Timely. Especially after the holidays when my wife's side of the family wouldn't stop talking about Evil Orange Man, and it seemed like the talking points were being beamed directly into their heads from a transmitter at MSNBC, which was on in the other room even at dinner. And the turkey was overcooked.
I really appreciate this piece because it has always seemed obvious to me that our allegiance was to a set of rules called the Constitution. That document and its various state counterparts were then used to promulgate laws which were then tested and refined by the courts. As intended. Slow. Deliberative. High context, low speed. It gives me no pleasure to say that, in watching all this for nearly five decades and dedicating my life to law, I was sickened (and am still sickened) by the Merrick Garland hearing denial by the Senate. I remember thinking “this is where it will all start to unravel.” And I can remember where I was when Trump was banned from Twitter and I thought “here we go. This will mark the next unraveling.” And I lived to see the day a candidate be struck from a ballot without due process. Sadness does not begin to cut it.
Excellent essay. I've had several discussions with friends and family about the lawfare that has been unleashed in the last few years. Trump isn't the only target, but he is the most visible and is the one who generates the most heated debate. For those who are convinced that we need to do everything, and anything, to keep Trump from winning in 2024, I show them the "give the devil the benefit of the law" scene from A Man for All Seasons. I've practiced law for 40 years and have never seen a more succinct and eloquent defense of the rule of law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2a2fAEQaGo
I've been voting since 1976. Over the years, many people I disagreed with profoundly have been elected to Congress and the Presidency. Until recently, though, they had a fundamental understanding of our constitution and how our government works.
What scares me the most today is the members of Congress who have neither. How can we continue to function like this?
A lot of those on the other side “despise” Trump. Some, like my daughter, don’t even realize what their side is doing, and don’t care. Stopping him by any means is more important than anything else, justifiable with slogans like “save our democracy”, or “he deserves whatever he gets”. The way forward seems to be education of the ignorant, so let’s keep talking and remind them of the Russia hoax, the Steele dossier, the riot that got named an insurrection, the anti-semitism of a two-state solution, the Abraham Accords, and four years of no wars.
You're preaching to the choir, Martin. We know we hold no real power. How do we convince our over-"educated" overlords to stop treating us like minions and to lay down their arms and join us in the obscurity of life?
No one will remember any of our names or theirs in less than a century. Hell, even young adults now reject the Holocaust as factual history less than a century later. Hitler is just a word. It's like saying "dude" was to us 40-somethings. As Taibbi and Kirn discussed last week on 'AtW' it's/we're all FUBAR!
Happy New Year, dudes! Start planning your home garden early this year. While you may need the food I can guarantee the therapy will be rewarding.
I said in 2016 that Trump was a natural and even inevitable response to the grotesque hatred and ugliness on the Left. They spew vitriol and venom, then get SURPRISED when people take offense. They are surprised when someone who is almost as bad as their average gets popular on the other side.
Let's be clear: Trump is nowhere NEAR as ugly, abusive, self absorbed, and hateful as most of the Left. What he does do is hold up a mirror. The problem is, the people who should be learning something, don't. They can't recognize those ugly monsters as themselves.
I've been on the internet interacting with Leftists for something like 20 years. I used to often pursue them into their ghettos, tone myself down, focus hard on reasonable and emotionally neutral arguments, and STILL get insulted and banned, over and over. It's not the manner of speech: it is DIFFERENCE ITSELF. That is the problem. They don't want to hear anything that they don't already have bouncing around in their heads. Difference is violence to them. And Difference--having an honest and principled and clearly articulable difference of opinion--they construe as violence, to which the response is a very different soft of violence, that of censorship, blacklisting, persecution by the "legal" system, and even physical beatings and even murders (Trump supporters HAVE been killed by left wing nut jobs).
RULES Without rules we have anarchy and chaos. Since Donald Trump appeared on the scene in 2016, the Democrats/Deep State have been ignoring the rules of propriety on a regular basis. They used the dirtiest of dirty tricks to try to ensure victory in 2016, and have almost totally abandoned all RULES if it would hurt Trump. The Steele dossier, the Russia hoax, the Mueller investigation, the "impeachments," the Jan 6 investigation, the midnight raids on Trump and his allies - all outside of the boring RULES. And now we have chaos - we haven't quite reached the stage of anarchy. Yes, who would ever want to abandon boring RULES unless the object was anarchy? So can you believe it? We all need to vote for boring Donald Trump!!!
My ex and I look at a field and see something completely different. I see a football field and she sees a field like in Sound Of Music with Julie Andrews running across it with a beautiful backdrop. The problem is, in a marriage her field has no borders, no rules, no consequences for violating the rules of stated play. I feel like that is our country today. There is no border, those who vote don't have to show they are actually citizens, leaders in politics, education and corporate worlds lie with as much ease as it takes to tie a shoelace, virtues and values are defined by a $ sign, and so on. And in the meantime, we escape to a field on a hillside to find a sandpit where we can stick our heads.
Spot on. I would add two more points. FIRST, Do not stereotype. Evaluate others at an individual level. History proves that stereotyping almost always leads to violence. SECOND, tyranny whether by a majority or a minority also tends to lead to violence. That is why clear rules are important to have and TO FOLLOW.
Gurri is right, but we need to go deeper. There is too little honor among us. It’s bad when the hoi polloi are vile, destructive to civilization when the powerful are. Our founders had an honor culture. Hamilton and Burr were willing to risk death defending theirs. Today we tolerate prosecutions based on fabricated evidence. And even when the falsehood is exposed the fabricators hears not a peep of condemnation from their side. They are only sad it didn’t pay off.
Trump’s personality is crude. So was Patton’s. But Patton had what Ike needed, so Ike gave him what he wanted. He put him to work. Aren’t we all glad he did?
I don't when it happened, sometime in the last 40 or 50 years I suppose. But people stopped thinking and feeling about the Good and the Beautiful, exchanging it for the evacuation of their bile. Gurri is of course correct. Trump isn't Hitler or Stalin or your nasty uncle Fred who hates everything. Rather, he is a loudmouth who loves America just as much as you do, but just gets crass about it. Vote for him or don't vote for him, but please, for the love of God, put a plug in your bile duct. Because Trump is also an opportunist. You feed him bile, you get it back twofold.
This would be a great article, if not for the fact that the half of this country that demonized the other half for a decade explicitly said they are a revolution to overthrow our society and install Marxism.
Revolutions aren't political differences. They're an assault on the system. The incessant leftist brainwashing over "systemic racism" is a fundamental assault on the system itself and its pillars.
You can't play by the rules with revolutionaries. They openly said they want to end the rules.
Democrat extremism must stop. Immediately. They must denounce the cultural revolution and reaffirm their commitment to our foundational principles. They must reject One World globalism and stop handing the WHO power over our policies.
We're not "disagreeing over politics" anymore, we're in an existential fight for the future and soul of the country. A fight with a Democratic Party that has insisted for years that "the entire thing must come down."
The Democrats are the source of our hatred, division and extremism. Nothing changes unless they change their hearts.
Donald Trump is "just a guy with a loud mouth and a desperate need for attention", eh? He also has a penchant for cronyism, a tendency to break the law whenever and however he wants, a powerful inclination towards political corruption and, oh yes, a fundamental disdain for democracy. As has been said, Trump has none of the qualities you'd want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn't.
Timely. Especially after the holidays when my wife's side of the family wouldn't stop talking about Evil Orange Man, and it seemed like the talking points were being beamed directly into their heads from a transmitter at MSNBC, which was on in the other room even at dinner. And the turkey was overcooked.
A great piece.
Anyone who thinks the government should decide what information you get to see just doesn’t get it.
I really appreciate this piece because it has always seemed obvious to me that our allegiance was to a set of rules called the Constitution. That document and its various state counterparts were then used to promulgate laws which were then tested and refined by the courts. As intended. Slow. Deliberative. High context, low speed. It gives me no pleasure to say that, in watching all this for nearly five decades and dedicating my life to law, I was sickened (and am still sickened) by the Merrick Garland hearing denial by the Senate. I remember thinking “this is where it will all start to unravel.” And I can remember where I was when Trump was banned from Twitter and I thought “here we go. This will mark the next unraveling.” And I lived to see the day a candidate be struck from a ballot without due process. Sadness does not begin to cut it.
Excellent essay. I've had several discussions with friends and family about the lawfare that has been unleashed in the last few years. Trump isn't the only target, but he is the most visible and is the one who generates the most heated debate. For those who are convinced that we need to do everything, and anything, to keep Trump from winning in 2024, I show them the "give the devil the benefit of the law" scene from A Man for All Seasons. I've practiced law for 40 years and have never seen a more succinct and eloquent defense of the rule of law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2a2fAEQaGo
I've been voting since 1976. Over the years, many people I disagreed with profoundly have been elected to Congress and the Presidency. Until recently, though, they had a fundamental understanding of our constitution and how our government works.
What scares me the most today is the members of Congress who have neither. How can we continue to function like this?
A lot of those on the other side “despise” Trump. Some, like my daughter, don’t even realize what their side is doing, and don’t care. Stopping him by any means is more important than anything else, justifiable with slogans like “save our democracy”, or “he deserves whatever he gets”. The way forward seems to be education of the ignorant, so let’s keep talking and remind them of the Russia hoax, the Steele dossier, the riot that got named an insurrection, the anti-semitism of a two-state solution, the Abraham Accords, and four years of no wars.
You're preaching to the choir, Martin. We know we hold no real power. How do we convince our over-"educated" overlords to stop treating us like minions and to lay down their arms and join us in the obscurity of life?
No one will remember any of our names or theirs in less than a century. Hell, even young adults now reject the Holocaust as factual history less than a century later. Hitler is just a word. It's like saying "dude" was to us 40-somethings. As Taibbi and Kirn discussed last week on 'AtW' it's/we're all FUBAR!
Happy New Year, dudes! Start planning your home garden early this year. While you may need the food I can guarantee the therapy will be rewarding.
I said in 2016 that Trump was a natural and even inevitable response to the grotesque hatred and ugliness on the Left. They spew vitriol and venom, then get SURPRISED when people take offense. They are surprised when someone who is almost as bad as their average gets popular on the other side.
Let's be clear: Trump is nowhere NEAR as ugly, abusive, self absorbed, and hateful as most of the Left. What he does do is hold up a mirror. The problem is, the people who should be learning something, don't. They can't recognize those ugly monsters as themselves.
I've been on the internet interacting with Leftists for something like 20 years. I used to often pursue them into their ghettos, tone myself down, focus hard on reasonable and emotionally neutral arguments, and STILL get insulted and banned, over and over. It's not the manner of speech: it is DIFFERENCE ITSELF. That is the problem. They don't want to hear anything that they don't already have bouncing around in their heads. Difference is violence to them. And Difference--having an honest and principled and clearly articulable difference of opinion--they construe as violence, to which the response is a very different soft of violence, that of censorship, blacklisting, persecution by the "legal" system, and even physical beatings and even murders (Trump supporters HAVE been killed by left wing nut jobs).
RULES Without rules we have anarchy and chaos. Since Donald Trump appeared on the scene in 2016, the Democrats/Deep State have been ignoring the rules of propriety on a regular basis. They used the dirtiest of dirty tricks to try to ensure victory in 2016, and have almost totally abandoned all RULES if it would hurt Trump. The Steele dossier, the Russia hoax, the Mueller investigation, the "impeachments," the Jan 6 investigation, the midnight raids on Trump and his allies - all outside of the boring RULES. And now we have chaos - we haven't quite reached the stage of anarchy. Yes, who would ever want to abandon boring RULES unless the object was anarchy? So can you believe it? We all need to vote for boring Donald Trump!!!
My ex and I look at a field and see something completely different. I see a football field and she sees a field like in Sound Of Music with Julie Andrews running across it with a beautiful backdrop. The problem is, in a marriage her field has no borders, no rules, no consequences for violating the rules of stated play. I feel like that is our country today. There is no border, those who vote don't have to show they are actually citizens, leaders in politics, education and corporate worlds lie with as much ease as it takes to tie a shoelace, virtues and values are defined by a $ sign, and so on. And in the meantime, we escape to a field on a hillside to find a sandpit where we can stick our heads.
Spot on. I would add two more points. FIRST, Do not stereotype. Evaluate others at an individual level. History proves that stereotyping almost always leads to violence. SECOND, tyranny whether by a majority or a minority also tends to lead to violence. That is why clear rules are important to have and TO FOLLOW.
Gurri is right, but we need to go deeper. There is too little honor among us. It’s bad when the hoi polloi are vile, destructive to civilization when the powerful are. Our founders had an honor culture. Hamilton and Burr were willing to risk death defending theirs. Today we tolerate prosecutions based on fabricated evidence. And even when the falsehood is exposed the fabricators hears not a peep of condemnation from their side. They are only sad it didn’t pay off.
Trump’s personality is crude. So was Patton’s. But Patton had what Ike needed, so Ike gave him what he wanted. He put him to work. Aren’t we all glad he did?
I don't when it happened, sometime in the last 40 or 50 years I suppose. But people stopped thinking and feeling about the Good and the Beautiful, exchanging it for the evacuation of their bile. Gurri is of course correct. Trump isn't Hitler or Stalin or your nasty uncle Fred who hates everything. Rather, he is a loudmouth who loves America just as much as you do, but just gets crass about it. Vote for him or don't vote for him, but please, for the love of God, put a plug in your bile duct. Because Trump is also an opportunist. You feed him bile, you get it back twofold.
This would be a great article, if not for the fact that the half of this country that demonized the other half for a decade explicitly said they are a revolution to overthrow our society and install Marxism.
Revolutions aren't political differences. They're an assault on the system. The incessant leftist brainwashing over "systemic racism" is a fundamental assault on the system itself and its pillars.
You can't play by the rules with revolutionaries. They openly said they want to end the rules.
Democrat extremism must stop. Immediately. They must denounce the cultural revolution and reaffirm their commitment to our foundational principles. They must reject One World globalism and stop handing the WHO power over our policies.
We're not "disagreeing over politics" anymore, we're in an existential fight for the future and soul of the country. A fight with a Democratic Party that has insisted for years that "the entire thing must come down."
The Democrats are the source of our hatred, division and extremism. Nothing changes unless they change their hearts.
Excellent article, Mr. Gurri. You'd be welcome for a boring dinner with my family any time.
Donald Trump is "just a guy with a loud mouth and a desperate need for attention", eh? He also has a penchant for cronyism, a tendency to break the law whenever and however he wants, a powerful inclination towards political corruption and, oh yes, a fundamental disdain for democracy. As has been said, Trump has none of the qualities you'd want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn't.