In 1983, Susan Rosenberg planted a bomb outside the US Senate chamber to assassinate Republican senators.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman @RepJerryNadler got Pres. Clinton to pardon Susan Rosenberg.

She’s now a board member of Black Lives Matter Network, Inc. pic.twitter.com/YchS2z5dFE

— Mike Yoder (@Yoder_Esqq) January 10, 2021

Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Ignorant Republicans rioted yesterday but didn’t even snag any free big-screen TVs out of the deal, sources at the Capitol Building reported.

The short-sighted protesters stormed the Capitol without stealing a bunch of stuff, prompting many to question whether they really understand the purpose of a peaceful protest at all.

“Look at these morons, rioting at the Capitol when there’s a perfectly good Target just down the street,” said one CNN reporter. “If they’d looted a bunch of local businesses in the name of social justice or whatever, we’d be covering this protest a heck of a lot differently, I’ll tell you that.

RTWT

“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.”

— Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Paris, January 30, 1787

I’m fond of reading Curtis Yarvin’s witty, learned, and cynical screeds. He, of course, needs an editor more than anyone who ever lived. Even I drew the line at some of the tangential riffs in this one, and edited out a few paragraphs.

He’s still worth a read.

The great coup of 2021

Borges, thou shouldst be living at this day.

Jan 8

I am not one to hyperbolize today’s news cycle. Actually almost nothing ever happens.

But the Great Coup of 2021 is one of the most amazing storylines in years or even decades, a kind of syzygy of news—a perfect juxtaposition of not two but three totally different narratives, each of which regards both others as dangerously insane—must present a natural feast for any historiographer of the present.

I wrote about this remarkable story the other day, while it was still happening. Today the story is what it’s done to people, which is absolutely remarkable and far greater than even I would have predicted. My wife described the attitude at her e-job as “9/12”—zero work is getting done.

Well—the present can suck to live through. But what else is there? And if you want to study bats, you have to go into the bat cave. You will get bat crap on you. My friends—today is a good day for bats. Shall we?

The three stories I’m about to highlight—which we could call the histrionic story, the hypochondriac story, and the historical story—form a kind of prism of narrative which perfectly illuminates not just the real events, but the world in which they can happen. …

The histrionic story

The histrionic story is the story of a true popular uprising crushed by a repressive regime—of course, the Trumpist narrative. The other day I took a shot at a couple paragraphs in this genre. And thought I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. Maybe I can get hired by TASS, Goebbels, NPR or OANN.

What’s so fascinating about the structure and content of the histrionic story is that, put under a microscope, it reveals itself as a kind of historical pastiche—a mosaic made from shards of actual, historical popular uprisings.

Pieces of our own Revolution are there; also the Bastille and even the Paris Commune. The Tea Party sits nervously next to the White Rose, thinking about whether to make a move on Sophie Scholl—alas, she has her heart set on Spartacus. The whole pageant of insurrection across the last four centuries, from the Grand Remonstrance to the Arab Spring, returns in the mosaic-chips of the broad panorama of MAGA, Trump and Q. Read the rest of this entry »

It is ironic and amusing that the Left which always sides with the criminals against the police, and which wants the police to be defunded and calls for policemen to be jailed when they are obliged to employ physical force against criminals resisting arrest, yesterday placed absolute reliance on the police, the military (whom they always betray and in which they do not serve), and the National Guard (consisting entirely of the deporables they despise) to protect them and to defend the confirmation of their stolen election from the righteous wrath of the offended American people.

Thomas Lifson: Trump calls for peace, tells demonstrators to go home and Twitter removes the post, suspends his account.

There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.
There’s a man with a gun over there,
Telling me I got to beware.