Overgrown bullies

The week thus far has seen a booby-prize collection of overgrown bullies, masquerading as adults, emerge in American politics. All of them are on the left, consistent with the ideology of the left, and its basis. Most members of this collection display the kind of carping one sees in middle – not even high – school. But some of it is very serious, and reflects broken promises of government service, and perversion of government’s core functions.

The overgrown middle-school bullies

“Middle school” comprises the fifth through eighth grades in America – the top two grades of what earlier generations called “elementary school,” plus the two grades those same generations once called “junior high school.” Sadly, the abandonment of the “junior high school” term becomes appropriate. “Junior high” was a place of heightened expectations of mature behavior. Your editor once had a sixth-grade teacher often declaim,

When you get into junior high, they won’t tolerate this kind of behavior!

That particular school district also published a guidebook for sixth graders near the end of the year, with this title:

Take one giant step from 6^th to 7^th.

That’s not true any longer, and hasn’t been true for thirty to forty years.

Any teacher in middle school knows that every middle school has its cadre of bullies. They will criticize every aspect of a target’s habitus, dress, and behavior. Sometimes their carping is self-contradictory.

Take, for example, the criticism offered at Politico.com of Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) for having a beard and mustache. Columnist Joe Navarro offered it in his piece, “Eight Body Language Tells from the Vice-Presidential Debate.”

One of the first bits of nonverbal communication to appear in the debate was on JD Vance’s face: his beard.… Our appearance is fundamental to our body language, and research indicates that voters see beards as (surprise, surprise) more masculine. That can be positive to some, reading as strength and competence. But to others, especially women, it can be negative, conveying aggression and opposition to feminist ideals.

Emily Schultheis, also at Politico, criticized that beard last summer. She raised the same issue:

By sporting a beard, Vance is on the cutting edge of a generational shift in facial hair styles — but he’s also in uncharted, potentially tricky territory. He, and by extension Trump’s campaign, are betting that voters will see his facial hair as a sign of Vance as the rugged everyman — “a young Abraham Lincoln,” as Trump said earlier this month — rather than giving off undertones of an untrustworthy aggressor.

She went on to describe how men, especially in politics, shaved their beards and mustache when King Camp Gillette invented safety razors with disposable blades. Her message is clear: that beard is uncool, uncouth, and unfriendly. But by her own admission, that stigma, which might have held as recently as 2015, no longer holds.

More pathetic examples

Greg Price found that obsession with Vance’ beard and mustache “pathetic.”

Politico says JD Vance’s beard is toxic masculinity and Tim Walz’s bulging eyes show his “passion.”

This is so freakin pathetic lmfao. pic.twitter.com/q59VEY219D— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 2, 2024

It’s also an inconsistent dividing line; Special Counsel Jack Smith also sports a beard and mustache. (More about him below.)

Nor is this the only instance of adults engaging in middle-school-style bullying. The world saw it on MSNBC, after the Vice-Presidential debate. That’s when Rachel Maddow and “Joyless” Reid described the debate in terms that would mystify anyone who actually watched it. But another personality, Nicolle Wallace, said some even more embarrassing things – for herself. Concerning the CBS producers cutting off Vance’s microphone as he defended himself against a charge of distortion of fact:

If you’re a woman, that might be the worst moment JD Vance had because he was going to mansplain right over that mute button… I think that a lot of women in positions of authority that should command respect just by virtue of that dynamic will see themselves and some dude that disrespected them and talked over.

That’s not the way it works, Ms. Wallace – and if this is “mansplaining,” so be it. A person in authority, who breaks his (or her) own rules, invites contempt for his (or her) authority.

Rachel Maddow made things worse:

The substance of that moment was when he was lying about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, again, and Tim Walz had called him out on it, and then he was trying to say, no, no, I’m not lying. Let me tell you why I’m calling them illegal immigrants, even though they are not illegal immigrants; let me mansplain the law to you. And the moderators, in that point, not only muted his mic, but said, thank you for explaining the law, not what we’re asking you.

But that counts for almost nothing compared to what Ms. Wallace said next:

It’s the audacity. I agree with you that we’re in year nine, and no one knows how to cover the audacity, the audacity is it’s, is it’s—someone should have said, “Stop it, stop, stop. Are you effing kidding me?” And they should have, they should have dropped that F bomb, right?

I mean, they should just—we, this is a debate. This may be the only chance people have to see the difference, and instead, I’ll go back to my toothpicks. JD Vance just put one little toothpick on top of the other and said, “And I’m for this, and I’m for this, and I’m so sorry those women died.” They died because of Donald Trump.

One man had a litmus test for the people he put on the Supreme Court, and he put not one, not two, he put three on because they passed the litmus test that they would overturn Roe. And that’s why Amber died.

That’s why that little boy doesn’t have a mom, and nobody made that reality come to life. Because I think if you, even if you didn’t get the contrast you were looking for, neither did you get any, any, you know—wake up and smell the smelling salts. You know, you were sort of lulled into normalcy.

For the record, one Amber Thurman took mifepristone, then the usual prostaglandin analogue – without a doctor’s supervision – then developed sepsis. That caused her death. To suggest, as Mss. Wallace, Maddow, and Reid do (and Gov. Tim Walz did), that women shouldn’t have to indulge in “abortion tourism” to kill the babies they did not have to conceive, escalates middle-school-style bullying beyond the “mere words” level. Now it starts getting into sticks and stones. (By the way, Georgia has lapsed into abortion tourist-trap territory, after a State judge invalidated its six-week limit.)

More serious examples

Which brings us to examples of bullying that have real consequences for people, beyond someone telling them to shut up. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission revoked a contract award that would have seen Starlink stations in rural areas in 35 States. They did this after Musk bought Twitter and ousted another overgrown middle-school bully, Parag Agrawal, as CEO. Yesterday Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, pointed out that those stations could have saved lives during Hurricane Helene. Incredibly, the Biden-Harris administration tried to claim credit for a dual initiative by Musk and Donald Trump to bring Starlink to the affected areas.

Yesterday Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia unsealed a 165-page brief by Special Counsel Jack Smith. That brief alleges, with little supporting evidence, that Trump, acting as a candidate, abused his authority to “overturn” the Election of 2020. The judge also slapped a gag order on Trump, so that he cannot tell his side of events. Happily, that brief tells nothing new, whatever the legacy media might say about it. The judge obviously unsealed the brief to make Trump look bad. But CNAV predictshis supporters will treat it with the contempt it deserves. (As legal commentator Paul Ingrassia does.)

In two days Trump returns to the scene of the first attempt on his life this year. The Pennsylvania Department of State will shut down voter registration from 6:00 p.m. to midnight that day, for “maintenance.”

🚨ELECTION INTERFERENCE🚨

This Saturday, President Trump is returning to the Butler Farm Show grounds — it will receive nat’l attention.

Event begins @ 5 p.m.

The Pennsylvania voter registration website will be unavailable for maintenance from 6 p.m. – 12 a.m.

🚨ELECTION INTERFERENCE🚨

This Saturday, President Trump is returning to the Butler Farm Show grounds — it will receive nat’l attention.

Event begins @ 5 p.m.

The Pennsylvania voter registration website will be unavailable for maintenance

from 6 p.m. – 12 a.m.@PAStateDept pic.twitter.com/C0syYHSStI— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) October 3, 2024

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it’s enemy action. Ian Fleming

The bullies have cost lives

Even more serious is the government’s response to Tropical Cyclone Helene. CNAV has already mentioned their attempt to claim credit for Starlink installations in the affected areas. (Furthermore, had the FCC not revoked an award President Trump made in 2020, some people would be alive today.) According to the latest reports, the government can afford no more than $750 per person in the affected zone. This, said Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the zone for a photo-op, would come in the form of a check.One person flatly told Harris to insert that check where the Sun does not shine.

This morning, The Gateway Pundit passed along information from America First Legal. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent $1 billion on illegal immigrant resettlement. That’s why the government can only draw checks for $750 per person – a trifle.

Worse, the fire chief of Lake Lure, North Carolina, threatened a volunteer helicopter pilot with arrest in the middle of a rescue operation. He had to leave a would-be evacuee stranded as officials imposed temporary flight restrictions over the area. That evacuee had to swim across a rain-swollen river to get to some semblance of safety. Two different news organs – the New York Post and The Daily Mail – are waiting for comment from Lake Lure officials.

In another inexplicable development, Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) has so far neglected to cut mission orders for 1,000 National Guardsmen to respond to the disaster area.

According to a source in North Carolina, despite 1,000 troops being ready and authorized to respond in NC, FEMA Region 4 and Democrat NC Gov. Roy Cooper haven’t yet written up the mission orders that the troops need in order to be deployed. So those troops are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. It’s been 7 days since Hurricane Helene made landfall. What on earth are you doing, Roy Cooper and FEMA?

According to a source in North Carolina, despite 1,000 troops being ready and authorized to respond in NC, FEMA Region 4 and Democrat NC Gov. Roy Cooper haven’t yet written up the mission orders that the troops need in order to be deployed. So those troops are just sitting around…— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 3, 2024

Summary

The American political left is a gang of overgrown middle-school bullies. Worse yet, they have taken over the United States government and several State and local governments, and legacy media. In so doing, they have earned contempt for themselves. Unfortunately that contempt now extends to the institutions they have taken over.

The way to handle a bully who dispenses nothing but hurtful words is to ignore him. But when the bullying reaches the sticks-and-stones stage, that calls for a more decisive response. The response need not be in kind – and some kinds of bullying one may not repay in kind. (To do so often means harming innocent people.) But the response must be of a sort that will stop the bullying and deter future instances.

Only with your vote can a definitive, decisive response come about. That response will require the dismissal, arrest, and imprisonment of members of the government side of the Censorship Industrial Complex. Ideally it should include the removal of certain judges from the District and Appellate benches, on impeachment for, and conviction of, violations of Constitutional rights, and usurpation of reserved powers of the States. And where lives have been lost, charges of treason – levying war against one’s own country – would be appropriate.

If this does not happen, let everyone remember what Abraham Lincoln once said in connection with censorship on sensitive issues. To paraphrase:

There is a judgment and a feeling against [one-world socialism, reversed racism, and woke-ism] in this nation, which cast at least [seventy-five] million[s] of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling – that sentiment – by [falsely imprisoning or assassinating] the [champion who] rallies around it. [And even if you think you can, h]ow much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which [inspired him] out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would [secession of aggrieved States] be [made less or more likely] by the operation?

And:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by [threats] of destruction to [Constitutional] Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

And remember: the Texas Nationalist Movement is watching.