Deconstructing Comey

Found this about pliable careerist James Comey, currently passing as Jimmy Stewart because he’s the #Resistance’s latest greatest hope to be rid of Trump.

I’d forgotten that at the time Comey’s FBI censored the mention of ISIS in reports about the Orlando shooting, under the pretext it would “inflame” more terrorists. What’s remarkable is the language the agency used at the time to justify Comey’s withholding of the tapes of Mateen’s calls and redaction of their transcripts:

 “We’re actually looking into any potential motive,” [Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ronald] Hopper said. “We’re not limiting ourselves to coming up with just one motive. We’re looking at a myriad of things right now and that actually is ongoing as we speak, both through social media, friend contacts, people that have only met the individual for one time. That’s why we’re asking for anybody and everybody that’s had any contact with this individual to come forward so we can piece that information together for potential other motives as well.”

If this was the first thing you read coming in you’d think the Orlando shooting was a classic whodunit. Then you might learn (with little help from the FBI) that Omar Mateen placed three 911 calls pledging his allegiance to ISIS and its leader (by name), and invoked his friend who died as a suicide bomber in Syria for al Nusra Front, a rival to ISIS (Comey’s report said that rivalry rendered the shooter’s motives mysterious somehow, as if Mateen is the modern equivalent of a bespectacled Bolshevik carefully crafting an analysis and choosing factions. Obvious nonsense.
So why the need for motives? But you’d never understand until you realize the point here is not to solve a mystery, but to create one.

But there’s more here too. This is a remarkable bit of text, a cautionary artifact if a saner time can decipher it. Beneath the deliberate attempt to obscure is both a reassurance and a plea to the like-minded. The subtext comes at them like a public radio pledge drive: rest assured we’re piecing together a palatable narrative, and you can help, no contribution is too small, see, because they can be combined. Call now.

Comey said censoring mention of ISIS out of the transcript was necessary because otherwise it would “inflame like minded” individuals–if you could make him out over the sound of their cheering. So, the world-weary thinks, they’re afraid of “right wing terrorists”, as they so often claim. But we’re so far down the rabbit hole we don’t see the real scandal when this cycle plays out–and before reading this I’d assumed Europe was the only place misinformation had become so habitual. Because they know the threat of right wing terror is a bogeyman, what they–political leaders conspiring with media–really do with some success is thwart  electoral action, that is the  peaceful democratic response of a people to violence wrought upon them by a group both foreign and favored by their elite; and they understand this well.

We’ve accepted the terms of the Narrative for so long even the enlightened have trouble processing it. For the normie it’s nigh impossible.
Contrary to the elite trope, there is nothing mystiying about the actions of a Mateen. What’s mystifying are the actions of those who profess mystification.

Comedy’s Long, Slow March

A good joke comes as a revelation, exposing a truth that is suppressed by social convention or just missed out of negligence. The laugh is a convulsion of surprised delight when a well-timed reveal springs that truth on us like a jack-in-the-box. The degree to which that revelation is unexpected, meaningful and shows itself underappreciated–hiding in plain sight–is the degree to which the joke works. The joy for us is in our momentary liberation from stifling convention or obscuring ignorance.

The stand up comedian, if he’s doing it right, is a chauvinist for his in-group of one–himself. His personal bias which, as the Left insists (and has willed into social reality) cannot exclude race, gender, ethnicity and on, is his basic tool, his soldier’s rifle. In the friction between this supremacist of the self and all else–his intolerance–is the comedy and, theoretically at least, the truth. Tolerance has no place in his routine. Tolerance is the death of comedy.

The stand-up is paid to notice things. Presumably he’s granted an exception to offend. But this right is meaningless if it isn’t the right to offend the prevailing order, whether it be political, social or cultural.
I can’t imagine the concept of a counterculture arising at all without comedy’s tendency to become sanctioned transgression, filling the vacuum created where expression is repressed.

Needless to say, things have changed. Mainstream comedy–the only kind that will be available to you if the Left achieves its wildest fantasies and clamps down on the Internet–has become the open defender of the prevailing order, which it sees as just. At the same time, it hacks away at the old legacy orders, sexual morality, modesty, patriotism, et cetera as if they weren’t in steep decline. It’s as if the old formidable warlord is now the cultural left’s captive, and they bring him out nightly, dress him up to look fierce, hand him a clay sword, and present him to their gullible children as the monster who rules over them.

In its absent-mindedness the counterculture offered alternatives to the conventional order that, depending on their political usefulness to power, coalesced to become today’s conventional–if chaotic–order of competing identities and outrages.

Mainstream comedy lumbers on a pack of zombies, bled of their lifeblood, bias, animated only by our cynical materialism, greed and anomie. The money is in pushing the establishment line, and broadcast and cable television retain the technical and professional prowess, so the zombies keep coming, just like in the movies. So too comedic films and television have a hollow and joyless feel no matter how well made they are, lacking as they do the two essential elements: relevance and truth. A thousand perfectly structured jokes taking as their basis, say, the persistence of white racism, are just a handful of beads without a string passing as a necklace.

It would been the worst thing to say of comedy before that it was harmless, that it threatened no convention or power, that no one would be offended by it. Now the professional comedian, hemmed in by pc restrictions that somehow rob him of both the objectivity with which he might juxtapose and expose the absurdity of the “white racism” myth and the subjectivity, or bias, that, as intersecionality demonstrates, is inherently problematic.

Noticing is essential to comedy. Noticing is also the essence of intolerance.

Portland’s Weekend

 

Joey Gibson’s “Trump Free Speech Rally Portland” was permitted for Terry Schrunk Plaza directly across from Portland’s City Hall. To its north is Chapman Square, where the hardcore masked and black-clad antifa were massing as if for an assault. Here police clear them out with flash bangs. That’s the bronze statue The Promised Land, commemorating the Oregon Trail, draped in red flags. Chapman Square was originally intended as a women’s only park–a safe space.

All week the city had been preparing in tandem with national and international media by framing this all in light of the commuter train stabbing of two good Samaritans by a local lunatic who had turned up at an earlier pro Trump rally draped in a flag and flashing Nazi salutes. He appears to be more crazy than political–and more left than right politically.
Myself I don’t understand the logic of the argument, such as it is, that says the existence of a fatal extremist on my side somehow negates all my concerns and objective analysis. But the city indulged itself, at least in the media, and people seem genuinely unable to see the obscenity of political manipulation in all the competing outrage.

Before Chapman Square was cleared, demonstrators had been taunting each other across Madison St for hours. Before this police warned of slingshots in Chapman Park–but the fruit landed here is the only projectile I saw thrown. Looked like a kiwi:

  

There was speculation within the Trump camp that antifa would attack individuals and small groups as they left. Here Trump supporters cheer as antifa are driven out by police.

 

Schrunk Plaza was boxed in on three sides by counter-demonstrations. To the east, in front of the federal building, massed labor activists. This is the view from there:

 

Here I arrive and toward the end stroll through Chapman Park, camp of the antifa, about two hours before scheduled start of the Trump event. Antifa can be heard rallying for action:

Clashes between rivals after the event were rare. There were a few confrontations as demonstrators on both sides hung about after the end of the rally. Here a woman is pepper-sprayed:

 

Black BLM protesters arrive late (of course) and block a street briefly. You can see me getting harassed by a dindu of the political variety and his masked antifa whitefriend. Luckily for me they weren’t nuffin (trying to figure out how to retrieve the sound).

 

Searching for Hillary

Something propelled Hillary Clinton along all this time, something that doesn’t translate on television and isn’t documented in history, something more than cunning and Bill Clinton, some genuine ability. Other pols and media hacks have often claimed to come away impressed with her intelligence.
It could be that the Real Hillary is wise and farsighted, and this shows through. I suspect it’s really because Hillary’s real knack is for backroom politics despite being an awful candidate for all the technical reasons: voice, appearance, vibe. I imagine Hillary Clinton is really good in the room (as I like to think of it), that is in small groups formulating strategy. This impression is likely magnified in the minds of her peers and toadies, dutifully as feminists, genuinely as fellow political hacks, hopefully as opportunists: “yes, she’s brilliant!”

This is the impression I had watching her corner Trump on the tax return issue in the first debate:

CLINTON: Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.
TRUMP: That makes me smart.
CLINTON: So if he’s paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he’s trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statements, they don’t give you the tax rate. They don’t give you all the details that tax returns would. And it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he’s ever going to release his tax returns, because there’s something he’s hiding.

Watching this I was impressed at how Hillary seemed to relax into this line of attack, growing perceptibly less stiff, less shrill, relishing the play and enjoying the game. This is Hillary Clinton, I thought. Hillary revisited this mode in her bizarre defeat lap the other day (repeating a genuinely fake news item):

“Who is behind driving up Trump’s Twitter followers by the millions?” she said. “We know they’re bots. Why? I assume there’s a reason for everything. Is it to make him look more popular than he is? Is it to try to influence others on Twitter about what the messaging is?”

But she can’t be that good. As an anti-feminist, I delight in the thought that Hillary’s campaign failed in large part because she led it, and the errors in judgement she made were female errors–most comically, the promotion of Alicia Machado, an outrage only women of a certain age and diminishing number seemed able to feel. Add the sexually ambiguous sidekick with the caddish husband and–well, Hollywood’s Soviet-caliber ideological discipline is unfortunate. What a great story to write, cast, shoot. That they leave it on the table shows you it’s not all money–and it’s not even all fame. Maybe it’s not even all power. But not for Hillary.

Of course if I’m right about her in the room skills, I suspect the real tragedy of Hillary is that she leveraged that relatively modest level of political skill and, more importantly, understanding, through cunning, the brand her husband created and her elite coterie into just-missing capturing the White House. And here I fear we see not the convulsions of a corpse but the slasher film monster rising from the flames, plodding toward us, armed with its inextinguishable will-to-power:

“I take responsibility for every decision I made but that’s not why I lost. I think it’s important we learn the real lessons of this campaign. So I think it’s important we learn the real lessons of this campaign. The forces we are up against are not just interested in influencing our elections and our politics, they are going after our economy, and they are going after our unity as a nation, so, yes, back in 98…I have been watching this and I have been the target for a number of years…

But even in the field of crazy videos, Hillary is bested yet again by a flamboyant, charismatic guy:

Luke Ford speaks with Greg Johnson

Luke Ford interviews Greg Johnson of Counter Currents on his new book, In Defense of Prejudice.

Johnson talks about his journey to white Zionism, white etho-masochism, why the Jewish Question can’t be ignored and other things.

Mr Johnson notes how the same peculiarly European universalist assumptions rationalizing colonial oppression in the past rationalize our oppression in the present.

Indeed, now in condemnation of its past form and deeds, spouting Enlightenment phrases it has hollowed out, Hydra-like in name, Diversity, Multiculturalism, Vibrancy, but–just as in its colonial past, with commerce the driving force, good old aggregated individual human greed and gluttony, as always–this dark undercurrent of Western history turns inward, nowhere left to go, nothing left to level.

But what was the mechanism by which this assumption of human commonality beneath a surface veneer of socialization lead first to our conquest and now to our surrender?
Through failure. When peaceful attempts at civilizing others failed genocide followed and now we condemn ourselves for the genocide, and we tell ourselves it isn’t because we failed to see how different peoples are, but because we failed to see how they are all the same. We didn’t believe hard enough in human equality, but we’ll rectify that.

But this doesn’t arise of itself. This has to attach itself to something. Ideology is the rationalization mechanism by which commerce and power effect their will (maybe it always is). The problem is our rationalization mechanism–Multiculturalism, Globalism–unlike, ironically, most religious systems, is inflexible and unalterable.
The faith in human equality it demands of us rivals Islam in its severity and finality–like Islam, Progressivism claims itself the rightful end of history. Into this crude mechanism (I imagine it steampunk-like in appearance, without any of the charm) we put humans of different types–barely more flexible and alterable than the mechanism which, just to add to the confusion, is the very assumption they are infinitely flexible. We’re corralled into a closed system of understanding by an elite and the global ethnic lynch mob they employ.

Straight From the Horse’s Server

Sometimes the content of a leaked document is so on the nose in confirming your assumptions you have to wonder if it isn’t a hoax. Which was the first reaction I had reading this document from Wikileaks’ Hillary Clinton email archive, before I realized the archive was obtained directly from the State Department via FOIA request. Still, it’s posted without

Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. What Israeli military leaders really worry about — but cannot talk about — is losing their nuclear monopoly. 

An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today. If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself. 

Back to Syria. It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel’s security — not through a direct attack, which in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained, armed and trained by Iran via Syria. 

The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel’s leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests…

Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted. Right now, it is the combination of Iran’s strategic alliance with Syria and the steady progress in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program that has led Israeli leaders to contemplate a surprise attack — if necessary over the objections of Washington. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel through its, proxies, it is possible that the United States and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran’s program has crossed an unacceptable threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria. [emphasis added]

That Israel and “tension” in the relationship drive policy and override our own national interest is a given. The prospect of refusing Israel outright is unthinkable. On our side it’s all about negotiating a better deal in our share of improving Israel’s position, as determined by Israel. In the case of Iran and Syria, that position is Israel’s nuclear “monopoly”–why Pakistan doesn’t count I don’t know.

And we negotiate poorly, to say the least. Here we are on the verge of intervening directly in Syria after having provoked its civil war as part of the broader neocon project (“seven countries in five years)–Hillary’s own contribution being the Libyan disaster, which is cited approvingly in this email from 2012–ultimately just to dissuade Israel from going off too soon on Iran, and setting off a broader war in the region, attacks on US troops and terrorist attacks in the US and Europe. The irony is that it’s Israel’s aggressive tendencies that threaten US interests and lives.