FNC Never-Trumper Chris Wallace speeds channel's plummet into MSNBC gutter
And about daddy Mike...  

"Watching @FoxNews weekend anchors is worse than watching low ratings Fake News @CNN or Lyin' Brian Williams...and the crew of degenerate Comcast (NBC/MSNBC) Trump haters..."
- Pres. Trump 7/7/2019 tweet.


Chris Wallace interviewed Trump White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney during Fox News Sunday, earlier that day. The host exploited the president's legitimate criticism of border protection-obstructionist Rep. Elijah Cummings and the third world conditions in some sections of traditionally Democrat-run Baltimore.

"Cumming district is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess," Trump had tweeted, in part. "If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous and filthy place."

"This goes back to what happened with the four members of 'The Squad,'" Wallace charged. "Nobody objects to the president defending his border policy, but this seems to be the worst kind of racial stereotyping."

Hm. About that...

In 1987, according to the Ann Arbor News, Chris Wallace's father, Mike Wallace, was pursuing for 60 Minutes a story about a San Diego Savings and Loan scheme. The S and L contrived to dupe poor and minority homeowners into signing away their homes as collateral for new air conditioners.

During a break in Wallace's interviewing of a Savings and Loan official, that person conceded the contracts were difficult to decipher.

"You bet your ass they [the contracts] are hard to read if you are reading over the watermelons or over the tacos," replied Mike Wallace, wrongly assuming recording had stopped and you would never hear his words.

Now, the rules about social acceptability of jokes change, over time. Ask a veteran stand up. 

One healthy component of humor is spotlighting peoples' differences, exaggerating and playfully mocking cultural idiosyncrasies. It's a game all can play.

I miss the comedy of earlier decades, in which we all had a good laugh at our neighbors and ourselves, and no one feigned offense. 
Car 54 and The Honeymooners pointed up cultural distinctions with grins. So did Phil Silvers and Henny Youngman. Lenny Bruce did it, too, though he often included more serious implications.

Newly arrived immigrants were sometimes the objects of innocent joshing, no harm done. Try imitating a foreign accent today, and see how fast you're personally and professionally ostracized. 

(A sign of the present-day liberal sphere's clenched keister: Some would rush from the campus to declare there can be no 'foreign accents' in America, a nation that is, they would further assert, an illegitimate concept, to begin with.)

Mel Brooks has lamented that PC has destroyed comedy. And I recall the late Alexander Cockburn writing in The Nation that some Jewish jokes can be funny in ways Holocaust jokes never are.

But a crucial distinction exists. There was no punchline, no implied jocularity, to Mike Wallace's behind-scenes words. They existed only as pernicious tools.

He spoke them in what he thought was a private circumstance. That suggests he intended the remark more as secret armchair hostility shared between confederates than benign humor.

In 1987, students at the University of Michigan protested a scheduled Mike Wallace speech there, citing his watermelons and tacos remark. (Their action did presage current shut-downs of controversial speakers; never a wise or fair option, regardless of provocation.)

The Ann Arbor News story noted Mike Wallace had, over the phone, declared "Not now nor ever have I been a bigot and a body of work over 35 years I believe attests to that."

Ultimately, Wallace did give the speech. "During Wallace's address, about a dozen students turned their backs to him," UPI reported.

My intention isn't to imply guilt to son Chris for sins of father Mike. And again, '80s students' fulminating against a speaker do remind of current speech-squelching of voices like Milo.

Authoritarian Social Justice standards are rigid and uncritical. Cross those lines -- or even be falsely portrayed as having done so -- and the activists and pundits will seize up the torches and pitchforks.

Those aren't my standards. And they may not be yours. But they are essentially the ones Mike Wallace was pilloried for abridging. And social justice warriors and mainstream journalists like Chris Wallace insist those very rules be respected, in 2019.

Under this gimmicky standard, no one "of color" can be criticized for any cause at all without race necessarily being the motivation. The actual reason for the criticism remains unaddressed, thanks to the spurious 'racism' allegation tactic.

And so, Chris Wallace breezily misrepresented the president's factually sound dilapidation comments as race-based.

Chris Wallace isn't alone. Many these days distort words and policies opportunistically, exploiting ethnic concerns as cudgels with which to batter ideological adversaries against whom they have no honest, substantive arguments. 

Some occupy elected offices. Others have bylines.

In response to Chris Wallace's attempted "racial stereotyping" slur, Mick Mulvaney noted (per Breitbart):

"When the president attacks AOC-plus-3, when he attacks 'The Squad,' last week, he gets accused of being a racist. When Nancy Pelosi does it a few days later, the left and many members of the media, not you, in particular, I want to make that clear, come to Nancy's defense: 'It couldn't possibly be racist. She was simply attacking their ideas.' 

"The president is doing the same. The president is attacking Mr. Cummings for saying things that are not true about the border. And I think it's right for the president to raise the issue...I think the president's right to raise that it has absolutely nothing to do with race."

Chris Wallace's careening away from fairness may well be of a part with other FNC hosts' misbehavior, including Bret Baier's alleged role in the mistreatment of Judge Jeanine Pirro. It may be, as some have suggested, that the channel is more concerned with courting Democrats than being fair to the president of the United States.

"Fox News is changing fast, but they forgot the people that got them there!"
Pres. Trump May tweet.

"Something weird is going on at Fox."
- Trump June 17 tweet.



Note: To falsely impute racial bigotry to the president, Chris Wallace rattled off the names of several black politicians Trump has criticized.

Among white political and media figures Pres. Trump has also recently directed harshness: Nancy Pelosi, Jerrold Nadler, Chuck Schumer, Katy Tur, Jeff Bezos, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Anderson Cooper, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Paul Ryan, Maureen Dowd, Rachel Maddow... 

And there are many others. But Chris Wallace won't mention them. Because to do so would be counterproductive to his phony narrative.

Attention to Baltimore rat-infestation didn't begin with Trump

From Infowars

President Trump, in one recent tweet, described Rep. Elijah Cummings' Baltimore as "a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess..." He added: "If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous and filthy place."

Predictably, numerous liberal politicians and media voices ignored the substance of Trump's condemnation, Instead, they hurled stunt 'racist' allegations. 

But in the past, others have criticized the deplorable third world state existent in Baltimore Pres,. Trump decried. They, too, described that city as "infested" by possibly disease-carrying rats.

None were called 'racist.' Nor are such denunciations likely.

The Fox News channel reported on a 2015 Bernie Sanders tour of Baltimore. 

"Anyone who took the walk that we did around this neighborhood would not think you're in a wealthy nation," said Sanders. "You would think that you are in a Third World country."

Fox noted that in a 2016 Tweet, Sanders wrote "Residents of Baltimore's poorest boroughs have lifespans shorter than people living under dictatorship in North Korea. That's a disgrace."

A 2016 Baltimore Sun op-ed urged "a federal disaster declaration for our most impoverished neighborhoods hard hit by crime, urban blight, and economic malaise." The piece noted that such initiatives "have been fabulously successful in the third world..."

In 2018, PBS aired "Rat Film," a documentary that examined the terrible conditions in the city, which included (and still do) a disease-conducive rodent rampage.

A Baltimore Sun review termed parts of that city "poor and rat-infested."

Baltimore's Mayor Catherine Pugh, a black woman, walked through one shabby neighborhood, during local Fox 45's 2018 filmed story on area dilapidation and rodents.

"What the Hell? We should just take all this shit down," Pugh said, per a Gateway Pundit account. "...Whoa, you can smell the rats...Whew, Jesus!...Oh, my God, you can smell the dead animals."

Gateway Pundit observed Baltimore is "number nine on Orkin's top-ten list of most rat-infested cities."

GP also quoted an Orkin press release:

"Aside from causing structural damage, rodents can carry hundreds of pathogens that can transmit various diseases and dangerous parasites. Additionally, they constantly leave behind droplets of urine as they travel, each day. These droppings can contribute to asthma and allergic reactions, especially in children."

That's of no consequence to the president's foes. Never mind their own past attentions to Baltimore's rat infestation.

Rebecca of Partisan Farm

"Wouldn't it be great if they told the truth?"
- Pres. Trump, at Turning Points' Tuesday Student Action Teen convention.

It would. But many in today's press seem far too devoted to ideological mission, to concern themselves with professional ethics.

Case in point: Rebecca Klar, of The Hill.

Klar penned a 7/22 article about the recent Publix grocery conflict between Erica Thomas and Eric Sparkes.

The headline: "Georgia State lawmaker defends allegation white man told her to 'go back.'"

Klar's racial-obsessiveness matched Georgia State Rep. Thomas' own. Her opening paragraph noted the office-holding complainant was an "African-American." 

So far, so good. That was a story factor.

But in that same first sentence, Klar repeated uncritically Thomas' unsubstantiated charge that a "white man" had told her "go back where you came from." 

No 'alleged' qualification. No healthy journalistic skepticism of an uncorroborated tale. Thomas' claim was suspicious, in both its sensational character and convenient rise on the heels of a related presidential tweet and ensuant crowd chant.

Add to that Thomas did hold state elected office, and would have that much more reason to spin a media-attractive yarn. What good reporter's antenna wouldn't go up?

The Hill's Klar evidently thought it unimportant that the accused Sparkes was Cuban, a longtime Democrat, had often posted venomously against Pres. Trump and his supporters (falsely slurring us as "Nazis"), and told interviewers he intended to vote Democrat for the rest of his life. 

Klar ignored those inconvenient facts. Instead, she exploited her capacity at The Hill to promote a false narrative serviceable to Thomas, potentially injurious to the president, and harmful to social welfare.

Klar did quote Sparkes refuting the supposed "go back" remark. But she gave Thomas the last word. The implication was, the Thomas position prevailed.

And Klar herself called the grocery dust-up a "racist attack." An objective reporter shouldn't employ partisan rhetoric as if such were established reality.

State Rep. Thomas later retracted the "go back" allegation -- and then reasserted it. Klar did not appropriately update the original piece. It remained on The Hill's site. A moments-ago check found it still accessible, uncorrected and unreflective of permutations.

In a student column from her Binghamton, NY college-days, Klar showed her zeal to push partisan interests:

"The 'alt-right,' white supremacist wing which the Trump campaign and now presidency ignited...[has] created a society in which everything has become political because the hate spewed directly impacts the everyday lives of millions of people."

"The hatred for minorities that has been facilitated by the Trump administration...outlandish acts of hostility displayed by the Trump administration..."


Klar did at least allow that voting for Trump "in itself is not a crime or immoral act..."

Now, I'm not a believer that our pasts define us for life. I am in 2019 a stalwart Trump supporter. But in the 1980s, I was a Democrat. In 2000, I helped found the Iowa Green Party. And in 2004, I was Ralph Nader's paid Iowa coordinator. 

People do change. That's life.

And there are different rules for opinion columns and straight news articles. But Klar's straight news account for The Hill was laced with the feverish partisanship on display in her college column. 

In that, she's hardly distinctive. The line that traditionally separated news from editorial began to vanish around the time Donald Trump announced his candidacy.

This isn't the first time I've criticized a heedless tyro on The Hill's payroll. By themselves, they are not significant.

But as writers at a prominent news site, they do potentially have some influence. And with power comes responsibility.

They typify a rabid media bias against America's president. One that eagerly jettisons professional propriety, when ideological interests stand to gain.

"When I say, 'the enemy of the people,' when I say, 'fake news,' when I say these things, I'm not kidding," Trump told the Turning point audience. "They have become...totally unhinged."


(Full disclosure: The present author has, occasionally, submitted essays to The Hill. None were accepted. That is unrelated to my criticism, which has persisted throughout that time. The Hill does
feature several fine writers whose work I appreciate. Jon Solomon and Joe Concha, for instance. But many who write for The Hill recall the late Alexander Cockburn's dismissal of modern journalism schools as "feedlots of mediocrity.")

Georgia State Rep. Erica Thomas retracts 'hate crime' retraction
But this story has two villains

It happened. It didn't. It did. 

What might tomorrow bring?

Atlanta Dem. Rep. Erica Thomas has suddenly retracted her retraction of a 'hate crime' claim. The alleged perpetrator, one Eric Sparkes, quickly surfaced to dispute her fanciful narrative. And many speculate Thomas lodged the original charge in hopes of political gain.

Thomas is one star of "Jussie Smollet, A Sequel." She claimed, tearfully, that a "white man" had accosted her in a Publix grocery. "Go back where you came from," she alleged he had roared at her.

Obviously, she had sought to accrue spotlight by attaching herself to anti-Trump agitations inspired by his somewhat related Twitter remarks.

And, for a few hours, Thomas succeeded. Rep. Ilhan Omar retweeted a message supporting Thomas. Erstwhile actor George Takei erupted. So did the ever-annoying Shaun King.

And Rep. Ted Lieu (CA) sped onto the nearest keyboard, to signal his moral splendor (within an electoral cheerleading frame):

"Both @realDonaldTrump and @GOP have grossly underestimated the number of Americans who have experienced the racist 'go back' insult. We all know how it hurts. And we are going to vote. I predict a Dem wave in 2020, just like we had in 2018."

Beto O'Rourke, laughably still in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, also angled for reflected shimmer:

"These are the consequences of a president who foments hate every day -- and sees our diversity not as a strength but as a weakness," O'Rourke tweeted. "Erica, thank you for serving your state and thanks to your husband for serving our country. We are better than this, and together, we will prove it."

Thomas' 'hate crime' allegation was also trumpeted by another ill-fated Democrat presidential nomination hopeful, Bill de Blasio:

"Let's be clear," he tweeted. "This is on [Donald Trump] and every single person who refuses to condemn his vile racism."

Per Daily Wire, de Blasio later added: "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: It begins with a tweet. Then a chant. Now a racist attack on a 9-month pregnant lawmaker and military wife just trying to feed her family."

But Thomas' sensational account soon crumbled. The accused, Eric Sparkes, denied having made the alleged "go back" shout. And he pointed out the absence of substantiating videotape or witness evidence. 

He further informed reporters of his Cuban heritage and longtime Democrat Party loyalty. Sparkes assured listeners he had traditionally voted Democrat, and would do so for the rest of his life. 

Subsequent revelations were that Sparkes even despised President Trump. 

If he shops at the same grocery as Thomas, he may well live in her district. Given that, he may even have voted for her.

As media revelations and online guffaws resounded, Erica Thomas hurriedly retracted her previous charges. She no longer claimed Sparkes had told her to "go back." Just been rude.

Rep. Lieu quietly deleted his supportive tweet. Shaun King found other matters he felt needed his attention.

Observers concluded hers was just another case of a Democrat dishonestly playing the race card and pretending at victimhood.

But she is not this story's only villain. 

Eric Sparkes has also hurled foundationless charges of bigotry for political edge. In fact. he's rather an experienced hand, at it.

On July 12, Sparkes tweeted a video clip of public hostility. He added: "For the Trumpers I grew up with this is the hidden and outright vocal bigotry, ignorance, and racism I experienced at times because my Grandmother did not speak English, only Spanish. So my anger comes out. FU all racists and to the ones who say you aren't racists than you are lying to yourselves."

"Trump needs to go back to Germany and his Nazi roots," Sparkes tweeted, in part, on July 14. 

To his credit, he hasn't yet claimed a Trump supporter roared at him to "go back." (Though he did advise the president to do exactly that.)

Sparkes, then, thought it clever to undertake the same smear tactic Erica Thomas later levied against him. 

Attacking people who hold contrary political ideas with false bigotry slurs? Eric Sparkes is so there!

Both villains have soiled their hands in the same sewer. Her attack on him? Karma, some would say.

Now, Thomas has reasserted her original 'hate crime' charge against Sparkes. Given that her banner was hefted by national-level Democrats, including presidential nomination aspirants, it's not unthinkable she's received pressure from 'higher up' to retract her retraction, lest stars look foolish.

Add in this possibility: Sparkes may be so die-hard a donkey foot-soldier that he submits to public ignominy, even lifetime branding, for the good of The Larger Cause.


These events deserve wide attention because they may well have ramifications far beyond their parochial bounds. Among hostilities presently imperiling national order is one of ethnic disharmony. It assumes ugly and sometimes violent character, rips into tatters America's wonderful quilt, and wreaks injuries on all it afflicts.

Brett Samuels of The Hill applauds illegal immigrants'anti-Trump criminality, casts law and order as negatives   

Illegal immigrants' disdain for our nation's right to sovereignty marks them as undesirables, in a land whose legal residents prize democratic order.

Mechanisms for changing laws exist in the Constitutional process. Selective observation of laws that We the People pass, through our elected representatives, is not among them. 

That sort of basic knowledge was once routinely dispensed in middle-school civics classrooms. It today seems called for in journalism academies.

"Immigrants on edge over prospect of ICE raids" was the title of a 7/20 Brett Samuels article in The Hill. It was emblematic of the Trump-Era mainstream media that instinctively stands with criminals and against our president, laws, and the men and women who safeguard the American people.

The piece was not properly labeled as analysis or commentary, but presented as a straight news account. The prejudice of its author was nonetheless manifest. 

"Immigrant communities across the country are on edge after mass deportation operations promised by President Trump failed to materialize in recent days," was how Samuels opened his article. 

Criminals should fear law enforcement. When they are among us, they should creep in the shadows and cast worried eyes over their shoulders. 

And they should never be comfortable. Justice is on the march.

"Advocacy organizations are urging those who might be targeted by ICE to remain vigilant, cautioning that the larger raids could take place in the coming days, weeks, or months," Samuels wrote.

Why is an American reporter working against law enforcement interests, and helping broadcast evasion advisories to criminals? That's an obvious question. Sadly, the obvious answer is that abetting criminality is fancied moral, in the contemporary press box.

"'I think this threat is still out there, and there's no trust in this administration," Sergio Gonzales, billed as deputy director of the Immigration Hub, told Samuels. Note that Gonzales painted the president of the United States as a villain; Samuels did not object.

In fact, Samuels quoted five critics of the president, but not even one supporter. (A few quotes from previous presidential remarks were cited.)

Samuels noted scofflaws were "braced" for the "threat" of immigration enforcement actions, as if those were not wholly proper but adverse weather phenomena against whose looming devastations barricades must be thrown up.

Of course, illegals are thought sympathetic only by others contemptuous of law and order. Samuels and his fellow inky quislings lurk in that ignoble category.

In this matter of right vs. wrong, many in the Fourth Estate choose to ride with the bad guys.

To save America, first, do no harm

In the 1980s, I studied religious cults. And I learned that to bend followers to their messages, they ensured no other voices could be heard.

Nearly any philosophy can seem plausible, if never challenged from without. Regular consideration of differing perspectives is necessary to accurate understanding.

Recently, a Democratic Socialists Facebook page shared this Twitter message:

"Someone I know blocked Fox News with parental controls at her parents' house and now her mom keeps asking why they can't watch their news program, and I truly believe this is how we can save America..."

"Save America" through skullduggery? Through information suppression? 

By surreptitiously impeding other citizens' speech rights and political independence, and lying to one's own parents for the sake of ideology? 

That's not a way to ensure intelligent citizenship. Citizens need open access to information necessary to chart our country's course. 

It is, instead, a scheme for shunting a cattle-like populace obediently down a path where only a solitary voice enjoys audience.

Fox News operates as a counter to the pretty much ideologically homogeneous mainstream media. Machinations to silence it, and foil others' reception of it, promotes brainwashing just as did deceptive religious cult-rackets.

(And not insignificant is that the parents supposedly harmed may well have helped build the freedom their offspring today withholds from them.)

Innocent persons so harmed would not make informed voting decisions. Not knowing of other perspectives, they would at best endorse someone else's program.

But I don't suppose zealous partisans care why their ideology advances, legitimately or illegitimately. Only that it does.

This ardent championing of knowledge restriction represents a startling break from classical liberalism's valuing of free speech and rigorous defense of unpopular speakers. It is of a part with general left anti-free speech efforts like event shut-downs, boycotts of publishers and booksellers, and stifling of media voices through advertiser targetings.

Debate among citizens has traditionally been understood to be in democracy's best interest. The liberty to exchange ideas in the public square is a hallmark of free society. 

But today, left forces denounce all who take exception to them as 'fascists,' and discourage conversation. Violence is often recommended.

That Twitter message received considerable applause, from persons who don't seem to grasp that they are the oppressors.

"Someone I know blocked Fox news in all the waiting rooms in a major hospital when his mom was in...when she had to go back for re-checks 3 months later, they were all still blocked. I am so proud of my friend," gushed one Facebook user.

"I'm doing this anytime I have a remote in a public place. I may even go as far as bringing a universal remote with me." said another.

No one cited a moral or legal source from which they imagined to have got editorial authority over everyone else's news and commentary intake. But later, one censorship advocate did give a clue.

When a contrary commentator observed "That's exactly how Nazis act! Censorship!," an early-twenty-something 'woke' cheerleader leapt to supply defense: "But in this case, it would be blocking Nazi like programs."

So, there you have it. Everything's situational. 

Censorship and viewpoint discrimination, like judging people by skin color or sex, do not warrant condemnation in every instance. Only depending upon who is exercising them, against whom, and in the name of what ideology.

Left-wing censors are assured of their moral superiority, and see themselves as courageous opponents of historic evil. To their minds, they are not capable of being wrong.

Such partisans, overstuffed with self-righteousness, believe they enjoy moral authority to enforce message-regulation on the rest of the world. They know best.

And in the back-halls of social media, they giggle amongst themselves at their befouling of the Great Conversation.

Note: That early-twenty-something advocate of political censorship recalled the great Oscar Wilde line: "I'm not young enough to know everything."

"Fuck you, chubby. Crawl back into your hole"                                                  

Actually, I suppose I'm at least partly to blame. For expecting intelligent, reasoned social media conversation about a legal matter with political implications, I mean. 

On Sunday, numerous ICE enforcement actions were conducted. Ordered by President Trump, they were said to focus on non-citizens who had been convicted of additional crimes. But rather than abide by judicial rulings that they should leave the United States, these persons had ignored the law and stayed here.

They had no right to remain, but did so, anyway.

More than a few organizations sprang into action, advising scofflaws on ways to evade law enforcement and obstruct its performance. Political and entertainment figures took up the cause of defying American laws. And so did innumerable self-styled activists who hunched over keypads.

To one of these last, who had on Twitter brayed in advocacy of related criminality, I posed a basic question:

"And enforcing democratically enacted laws is bad -- why?"

For any society to thrive in orderly fashion, elementary standards must be respected and maintained. One of those is obeying laws passed by the people's elected representatives. Any changes the public desires can be effected through the democratic process. 

It doesn't happen in a twinkling. But that's democracy. 

"Fuck you, chubby. Crawl back into your hole" was the full response I received to my Twitter question. 

Of course, ad hominem slurs and non-substantive rejoinders come from both right and left. But the contemporary left seems particularly hostile to debate, ideological independence, and free speech. 

That's evident in speech codes, shutting down speakers, organizing advertiser boycotts to silence contrary voices, and street protesters blocking cameras.

Now, sour-dispositioned addle-pates on social media wouldn't be a serious problem, were they to confine themselves to that noisome platform. But someone keeps telling them where the voting booths are located.


Note: My social media-slurrer had earlier posted on her Twitter page the iconic photo depicting a brave soul facing off with Tiananmen Square tanks. Reports are the Chinese government is scrubbing accounts of that inspirational moment from historical texts. 

Ironically, the American left is pursuing identical erasure by demolishing statuary, banning authors, and 'vanishing' recollections. How lacking in self-awareness are such partisans.

There's really nothing funny about donkeys dancing

On Tuesday, U.S. House Democrats promoted a resolution condemning Pres. Trump, by name, for specific comments wrongly interpreted as "racist."

Last year, Dem. Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN) issued statements rooted in anti-Semitism. In fact, they drew on negative historical stereotypes. 

But rather than condemn Omar, specifically, for particular remarks she had made publicly, House Democrats under Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA) covered for Omar and her Jew-hatred. 

They cobbled together a general resolution that, in the end, said very little. Certainly, nothing against Omar and her anti-Semitic statements, despite those being the reasons for the congressional action.

Remember Democrats' double-standard next time someone claims that party is at all sincere about bigotry. Democrats rail against misrepresentations, while giving a pass to the real deal.

CNN.com 7/14 headlines

Frightened GOP won't make Trump pay a price for his racist tweet

AOC responds to Trump's racist attacks
Opinion: Why Trump's racist dog whistle won't work this time
Brian Stelter left speechless by Trump's racist tweet
Trump tweets racist attacks at congresswomen

"We’ve seen that anytime you break away from the Trump story and cover other events in this era, the audience goes away."
- CNN President Jeff Zucker 11/2018 Vanity Fair

Nazi is its own horrible category

On Sunday, ICE conducted enforcement actions in several US cities. Officers were upholding Constitutional law.

But more than a few figures in political, news, and entertainment worlds, as well as in social media, compared President Trump and American law enforcement officers to Third Reich-Era Nazis.

"Hitler," "fuhrer," "concentration camp," and "Waffen SS" were only a few terms freely misused.

America is a democratic republic in which men are free to select governance and make laws, exercising will from the grassroots, up.

On the other hand, Nazi Germany was an oppressive, national-socialist state imposed downward on a populace. There can be no sound equating of American office-holders and police who advocate for democratically enacted laws, with murderous Nazi troops responsible for the systematic killings of tens of millions. 

To attempt comparison is to deny the uniqueness and proportion of the Nazi horror.

The current mania to throw around Nazi-based slurs may owe, partly, to time's passage. The more victims and decades that pass, the easier it becomes to treat the phenomenon casually. To exploit it for political purposes of the moment, unhindered by conscience.

It may be that among those now misapplying related terminology are callow minds who don't grasp the enormity and singularity of the Nazi monster. And that it is not to be invoked ill-advisedly.

Too, there has always been an ill-reasoned attitude that any order or national pride is necessarily of the same cloth as fascism. That patriotism is inherently unhealthy. 

Unfortunately, that garbled thinking is enjoying some present popularity.

Democrat congressional figures and presidential nomination hopefuls seem bent on outdoing one another in a sort of cuckoo competition. Nearly each day brings fresh madness. A cartoonish declaration. A publicity-calculated posture.

More seasoned actors doubtless understand their party is hurtling toward electoral demolition. And they may secretly wish for a saner environment. 

But the pull of juvenile extremism untempered by wisdom makes its demands. Resistance is futile. 

And the Rule of Law, once an American ideal understood to benefit citizens, is now derided by the left as fascistic.

GIVEN ICE RAIDS, THIS EXTENDED EXCERPT FROM MY 2018 BOOK, "Ideas Afoot," IS APPROPROS

Attempts to equate contemporary American immigration law enforcement with discrimination against 1930s German Jews and civil rights-era American blacks are crippled by a logical flaw.

In each historic instance, national citizens were denied rights due them by virtue of existent citizenship. The Rev. Dr. King, for example, argued persuasively that the US government needed to live up to promises our Constitution makes to citizens. He didn't advocate that non-Americans be elevated. Advocates of granting legal citizenship to illegals sometimes argue that such has become their rightful due, as illegals may have lived for years in the United States. Consider the principle of ownership in another context: Five years ago, Roy stole a blue car, in Philadelphia. Today, he is still driving it. Because five years have passed, is the car now legitimately Roy's, or does it remain stolen property? Voices demanding that citizenship be extended to scofflaw non-citizens point to possible past economic contributions, like taxes. They further insist that illegals brought into this country when they were children are without culpability, and know no other life, no other country. Consider, then, another hypothetical: After having stolen the blue, Philadelphia car, Roy gives it to Pete. Though initially unaware that Roy had stolen it, Pete later realizes that. It is the only car Pete has ever had. And over the course of several years of driving it and enjoying its benefits, Pete spent considerable cash on gas, oil, and general mechanical upkeep. Do those factors make the car no longer the bounty of criminality, and somehow Pete's rightful property? Should the original owner of the blue Philadelphia car simply absorb the loss and exempt Roy and Pete from applicable laws against theft? No, and no. Do the American people have both legal and moral rights to maintain citizenship standards? We do. Some might dispute my comparison. In the blue car instance, a piece of property was stolen from an owner. But a non-citizen entering a country illegally doesn't take away anyone else's citizenship. But in each case, the Rule of Law holds. Whether protecting ownership of private property or articulating national sovereignty -- in this matter, through citizenship standards and statutes -- the governing authority of democratically enacted law is acknowledged. One can't support that concept, selectively. Whether someone believes current laws are sound, broken, or will be changed, is irrelevant to this point: People today should obey laws as they exist, today. And by enforcing laws we chose through the electoral system, our government is affirming self-rule. That benefits every actual citizen.

'Tactical strategy' may partly explain why official Portland gave green light to Antifa terrorists

A veteran drummer once said a lesson he'd learned early on, was to keep playing when a fight broke out in a club or hall. Stopping the music, he related, would cause uninvolved audience members to look for the trouble, and possibly join in. The small disturbance would become a big one.

I don't excuse Portland police for standing by while Antifa terrorists savagely attacked Andy Ngo and others. Their inaction was disgraceful. Some say police may have worried about violating an alleged 'stand-down' order, and being fired. But if job security is more important to someone in uniform than protecting citizens, why did they join law enforcement, in the first place?

Mayor Ted Wheeler has denied charges he issued a stand-down order. But he has indulged Antifa, before. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.N. Ambassador Ric Grenell have called for federal investigation of Wheeler and why Portland police allowed Antifa criminality to run rampant. Others now urge National Guard troops be deployed.

This brings to mind other instances where city leaders allegedly handcuffed police from enforcing laws against left-wing rioters. Think of Baltimore. 

But I do wonder how much city leaders' decisions are motivated by political bias, and how much by tactical thinking: trying to ensure small fights don't become big ones. 

Tactical strategizing isn't an excuse. But it may be part of the explanation.

The vanishing America
Patriotism either lives in your heart, or it doesn't.      

Council members Anne Mavity and Tim Brausen are second and third, from the left.

On June 26, TV station Fox 9 reported the St Louis Park, Minnesota City Council would "revisit" its earlier vote to discontinue opening meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. In a statement, an unnamed council member explained that body had heard "many comments from the community."

Rightly, much attention is paid national and international-level events and figures that illustrate American exceptionalism. Think of the signing of the Constitution, WWII's successful vanquishing of Nazism, the Cold War defeat of Communism, and the historic elections of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.

But no less important are small-town signs of patriotic faith, of average folks standing up for freedom in daily life. The neighborhood grocer, the local school, boy scouts, country fair racetracks, Main Street parades -- the list goes on. Regular people living out incredible testimonies to the wonders liberty made possible. 

Classic plays like Our Town and movies like Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life attested to the vitality of small-town folks and our dreams. So did Mark Twain stories, Norman Rockwell paintings, and military-veteran family members' photos; they occupy places of honor in the humble homes of millions of hardworking, tax-paying, average citizens.

But it cannot be ignored that danger to the legitimate American patriotism that raised up our great country also lurks in out-of-the-way environs.

On June 17, and reportedly without prior notice to citizens, five City Council members in St. Louis Park, of Hennepin County, Minnesota, voted to kick the Pledge of Allegiance out of future meetings.

"I hope it's not too controversial," Councilman Tim Brausen told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Our community tends to be a very welcoming and increasingly diverse community, and we believe our citizens will understand. I don't think we're going to be any less welcoming by not starting our meeting out with the standard ritual."

That Councilman Brausen would flippantly dismiss our Pledge as merely a "standard ritual" hints at the shallowness of his understanding of the involved sacred matter.

And his invocation of progressive buzz phrase "diverse" bears examination. In light of his action against America's Pledge, he clearly means diversity of national loyalty. 

Just think about that: An American city council encouraging disloyalty to our country. If anyone doesn't want to be an American citizen, and support our nation over others, why are they here? And why are Brausen and his council comrades abetting their traitorousness?

Brausen was also reported by the Minnesota Sun to have lamented:
"[S]ome of us feel like patriotism has been so politicized that it's almost used as a weapon against people, and we're worried about that."

Brausen couldn't be more wrong. Proclaiming rightly prideful national loyalty is not a negative. It is a joyful assertion of who we are, and that America is a unique nation. No one should ever be ashamed to be an American.

Council member Anne Mavity tried to have it both ways. She voted to banish the Pledge of Allegiance from meetings of the council, a part of the American government, but also told the Star Tribune "We all love our country dearly, and we demonstrate that by our service as elected officials all the time."

But by their votes ye shall know them, Can there be anything more cruelly cynical than exploiting a country's opportunities to feather one's own nest, then claiming nobility while stabbing it in the heart? 

(Remember, too, that unprincipled bureaucratic functionaries like Mavity enjoy employ in oppressive governments around the world. Municipal position alone hardly bespeaks goodness.)

Mavity's is a peculiar and maloderous case. She has littered her Twitter page with paeans to vile anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar, giving evidence of hostility toward America prior to her attack on the Pledge.

Several Twitter denunciations of Mavity and the anti-Pledge council merit inclusion, here:


"Anne Mavity is a disgrace to this country. What kind of council member does not support the Pledge in a meeting? What an embarrassment! #America #PledgeOfAllegiance." 


"DISGUSTING. I went to the Naturalization Ceremony at Xcel on Monday, and those new citizens said the pledge. Your PC crap is a disgrace. Resign your position. Along with this cupcake Tim Brausen."


"I'm 4th generation MN and my family faced enormous hardships to get here and build their farms. If u can't say pledge and support US than go find a country you can support, but for God's sake stop denigrating the place my father, uncles fought to protect."


"What a sad state of the Left in this country. Your agenda is to kill patriotic values through 'death by a thousand paper cuts,' History will judge you for the traitor you are."


"Anne Mavity' remarks about the pledge of allegiance demonstrates that she is not supportive of American values. She should resign or be removed and never hold an office of public trust."


Echoing Tim Brausen's "standard ritual" slight of the Pledge, Mavity told the press the Pledge was a mere "unnecessary component."

The Pledge of Allegiance symbolizes loyalty to a nation unprecedented in world history. A country in which opportunity and upward mobility are every man's treasure. One that gave countless lives around the world in defense of freedom; not just our own, but countries near and far that relied on our instinctive sense of decency.

Ours is an exceptional land of invention and industry. An economic superpower that provides healthy sustenance to families from coast to coast. A beacon to all around the globe that oppressed men can stand up. A country whose brilliant Constitution was forged by men far superior to any today who effectively spit on our forbears' sacrifices.


The Star Tribune offered a racial breakdown of the area, as if that were at all relevant. 'American' is a nationality, not a racial designation. A person can and should be proud to be an American, and feel that more than any other trait unites them with fellow citizens.

America is inclusive of all its people. But it's got a history, Constitution, national sovereignty, and particular character. Everyone in the world isn't an American. Nor should this nation be expected to abandon legitimate definitional properties and lose its singular identity to assuage the sensibilities of vote-clutching opportunists and newly arrived subversives.

Patriotism is necessarily exclusive. It celebrates and honors a particular country, not every world nation. That exclusivity must be maintained for the faith to have substance. Nationalism and globalism are at cross purposes.

Legal American citizens should, and have every right, to feel that our country is our home. Its interests are our interests. When it is strong and successful, we are, too.

And we damn sure do say the Pledge of Allegiance.