#instapundit

"As the old saying has it, the left looks for heretics and the right looks for converts, and both find what they’re looking for. The effect is no doubt subliminal, but people who treat you like crap are, over time, less persuasive than people who don’t. If people on the Left are so unhappy about how many former allies are changing their views, perhaps they should examine how those allies are treated."

You know, in the 90s when I heard that a movie had a lesbian scene in it, I was definitely going to see that movie. Today, if someone tells me that a movie has a lesbian scene in it, I am definitely going to avoid that movie. If they can ruin that, they can ruin anything.

Many comments here take a bellicose attitude towards all this, as if THE mechanism the government will use is some jackbooted official with his armored vehicle parked in your driveway. This expectation flies in the face of modern experience. Those of us who expect/anticipate/depend on using the 2nd Amendment to prevent this stuff will have nobody to physically confront in any meaningful way. You can't persuade a computer chip to refund the bank account it emptied on orders of a bureaucrat 1,000 miles away by pointing a gun at it; and you can't persuade the HR department at "X" Corp to give you your job back by doing that either.

And for the record, no, I will not condemn the protesters. Should they have gone into the Capitol? I don’t know. Why shouldn’t they have? It’s not like they went and hanged the corruptocrats using their own intestines as ropes. They might — or might not. Really, do you trust the reporting? In this time, in this place? — have broken windows. And then walked, carefully between the ropes? Sure, why not. Let’s roll with that narrative.  They might have made a mess of Nancy Ice Cream Pelosi’s office. Maybe. Again…. reporting? You know what they didn’t do? They didn’t kill anyone. That was reserved for someone who shot through a door sidelight at a protester.  You know what else they didn’t do? Use live ammo.  You know what else they didn’t do? Trample the flag, which the capitol police did, while being begged not to. You know what else they didn’t do? shine lasers in cops eyes, set fire to the building, loot it, or shoot fireworks at people. Spare me your pearl clutching. How do you propose we get our republic back if demonstrations are “rude?” When they committed blatant fraud in two elections, right before our eyes, and thereby abolished the representative part of the republic, and with it the constitutional part, what are you going to do? Write them strongly worded letters? Or wait till they fraud 2022 just as blatantly, while you stand around being utterly stunned? It’s time to ditch the Marquis de Queensberry rules.  It’s time to stop fighting with our feet in a bucket. Yes, what happened today was very very bad. Yes, it means that what comes next will probably come with a butcher’s bill. I have sons in military age. I’m not thrilled. BUT the fault is not of the protesters. The fault is of the corruptocrats, yes, including the Supreme Court Justices, every one of them who found it easier to roll over for fraud and not let the ridiculous level of fraud in the elections have its day in court. If you’re going to clutch pearls and tut tut do so at those who passed the buck, refused to do their jobs or sided with the left in the hopes of being eaten last. The angry Americans, many of them despoiled out of their livelihoods by the elite’s Covid-19 fun and games designed to destroy the economy so they could steal the election, are the least guilty here. It’s quite likely — if G-d watches out for fools, children, and the United States of America — they’ll be held up as heroes some day.

All I ask at this point is that I survive in the GULAG one day longer than Rod Dreher.