For all of the derision that Ted Cruz took as regards his comments on the New York City culture, I think it would be unwise to ignore the point he’s making…
Observe the following;
I agree with the stated purpose of the graphic but I’m going to use the graphics to make a different point. Stay with me on this.
The darker areas on the map are areas that went for Hillary Clinton in the most recent election. In majority they are also the areas that elected Barack Hussein Obama. For the sake of bandwidth I won’t include the state-by-state breakdown but believe me when I say that they are of a similar nature.
I’m going to suggest to you that what we are witness to is the Clashing of cultures. American and everything else.
There are those on the left who suggest that what we’re seeing is a lack of communication and mutual respect, to which I say “somebody get me a shovel”.
Let’s take communication first. We’re not communicating because the concept that we have are so markedly different. Let me give you the concept, by a simple example.
” Juliet on her balcony.”
To most people that brings forth a picture that is steeped culturally within our brains. The Shakespearian plays have long been an important part of our culture. Somebody from outside the culture on the other hand will not understand the word picture being described by the phrase.
That lack of cultural connection is at the core of our political disagreements these days. Concepts of freedom, concepts of individual property, concepts of Justice all suffer from this disconnection.
Let’s take another example and this time let’s go to the more extreme.
Let’s take another example. Islamic culture holds that marrying a nine-year-old when you are 56 is completely acceptable thing.
Is this really a matter of mutual respect? Of communication?
Or for that matter respect. Can anyone explain to me how what I’ve just described is deserving of any respect at all from anybody?
The point here obviously is that there are some cultural values and therefore some cultures as a whole that are completely incompatible with American values.
It seems fairly safe to suggest that the areas in Darker coloring on the map tend to lean toward leftist values. At this point we turn to Mustard Seeds.
American values have always been small and secular government, religious people outside of government, free market capitalism, neighbors helping each other rather than the government doing so, and using our military force to combat evil around the world to help spread freedom and democracy.
Left-wing values emphasize big government, cradle-to-grave welfare system, wealth distribution through the government to equalize income and egalitarianism, secularism and hostile towards religion (particularly Christianity), and isolationism/pacifism in terms of dictatorial governments around the world.
The article goes on to point out that leftist values are in direct opposition to the Constitution of the United States and the concept of limited government upon which it is based.
Of course the left has extremely different views of right and wrong. Morality if you will. How else to explain the lack of concern for the overt criminality of the Clinton cabal? These things also are in fact cultural in nature.
We are talking about two separate cultures here. Two different incompatible sets of cultural values.
I suggest those differences were reflected in this most recent election. In fact I suggest to you that the election and the ferocity of it cannot be explained without leaning heavily on what amounts to a culture War It can only be viewed as nothing short of a rejection of leftist values and a call for a restoration of American values.
As longtime readers of this site will understand I have some serious objections to the messenger that was chosen. But, that’s another post.
There are some who will look at the map and what I’ve written here and suggest that because minorities are more strongly represented in the areas the map shows what I’m making here is a bunch of racist claims. I respond as I have in the past that the majority of what gets incorrectly labeled race issues are in fact cultural issues. How old is to explain the success of minorities who have ditched the street culture adopted mainstream culture and thrived?
Clearly there’s a good deal further we can go down this road but I think this subject is fairly well covered, at least enough for you to continue down the road on your own.
Addendum; Eric
Not too hard this one.
The Breakfast Scramble:
The Clinton campaign’s inside view, from Politico:
So much of the campaign’s energy was spent explaining inherited issues, they said, like the paid speeches Clinton delivered to Wall Street banks, pay-to-play accusations about the Clinton Foundation, and fallout of Clinton’s decision to set up a private email server at the State Department. “They spent their time protecting her, explaining her, defending her, with all these issues, the speeches, the Foundation, the emails — that became the energy of the campaign,” sighed one longtime Clinton confidante.
All those issues cited by the Clinton campaign as baggage came from deliberate choices made by the woman formerly called the Smartest Woman in the World.
DNC staffer unloads on Donna Brazile, via Washington Free Beacon:
Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?” he asked, according to two people in the room. “You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself.”
Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.
“You are part of the problem,” he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump’s victory by siding with Clinton early on. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
Aside to Zach, all candidates are flawed. However, not all supporters are blind and stupid.
North of the Border commentary, Ezra Levant dumps on media narrative, Rebel:
Donald Trump’s support amongst white Americans only went up by one per cent, and if that were the only boost he got, he would have lost the election.
Donald Trump won because he had big gains with minorities.
Starting with black voters, he was up to 8 per cent from Romney’s one per cent. Of course, the Democrats still dominate black voters, but that shift is a major breakthrough.
Ezra has got numbers, and he got them all from the New York Slimes. The ‘rats need to get over ninety percent of the black vote, and a like percentage of Hispanics votes as well. For a conservative these numbers are out of reach. However there are common sense conservative issues like good schools and safe neighborhoods which would play with a modest percentage of black and Hispanic votes. Get these votes and the ‘rats will need to write a new playbook.
? A while ago Billy Beck posted a timely quote and a comment. I kept it on file because I kind of figured it would be useful at some point in the future. That is today…
“… the same uninflected, monotonous tone of a memorised lesson, the same automatic progression of sounds rather than meaning, the same earnest, dutiful, desperate hope that the sacred formulas will come out correctly. But in the face and eyes of a large television closeup, there was a shade more intensity than in the faces of the poor little college robots, more superstitious awe, and less comprehension: it was the face of a man performing a magic ritual on which his life depends. This man, I thought, believes it; he is compelled to believe it; he does not know what it means—but he knows that if this string of sounds were taken away from him, he would left to face something more frightening than death.”
Says Billy;
That’s Ayn Rand writing on Nikita Khrushchev. The thing is: that perfectly describes every liberal and leftist I ever met.
Which brings us to the shock and disbelief that we saw in Hillary Clinton supporters this past week. How else to explain what we saw other than the kind of mentality described above being shocked back into reality?
It’s unfortunate that that’s the only satisfaction I will get out of this election season.
If we are talking Hillary Clinton Behind Bars does it make sense to not have Bill Clinton locked up? Is there any conceivable way he is not an accessory to the crimes of Hillary Clinton? Along with a great deal of other people as well of course.
Which ties into my comments of the other day. There are a lot of left exposed legally now that they don’t have the power of the White House to protect them.
Hillary Clinton has always been the focus of that criminality, but as yet we have mentioned is the number of people that will end up going down with her. I’m
On the other hand if she’s out of the picture most of the prosecutions cease to exist. Does anybody not imagine that the chances of her having a mysterious heart attack in her sleep with a pillow over her head haven’t just tripled?
Do I really think that Donald Trump is going to cause major problems? Yes, I do.. He’s going to get a great many things right. but because he himself is not conservative and certainly doesn’t operate from conservative principles the number of things he gets wrong will also be rather high and potentially very problematic.
I will tell you right now that going forward you will find this right here supporting him when he is right and roasting him to an orange crisp when he’s wrong. You will probably remember that I roasted W on several occasions in these spaces.
By the way we are discussing a new format for this website. And a new name. Not quite sure what direction you’re going there yet. But will keep you posted so to speak
The Breakfast Scramble: Eric is right. There is a lot about which to talk.
His girl Friday. A shout out to Kellyanne Conway. The Little Donny of the primaries was a wild hip shooter. His campaign was in disarray. He never even got on the ballot in Oregon. Somebody corralled Little Donny and I have to assume it was Conway.
In the closing months of the campaign, Little Donny had message to stuck to it. In contrast Mrs. Clinton resorted to rerunning the Daisy Ad from the Lyndon Johnson campaign. The only message Mrs. Clinton had was how evil Trump was. It did not work.
Conway will be needed in the Trump administration. As for me, I suggest chief of staff. Keep Little Donny focused.
Phone and Pen Department or doors go both way. The same procedure used to create something can be used to abolish it. For example, Obamacare passed with fifty-one votes in the Senate. The republican will have fifty-one votes, plus the House and the presidency. The globull warming agreement that Dim Won, Barrack Obama, signed, but never submit to the Senate for ratification, can be unsigned. The executive orders mandating open sex restrooms and legally depriving male college students of any due process right can be revoked.
Clinton Inc, will all the foreign government who paid millions to the Clinton Foundation in return for future political favors, now get a refund? Will Wall Street get a refund for all those gross speaking fees paid to the Clinton’s for a private preview of the policies also be refunded. Don’t bet on it.
You break it, you own it, from Jim Newell, Slate:
The party establishment made a grievous mistake rallying around Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t just a lack of recent political seasoning. She was a bad candidate, with no message beyond heckling the opposite sideline. She was a total misfit for both the politics of 2016 and the energy of the Democratic Party as currently constituted. She could not escape her baggage, and she must own that failure herself.
Theoretically smart people in the Democratic Party should have known that. And yet they worked giddily to clear the field for her. Every power-hungry young Democrat fresh out of law school, every rising lawmaker, every old friend of the Clintons wanted a piece of the action. This was their ride up the power chain. The whole edifice was hollow, built atop the same unearned sense of inevitability that surrounded Clinton in 2008, and it collapsed, just as it collapsed in 2008, only a little later in the calendar
The Clinton’s bought it, they broke it, they own it. Are the ‘rats down to Little Andy, Andrew Coumo, governor New York, as their future?
Listen to Chuckles scream, Dirty Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader, dreaming a ‘rat controlled Senate promised to modify the filibuster rule to allow would be President Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees to get unconfirmed with fifty-one votes. I, for one, hope current, and incoming, Senate Majority Leader Mitchell O’Connell, take Dirty Harry up on his offer. Listen to Senator Schumer scream.
Based on the results of the election I believe that David and myself will have no shortage of things to write about over the next four years
Yeah, pretty much…
Trump won because he convinced a great number of Americans that he would destroypolitical correctness.
I have tried to call attention to this issue for years. I have warned that political correctness actually is a problem on college campuses, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, I have warned that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.
I have watched this play out on campus after campus. I have watched dissident student groups invite Milo Yiannopoulos to speak—not because they particularly agree with his views, but because he denounces censorship and undermines political correctness. I have watched students cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It’s not about his ideas, or policies. It’s not even about him. It’s about vengeance for social oppression.
Trump has done to America what Yiannopoulos did to campus. This is a view Yiannopoulos shares. When I spoke with him about Trump’s success months ago, he told me, “Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions. That’s a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is.”
He described Trump as “an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness.” Correctly, I might add.
Frankly, that’s been my objection to Trump from the beginning. His success has been based more on emotionalism than on policy. Certainly none of his campaign could be charged with promoting conservatives thinking and conservative policy.
My focus is on policy. Actual accomplishment, not emotionalism.
The only reason he managed to get by with it is because of the corruption of Hillary Clinton, a point which even a lot of Democrats acknowledge. As my wife said earlier today, Trump didn’t win because he’s Trump, Hillary lost because she’s Hillary. Remove Clinton from the picture in 4 years and what do you suppose is going to happen?
I have made reference several times over the last 6 months to a failure of a Trump presidency specifically because it is not conservative policies that he will pursue. Despite this of course, conservatives will get the blame when his policies fail.
Which of course means a Democrat in the White House four years from now… a double disaster no matter how you slice it.
?Given the number of people who have died under mysterious circumstances who either would have exposed Clinton wrongdoing, or were successful at it, you really have to wonder how much longer Clinton’s ability to breathe and stay above room temperature will remain unimpeded.
There are after all a large number of wrongdoings to be accounted for, not all of which she personally was responsible for. And there are the international connections to consider.
Personally I will not be surprised to see Hillary Clinton’s body found at Fort Marcy Park with two bullet wounds to the Head and a gun in her hand that will not fire.
Little Donny Trump won big. Little Donny carried Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I doubt that my boy Ted Cruz could have done that.
Remember no Clinton has ever won a majority in any national election. Think about that Chelsea.
Memo to the New York Times, prep the obit for Obamacare.
?I have said repeatedly win or lose, the buyer’s remorse on Donald Trump is going to be epic. I see nothing to change that attitude.
That, and we still have Congress to deal with as well. Remember, the majority of the Congressional idiots are the ones who absolutely refused to oppose Obama. You’ll pardon me if I’m not dancing in the aisles.
?A friend asked this morning over coffee if I was nervous about the election. I told him no, that we were basically screwed no matter who wins. Nothing to be nervous about.
It’s not just a matter of Trump and Clinton that causes that condition. It’s a matter of the people that put them in that position.
Even assuming we survive the four years and whoever wins today’s rat race, and assuming that both of these two morons are removed from any further governmental imposition by time crime or slime, we still have the people who believed that they would be good leadership material to contend with at the next election.
I do not believe that any people country or culture can survive that level of idiocy for that long.
Janet Reno, Butcher of Waco, and kidnapper of Elian Gonzalez is dead, New York Post:
Reno died early Monday from complications of Parkinson’s disease, her goddaughter Gabrielle D’Alemberte said. D’Alemberte said Reno spent her final days at home in Miami surrounded by family and friends.
[…]
One of the administration’s most recognizable and polarizing figures, Reno faced criticism early in her tenure for the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, where sect leader David Koresh and some 80 followers perished.
The late David Koresh was not available for comment and Raul Castro refused to make Elian Gonzales available to make a comment. The woman was evil.
Via Tom Macguire, Just One Minute:
Clinton directed her maid to print out classified materials
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton routinely asked her maid to print out sensitive government e-mails and documents — including ones containing classified information — from her house in Washington, DC, e-mails and FBI memos show. But the housekeeper lacked the security clearance to handle such material.
Via Doug Mataconis, Outside the Beltwey:
The F.B.I. informed Congress on Sunday that it has not changed its conclusions about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, removing a dark cloud that has been hanging over her campaign two days before Election Day.
James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, said in a letter to members of Congress that “based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”
Mrs. Clinton is totally obsessed with protecting all information about her yoga routines, but totally indifferent to protecting out national secrets.
?You folks celebrating the supposed news that the FBI didn’t manage to find anything Russia, here’s a couple of things to think about.
The reason the story had legs was because it was believable. There’s a lot of people out there including possibly yourself that wouldn’t put it past him.
Remember also, this is the same FBI that didn’t find anything worth chasing as regards Hillary Clinton. You’ll pardon me if I don’t find assurances from the FBI comforting.
