like you’re gonna have to go out to Martha’s … heck learn something new everyday as my Grandma said … Here I’d spent my whole life up to my social security eligible age thinking the Vineyard was a isthmus or somesuch but only today I discover nope, an island.
Anyway, cutting to the chase – don’t look like you’re gonna have to travel to be part of the vibrancy Malcolm.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/09/15/metro/marthas-vineyard-responds-surprise-arrival-planeloads-migrants/
Keep saving the coinage accruing in your ‘Swear Jar’ Malcolm for those precious gallons of gasoline – I assume it takes a ferry to get to Martha’s place?
Anyway. John Kerry’s house’s 17 bedrooms are suddenly discovered to be reserved for climate experts and their families and Barack and Michelle are hosting the Clintons and what with two details of Secret Service and whatnot …
Well to put a point on it – the poor migrants are headed to you.
Well, I’ve been over to Marths’s Vineyard exactly once, a few years back, since I was there in 1975 (which is where I first met the lovely Nina). Not planning on heading over there any time soon.
With luck the airlifts will continue to focus on MV and Nantucket, where the actual ruling class frolics (because God knows they could use a good dose of their own policies) and will leave quiet little Wellfleet, where decent people still work hard for a living, out of the picture.
https://americandigest.org/democrat-deer-stare-into-the-headlights-of-history-at-the-new-american-digest/
(Apologies. This site was the only place I know of where it was sizeably excerpted.)
Read somewhere about where the good people of Martha’s Vineyard extended their most abundant Love of the more downtrodden and that rang a bell in my distant memory to wit:
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.cleanup&id=0100960
Their sheer glorious Love truly knows no bounds.
https://areaocho.com/boomers-and-strategy/