The editor of my local paper has just published an opinion piece saying that the shooting of Renee Good — whom he describes as “calmly trying to drive away” — “tells us that we have landed in a new and terrifying landscape, governed by people whose enemy is the truth and who are ready to justify the murder of anyone who tries to defend it.”
“One nation, under God”? No longer — and from the look of things, never again. We are living in parallel, utterly incompatible, and implacably antagonistic models of reality. Try as I might, I can see no path forward that doesn’t lead either to war or divorce.
I’ve been saying this was coming for a very long time now, but I think that as 2026 begins we are approaching the event-horizon. (I think we may already have seen America’s last “peaceful transition of power”.)
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To be honest, as much as I love the Cape, and Provincetown, having visited there regularly starting in the 70’s until the early aughts, I wouldn’t expect a Provincetown paper to print any other kind of opinion piece.
Total hypocrisy from upper middle class New Englanders living in a true blue hive bubble.
Remember what nearby Martha’s Vineyard did with those migrants that were flown in only a few years ago?
They were fed some Fruit Loops for the cameras, and then escorted off the island post haste.
The writer of that opinion piece has never lived in an urban ghetto and dealt with the insanity and nonsense that tens of millions of Americans deal with on a daily basis, and that writer pays very good money to stay as far away from real world issues as humanly possible.
That piece was an flaccid form of virtue signaling meant to secure that writer’s continued place on the social ladder amongst the fine hypocrites of the Outer Cape.
In other words, best ignored.
I’m for deportations and against “demonstrations” that are actually interventions, but I’ll note a certain ominous symmetry in reactions to the killings of Rene Good and Charlie Kirk. I’m not saying the killings were symmetrical, but there was in both cases palpable glee in the most zealous quarters of the Right and the Left. I have yet to see a Tic-Toc video of MAGA maniacs dancing on Good’s grave, but polite long-faces of simulated sorrow were conspicuously missing. Again, not making a case for moral equivalence, only noting that the custom of trans-partisan sympathy, however fake, is now quaint and discarded. Americans are now openly happy when they hear that a political enemy (not opponent) has died.
I expect this polarization to be pumped by the political parties as we head into 2026 and 2028, and beyond that fear a Democrat President playing by the unilateral rules Trump has made. Rule by executive order is great until your political enemy is sworn into office, and in an instant the political weathercock swings round and points to the Left. I say many swing and marginal voters were electrified by the personality of Trump, and these same voters will snooze or swing Democrat when the candidate is as bland as Marco Rubio or J.D. Vance. But this has been a long time coming and all we can do now is watch the trains collide (unfortunately we’re also passengers on one of those trains).
Oh Another Dave with your
Succinct Another Dave. And particularly flaccid in that, that writer failed to expand on those particular yearners to be free’s next destination:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-09-20-marthas-vineyard-illegals-shipped-superfund-site.html
“Fine hypocrites” indeed.
Dave, JK,
I wouldn’t call it hypocrisy; this is just the set of theorems you build when you have a certain set of axioms. Ed Miller has done a great job getting a small local paper up and running out here — not an easy thing to do! — and when it comes to actual news-reporting and local-interest stuff on topics that aren’t fraught with ideological baggage, the Independent does its work very well.
But I’ve a feeling that Ed’s a member of the older “red-diaper” generation that are so numerous out here, and who have linked arms with other factions of the broader Left that have also gravitated to the Outer Cape, and so the world-view on display in this editorial (a world-view that seems, to those who don’t share it, to float utterly unmoored from historical, moral, and even biological reality) just goes entirely unquestioned; it’s simply assumed that the axioms it’s based on are just self-evident truths, and that any narrative that calls it into question is simply a pack of lies.
Professor Smith,
Just so. And this is, of course (and as we have been discussing in these pages for a while now), what Carl Schmitt rightly identifies as the essence of the political.
Professor Smith,
Just so. And this is, of course (as we have been discussing in these pages for a while now), what Carl Schmitt rightly identifies as the essence of the political.
Malcolm
The good professor has written helpful posts regarding “hostis/inimicus”. These have helped me think about this issue. I recall, also, Taleb describing the tactics of hostile minorities in promoting their “pet issues” as shown by Jewish promotion of “kosher” and Muslim promotion of “halal” into the host societies. It illustrates the point that as power is gained and increased there can be a change from the condition of tolerated disagreement into expressed hostility and hatred demanding change and subjugation.
My $0.02.
Jim Reibel, as long as Jews or Muslims don’t foist their dietary requirements on others, I see nothing wrong with kosher or halal products. Why pick foolish battles, when the real issues are sharia and jihad and arguably a disproportionate Jewish influence in culture and politics, for instance our foreign policy regarding Israel (although I think such power is made to be more trouble than it really is)?
I may be missing your point though Jim Reibel, to be fair – let me know if this is so.
Jason
Food was the the single or pet issue used as the example. Unfortunately, single issues are seldom the only goal. These issues are used as wedges to extend the argument, the Overton window, and something else emerges as a new cause. This, IMO, is what separates a hostile minority. In the example of requests/demands of Jewish activists and Muslims, I see a significant difference.
Again, just my $0.02.