Kevin Williamson at NRO is beginning to see what we on this site have posited for quite some time now — and in fact, was the foundational assumption behind “outlaw” (which, as we know, was subsequently mocked by certain sanctimonious GOP bloggers who have determined that I must be driven off the intertubes): namely, that liberty and individual autonomy, the framework of classical liberalism or constitutional conservatism, as it’s more frequently labeled today, is far more widely appealing to Americans than both the progressives and the “pragmatic,” “compassionate conservative” big government white board fluffers would have us believe.
[…] astonishing fact: When it comes to the policy opinions of American voters, there have been three peak years for conservatism: 1952, 1980, and . . . right now, according to Professor James A. Stimson, whose decades-long “policy mood” project tracks the changing opinions of the U.S. electorate. Americans have grown more conservative on the whole, but the even more remarkable fact is that the electorate has grown more conservative in every state. As Larry Bartels points out in the Washington Post, the paradoxical fact is that Barack Obama was first elected in a year in which the American policy mood already was unusually conservative, and he was reelected in a year in which it had grown more conservative still. And so the question: Why did an increasingly conservative electorate elect and reelect one of the most left-wing administrations, if not the most left-wing, in American history?
That seeming paradox may be explained in part by the fact that the American public’s increasingly conservative views are not associated with an increased sense of identification with the Republican party. In late January 2004, Gallup found a Republican/Democrat split of 31 percent to 33 percent in the Democrats’ favor, with more identifying as independent (35 percent) than as a member of either party. In September of this year, those numbers were 22/31/45. Add in the “leaners” — those who do not strictly identify with one party but generally are inclined toward its views — and the GOP was at a 44/51 disadvantage in 2004, and today is at a 41/47 disadvantage. Which is to say, the Republicans lost 3 percent who didn’t move to the Democrats, and the Democrats lost 4 percent who didn’t move to the Republicans. Independents jumped from 35 percent to 45 percent during that period.
[…]
So as the electorate grows paradoxically more conservative and less friendly to Republicans, the challenge for the GOP is to figure out how to connect its conservatism with a conservative public that distrusts the conservative party. That doesn’t sound like a terribly difficult challenge, but it is. Conservatism is a philosophy, which is a different thing from a specific policy agenda. Talking endlessly about the middle class is not going to cut it, nor is tinkering with tax rates. And beyond the specific political platform, Republicans have to show that they can be trusted to govern with the best interests of the broad electorate in mind. In 2013, showing that Republicans can govern starts with Republican governors. If there is any upside to the shutdown showdown, it is that by highlighting the fecklessness and foolishness of Washington, it increases the odds that a governor rather than a senator will emerge to lead the GOP in the next great contest.
Leaving aside what is likely a thinly-veiled shot at Cruz and Lee — and perhaps even the feint toward a Chris Christie “inevitable” nomination — what is important to note here is that the country itself is conservative in the sense that it believes in fiscal restraint, a limited but responsive government, and then — beyond that — it wants to be left alone, to live freely, to pursue personal interests, to enjoy life without the constant intervention of government agencies or social engineers looking to tinker with citizens’ lives as if they were studying lab rats.
When I first wrote about what I called “outlawism” — which was captured nearly concomitantly in the spirit of the TEA Party movement — I was talking about a collection of those Democrats who still believed in individual liberty, personal responsibility, the “Protestant work ethic,” and fiscal sanity (the erstwhile Reagan Democrats) coupled to classical liberals, conservatives, and many libertarians, all of which shared the basic belief in the ideals set forth in our founding documents. That is to say, they may differ on certain policy issues, but they don’t differ on fidelity to the Constitution and the liberty it was designed to protect.
In 2008, Mitch McConnell told us the era of Reagan was over — and that the GOP risked becoming a regional party. On the first assertion he was spectacularly wrong, if you can believe Stimson’s policy mood data; but on the second point, he was correct, albeit not for reasons he tried — and the GOP establishment statists have tried repeatedly — to convince us of: the GOp risks becoming a regional party because increasingly it stands for nothing, preaches “pragmatism” rather than principle, and protects the status quo while attacking the conservative activists in its midst.
The establishment GOP pretended to learn from 2010’s elections, but instead, all they’ve done since is work to drive out the interlopers in their midst. Jindal is right that this is far more difficult to do at the state and local level, but that just highlights the disconnect — and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here, because personally I believe the break to be studied and intentional — the national GOP and its white board humping “architects” have with those who would naturally gravitate toward a party that extolled conservative principles and then acted upon them: rein in spending, decrease the size and scope of the federal government, downsize or cripple entrenched bureaucracies that serve only now to molest the American people, to drive up their fuel costs, punish their industry, and keep them forever bound in red tape, servants to an unelected branch of government that can only exist if national politicians agree to keep funding them.
Which is why I’ve been saying for years now that the two-Party divide is a ruse: the GOP establishment and the Democrats make up a perfectly copacetic ruling class elite, and the real second Party, the TEA Party, has been far more the object of GOP attacks than a Marxist President and his coterie of central planners and army of bureaucrats.
It is, as I’ve termed it repeatedly, the ruling class vs. the rest of us. And the problem is, more and more, the people don’t know where to turn for representation. Which is how a conservative nation is left with a progressive President: we are tired of being told we must settle for the lesser of two evils, and many conservative-leaning voters have simply tuned out the Republicans, and won’t go to bat for the likes of Mitt Romney or John McCain — particularly when they themselves won’t forcefully fight an opponent who has spoken of fundamental transformation and insists the Constitution is a flawed document that must be overcome by a program of theft and authoritarianism disguised as “social justice.”
The reason you saw the grass roots rise up recently — just as they did in 2010 — is because they saw a few brave politicians willing to fight for them. And the GOP went immediately into attack mode — not against Obama or Obamacare, which they’ve only tried to deal with symbolically — but rather against the presumptuous citizen legislators in the Senate who refuse to abide by the cozy rules of a sleezy, inbred, single-party system whose disagreements are often times nothing more than theater intended to keep the fund raising money flowing.
And no, it doesn’t help that so many professed “conservatives” undermine the efforts of actual conservatives, be it through leaks, or speeches on the Senate floor, or appearances with GOP boosters, or with articles or blog posts meant, ultimately, to keep the status quo while giving the appearance of agitating for change.
We see you now. And we’re disgusted.
the whore Team R senators like Meghan’s coward daddy and that old bitch from Maine screamed at Senator Cruz
spit was flying out of their mouths
he made them so mad
They never get that mad at food stamp.
Ted’s peeps just called asking for money. I gave him some. That NEVER happens.
Anybody besides me notice the phrase “be careful what you wish for” popping up here and there today in connection with the looming dissolution of the GOP?
To which I guess I’d say, sure, ok — but that’s only going to make us double-down on our “wishes”. Heck, maybe we’ll even go so far as to examine them carefully.
More and more people are realizing that our model of government is not a two-player zero-sum game. The data set is not {D, R}.
Leaving aside what is likely a thinly-veiled shot at Cruz and Lee — and perhaps even the feint toward a Chris Christie “inevitable” nomination
Is he the *only* governor out there? I can think of much better ones.
But if you look at the Empirical History, Senators generally *do not* directly become Presidents, or even Presidential losers. The Obamunist is something of a historical anamoly. And he had that race card to play, and a slavish press machine.
Governors do, very often.
Veeps also do often.
2012–Obamunist (senator turned incumbent) defeats Romney (governor)
2008–Obamunist (senator) defeats McLame (senator). Anamoly.
2004–Bush The Younger (governor turned incumbent) defeats “Jen-Jiss Caan” (senator)
2000–Bush The Younger (governor) defeats Goreon (veep)–narrowly.
1996–Clownton (governor turned incumbent) defeats Dole (senator)
1992–Clownton (governor) defeats Bush the Elder (veep turned incumbent)
1988–Bush The Elder (veep) defeats Do-cacas (governor)
1984–Uncle Ron (governor turned incumbent) crushes Mondull (veep)
1980–Uncle Ron (governor) crushes Jimmuh Carturd (incumbent)
1976–Jimmuh Carturd (governor) defeats Ford (appointed veep and not ever elected at that)
Shall I go on? Save for JFK in 1960, I can’t think of another successful Senator turned President in recent history. And he too had a slavish press machine behind him.
Beat me to it, Curmudgeon.
OT: Mike Lee just gave a gangbuster of a speech a t the Values Voter Summit. To ruin it, Brett Bozell follows to bitchfest (as usual). I’m hoping he is going to introduce Ted Cruz.
Jimmuh Carturd was also a governor turned incumbent.
1972–Tricky Dick (veep turned incumbent, unsuccessful governor run) crushes McGovern (senator)
1968–Tricky Dick (veep) defeats Hubie Humphrey (veep)
1964–LBJ (veep turned incumbent) sadly crushes Goldwater (senator)
Why is party leadership equivocated with Presidential runs or success getting into office, even? It needn’t be, save due to foul habit. Which is evinced by Williamson et alia here.
Why is party leadership equivocated with Presidential runs or success getting into office, even? It needn’t be, save due to foul habit. Which is evinced by Williamson et alia here.
Because empirical history is what it is.
Would I vote for candidate Cruz over Candidate Christie (even built like a rhino?). Of course. But I think *another governor* running in 2016 will do better than either of them and get the GOP nomination.
I will admit Generals also sometimes become president:
1956-Ike (general turned incumbent) crushes Stevenson (governor) again
1952–Ike (general) crushes Stevenson (governor)
1948-Truman (veep turned incumbent) defeats Dewey (governor)
Heck, to go back further:
FDR–governor before President. Before two term limit amendment (22nd)
Hoover–again an anamoly. Neither Senator nor Governor nor Veep
Oh bullshit with the history (and leave empty empiricism aside too, for that matter) Curmudgeon. Please.
What does Williamson say? “Conservatism is a philosophy, which is a different thing from a specific policy agenda.” What the hell is that about? If it’s remotely true, then “Conservatism” would want a philosopher for a leader, not a prancing pretender to the role of Statesman. But what in the hell is a philosopher? Anything remotely like a politician? Someone like John Rawls, say? Ha!
So we really do have a two party system. A Ruling Class Party (RCP) with progressive marxists on one end and entrenched “lower” taxers on the other. And a Tea Party with contitutionalists, libertarian, classical liberals on one end and social conservative bible thumpers on the another. There. If we start to view the political breakdown on these terms and refuse to linguistically or otherwise allow the GOP to claim some other party membership than that of the RCP we may end up at some pount coalessing around a party leadership that will repesent everyone who lives between New York and California. Conservative media are supporting the RCP and need to get off that wagon. The values of the Tea Party are clearly not represented by the RCP. On either end.
Oh bullshit with the history (and leave empty empiricism aside too, for that matter) Curmudgeon. Please.
Gee, you are sounding like a radical leftist academic there…..
Indeed, what makes the Obamunist so dangerous in my mind is his leftist theories don’t stand up to empirical real world history.
I certainly don’t want the bloated RINO as GOP nominee in 2016. But to stop him, it *probably* needs to be another Governor.
Unexamined habits of thought are nicely empirical phenomena, if you must insist on phenomena as touchstones. Take some time to look at them, then.
Unexamined habits of thought are nicely empirical phenomena, if you must insist on phenomena as touchstones. Take some time to look at them, then.
Governors (proto-executive branch presidents in many respects) are not “unexamined habits of thought”. Neither are veeps, for that matter, as they are official executive branch president under-studies.
That is how the real world works.
So what cool governors do/did we have? Jan Brewer of AZ? Bobby Jindal of LA? Rick Scott of FL? Rick Perry of TX? (Tanned, rested and ready this time around?) Mike Pence of IN? Scott Walker of WI?
We live in interesting times. Times that call for a breaking of the mold that insists on inevitability of certain Chosen. Chosen by whom?
Not by us, it would appear.
Don’t for a moment think I laugh with scorn at your “real world”. Because I do, and you’ve got your real world dignity to maintain. I have no dignity, so nothing to keep.
Wisconsin boy has the best record/least baggage of that crew plus he’s not a drooling momo like Rick Perry
Mitch Daniels is a dark horse possibility if his whore wife up and decides to shack up with one of her facebook friends or what have you
Don’t for a moment think I laugh with scorn at your “real world”. Because I do, and you’ve got your real world dignity to maintain. I have no dignity, so nothing to keep.
And again, you come across like an airy-fairy leftist academic. And they would respond to me with the same scorn, the same words even. Because *this time*, socialism would work because true progressives would be in charge, they would say.
Meanwhile, if Tom Tancredo runs for Governor in Jeff’s home state of CO, I am so donating money.
There ya go, ya real worlder, ya got me! I’m a leftist!
I’m resigning myself to the fact that the GOP Dream Ticket for 2016 will be Lindsay Graham and Lisa Murkowski. Or worse.
Mr. Curmudgeon that is not truwe what you said about how Mr. sdferr comes across
take a deep breath and maybe stop to enjoy a handful of Flavor-Blasted Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish Grahams! You will be glad you did and it will give you time to reflect on what Mr. sdferr is saying.
*true* i mean
Flavor-Blasted Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish Grahams are not in any way related to Princess Lindsey btw that’s just one of them weird coincidences
There ya go, ya real worlder, ya got me! I’m a leftist!
Way to be obtuse. Obviously, you are not a leftist. But like them, you are dealing in airy-fairy theory.
I am reminded of a good many in the Libertarian or American Independent/Constitution Parties. Not the “Legalize pot, man” caricatures. Real thoughtful people. But they could never win elections, as they had no idea how real politics works.
I’m resigning myself to the fact that the GOP Dream Ticket for 2016 will be Lindsay Graham and Lisa Murkowski. Or worse.
Hey, Sarah Palin was a great governor up there, which that RINO slut Murkowski never was. And closet case Lindsey Graham was never a Governor either.
And Empiricism isn‘t airy-fairy theory? Stop and think about that for a second. Or go back to the whole world, and leave the pitifully partial realism behind for an hour or two.
And Empiricism isn‘t airy-fairy theory? Stop and think about that for a second. Or go back to the whole world, and leave the pitifully partial realism behind for an hour or two.
Uh, NO, it isn’t. It is looking at what happened, again and again, and trying to understand why.
Leftists make up crap like a “labor theory of value”, while we on the Right understand that no matter how high quality the buggy whip is, a thing is only worth what other people will pay for it.
Again, I’m all for Ted Cruz for Prez in 2016. (Is he definitely running?)
But the odds suggest someone else, although anamolies do happen. I definitely don’t want it to be the gasbag governor from NJ.
That is all.
Did I say he was?
Williamson was a Romney guy. I drew an inference. If you want to point out that there are other governors he could have meant, have at it. But who is being pushed by the guys who pushed Romney?
Correction: Williamson on Twitter told me he was a Perry guy. I received bad info.
Although according to one source, Williamson said that those who distrust Romney (I’m guessing with respect to his claimed “severe conservatism”) must hate Obama, which completely conflates two different things: I detest Obama, but not because I distrusted Romney.
Obama earned that all by his lonesome!
The last one before Kennedy was Harding, who had been a lite-gubnor before becoming a Senator. But much depends on one’s definition of “successful.”
Since the Civil War the “best” way for a Senator to become President has been to become Vice President. That worked for both Johnsons, and Harry Truman. Also Nixon, eventually.
Amazingly, Obama and Harding have a great deal in common (save the womanizing). They, neither one take their job seriously and spend most of their time screwing off and throwing parties.
Beware of normalcy bias.
History has a lot to teach us, but you have to know which point in time to draw the lesson from. The latter half of the 20th century in the U.S. — when we were fat and happy and growing and stable and safe — is not the America we’re living in now, not by a long shot.
If you haven’t reconciled yourself to the fact that everything you thought you knew about U.S. politics has been skewed good and hard, you need to do so now, before you follow the coyote’s yellow line off the cliff or into the fake tunnel he painted on the rock wall.
We’re at a time where being “reasonable and rational” is not prudent, and when relying on our past experience can be foolish if not outright dangerous.
Think the unthinkable, then see if current trends indicate that the unpleasant men who took over the cockpit are actually going to plow the airliner into the North Tower. If they’ve made a U-turn and are headed toward lower Manhattan, there’s no reason to believe they’ll veer away at the last second.
“Flavor-Blasted Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish Grahams are not in any way related to Princess Lindsey”
Good, because that makes me think of some twisted sexual act involving Lindsey, Harry, Nancy, and Barry. A “San Francisco S’More”, maybe. Like calling a three-way a sandwich, only far, far more disgusting.
Sorry for that image.
Kennedy only appears successful because he was assassinated before his shit hit the fan. His was the prototype for the modern symbolism over substance Presidency.
Of course, it helps that he was a Democrat in that regard.
Princess Lindsey could’ve been the Truman Capote of our day I think
if he wasn’t so repressed and lapdoggish
Obama, Kennedy and Harding were the only Senators to make it to the White House
So your point of “successful” would hold, since Kennedy never really managed to do anything but pledge to take us to the moon (even though every manned lunar mission actually happened in Nixon’s term), and everything else he did got screwed up (Bay of Pigs, Missile Crisis, Withdrawal from Vietnam, etc.) and Harding was the first man elected from the Senate to the White House, and had his own bunch of problems (see also ‘Teapot Dome’…)
A little clarification. By “successful”, I meant successfully winning the White House, or even successfully becoming the nominee for that election year who wound up losing the White House. Not how the schmuck actually *performed* in office. (JFK was in many respects a disaster, although his understanding of “supply side” fiscal tax cutting policy to generate massive economic growth was years ahead of its time.)
But when it comes to becoming President, or even becoming the other guy who loses the Prez election, it happens to governors often, Veeps often, generals sometimes, Senators seldom, anyone lower than that, hardly.
Beware of normalcy bias.
History has a lot to teach us, but you have to know which point in time to draw the lesson from. The latter half of the 20th century in the U.S. — when we were fat and happy and growing and stable and safe — is not the America we’re living in now, not by a long shot.
Really? The 1970’s, as I recall, were a time of economic, cultural, and political decay, with the Soviet Empire seeming to take over more and more of the world, and *nothing* going right here at home. That sure wasn’t a good time.
With the Obamunists, I am getting that feeling again. Welcome back Carter, with Joe Biden as Horshack and Eric Holder as Epsteen.
Think the unthinkable, then see if current trends indicate that the unpleasant men who took over the cockpit are actually going to plow the airliner into the North Tower. If they’ve made a U-turn and are headed toward lower Manhattan, there’s no reason to believe they’ll veer away at the last second.
In this respect, I am seeing a disgusting revival of the “New Left”, which we thought we had stamped out in the 1980’s. But we had not.
For all the Leftist rhetoric about the “religious right” of the 1980’s and the “teabaggers” of today, the fact is that we on the Right have been on the defensive all this time. The cultural decay has been ever leftward. Stop abortions? Heck, we can’t even keep marriage what it always has been anymore.
And now they feel entitled to take from us. “White male” replaces “bourgeois” in Leftist denigration. And the ideology is to excuse robbing from both.
I take heart in the fact that most of us here and many other places no longer care what others, lefties for instance, think. This is what I love about the Young Turks: Lee, Paul, and Cruz. They talk the talk and aren’t afraid to get jeered or called names. It’s a huge “Fuck you” to the Establicons and it’s why they hate them.
The left has been treading water on being the party of “cool, tolerant and young” for too, too long. Look how old many of their standard bearers are. They’ve allowed themselves to be partitioned into smaller and smaller factions and are caricatures of themselves. The clown from Oregon with his bowtie and green bicycle pin. The Civil Rights warhorses who are stuck in 1963. The shrill Mafia princess, Pelosi and the rich bitches from California. What do they stand for?
Change is coming.
Since the Civil War, directly, without having held some other intervening office…
As I mentioned in my comment, there have been quite a few senators who got to be President — but very, very few got there directly from the Senate.
It is worth bearing in mind, of course, that only 43 men have ever been president.
it wouldn’t even be that many except the job is like a hundred years old
That’s a good and interesting reflection McG. Only about 43.
And how many of those, we might wonder, showed themselves actually to be any good at the job? Surely the vast majority! Right? Oh, maybe not. But lets us follow all those others who weren’t any good at the job! By Jove. Capital idea!
When it comes to the presidenting, these are obviously historical first times, and past performance does not indicate future expectations!
I mean, we got us a black dude, bro’s before ho’s and all that, but now it’s time for a woman. It’s inevitable. Then we gots to work in a homosexual feller, although depending on the womans, Hillary for example, the gay thang might be taken care of.
After that we haffta do a Hispanic or a handicapped. Either way.
It’s all ‘cuz of the social justice…
Hillary will be our first shrieking cave hag president.
I may have to move to Saskatoon if that’s our future.
When the whole world is Detroit will Nike market a special crumbling infrastructure/self defense shoe?
The ones best at the job of presidenting have tended to have experience at running enterprises of one sort or another; before the Civil War even a Senator would have been expected to have that before being sent to Washington to bloviate for a living.
They had a background in which leadership was demanded — where one simply did not excel without it. And no, exerting petty peer pressure didn’t qualify. Again, even a Senator would once have had to demonstrate such a skill before winning admission to the most exclusive debating society on earth.
If I had any doubts about the benefit of repealing the 17th Amendment, I think I may have just talked myself out of them.
We should half and half it. Der Staat picks one senator and ze’ pipples pick t’other.
Who is in the farm system for the dems. The only names i hear is Hillary or Warren or Biden.
In defense of sdferr from earlier, empiricism is how we ended up with a class of professional political apparatchiks who obsess about ways to keep lo-info voters fat, happy, stupid, and voting for their candidate.
And in defense of curmudgeon, the Republican half of that class, despite all evidence to the contrary, remains committed to the theory that you have to make those low-info voters like you by condescending to them.
Because that worked out so well for the Dole, McCain, and Romney campaigns.
I think Marxism is pseudo-empiricist. It uses empirical assumptions as a tool to demolish the credibility of spiritual or traditional viewpoints that might impede or weaken avenues of implementation but ultimately the Marxist entity favors information control and designated revisionism over empiricism. Science and nature are deemed as political as everything else and the needs of the revolution must always trump the lying eyes of the people when the two come into conflict. If Lysenko promises what the party wants then Lysenko-Michurinism IS the only true science as far as the people are concerned and recognizing otherwise is dissidence, madness, or sabotage. To defend the narrative of the theory and preserve the mandate of the theoreticians to, by consensus or concurrent imprimatur, dictate the particulars of the people’s view of reality, in the name of maintaining their health, unity, submission, morale, and productivity, all inconvenient or troublesome observations must be prodigiously re-sculpted, recanted, or left to go unacknowledged and undocumented. Such is the burden of those who dedicate themselves to facilitation of the historiographical dialectic of political progress.
Also, Bill Maher is a grody little tit head.
What Gus is saying is, just as faith without reason is brittle, reason without faith is brutal.
I’ve always thought of conservatism as more of a temperament or outlook or worldview than as a philosophy myself.
Conservatism is an aversion to moving the furniture around, getting more of it, or getting rid of it without a really good reason.
Conservatism taken too far (note the air of dependence and agoraphobia) looks like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mKIuZ4tIzk
——————————————————————————-
Progressivism someone with no carpentry experience deciding that the furniture is stupid and taking the furniture apart to build shitty new furniture and then taking that apart to built shittier furniture and eventually when they end up sitting on a fractured wood pile they start demanding that someone else pay for new furniture. Then the cycle of “progress begins a new.”
Progressivism taken too far looks like the killing fields of Cambodia only on a far bigger scale . But for the purposes of keeping things bearable, comedic, quasi-suburban and Fabian it looks like this when the dealy and tragic realistic edges are sanded off:
(A bunch of insular unhappy freaks wasting time and resources in some meaningless, passive aggressive, individuality crushing comfort ritual punctuated by some trauma or tragedy form outside that no one seems capable of understanding or anticipating.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IgMYNm1QS4
i have this lazy boy couch i inherited and it weighs like 7,000 pounds and I already bought matching art
but
omg
I forgot
there’s a sale tomorrow on these really wonderful mid-century sofas and chairs and whatever
i’m a hate myself for not going but I just made plans
but really I can get the sofa cushions restuffed at least once before I absolutely have to trash this thing
but seriously if you’re in the LA area you should go cause of they have some really fun pieces without all the snottiness and rampant hipsterism what attends the whole danish post-modern shopping experience of late
The natives, they grow restless…
So it seems that ‘Losing more slowly’ is a natural and wholesome element of the GOP; therefore, we will lose to the Left, the Republic will crash and burn because unsustainability, and perhaps sometime in the very distant future, future historians will note that ‘unsuccessful attempts allowing these humans to self-govern to a degree prove that we must always give fealty to our Ruling Class. PBUT.”
I’m’a give you advice, ‘feets. You want a nice recliner? Here.
OK, enough play. I’ve got to do things.
But first, this, to rattle the chains of the Infowars sorts. )
Storm Koalas are fearsome beasts.
Or is it a Macaque?
The Establishment will tell any lie, sabotage any solution, undermine any friend, befriend any foe, to protect its privileges.