'I'm Bored'

It was the funniest thing: Early this morning, checking Twitter, I see this NBC fake news piece in my feed, "Former Soviet Counter Intelligence Officer at Meeting With Donald Trump Jr. and Russian Lawyer," and then all of a sudden I start singing Iggy Pop's "I'm Bored" in my head, lol.

That's a safe link at Memeorandum. No need to give the idiots at NBC any traffic from my blog.

I'm really bored with the Russia fake news story.

In any case, "I'm Bored" appeared as Track 4, on Side 1, of Iggy's 1979 album "New Values." I saw him in concert at least twice, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and at the Hollywood Palladium. He's everything that you've ever heard about him. I think some of his teeth were knocked out at the time. So fun.

'Smooth'

From yesterday afternoon, when I was out to CVS and the bagel shop.

Santana, at the Sound L.A.:

Jungle Love
Steve Miller Band
2:35 PM

Rock'n Me
Steve Miller Band
2:32 PM

Abracadabra
Steve Miller Band
2:29 PM

Tush
ZZ Top
2:26 PM

Sharp Dressed Man
ZZ Top
2:22 PM

Legs (Edit Version)
ZZ Top
2:18 PM

Smooth
Santana
2:07 PM

Black Magic Woman / Gypsy Queen
Santana
2:02 PM

Evil Ways
Santana
1:58 PM

Bye Bye Love
The Cars
1:54 PM

Let's Go
The Cars
1:51 PM

Just What I Needed
The Cars
1:47 PM

Good Times Bad Times
Led Zeppelin
1:37 PM

Rock and Roll
Led Zeppelin
1:33 PM

D'yer Mak'er
Led Zeppelin
1:29 PM

Purple Haze
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
1:26 PM

All Along the Watchtower
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
1:22 PM

Fire
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
1:20 PM

Eric Raymond, 'Gramscian Damage'

Glenn Reynolds links to this post every now and then, and since I've been blogging about cultural Marxism today, now's as good a time as any to post it. At Raymond's "Armed and Dangerous" blog, "Gramscian Damage":

Americans have never really understood ideological warfare. Our gut-level assumption is that everybody in the world really wants the same comfortable material success we have. We use “extremist” as a negative epithet. Even the few fanatics and revolutionary idealists we have, whatever their political flavor, expect everybody else to behave like a bourgeois.

We don’t expect ideas to matter — or, when they do, we expect them to matter only because people have been flipped into a vulnerable mode by repression or poverty. Thus all our divagation about the “root causes” of Islamic terrorism, as if the terrorists’ very clear and very ideological account of their own theory and motivations is somehow not to be believed.

By contrast, ideological and memetic warfare has been a favored tactic for all of America’s three great adversaries of the last hundred years — Nazis, Communists, and Islamists. All three put substantial effort into cultivating American proxies to influence U.S. domestic policy and foreign policy in favorable directions. Yes, the Nazis did this, through organizations like the “German-American Bund” that was outlawed when World War II went hot. Today, the Islamists are having some success at manipulating our politics through fairly transparent front organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

But it was the Soviet Union, in its day, that was the master of this game. They made dezinformatsiya (disinformation) a central weapon of their war against “the main adversary”, the U.S. They conducted memetic subversion against the U.S. on many levels at a scale that is only now becoming clear as historians burrow through their archives and ex-KGB officers sell their memoirs.


The Soviets had an entire “active measures” department devoted to churning out anti-American dezinformatsiya. A classic example is the rumor that AIDS was the result of research aimed at building a ‘race bomb’ that would selectively kill black people.

On a different level, in the 1930s members of CPUSA (the Communist Party of the USA) got instructions from Moscow to promote non-representational art so that the US’s public spaces would become arid and ugly.

Americans hearing that last one tend to laugh. But the Soviets, following the lead of Marxist theoreticians like Antonio Gramsci, took very seriously the idea that by blighting the U.S.’s intellectual and esthetic life, they could sap Americans’ will to resist Communist ideology and an eventual Communist takeover. The explicit goal was to erode the confidence of America’s ruling class and create an ideological vacuum to be filled by Marxism-Leninism.

Accordingly, the Soviet espionage apparat actually ran two different kinds of network: one of spies, and one of agents of influence. The agents of influence had the minor function of recruiting spies (as, for example, when Kim Philby was brought in by one of his tutors at Cambridge), but their major function was to spread dezinformatsiya, to launch memetic weapons that would damage and weaken the West.

In a previous post on Suicidalism, I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

* There is no truth, only competing agendas.
* All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
* There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
* The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
* Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
* The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
* For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
* When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "How Deep is the Left's System of Ideological Indoctrination?", and "Linda Kimball, 'Exposing America's Enemies: The Social Justice Seeking Communist Left'."

Jackie Johnson's Hot Weekend Forecast

It was very mild today, about average temperatures for the L.A./O.C. metro areas, but it's warming up. There's a high pressure system pushing westward that's going to beat back the monsoonal moisture that's been keeping it cool these last couple of days.

As usual, I'm just chillin'. Been reading Fritz Fischer and ordering a few more books on Amazon. I'll start Omar El Akkad, American War, over the weekend.

In any case, here's the lovely Ms. Jackie. You can barely see her baby bump in that beautiful yellow dress. I'm so happy for her!

VIDEO: President Trump Teases Emmanuel Macron on French Security: 'You'd better do a good job...'

President Trump is killing it in Paris!

Watch:



And at Free Beacon, "Trump Teases Macron on Security of France: ‘You’d Better Do a Good Job’."

Mark Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Mark Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War.

Emily Ratajkowski St. Lucia (VIDEO)

Following-up from Tuesday, "Emily Ratajkowski for Harper's Bazaar Australia: 'My boobs are too big...'"

At Sports Illustrated:

Linda Kimball, 'Exposing America's Enemies: The Social Justice Seeking Communist Left'

At his post this morning, Robert Stacy McCain linked Linda Kimball's piece on "Cultural Marxism" at American Thinker. It's an old piece, which I've read before, but I googled some of the articles linked there. One of these is, "Exposing America's Enemies: The 'Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left," originally posted at the American Daily, but now dead.

I'm posting here some excerpts I've found at various other cites. Ms. Kimball apparently aroused some strong passions on this issue, at Democrat Underground, for example, and this was back in 2006.

Free Republic also posted it at the time:

On one hand, Americans were outraged and appalled by the May 1 immigrant demonstrations that clogged streets and virtually closed down some cities. Law-abiding citizens saw lawbreakers who not only seemed to feel justified in their criminal behavior, but also believed they ought to be rewarded for it.

On the other hand, Americans are more infuriated and disgusted with their duly elected government officials in both legislative and administrative branches for not enforcing the law and protecting the rights of citizens. President Bush and the weak-kneed GOP have deservedly come under fire. If our sovereign nation is to survive, however, it is of paramount importance that the harsh light of truth be focused upon the subversive element responsible for creating an atmosphere conducive to lawlessness and tyrannical militants brazenly declaring their intentions to ''conquer'' the Southwest and to throw Americans out of their homes and off of their land.

The subversive element--a motley collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, and malcontents--organized themselves in the 1960’s and became known as the New Left. For over forty years the New Left has been waging a Gramscian ''quiet'' revolution for the overthrow of the America of our founders. Today these subversives call themselves liberals, progressives, and Democrats. Even though there yet remain good, decent Democrats such as Zell Miller, the majority, as David Horowitz attested to, are social-justice seeking communists: “The Democratic Party is very close to being the (Communist-controlled Progressive) party of Henry Wallace…The vast bulk of the American left is a Communist left and they’ve introduced some fascist ideas like “identity politics,” which is straight out of Mussolini.” (How Marxism Dominates the Left, Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com, June 1, 2005)

America’s Communist Left operates in a vast interconnected matrix of revolutionary groups disguised as respectable civil rights and legal organizations. These front groups have consistently worked towards the transformation of America through subversion of America’s Rule of Law, Constitution, judiciary, and all institutions necessary to the longevity and health of our nation and civilization. These groups attack all national security measures, subvert immigration laws and procedures, lobby on behalf of terrorist and enemy combatants, and engage in propagandistic apologetics for the most brutal dictatorships in the world even as they constantly vilify and demean America and Americans. As they do these things to destroy America and shame Americans, they hypocritically portray themselves as defenders of democracy and humanity.

The purpose of this article is to expose, at least in part, some of the principal communist groups responsible for undermining and weakening America and who likewise serve as a power source, not only for the militant Marxist organizers of the recent demonstrations, but for Islamic jihadists as well.

The Quiet Revolution

In 1984, “The Power to Lead” was published. In it, author James McGregor Burns admitted: “The Framers of the US Constitution have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages, frail bridges, tinkering. If we are to ‘turn the Founders upside down’…we must directly confront the constitutional structure they erected.” (A Chronological History: The New World Order by D.L. Cuddy PhD)

Turning the ''Founders upside down'' and directly confronting the ''constitutional structure'' are what the American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers Guild, and The Center for Constitutional Rights are committed to doing. Together, these three communist front groups comprise the “legal left,” and they slash and rip at the fabric of the constitutional framework.

The ACLU was established in 1920 by Roger Baldwin, a Stalinist who candidly admitted: “I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself.” On the Communist Party USA website, the ACLU can be found at this link: go here. http://www.cpusa.org/link/category/22/

When not working with and defending terrorists like Sami al-Arian, the ACLU terrorizes towns into removing Ten Commandments monuments and crosses and persecutes and intimidates Boy Scouts and law abiding Christians. The ACLU’s Immigrant Task Force and Immigrant Rights Project are a dual driving force in the Open Borders Lobby. Among current projects: dissolving America’s borders, erasing all evidence of Christianity and God, and requiring the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to provide free legal counsel to illegals while simultaneously demanding that illegals be provided with full welfare benefits.

The ACLU and its partner groups receive funding from a large assortment of subversive leftist funders. Among them: Arca Foundation, Ford Foundation, George Soros Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, Woods Fund of Chicago (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1936 by the Communist Party USA. The NLG is an active affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which served as a Soviet front group during the Cold War. The NLG defines its mission as an effort to: “unite lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers of America (to) function as an effective political and social force…to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.” In other words, its mission is to ''deKulakize'' America in the name of social justice.

In 1999, NLG member Chip Berlet described a Guild ''communist debate'' session: “The cacophony at some meetings (arises from) debates featuring…Leninist, Trotskyite, Stalinists…Maoist…Marxist, anarchists, libertarians and progressive independents…with multiple identities as lawyers, legal workers, labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties and civil rights advocates, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and people of color.” Chip Berlet is an activist with Morris Dees Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), another communist front group and Open Borders member.

Not coincidentally, it was the SPLC that ''redistributed''--in the name of social justice--an Arizona ranchers’ property to some illegal aliens. This incident was detailed in an article entitled: “Two Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court,” (New York Times, 8/19/05). Dees was quoted as saying, “…it’s poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land”

Like the ACLU, the NLG is a key member of the Open Borders Lobby. Its National Immigration Project consists of a network of lawyers, law students, and legal workers committed to “full democratic rights for all non-citizens”--in the name of social justice. The NLG receives funding from, among others, the George Soros Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The last of the trio is the Center for Constitutional Rights. It was founded in 1966 by pro-Castro attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kuntsler. The CCR prides itself on using “litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections.” This is communist code for: “We subvert America’s laws.” Among those deemed by the CCR to be in need of protection are terrorist organizations, enemy combatants, and illegal immigrants.

The CCR receives funding from the Ford Foundation and George Soros Open Society Institute. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org )

Two principal front groups, both of whom disguise their treachery as ‘civil rights,” are United for Peace and Justice and Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.

The UFPJ is a rabidly anti-American, anti-war coalition co-chaired by committed communist Leslie Cagan. Cagan, who worships upon Fidel Castro’s altar, was an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence, a splinter group of the Communist Party USA. The UFPJ was created Oct. 25, 2002 in the Washington D.C. offices of People for the American Way, which played a key role in forming UFPJ. UFPJ is a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. UFPJ’s social justice agenda extends well beyond anti-war activism as it is also a pro-abortion, pro-open borders advocate that condemns nearly every aspect of American culture and our government’s foreign policy. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride (IWFR), another key player in the Open Borders Lobby, is supported by the ACLU and Communist Party USA. Additionally, it has the backing of Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, and Joe Lieberman. Among other groups listed as members of the IWFRC’s national sponsoring committee are ACORN, National Council of La Raza, National Immigration Forum, and United for Peace and Justice.

At the link below are literally hundreds of sponsors of IWFR, such as: Democratic senators, representatives, county board supervisors, governors, town council members, radical organizations, liberalized Christian and non-Christian churches, and political parties (including CPUSA and Democratic Socialists of America: go here).

Many thousands of Americans have been taken in by a myth. The myth states that communism died when the Soviet Union imploded. It further says that in these ''enlightened progressive times,'' only superstition-believing McCarthyite rednecks still believe in the communist boogieman. The myth, of course, was created by New Left communists to whom seduction, deception, and psychological manipulation are the ''rules of the game.'' Gramsci’s transformational revolution is very much alive. It’s spreading the cancer of godless communism--the ideology from Hell--throughout the length and breadth of our culture, and corrupting and decaying everything it touches.

President Ronald Reagan cautioned that: “…without God, there is no virtue because there’s no prompting of the conscience. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

Americans---awaken and remember!

And here's more, from "Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats":

Social Justice is Communism

Judging from the adolescent name-calling and howls of protest which my previous article elicited from Progressive groups such as the Democratic Underground, it is obvious that the enraged howlers have no idea of what it really means for one to be a seeker of social justice. Either that or they really do know but are deceivers of the first magnitude.

Be that as it may, some clarification and definition of the terms social justice and communism is in order before proceeding on to the issue of Progressive Democrats.

To most Americans, communism means the Kremlin, gulags, killing fields, and Mao's brutal Red Guard. These things though were not the essence of communism. They were the visible manifestations of inhumane power and its consequences, all of which resulted when social justice seekers acquired total control to remake society and man.

The essence of communism is social justice, or justice in the social sphere. This is code for the elimination of poverty, of suffering, and of all differences between humans that erect walls between people. Fundamentally, social justice is a process of elimination that results in sameness (egalitarianism). When social justice seekers speak of the need for equality, what they're really calling for is sameness.

However, the attributes which make people different from each other and which social justice seekers are determined to eliminate, are the product of human nature and of freely made choices. For instance, some people are ambitious and hard-working while others are indolent and lazy and may willfully choose to live out of the pockets of the former.

It's the positive aspects of human nature that make a society dynamic. Dynamism is the animating force behind America's greatness -- her productivity, excellence, creativity, free markets, etc. In eliminating human differences, social justice seekers kill all of this, and as they did in the former Soviet Union, leave behind a smoking ruin haunted by despairing cookie-cutter claymation beings.

In speaking of the social justice process of elimination, Balint Vazsonyi remarked, prophets of socialjustice communists, whether by that name or any other name, focus on who should have less. Because they have nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they have to take away life itself. (America's 30 Years War, Balint Vazsonyi, p. 59)

The America of our Founders simply cannot coexist with the Search for Social Justice. For instance, as designed by our Founders, the Rule of Law exists to guarantee that unequal (different) people can have individual liberty, rights and possessions—including land ownership, which social justice seekers view as the original sin. Social justice demands that those who possess more of anything have it taken away from those who earned it and redistributed to those who did nothing to earn it.

Social Justice Seeking Democratic Progressive Caucus

The Democratic Progressive Caucus (DPC) is an organization comprised of about sixty Members of Congress. It was founded in 1991 by Rep. Bernie Sanders, former socialist mayor of Burlington, VT, and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA describes itself as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. (www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The DPC advances its communist agenda behind innocuous sounding phrases such as social and economic justice. The three core principles of The Progressive Promise are:

1. Fighting for economic justice and security for all. (Code for: We’re going to ‘eliminate poverty and suffering’ by taking away all of your possessions and redistributing them.)

2. Protecting and preserving our civil rights and civil liberties. (Code for: We’re going to ‘eliminate’ all differences and pound everyone down to the lowest common denominator).

3. Promoting global peace and security. (Code for: We—your Superiors—will finally feel secure and at peace once agendas 1-2 have been carried out to completion.) (Source: http://www.bernie.house.gov/document_display_text.asp?FileToConvert=/pc/index.asp)

In “Pelosi Leader of Progressive Caucus,” it was revealed: “Until 1999, the website of the Progressive Caucus was hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Following an expose of the link between the two organizations in World Net Daily, the Progressive Caucus established its own website.” (WorldNetDaily.com, Nov 11, 2002)

On the website of the DSA it boldly declares: “We are socialists…Democracy and socialism go hand in hand…wherever…democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org ) The DSA increases its influence and power by networking with the Democratic Party to advance social justice programs and policies such as affirmative action and Stalinist hate crime laws. “Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party.” (ibid)

Following are brief descriptions of some of the social justice seeking subversives in the Democratic Progressive Caucus whose words and actions embrace the tenets of communism:

1. Barbara Lee (D-CA): “former agent of the Black Panther leader and convicted killer, Huey Newton. Lee conspired with fellow communist, Cong. Ron Dellums, who used his authority to impede US foreign policy with regard to the Communist dictatorship of Grenada.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetWork.org ) “anti-American Communist who supports America’s enemies and has actively collaborated with them.” (Radical Road Map, James H. Hansen, p.189)

2. Jim McDermott (D-WA): “In 2002, McDermott and fellow Progressive Caucus member Rep. David Bonoir (D-Mich) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) traveled to Baghdad, where they publicly embraced Saddam Hussein and created propaganda on his behalf.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetWork.org )

3. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), who has accepted an award from the DSA once told one of its writers: “The American people are not ideological; therefore, the way to go is to attack private power.” (ibid)

4. John Conyers (D-MI): “In 1981 Conyers co-hosted a delegation from the Soviet front World Peace Council, giving that group a forum in Congress. Conyers endorsed a Communist-led antiwar demonstration in Washington in 1983 and…spoke at another Washington demonstration led by ANSWER in 2003.” (Radical Road Map’s, James H. Hansen, p 189)

5. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) “has taken part in…CAIR (a radical group with ties to Mideast terrorist organizations) events…including a Ramadan iftar…hosted (on Capitol Hill) by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), and Barbara Lee (D-CA).” (Kucinich Headlines Muslim Fundraiser, WorldNetDaily.com, Nov. 30, 2003)

The Constitution requires that members of Congress “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this constitution.” The Oath of Office sworn to by US Senators reads:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the U.S…that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Very simply, if Democratic Progressive Caucus members truthfully believed in the Christian-Judeo God and likewise in our Constitution--the document conceived of by our Founders and not the Lefts living document nonsense—they wouldn’t be social justice seeking communists. Rather, they would be Conservative Constitutionalists. That they are social justice seekers tells us that when they took their oath before God, they lied. Quite simply—they lied.

In Noah Webster’s 1828 edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language we find the correct term to apply to treacherous Democratic Progressives. That word is “traitor,” and the following definition is the one most likely referred to by our Founders. “Traitor: One who violates allegiance and betrays his country; one guilty of treason…who, in breach of trust, delivers his country to its enemy…who aids an enemy in conquering his country.”

Through use of Stalinist psycho-politics, America’s Communist Left imprisoned the consciences of Americans within psychic strait-jackets of political correctness. As long as we allow ourselves to be chained by political correctness, we will not be able to identify and speak openly about our enemies--those without, and those within. In the absence of freedom of conscience and of clear and honest speaking, we can neither formulate strategies for our safety nor deal appropriately with the treacherous deceivers operating amongst us who are colluding with our enemies and plotting to destroy our nation from within. The first order of business then, is for all Americans to break out of the psychic strait jackets of political correctness, thus allowing Truth to expose the treachery and treason at work in our nation.

Truth will set us free: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32.

How Deep is the Left's System of Ideological Indoctrination?

Blogging about cultural Marxism today, prompted by Robert Stacy McCain, had me reading around and following links. I came across this old interview with David Horowitz at Newsmax, reposted at FrontaPage Magazine, "How Marxism Dominates the Left":

The Democratic party has never been such a left wing party and I think that comes directly out of the campuses. The whole Howard Dean campaign is what shifted the Democratic party to the far left. You had three Democratic front-runners - Kerry, Edwards and Gephardt - who were all supporters of the war until the Deaniacs came along. And who were the Deaniacs? They were the campus Communists.

The reason you have a blacklist and the reason you have indoctrination, which you've never had before on such a scale, is that you have the generation of the 1960s radicals who to avoid the draft and keep organizing against the war stayed in school and got student deferments and went on to became professors.

They are not academics, they're political activists. Do you think the woman who invited Susan Rosenberg, a convicted bomber, to be a visiting professor at Hamilton and followed that by inviting Ward Churchill – the closest thing to a campus terrorist guerilla – is an academic? Do you think she's a scholar? She's actually the daughter of a Communist lawyer, Victor Rabinowitz, whose closest friend is Leonard Boudin, another Communist whose daughter Cathy was a Weather Underground terrorist.

These people have infiltrated the academic world and converted it and largely captured the Democratic party in the process...

More.

Plus, at Amazon, David Horowtiz, The Black Book of the American Left Volume 7 — The Left in Power: Clinton to Obama.

Rise of the 'Dirtbag Left'

I just posted on Angela Nagle's, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right.

I first read about the book at this interesting piece, at Maclean's, "The rise of the internet's 'dirtbag left'."

Roger Kimball, The Long March

Following-up on my previous entry, I've got Kimball's book on order.

Get yours at Amazon, Roger Kimball, The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America.

Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Robert Stacy McCain got me going on posting all this Marxist and Marxist-related literature. (See, "It All Comes Back to Hungary: Soros, Cultural Marxism, Lukacs and Bela Kun.")

I expect to keep reading a lot on the origins of World War One, and I'm well caught up on contemporary communism and related genres. But I've never read Gramsci.

That might change soon.

At Amazon, Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks.

Jon Halliday and Jung Chang, Mao

At Amazon, Jon Halliday and Jung Chang, Mao: The Unknown Story.

'Totalitarians cannot tolerate rival sources of authority, which is why all totalitarian regimes seek to destroy religion and the family as independent institutions...'

The headline's from Robert Stacy McCain's new essay, at the Other McCain, "It All Comes Back to Hungary: Soros, Cultural Marxism, Lukacs and Bela Kun":

What we are actually witnessing — in Hungary, in the United States and in many other countries in recent years — is a populist reaction against the elite “progressive” consensus of which [George] Soros is a prominent symbol. There is an international clique of influential people and organizations who share certain ideas about the future direction of political, social and economic policies, and who don’t want to be bothered with debating the merits of these policies. The ordinary people whose lives would be affected by the agenda of the elite aren’t being asked for their approval, and popular opposition to the elite agenda (e.g., the Brexit vote, Trump’s election, Hungary’s anti-“refugee” referendum) is treated by the elite media as evidence of incipient fascism. Never does it seem to have occurred to George Soros, or to anyone else in the international elite, that perhaps their policy ideas are wrong, that they have gone too far in their utopian “social justice” schemes. Unable to admit error, the progressive elite therefore resort to cheap insults and sloppy accusations of “fascism” to stigmatize opposition to the Left’s agenda. Why is Viktor Orban under attack by Soros-funded organizations? Why is the Left trying to depict Hungary as a fascist state?

RTWT.

David Priestland, The Red Flag

At Amazon, David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism.

ICYMI: W. August Mayer, Islamic Jihad, Cultural Marxism, and the Transformation of the West

*BUMPED.*

This is a surprisingly good book. Mr. Mayer deserves a wider audience. I'd never heard of him before and literally came across him by chance, through a random Amazon search that just popped into my head.

He's very well read and makes incisive, original arguments.

At Amazon, W. August Mayer, Islamic Jihad, Cultural Marxism, and the Transformation of the West.

Keystone Kops Collusion

At WSJ, "Don Trump Jr.'s Problem is Donald Trump Sr.'s Credibility":

President Trump’s critics claim to have uncovered proof, finally, of 2016 collusion between the campaign and the Kremlin. Another reading of the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a well-connected Russian lawyer is, well, political farce.

In June 2016, Mr. Trump Jr. arranged an appointment in Trump Tower with the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. He said in a statement that he hoped to acquire opposition research about Hillary Clinton, and he even pulled in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and then campaign manager Paul Manafort. By Mr. Trump Jr.’s account, Ms. Veselnitskaya relayed nothing to compromise Mrs. Clinton and then lobbied him about the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 U.S. law that sanctions Russian human-rights abusers.

According to the emails that Mr. Trump Jr. released Tuesday, Mr. Trump Jr. agreed to meet with Ms. Veselnitskaya after he was approached by Rob Goldstone, a publicist who offered to pass along “some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” He wrote that this information “is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

The appropriate response from a political competent would have been to alert the FBI if a cut-out promised material supplied by a foreign government. Mr. Trump Jr. instead replied that “if it’s what you say I love it.”

Then again, the Trumps knew Mr. Goldstone through the Russian pop star Emin, aka Emin Agalarov, whose father partnered with Donald Trump Sr. in bringing the Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow in 2013. Mr. Trump Sr. appeared in a music video with Emin the same year. Mr. Goldstone said that “Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting”—info his father got from the “Crown prosecutor of Russia.” Russia’s “Crown prosecutor” doesn’t exist.

Mr. Trump Jr. responded that “perhaps I just speak to Emin first.” Mr. Goldstone brokered the call, reporting that “Ok he’s on stage in Moscow but should be off within 20 Minutes so I am sure can call.” Subsequent messages show Emin asked Mr. Trump Jr. to meet with Ms. Veselnitskaya, who was well-known as an anti-Magnitsky operative at the time. Mr. Goldstone publicly checked into Trump Tower on Facebook during the meeting, which isn’t how a KGB man would normally conceal the handoff of state secrets.

In the daisy chain from Russian oligarch to singer to PR go-between to lawyer to Trump scion, which is more plausible? That Don Jr. was canny enough to coordinate a global plot to rig the election but not canny enough to notice that this plot was detailed in his personal emails? Or that some Russians took advantage of a political naif named Trump in an unsuccessful bid to undermine the Magnitsky law they hated?

Still more.

Contrast WSJ's to Krauthammer's analysis, "Charles Krauthammer on Donald Trump, Jr.: 'I Love It' Are 'Fatal Words' (VIDEO)."

Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke

At Amazon, Greg King and Sue Woolmans, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World.

Charles Krauthammer on Donald Trump, Jr.: 'I Love It' Are 'Fatal Words' (VIDEO)

Lots of conservatives hate Charles Krauthammer, seeing him as a Beltway hack because he doesn't always toe the right's political memes du jour.

I get it.

I like Krauthammer because he's so smart. He's very conservative, but he doesn't let an agenda get in the way of facts. He calls it like he sees it. In this case, (1) in Donald Jr's emails we have clear factual evidence that gives fuel to leftist claims of "collusion." But it's not just that, (2) it's that we're talking about a "foreign power," Russia, probably America's greatest adversary right now, a country that opposes American interests at every turn and which has been the headlines for years with foreign invasions, attacks on civilian aircraft, and great power hostility at the U.N. All of this makes recent developments very grave for the White House.

Watch, from Martha MacCallum's segment yesterday, at Fox News, "Krauthammer on Trump Jr.: 'I love it' are the fatal words."

PREVIOUSLY: "Donald Trump, Jr.: 'For Me, This Was Opposition Research...' (VIDEO)."

Donald Trump, Jr.: 'For Me, This Was Opposition Research...' (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Russia Story Has Become the 'Brier Patch' from Which the Trump Administration Cannot Escape."

I was watching the All-Star Game last night, tweeting baseball, when I see all kinds of establishment types, like Professor Daniel Drezner and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, posting tweets about Donald Trump, Jr.'s, interview on Sean Hannity.

Give me a break!

Don't these people take time off from their campaign of attacks?

This is after 8:00pm on the East Coast, so the Beltway blowhards have been at it all day finding ways to take down the administration. And funny thing? There's no "there" there. There's nothing. Donald Jr. had this meeting in June 2016. Donald Sr. had barely wrapped up the nomination by then and we hadn't had the GOP national convention. This is way early in the campaign season and most establishment hacks thought the Trump presidential bid was a joke. Now Russia's become all-consuming, since this is the one shot leftists have at destroying the president. The New York Times is right: This so-called scandal has emerged as a "brier patch," but more for the partisan hacks in the press than for the Trump administration. President Trump will continue to have an easy target for his rancor and tweet-storms, and rightly so. The genuine problem for Republicans will be the failure to advance their policy goals in the Congress, a failure which the Democrat-Media-Complex is working to bring about. The end result will be more anger at Washington, policy debilitation, and political polarization. Who this helps in 2018 remains to be seen.

In any case, listen for yourself. This is this most I've ever heard Donald, Jr. He's a fine man. I hope he's got as much fortitude and Teflon as his dad, because the attacks are just heating up.

At Fox News:



And at Fox, via Memeorandum, "Donald Trump Jr. tells Sean Hannity: ‘In retrospect I probably would have done things a little differently’."