Fish Fear Me

Words Of Wisdom

Kevin Williamson has po'd me more than a few times over the last two years, but he has a gem over at NRO today:

Perhaps we should consider the philosophical maxim of Raylan Givens: “If you get up in the morning and you meet an a**hole, you met an a**hole. If you meet nothing but a**holes all day, you’re the a**hole.”

Yep.

Juan Williams, Lügenpresse, And Fake News

Juan Williams has a piece in The Hill today, another of those "isn't Trump awful for the way he treats journalists?" kind of pieces. I was just about to quit reading it when I came across this:

Trump started his attacks on the media during his 2016 presidential campaign. Supporters at his rallies were heard shouting the word “Lügenpresse” at reporters. “Lügenpresse” is a German phrase that translates as “lying press” in English.

It was popularized by Hitler’s Nazi party to fire up crowds against reporters who covered the demagogue’s rise to power.

Well, that's not good. But then I couldn't recall that happening, so I went in search of some video of that, thinking there must be some out there if it actually was a thing.

Initially, Google gave me about a dozen results in English. About a half dozen cited a tweet from Rosie Gray that had a 23 second video clip of a couple of guys using the word at a Trump rally in Cleveland, October 22, 2016. They do not appear to be threatening or sinister. You can officially call me underwhelmed.

But that's not to say that other video does not exist, so searched further and came across piece on Huffpo titled:

Lügenpresse: The Bridge Too Far in Trusting Trump

The piece by Brian Ross begins:

Scranton, PA. Thousands of people in a hall hear Trump’s call: “The lying media...” and then it begins. The chant rises: “Lügenpresse! Lügenpresse! Lügenpresse!”

My 16 year old said: “Did I just hear that? Did that just happen?” Yes, it did. Lügenpresse is German for lying media. It’s a classic Nazi dog whistle, straight out of Hitler rallies of the early 1930s. It has been a feature of so many of his rallies, once he started looking for people to blame, other than himself, for his slide in the polls. It has grown louder and louder as we approached the election. Nazi chants in an American Republican presidential rally. Not shunned. Endorsed.[emphasis his]

Hmmm. The post is dated 11/10/2016 and Trump indeed was in Scranton for a rally 11/7/2016, the day before the election. There's video of that event and I watched Trump's portion of it this afternoon.

If “Lügenpresse! Lügenpresse! Lügenpresse!” can be found in that video, I missed it. It's possible that it was edited out. It's possible that it happened in a different venue. It's possible that, like a game of "telephone," what happened in Cleveland morphed into something larger but untrue. What do know is all I heard were boos and chants of "CNN sucks" several times.

If anyone can point me to clear evidence that this has happened somewhere I would very much appreciate it. I suspect, however, that no such evidence exists. Like the false charge that Tea Partiers shouted racial epithets at John Lewis and Andre Carson during a protest, no video evidence will be forthcoming. If that turns out to be the case, how ironic that Juan Williams has used fake news to decry Donald Trump's attack on fake news.

Don't Let Your Kids See This...

...It will shatter their illusions about unicorns:

Unicorn Rafters Rescued

Peace

It appears that the "Unite the Right2" rally has ended peacefully in Washington DC. The police successfully escorted the small band of about 20 people that Jason Kessler assembled to Lafayette Park, kept counter-protesters away while they held their rally, and then snuck them out in vehicles as black clad antifa morons stood in the rain hoping to kick some white nationalist ass. Oh well. Hopefully foiled antifa thugs are not taking their frustrations out on innocent windows and trash receptacles.

I don't know which is more pathetic, Kessler's sad little group or the massive overreaction to it. It should be obvious by now that there is no real constituency for white nationalism in the nation as a whole or the GOP in particular. Antifa and other counter-protesters may claim credit for that, but at best they reduced attendance from maybe 100 down to 20. There is no constituency of any significance for white nationalism

Kudos to the DC police for ensuring that Kessler and company were able to exercise their First Amendment rights today. I have no doubt that thugs among the counter-protesters would have used violence to prevent that. Would have eagerly used violence. White nationalism is an ugly thing, but so is any ethnic nationalism. But in this country we don't ban speech we don't like, we counter it with more speech. That's what peaceful counter-protesters did by exercising their free speech rights today, even though I think it was to an absurd degree.

It's Just An Appetizer

Hmmm:

In a move presaged by weeks of mounting pressure,  Apple, Facebook, Google's YouTube and Spotify cracked down on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars media empire, removing wide swathes of content or terminating his accounts entirely. All the actions seemed to happen within 24 hours. 

Was it a long-overdue crackdown or a conspiracy of censorship? That depends on who you ask. The truth -- wait, does that still exist? -- is probably neither. But in a hyper-divisive era, the opaque manner that tech companies enforce their community standards leaves them open to being villainized[sic] by both sides, even those straining at opposite ends of a political tug-of-war.

I've never cared for Alex Jones or his website. I don't remember the topic of the day when I visited it years ago. I do remember that it was treated with a grain of truth then veered wildly off the deep end, and I'm pretty sure I literally scoffed at the result. I haven't gone back, so I have no idea what the content of his website or various podcasts has been like for the last few years. It appears that the main complaints have been about him peddling conspiracy theories, spreading "disinformation," and "hate speech." However, at this point I have not seen any specific posts linked to a specific complaint.

Whether he is guilty as charged or innocent doesn't matter much to me though. As long as it was legal, his speech was just speech. Those companies certainly have the right to determine what content they wish to host or promote, but I think they are making a mistake in trying to satiate the SJW beast. It's not going to stop here. I bet by the time I finish writing this post there will be calls for Jones to get the Daily Stormer treatment and expelled from US web hosts and domain services. And as a comment I read today put it, once they get rid of the craziest guy on the right they'll just go after the next craziest guy and so on, until they run out of the crazy guys and just start working to silence anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. 

Is that paranoid? You tell me. So-called hate speech used to be recognized as something that had to be stomached for the sake of freedom, because in a free society who gets to be the ones who decide what qualifies? Now there are not only calls to suppress such speech, but to do so violently. We've seen that BAMN and so-called Antifa, and others, are militant in their belief that speech they don't like must be violently suppressed. And we've seen, and will see again this weekend in DC, the rise of a resistance to them that is willing to respond with violence of their own. Though I reject their ideology, maybe it's best for everyone in the long run that they do.

Perhaps things will settle down for the media giants listed above, but I doubt it. Today they fed Alex Jones to the SJW beast. Who will they throw into the insatiable maw next? None of this is good for our society, none of it.

Enemies Of The People

As I'm sure you are aware, Jim Acosta and various other journalists and pundits are up in arms over Trump labeling the news media as "the enemy of the people." Like most things these days(including Trump himself), my thinking is conflicted on that. I know it sucks to be demonized by people with powerful voices, because you never know if some crazy person will be motivated into doing something violent against the targets of the vitriol. Just ask Steve Scalise, his fellow Republican teammates, and the US Capitol Police. On the other hand, as a conservative and Trump supporter, maybe it's not a bad thing for journalists to see what it's like to be on the receiving end. Besides, there's some truth to the label they are being slapped with.

I think most members of the news media, especially in the era of Trump, are unthinking and unprofessional. They are more concerned with maintaining a narrative than in looking for and disseminating the truth. Partly it's the overwhelming pro-Democrat/anti-Republican bias. Partly it's groupthink and a willingness to succumb to hysteria. Partly it's an undeserved sense of superiority. To some extent, all of those permeate every major issue today, not to mention issues of the past, but with the nomination and election of Donald Trump it has become extreme.

Despite my anger and disgust with most journalists these days, I don't want to see any of them hurt. Fired maybe, but not hurt. But I also wish they would stop fueling the anti-Trump/anti-Republican hysteria that just may see some nutjob going after Trump or more Republican Congressmen. Every time they amplify some Democrat politician demonizing Trump and Republicans as racist, fascist, misogynist and on and on they add more potential violence to our society that may be one serious incident from major political violence. 

I see zero chance that journalists will do any soul searching and examine their role in creating today's political climate, just as I expect the same from Trump. I see nobody on the national level with either the desire or the ability to steer our discourse back to a more civil tone. It's going to continue to degrade. There is much to criticize Trump for, but the rhetoric against him and those who support him has also become insane.  

And I think there's a pretty good chance that some crazy person is listening, and making plans.