THE COLUMN: The Untouchables

In the movie The Untouchables, written by David Mamet and directed by Brian De Palma, a streetwise Irish cop named Malone tries to educate a starry-eyed fed named Eliot Ness in the ways of Chicago justice when up against an implacable, deadly opponent like Al Capone. The scene has become justly famous for this line: "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. THAT'S the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone."

But for our purposes here, what even more important is the exchange between Sean Connery and Kevin Costner that immediately precedes it:

Ness: I want to get Capone! I don't know how to get him.

Malone: [talking privately in a church] You said you wanted to know how to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I'm saying, what are you prepared to do?

Ness: Everything within the law.

Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the ball on these people Mr. Ness you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won't give up the fight, until one of you is dead.

Well, that's the question, isn't it? In a battle between good and evil, with the law having gone over to the side of evil—as it had in the gangland Chicago of the 1920s and '30s—what are the good guys prepared to do? With the country-as-founded now being shot out from underneath us on a near-daily basis, how do concerned citizens fight back?

The electoral system? Since the election of George W. Bush in 2000, there have been at least three presidential votes in which the losing side has contested the outcome; Bush's hanging chads, Hillary Clinton's baseless charge of "Russian collusion" against Donald Trump in 2016, and the chaos of 2020 that installed longtime hack politician Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. in the Oval Office. Of these, the two most recent are best viewed in tandem. The Left was taken by surprise by Trump's Electoral College victory (the only kind that counts) and, starting the day after the vote, launched its plan to make sure they'd never be robbed by what they thought was a fixed fight again.

Read this—"Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition" from something called the Electoral Integrity Project and weep:

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Some of their thoughts:

The concept of “election night,” is no longer accurate and indeed is dangerous. We face a period of contestation stretching from the first day a ballot is cast in mid-September until January 20. The winner may not, and we assess likely will not, be known on “election night” as officials count mail-in ballots. This period of uncertainty provides opportunities for an unscrupulous candidate to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process and to set up an unprecedented assault on the outcome. Campaigns, parties, the press and the public must be educated to adjust expectations starting immediately.
A determined campaign has opportunity to contest the election into January 2021. We anticipate lawsuits, divergent media narratives, attempts to stop the counting of ballots, and protests drawing people from both sides. President Trump, the incumbent, will very likely use the executive branch to aid his campaign strategy, including through the Department of Justice. We assess that there is a chance the president will attempt to convince legislatures and/or governors to take actions – including illegal actions – to defy the popular vote.

"Dangerous" it is for sure. One instant solution is to restore Election Night to its one-day, one-vote place in the proper scheme of things. And note for the record that "an unscrupulous candidate" describes Mrs. Clinton's churlish and criminal response to her loss in 2016 far better than it does Trump's. As for defying the popular vote, so what? That vote means nothing until the Left finally passes its National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and thus eliminates the Electoral College by unconstitutional means.

Because they are the law.

Some of their solutions:

Plan for a contested election. If there is a crisis, events will unfold quickly, and sleep-deprived leaders will be asked to make consequential decisions quickly. Thinking through options now will help to ensure better decisions. Approach this as a political battle, not just a legal battle. In the event of electoral contestation, sustained political mobilization will likely be crucial for ensuring transition integrity. Dedicated staff and resources need to be in place at least through the end of January.
Address the two biggest threats head on: lies about “voter fraud” and escalating violence. Voting fraud is virtually non-existent, but Trump lies about it to create a narrative designed to politically mobilize his base and to create the basis for contesting the results should he lose. The potential for violent conflict is high, particularly since Trump encourages his supporters to take up arms.

Except that politically mobilized Trump supporters didn't take up arms on Jan. 6, and as for "violence," the patsy protesters had nothing on the Antifa and Black Lives Matters thugs during the Summer of Floyd of blessed but rapidly fading memory, his work on earth here now done.

If not the system (which as I noted here and here, IS the steal, having now effectively legalized voter fraud), then what? Certainly not the courts. Time after time, suits have been brought in response to this or that enormity, only to have the courts dismiss the plaintiffs as "without standing." Most egregious of the recent examples was Texas v. Pennsylvania in late 2020, in which Texas and other states sued Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—the states that handed Biden his "win"—for changing their election laws (owing in large part to the Covid hoax) by means other than legislative, in clear violation of the Constitution.

Further, the suit was brought directly to the Supreme Court under Article III of the federal constitution which cites disputes between and among states as one of the Court's few "original jurisdiction" powers. This was the only one of the many suits launched by or on behalf of the Trump campaign that had a legitimate chance of winning, but of course the Roberts Court wanted nothing to do with it, and drop-kicked it through the goalposts of infamy. "Without standing"? If the citizens of the several states and the states themselves, whose initial compact resulted in the creation of the federal government in the first place, don't have standing, then who the hell does?

As the members of the Court, especially its weak and cowardly Chief Justice, John Roberts, wonder why the Court's reputation has fallen into such disrepute, its abandonment of its constitutional role as an arbiter and its arrogation of legislative authority with the Marbury power grab of 1803 surely has everything to do with it. Congress, by the way, could strip the court of its "judicial review" powers any time it wanted to, but of course it never will.

And speaking of the Congress—that "parliament of whores" in the late P.J. O'Rourke's famous phrase—the recent revelations of the Twitter Files, the display of the hidden Jan. 6 videos, and the scalded-vampire reaction to their publication and broadcast by such "Republicans" as Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, and Thom Tillis (whoever he is) have pantsed and unmasked the distaff-bitch side of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party. One of the most enduring effects of Elon Musk, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss' bravery in pulling back the McConnell curtain will be the public realization, at long last, of the perfidy of the establishment Republicans, and the understanding that this is why nothing ever changes, even when the GOP is in power.

No surcease from the courts or the Congress, then. Meanwhile, the addlepated but deeply malevolent Joe Biden, who continues his payback war against everyone who wrote him off half a century ago as a malignant idiot, continues to illustrate the truth of "Irish Alzheimer's," which is that you only remember the grudges. Wrecking the economy, annihilating longstanding societal norms in the name of "equity", picking a fight with Russia like a drunk in a bar nearing closing time, shuttling his treasury secretary over to the Ukraine as techbro banks collapse literally overnight, Biden is the most destructive president in American history, even worse than Woodrow Wilson: like Wilson he disbelieves in the Constitution; unlike Wilson, he openly despises his country and his countrymen and acts on it every day.

So what are you prepared to do? The recent midterms, which were supposed to have been a spanking for the Democrats, barely moved the needle. The sudden appearance of Kevin McCarthy's backbone as speaker of the House has been a pleasant surprise (and thanks to the Freedom Caucus for holding his feet to the fire until they got what they wanted), but the superannuated Senate led by two ambulatory stereotypes, Chuck Schumer and Turtle McChao, is functionally dysfunctional, held periodic hostage by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and now boasting both a vegetable in John Fetterman and its very own Lady Gaga in Dianne Feinstein. There is much talk of partition, even of civil war.

Yet most of us continue to believe in America; like the movie version of Eliot Ness, we've sworn to do "everything within the law" to try and right the ship of state before, like all previous democracies, it sinks beneath the waves of historical reality. As I often say about the imported "critical theory" Left, they never stop, they never sleep, they never quit. They won't give up the fight until one of us is dead.

So then what are you prepared to do?

Let's hope it never comes to this. Better it should end this way, with America restored as the gangsters are sent scurrying for jail or their rodent holes:

One way or another, that's how you get Capone. Which is it to be?

THE COLUMN: From Hell's Heart

After Joe Biden's disgraceful speech last week —the worst and most deliberately provocative bully pulpit address in American history—many people have finally woken up to the very real threat threat of Leftist fascism (historically, there is no other kind) and its burning desire for civil war, and have begun asking themselves: what if this idiot is serious?

That Biden is, in fact, an idiot, is beyond dispute. For more than half a century this thoroughly nasty piece of work has been bullying, blustering, bragging, plagiarizing, insulting, sliming, and attacking his political enemies—who now apparently include anyone who opposes him and his criminal Anti-American Party—without any fear of reprisals whatsoever. Since he spent most of that time in Congress, profiting handsomely at the public teat, attacking Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, he was immune from consequences thanks to the Speech and Debate clause in the Constitution: the same Constitution he now openly despises and seeks to supplant.

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

Bidding fair to claim the title of Second-Worst Irish-American politician in American History, and closing fast on the current titleholder, Ted Kennedy [the noxious "Robert Bork's America" speech begin at 25:38 and is well worth a watch], Biden vilified his predecessor, his supporters, and by extension every American who voted for the Republican candidate during the contentious and hotly contested 2020 election. You can see the hatred and the anger on his face as he "calls for unity":

The fact is, Biden is Fredo Corleone without the wit, charm, or brains: "I can handle things. I'm smart. It's not like everybody says, I'm dumb. I'm smart and I want respect." He is Ubu Rex without the self-restraint, a Roman emperor who judging from the two Marines outrageously stationed behind him actually trusts his Praetorian Guard. Like another National Socialist who instantly comes to mind, he's forever mad at the world for not recognizing his talent and his genius and will show us who's boss or die trying.

Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country. These are hard things. But I’m an American President — not the President of red America or blue America, but of all America. And I believe it is my duty — my duty to level with you, to tell the truth no matter how difficult, no matter how painful. And here, in my view, is what is true:

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself. MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

Caligula and the Praetorians in 41 AD: oops.

All of these "rights," of course, are not rights but policy prescriptions of the Left. There is no enumerated, nor implied, "right" in the Constitution to "choose" to murder your unborn children, to contraception, to "marry who[m] you love." "Privacy," unenumerated, is something we would all like to have, but given the initial privacy violation of the 16th amendment, which has made the lives and ledgers of every citizen open to the inquiries of the state, and to which the presumption of innocence does not apply, it's a little late for a "progressive" Democrat to be bitching about loss of privacy. More of what in decent Irish neighborhoods used to be called fighting words:

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots. And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections. They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.

Make no mistake: despite Biden's walk-back the next day—for members of Congress, words have no lasting meaning— this was an evil speech and tantamount to a declaration of war on both conservatives and a Republican Party that, however poorly, represents them. It should have been immediately been greeted with articles of impeachment by the hapless, cowardly, and contemptible GOP, but of course it wasn't. Biden and Left have backed the Chicken Party into a corner, from which they cannot fight back without giving MSM credence to the charges he just laid against them. Grandpa Joe (more like your Wicked Uncle Ernie from Tommy), a veteran of nearly half a century of "reaching across the aisle" in order to pick the country's pockets, may be dumb but he's not stupid. He knows his enemies and their foolish desire to be loved by the press, and knows that they won't dare stop him as he fiddles about.

Despite his manifest unworthiness for the highest office in the land, Joe Biden is in a way the perfect president for our times. Since Reagan, and with the partial exception of Donald Trump, we have had a parade of base, weak, conniving, corrupt, and otherwise unsuitable presidents, so why should he be any different? In latter-day America, only scions and plutocrats need apply: starting with the CIA's very own commander-in-chief, George H.W. Bush, we've had William Jefferson Blythe III, George W. Bush (aka Junior), Barack Hussein Obama II, Donald J. Trump, and now Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. And if the president's staff of Drs. Feelgood can keep him ambulatory and relatively sentient and publicly continent until January 2025, there's a very good chance he'll be POTUS again, especially if he runs against his fellow obsessive geriatric, Trump.

Die, MAGA, die!

Like Captain Ahab in Melville's masterpiece, Moby-Dick, JB, Jr., has finally harpooned his nemesis, the American government, determined at last to make the magnificent monster pay for laughing at him all these years.

But the Whale is bigger than Biden, and swims in a school far beyond his understanding or ken. On Thursday night, Robinette's concluding words were:

And I have no doubt — none –– that this is who we will be and that we’ll come together as a nation. That we’ll secure our democracy. That for the next 200 years, we’ll have what we had the past 200 years: the greatest nation on the face of the Earth. We just need to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America. (Applause.) And may God protect our nation. And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy. God bless you all. (Applause.) Democracy. Thank you. (Applause.)

What they should have been were: "From Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." Ahab's last words, just before the White Whale drags him down to Davy Jones' Locker. Talk about a call for unity: the (applause) on both sides of the aisle, from both satanic Left and patriotic Right, would have been thunderous.

THE COLUMN: Invasion of the Body-and-Soul Snatchers

Elon Musk, after me the foremost scourge of Twitter, is much in the news these days. Not only for his high-stakes poker game against the unworthy likes of Parag Agrawal—an Indian immigrant with a bad attitude toward the First Amendment, doing the job (with a handsome pay package) that Americans just won't do—but for his direct challenge to the Wokerati whose private preserve Twitter, Disney, Netflix, and just about every other aspect of the culture have become. Naturally, the eccentric multi-billionaire immediately came "under fire," as the gun-shy media likes to say, for past sins real or imagined, and immediately turned the tables on his accuser in a way that even Bill Clinton never dared to do.

But as we've all learned over the past several decades, truth is irrelevant to the Leftist project, whose two-step program for fundamental transformation goes like this. First, posit a counter-factual. Second, act on it as if it were true while browbeating the bejesus out of your opponents. Lately, it doesn't matter how counter-factual or, indeed, utterly ridiculous it is: men can get pregnant, police should be defunded, and the "right" to an abortion can be found in the Constitution. The Hive Mind pushes these precepts and many more, and if you don't agree, then the only explanation is that you're some sort of racist or bigot, now the dirtiest words in the English language. There is no longer any such thing as dispassion, and the time for debate, disagreement, and rational discussion is over. Get with the program, comrade.

Run! It's Dave Chappelle!

This is what happens when everything—sex, race, sports, politics, music, culture, pancake mix, butter, baby formula, religion, the nation-state, your Aunt Hilda—becomes political. Musk has, correctly, described such conformity as the "woke mind virus." Such a state of affairs is in fact the end-state of "progressive" cultural-Marxist thinking, which has substituted the permanent imposition of political correctness in place of what economic Marxism had initially anticipated, which in the words of Friedrich Engels was the "withering away" of the State itself.

The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not ‘abolished.’ It dies out.

Wrong again, Freddy! What the Marxists discovered after they sandbagged the first, anti-Tsarist Russian Revolution and replaced it with their own, is that the State and its coerced minions in private enterprise come in very handy if you're a power-mad atheist bent on cultural destruction and your own supreme power. It took 75 years of Soviet communist rule, the blunt-force application of a central-European anti-capitalist philosophy promulgated by a malevolent hobo and his rich benefactor, for the Russian people to learn the partial error of their ways. In the meantime, the State never died out.

The "withering away" of the State is in fact the last thing the Left wants, especially as the Great Reset dawns in Davos. Oh, the nation-state can go once they have captured its armed forces; after all, such outmoded concepts as a "nation" only encourage such nasty concepts as nationalism, which must be stamped out by any means necessary. The communist Left didn't win its prolonged struggle with its former ally, National Socialist Germany, to countenance allegiance to something at once both higher and baser than the abstract ideal of International Socialism. That the version the Left is currently trying to impose upon us looks much more like the fascism of the Nazis than the communism of Stalin is left unremarked. But hey—omelets and eggs.

Which brings us back to Wokism -- now, amazingly, suffering a series of defeats as the Zeitgeist turns. In Florida, the thrashing of the Walt Disney Company by Gov. Ron DeSantis—the next GOP candidate for president, if the Republicans have any sense— vividly demonstrated how far the force of will, painfully applied, and an absolute refusal to accept their literally insane premises can go toward reversing the course of degenerate political correctness. DeSantis has shown that one arrogant corporation's "progressivism" is another man's sexual perversion, and that decent folks draw the line at the grooming of their defenseless children by those who can't reproduce any other way, whether by the House of Mouse or proselytizing operatives working within the taxpayer-supported public-school systems. The withering State is not so much fun when it's punching back, is it?

The quick rout of the Ministry of Truth under its nasty Gauleiterin, Nina Jankowicz, was also an encouraging sign, although technically the "Disinformation Governance Board" is only "suspended" pending an assessment by two of the most dedicated statists in recent history, Michael Chertoff and Jamie Gorelick. Naturally, the lickspittle media is furious: "The fate of the board is yet more proof that efforts to combat even clearly threatening disinformation will always be ripe targets for the purveyors of disinformation, and officials should have better anticipated and handled this obvious dynamic," huffed the once-respected Columbia Journalism Review, echoing the anti-freedom sentiments of Walter Lippmann in his 1922 treatise, Public Opinion.

Careful! It might be Nina Jankowicz!

Even more fun has been the collapse of Netflix, a company that is living proof of Erick Hoffer's maxim that "every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." What started as a way to make movies available to everybody for a small subscription price turned into a market-cornering monstrosity and ultimately into the woke "Streaming Service," which sought to replace the studios as the principal financier and greenlighter of motion pictures. It borrowed a fortune, produced next to nothing of value, drove good scripts out of the market, and has damn near destroyed the picture business by replacing professionalism with aspirationalism.

Faced with a subscriber exodus, a shareholders' lawsuit, and a loss of some $200 billion in market capitalization, and finally paying the financial penalty for trying to force endless remakes of Moonlight and other woke sermons down everyone's throat, Netflix has suddenly had an attitude adjustment:

More significantly, the document adds a new directive for employees to act with fiscal responsibility — a change that comes as Netflix in Q1 saw its first decline in subscribers in more than a decade. The updated Netflix Culture memo also includes a new section called “Artistic Expression,” explaining that the streamer will not “censor specific artists or voices” even if employees consider the content “harmful,” and bluntly states, “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

And then there's Nancy Pelosi and her effective excommunication from the Catholic Church. Who says there's no good news? Would that Robinette—just banned from entering Russia— could be next.

Still, in the aftermath of the Great Covid Panic of 2019-22, the American economy continues to crater. Soaring gas prices at the pump, occasioned by Biden's cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline and all the anti-energy policies that have since followed, are only the most outward manifestation of the rot at the heart of the American experiment. Not just content with your body, the spirit-sapping demons unleashed by the Frankfurt School hunger for your soul as well. They want their passionate desire to kill children in the womb to remain uncensured by society and have not only protested but threatened violent riots should the Supreme Court stick to its convictions and overturn the moral enormity of Roe v. Wade this term.

Just close your eyes and everything will be all right.

The stock market also recently has had one of its worst weeks ever, and polls show most Americans have utterly lost confidence in the Biden administration. Even worse, Biden's crack foreign-policy team is now encouraging historically neutral Finland to join a superfluous and outmoded NATO and thus fall under the alliance's Article 5 provision of "collective defense" should the Finns, as they often do, get into a spat with the bear next door. For those scoring at home, this is essentially how World War One started, but who reads history any more?

To add insult to injury, the country and its nursing moms are suffering through an absolutely predictable, government-created shortage of baby formula, apparently on the moral principle that if you can kill babies in the womb right up to the moment of birth, you might as well go the extra mile and starve them to death after they're born. In a reversal of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift, airmen from the Ramstein Air Base in Germany have shipped over pallets of Nestle Health Science Alfamino Infant and Alfamino Junior formula: Operation Fly Formula.

The formula shortage will eventually ease. But something else will take its place. The litany of potential disasters under Joe Biden is endless, each baleful new development replicating like the pod people of Don Siegel's classic 1956 film, sucking the life out of human beings and institutions, absorbing mind and memory, and leaving nothing but husks behind. They never stop, they never sleep, they never quit.

You wanted "malaise," America? You "voted" for it—and you got it.

By the way, have you heard about monkeypox? Not a worry for you, you say? After all, "most initial cases of monkeypox have been among gay or bisexual men who have had sex with other males." Silly fellow. The Disinformation Governance Board, currently disguised as a giant watermelon, would like a word with you. As Kevin McCarthy (the actor, not the politician) warns at the end of Body Snatchers: "You're next!"