Making a List and Checking It Twice

Christmas is around the corner, and so the mind naturally wanders to the subject of gifts and lists of who has been naughty and nice.

     According to the political Left, Trump has been very naughty. So naughty that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has unilaterally said that the House will begin impeachment proceedings. In fact, some "respectable" news sources are so excited that they are suggesting that both President Trump and Vice President Pence could be removed from office, leaving Nancy Pelosi the president (see, e.g., The Hill and The Washington Post).

     There are various theories why the Democrats would suddenly decide to try impeachment, some of which I discussed before. One theory is that Attorney General Barr is about to release a report into the conspiracy behind the Russian collusion allegations, along with a slew of criminal indictments, and so the Democrats and their handlers are panicking.

     Another theory, for the more Machiavellian of you, is that this is an indirect method by a faction within the Democratic party to remove Biden from the Presidential race since it will expose Biden's past corruption and business dealings. And Biden has a lot that he doesn't want brought to the public's attention.

     But one that I came across the other day suggests that this is all the result of the insular nature of our ruling elites. Larry Kummer, in his article, "A big question: why do Democrats want to impeach Trump?", suggests that the Democrats "have developed epistemic closure: a self-contained social system in which people’s thinking is unaffected by criticism of their logic or fact by those outside the circle." He adds: "Many on the Left and Right live in self-imposed bubbles, defined by whom they talk to, watch, and read. Untethered from reality, these bubbles detach from reality and float away." There is a lot to commend the view that the 1% are untethered from reality. Peter Turchin related last year:

Last year I had an interesting conversation with someone I’ll call the Washington Insider. She asked me why my structural-demographic model predicted rising instability in the USA, probably peaking with a major outbreak of political violence in the 2020s. I started giving the explanation based on the three main forces: popular immiseration, intra-elite competition, and state fragility. But I didn’t get far because she asked me, what immiseration? What are you talking about? We’ve never lived better than today. Global poverty is declining, child mortality is declining, violence is declining. We have access to the level of technology that is miraculous compared to what previous generations had. Just look at the massive data gathered together by Max Rosen, or read Steven Pinker’s books to be impressed with how good things are.

Turchin goes on to explain how real wages, which grew steadily through the 20th Century, have stagnated since around 1970 (and relative wages had started to decline even earlier), with much of the commensurate harm. Men have been hit the hardest, and Turchin believes that the declining labor participation rate of men can be directly tied to decreasing demand for labor. And the cause of this? According to Turchin, it is "a combination of immigration, loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, massive entry of women into the labor force (thus, this factor both inflated household income and, perversely, depressed wages for men), and changing attitudes towards labor." And the elites either don't know or don't care. As Vox Day summarizes it: "What we've witnessed over the last 50 years is the mass transfer of American wealth and property title from the middle classes to the elite of the US elite. These indicates that revolution is coming, sooner or later, in one way or another."

      Getting back to the topic at hand, this "living in a bubble" theory is that the Democrats have realized that Trump is going to win the 2020 election, and this is a last ditch attempt to prevent it from happening. Or, as one political commentator put it:

      Democratic Party members smell something, and they think they’re sure is blood, without ever contemplating it might be their own. They’ve all been thinking impeachment for a long time, and now more than ever, because they appear to realize it might be the only way to get rid of Trump and get their people in charge, that the ballot box may well not deliver that outcome.

      Ryan Grim’s piece for the Intercept provides a a good picture of what is going on in Dem Camp, not because it’s so well written, it’s actually quite shaky, but because between the lines the despair seeps through. Do read the whole thing, it’s worth the while because it tells a story nobody really talks about.

      That is, on various levels of the US political system, Democratic party candidates have become increasingly fearful of losing their seats, and impeachment must bring them ‘salvation’. You get the idea it’s not even so much about what Trump does, but squarely about him standing in their way, like he stood in Hillary’s.

And yet they ignore the possible implications of pursuing impeachment for the sake of pure spite.

      Pastor Robert Jeffress on Fox News Channel apparently commented on the proposed impeachment and stated that "It will cause a Civil War-like fracture from which our Country will never heal." Which, in my mind, seems a fair assessment. But, when Trump tweeted this comment, he was immediately criticized, including from members of the GOP.

     Of course, it isn't just Trump where the elite demonstrate life in a bubble. We see this with gun control. For instance, Beto O'Rourke went to Kent State University to argue that only the government should have guns. Yes, that Kent State where, in 1970, four students were killed and nine others injured when National Guard troops fired on a group protesting the Vietnam War. "Invoking armed agents of the state gunning down unarmed civilians is an interesting way to argue that Americans would be better off if the government forcefully disarmed private citizens," wrote Eric Boehm at Reason.com.

     But there are a lot more politicians and pundits that have publicly stated that they want to take your guns, as if a confiscation scheme would have no consequences. David Burkhead has put together a lengthy list of such folks, and quotes, for your perusal. He continues to add to the list, so check back and periodically download it for future reference. Such lists have value because there will be a day of reckoning, as Kurt Schlichter explains:

No, not the physical danger that collaborators would inevitably face enforcing such illegal commands, though we’ve seen the bloody results of such tyranny before and it sure won’t be The Waco Kid going through the door. This is about the other consequences of abandoning one’s oath. It is about the consequences that would come when the rule of law returns and justice demands to be done. Because there will be an accounting before the law for anyone who swore to defend the Constitution and then willingly does the opposite.