The Social Justice Victim Machine

A really extraordinary (or, at least it would have been prior to Tuesday night…) video caught my attention today,  Journalist Jonathan Capehart breaks down over Trump’s America;

At about the 5 minute mark, there is an exchange that I found deeply disconcerting but also very illuminating.

Q:You are a gay, black Washington Post Columnist and much celebrated. Are you, is this, your America? Are you worried it will become another America?
A: That is a very powerful question John, and it moves me almost into silence, because, um, the election of President Obama was a great moment for this country… and now we stand two months away from…from all of that disappearing [here he begins to weep]… And as an African American, as an openly gay man, and as an American, that frightens me.

Watching Jonathan Capehart break down out of fear because his candidate lost an election… at first I thought it was almost juvenile, hysterical even (in the old sense of caused by uncontrolled extreme emotion, not the humorous sense). Capehart is more then just a well established, well respected and frequently awarded journalist, at least one site lists his net worth “considered to be $3 million“.

But it occurs to me that in this man, a well respected multimillionaire journalist, we see the same pathology that is running rampant in the the Social Justice Warriors and Inter-sectional Feminists (etc, etc) on college campuses all across the Anglosphere. He has allowed himself to be terrified, to become a victim in his own mind. A victim of his own accusations against someone else.

He’a convinced himself that Trump, a man who was a rich New York liberal until only a few years ago, a man who has a Jewish daughter, a Jewish son in-law, and two Jewish daughters in-law, is but a toothbrush-mustache away from being Neo-Hitler.

The same Donald Trump that, at the end of the interview, Capehart describes as being warm and charming when Capehart interviewed him personally!

I can’t help but think about the protesters that accosted Professor Peterson only a few weeks ago. Protesters that accused him of not only attracting Nazis to his rally with his rhetoric, but that his words were the proximate cause of teen suicides.

It really is both amazing and dismaying. Whether on campus or in the campaigns, it seems that the only thing the pursuit of Social Justice has produced is an ever greater number of victims.


Hillary’s Health goes from “Conspiracy Theory” to “A Real Issue” in just 5 days

Folks may be aware that Hillary Clinton had to leave a 9/11 memorial earlier today;

UPDATE: Another angle of Hillary entering the van has been posted,

What you may not be aware of is the concerted effort by many in the ‘mainstream press’ to minimize and cast aspersions on questions about her health prior to this.

At the Washington Post Chis Cilliza’s behavior provides a great example of this;.

In the article posted last Tuesday simply titled Can we just stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s health now?, WaPo’s Cilizza dismissed rumors about Hillary’s health thus;



Putting politics aside (if possible in such a situation), this is a great illustration of how press bias can manifest without being as blatant as ‘X people are bad, bad people!” While Cillizza peppers his column with plenty of disparagement towards Trump, his real effort is to firmly signal that discussion of Hillary’s health is firmly outside of ‘polite discussion’.

On Friday, September 2, the FBI released (dumped) a large number of documents related to the Clinton Email controversy, among them several noting that she had referenced a head injury in explaining lapses in protocol;

In at least one case, according to documents released Friday by the FBI, Clinton said she could not recall every briefing she had received after a 2012 concussion, which later led to a blood clot in her head.

“Clinton stated she received no instructions or direction regarding the preservation or production of records from [the] State [Department] during the transition out of her role as secretary of state in 2013,” the report says. “However, in December of 2012, Clinton suffered a concussion and then around the New Year had a blood clot. Based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received.”

Since then there has been an uptick in discussion about Hillary’s health, predominantly confined to ‘alternative’ media outlets. Which is where bias comes in;

  • Hillary is a 68 year old woman.
  • In December, 2012 Hillary suffered a concussion.
  • As this concussion was the stated reason she did not appear before a Congressional hearing, can presume it was a serious matter.
  • In a Q&A session in 2014 Bill Clinton stated his wife’s concussion “required six months of very serious work to get over,” contradicting the previous statements from a State Department spokeswomen.
  • Hillary is an enthusiastic drinker. As Amy Chozick, national political reporter for the The New York Times, remarked in an interview with ABC News, “She likes to drink. We were on the campaign trail in 2008 and the press thought she was just taking shots to pander to voters in Pennsylvania. Um, no.”

To that we add Friday’s FBI revelations, yet some the press were arguing that concern over Hillary’s health was confined to the “ranks of conservative conspiracy theory”. Why?

Why would concerns about an objectively elderly woman with a serious head injury in her recent medical history be confined to this disreputable, shadowy alt-media? Does anyone honestly imagine that anything *vaguely* similar in Trump’s past would be so treated?

I have long observed that the only really amusing thing in the growing mistrust American’s have for the press is that the press seems utterly unable to understand that the Press’ own constant dishonesty and bias are responsible.

Magneto or Magical Negro


TvTropes, Magical Negro

The Social Justice/Politically Correctness/Diversity movement (the Diversity crowd, for short) has given rise to many strange, and often paradoxical, phenomena. One of the more distressing is a trap that simultaneously demands diversity while also punishing diversity. It starts with well meaning people that want more representation of women and minorities in popular culture. At the same time female and minority characters that deviate even slightly from the doctrines of the SJ/PC faith prompt the diversity crowd to erupt with toxic, and often very personal, criticism.

In shorthand I call this phenomenon ‘Magneto or Magical Negro’, and it begins with a binary decision;

Either, the character is an individual, and both their virtues and their vices are simply the individual expressions of a given character,

-Or, the character is an avatar, representing their whole demographic. Thus their virtues are the virtues of their entire group, their vices the vices of the entire group, and their failings and limitations paint the entire group with the same brush.

The Diversity Crowd claims that they want morally complex, fully developed characters (Magneto), but their insistence on treating these characters as avatars leads to demanding flawless (thus one-dimensional) caricatures (‘Magical Negroes’). My paradigm example of this comes from the vastly different responses that two popular comic book characters received for very similar character moments: Micheal Fassbender’s Magneto in X-Men: First Class and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

In X-Men: First Class, we receive a great deal more backstory on the character of Magneto. Since 2000’s X-Men we’ve known that Magneto is a Holocaust survivor, now we learn the story of what happened to the boy last seen at the gates of a death camp, specifically the torment he endured at the hands of Nazi ‘doctor’ Sebastian Shaw. We follow Magneto in the post war years (what fans refer to with affection as the ‘Magneto, Nazi hunter’ scenes). After extracting information from a collaborating Swiss banker, he follows the lead on Shaw to a bar in Argentina, where he discovers several former colleagues of Shaw. What follows is a magnificently tense scene between the ex-patriot Nazis and the Holocaust survivor that eventually culminates in brutal revenge.

Notice that the man asking the question is nailed to the table.

In Avengers: Age of Ultron the scene is dramatically different: early on the film  establishes there is some form of relationship between the alter egos of Natalia (Natasha) ‘Black Widow’ Romanova and Bruce ‘Hulk’ Banner in the form of the ‘lullaby‘ (nickname for Natasha’s ability to sufficiently calm the Hulk that he reverts to his Banner form).

This, along with banter between Banner and Steve ‘Captain America’ Rodgers during the celebratory scene in Stark’s Avenger’s Tower, hints at Natasha’s desire for a deeper connection to Banner. It also establishes that banner is reticent (to say the least) about pursuing a romantic relationship with anyone, considering his own personal challenges.

Some time later in the film the Avengers are regrouping at a safe-house, having been handed a significant defeat by the villain Ultron. More importantly, Scarlet Witch (at this point acting as his agent) has tampered with the Avengers’ minds, leaving them emotionally shaken. It is in this context that Natasha makes an emotional appeal to Banner, trying to convert their relationship into something more… intimate.

She makes quite the convincing case…

In the course of this scene, Natasha responds to Banner’s fear that he can never provide her with children by noting that, along with the physical and emotional conditioning that made her an assassin for the Soviet State, she was also sterilized. He is not, she points out, not the only “monster” in the room.  Unfortunatly for her, the Bruce Banner of Age of Ultron is very much the ‘Hulk is a curse’ version of the character familiar to fans of Bill Bixby’s long running series, and Banner cannot bring himself to accept Natasha’s romantic overtures.

Note that as different as the emotional tone and the content of these scenes are, the characters are actually revealing notable similarities between the characters;

-Both Magneto and Black Widow bear deep, emotional scars inflicted on them by tyrannical regimes (for Magneto the Nazis, for Black Widow the Soviets).

-Both had their childhoods stolen; First Class and Age of Ultron make clear that each character was subject to systematic abuse with the intent of turning them into living weapons.

-Finally, though neither serves their former tormentors, both characters recognize they have become ‘monsters’; one a man so driven that he is willing to do literally anything in the service of his cause (up to and including attempting to murder his long-time friend and ally Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past), the other driven by guilt over the ‘Red in her ledger’; an allusion to innumerable bloody deeds in the service of the Soviet State that Loki taunts her with in The Avengers.

So, of course, naturally these interesting character moments were equally well received? Well… no. Fassbender’s take on the character of Magneto in First Class was widely praised, to the extent that any criticism seems more oriented to the idea that Magneto is too sympathetic. Johansson’s Black Widow, by contrast, despite being fleshed out a great deal more then the (somewhat shallow) ‘action girl’ of the previous Iron Man and Avengers movie, was the subject of a torrent of criticism.

While there were some critics that valued the message and development of the character, a disturbing amount of criticism condemned both the plot point, the movie and the director, often as ‘sexism’. For example, Black Widow: This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things read the bilious article at Io9. The daily Beast chooses to post their ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’s’ Black Widow Disgrace under the “Sexism” category. The bulk of the vituperation would be reserved not for long pieces with room for (slight) nuance, but for a storm of outrage on twitter that grew so intense (and personal) that many at the time blamed it for Joss Whedon deleting his twitter account (a claim he denies, to be fair).

Twitter, where movies ruin lives and Joss ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Wheadon is “the master of misogyny”.

Magneto is not just a Jew but a Holocaust survivor. It’s a part of his character, and a very important part, but it is only a part. Black Widow was forcibly sterilized by a totalitarian regime, part of their process to make a more perfect assassin. It’s a part of her character, and a very important part, but it is only a part. Because the Diversity Crowd does not consider Jews a ‘minority’ (because reasons), Magneto is free to be a complex, flawed and… well, a ‘monster’. Because Black Widow “is the main female character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe” she thus can’t be permitted to admit emotional scars over a disturbingly physical, intimate violation.

Of course this isn’t the only example of this phenomenon; it’s not even the most recent. What do I mean? It’s the action-adventure movie that smashed box office records this summer. It’s proof that a cast starring four diverse women can attract both men and women. So why isn’t Suicide Squad getting the “Girl Power” treatment that the pool of box office ectoplasm that is Ghostbusters 2016 enjoyed?

I think they might be trying to tell us something…

Suicide Squad made more in its opening weekend then Ghostbusters has in the four weeks since release, and at first glance this would seem to be a triumph for ‘women protagonists in action movies’ movement. After all, by the standards of the diversity boosters it’s arguably an even better standard bearer then Ghostbusters 2016!

If your goal is ‘diversity’, it’s worth noting that GB2016  gauchely cast three Caucasian women as scientists while relegating their lone non-white lead character to the role of ‘street smarts’. By way of contrast, the lead cast of Suicide Squad features African American Viola Davis as Amanda ‘the Wall’ Waller, one of the more formidable women in the DC universe and throws in Karen Fukuhara as Tatsu ‘Katana’ Yamashiro for even more diversity.

Yet though Suicide Squad seems to tick every box for the Diversity Crowd, that same group was not merely indifferent but actively hostile to the box office hit, positively angry at how it has eclipsed the sinking ship of GB2016. At Breitbart, Ben Kew rounds up a selection of the scathing opprobrium directed towards Suicide Squad;

And the critics are already throwing their toys out of the pram. “Suicide Squad Sets Box Office Record, Because We Don’t Deserve Better Movies” huffed Gawker’s Gizmodo blog, which also branded the film “misogynist bullsh**.”

Slate, meanwhile, went after the movie’s Joker-and-Harly-Quinn-themed merchandise:“nothing says #relationshipgoals like the tortured pas de deux between a deeply troubled woman and her abuser.”

Perhaps my favorite example of explaining just how badly the box office hit of Suicide Squad measures up to the box office failure of GB2016 comes from Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune. In a piece titled Harley Quinn vs. Holtzmann? The Ghostbuster emerges with smarts, grace, Phillips gives his best shot at salvaging something from the wreck of Gb2016 while also denigrating Suicide Squad*;

After the Chicago press screening, writer Bastien recalls, “I literally held my head in my hands … this straight-up racist, sexist, poorly edited, nonsensical, ugly movie. And it was a bummer because, for once, the casting was incredibly diverse.”

Ah, if only that “incredibly diverse” cast could have been advised by people like Phillips or Basttien, it might have had the success GB2016 is now enjoying! All of this, despite the fact that Suicide Squad achieved what is perhaps the holy grail in box office performance;

The biggest surprise in terms of audience makeup was the strong turnout among females, who made up 46 percent of Friday’s audience, according to exit poling service CinemaScore. That’s unusual for a superhero film. Warners also succeeded in luring younger moviegoers: 28 percent of ticket buyers were under the age of 18. Both females and those younger moviegoers liked the pic better, giving it an A- and A, respectively.

A movie with a diverse cast of women explodes at the box office, with huge appeal to both women and younger movie goers. In other words, it does exactly what Sony executive Tom Rothman claimed Hollywood needed to do: “In his estimation, studios need to recognize and address [a lack of diversity] or “die,” and that is part of why movies like Ghostbusters are so important to the future of an already ailing business.” Yet for all its commercial success and actual diversity, for many commentators the women of Suicide Squad are more embarrassing then the potentially franchise killing GB2016.

While this summer Suicide Squad didn’t conform to exactly what the Diversity Crowd considers acceptable portrayals of women, early this year an even larger version of this same phenomenon gripped the media. In the lead up to the 2015 Oscars, the #OscarsSoWhite campaign dominated entertainment news with (at least) the Guardian, CNN, NPR, The Blaze, the LA Times (to list but a few) writing stories about this grave injustice. It seemed that no news outlet could resist the urge to talk about tiny gold statues not being distributed evenly. Much of the furor centered on the perception that black actors were being funneled into ‘stereotypical’ roles.

The Hollywood reporter came closest to quantifying this, producing an info-graphic that attempts to categorize how Black actors win their Oscars. Most notable is the degree of parsing that has gone into their classifications; apparently the character of Ray Charles, for which Jamie Foxx won an Oscar in 2004, is reducible simply to ‘drug addict’ and ‘musician’ while Denzel Washington’s conflicted and complicated Private Silas Trip is simply reduced to ‘slave‘.

At the risk of minimizing the #OscarSoWhite concerns, perhaps when a representative system reduces an honorable and upstanding Marine Corp Drill Sargent, a murderous and corrupt police detective and a vicious African dictator all simply to ‘tyrant‘**, perhaps the problem lies more in the metric then the measured. As a bonus, both the Drill Sargent and the and the corrupt detective also join the African dictator under the classification ‘violent‘. In fact, though the graphic claims that Black actors win Oscars”most often for roles that paint stereotypical (or painful) portraits of African-Americans”, the actual roles listed are so varied as to defy any description. It’s a listing of saints and sinners, reduced to a box score that obscures vastly more then it reveals.

So in the end what was the point? It’s hard to say; after all the complaints about stereotypical roles the big Oscar contender for blacks was… the slave rebellion story Birth of a Nation (before being troubled by controversy). What lesson, what policy, what guideline could be implemented after the 2015 Oscars that could possibly mollify this complaint? Worse yet, if the complaint is ultimately misplaced, based on ham-handed narrative crafting like the graphic above, what if the complaints can’t be mollified?

This leads to the final incident I’ll touch on, notable more for the perfect summation then its notoriety: the ‘Stop Killing Queer Women (On TV)‘ controversy that sprang up after a recurring lesbian character died in the third season finale of the show The 100. There is actually quite a lot of effort that goes into tracking how many fictional lesbians die on TV (satire or SocJus, who can tell?). Rather then go into my thoughts on the matter, let’s hear how YouTuber Undoomed reacted (warning, language and merciless mockery);

Now, amusing as all this insanity may be, it actually… got results: the showrunner for The 100 apologized. Let that sink in for a moment: nothing in the apology indicates that this plot twist was a poor narrative choice or didn’t make sense in the universe. No, the apology is entirely designed to pacify people who are upset that a lesbian character was treated like she was a character instead of a tool for raising self-esteem.

What motivates all this is… complicated (certainly too complicated for a post this long). In the end the motives don’t actually matter, what matters is where it logically leads. Talking about The 100 lesbian controversy, William Shatner manages to sum up the logical outcome of all this in one tweet;

At its core the ‘Magneto or Magic Negro’ trap isn’t the result of racist, sexist or bigoted motives on the part of creators. It’s the logical result of a series of incentives that both demand more representation of ‘minority’ characters, then engages in punishing, hypersensitive offense-taking when it comes to that representation.

Imagine you are a film maker, but not a Chis Nolan or a Joss Wheadon or Russo Brother; instead you’re a new film maker, one without the clout to buck the studio’s desires. A Josh Trank, for example, whose Fantastic 4 movie was taken over by the studio and forced, like sausage through a meat grinder, into the shape the studio wanted. A director that has to fight with the studio system to get their vision on the screen and who, chances are, end up doing mostly what the studio wants even when the studio executives are imbeciles. Quick aside; yes, that’s right, the same Tom Rothman that was pumping GB2016 for Sony a few months ago is the responsible for keeping (box office hit) Deadpool in development hell while he was at 20th Century Fox.

Directors, showrunners, writers, basically everyone on the creative side of entertainment is constantly struggling against the bean counters whose primary job is to manage risk. Well, guess what makes bean counters think something is risky? Internet outrage.

See, the thing about a one dimensional, blandly positive ‘Magic Negro’ character is it’s safe. Actors don’t want safe, writers don’t want safe, directors don’t want safe; no one on the creative side really wants these safe, bland characters, just like no chef wants to make vanilla pudding all the time. Somewhere along the line, though, the creative person is taken aside and asked ‘do you really want to take the heat for having a black guy/woman/LGBT/etc do that?’

So the edges get ground down. The rough patches get smoothed out. Sometimes the path of least resistance is to change nothing at all except to make the dangerous, risky character into a white, preferably straight, male. So a movement that is theoretically devoted to increasing diversity in roles instead becomes an engine for reducing actual diversity.

There is nothing mysterious or conspiratorial about all this; it’s a simple example of incentives not lining up with goals and it is everywhere. As long as this article is I barely scratched the surface. This phenomenon shows up everywhere creativity exists: video games, books, comics, art, music…

What’s truly ironic is that the ‘fix’ to the problem is the one thing, the simplest of all things, and it’s the one thing that we can confidently predict isn’t going to happen; Stop complaining. As the saying goes, the best way to make race less important is to stop treating race like it’s important (and that goes for all the other groups as well). When a female/black/LGBT/etc character is simply a character, instead of the embodiment of an entire group, that’s when we will get the diversity almost all of us actually want.



*As an aside spare a moment to wonder, given he “had issues with the Joker’s sex toy Harley Quinn long before”, his 10-year old daughter was allowed to see the PG-13 Suicide Squad that he labels a train-wreck of violence, sexism and bad editing.

**Louis Gossett Jr.’s  Marine Corp Sgt. Emil Foley, Denzel Washington’s corrupt LAPD Det. Alonzo Harris and Whitaker’s Idi Amin.

#NeverTrump Files: Bret Stephens and the Underpants Gnomes
























This stance by the WSJ editorial page has remained constant.




Quick Hit: de Blasio, Red Skull and Progressive Cognitive Dissonance













White Crime, Black Deaths, and Lying with Statistics


-Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, by way of Mark Twain.



1. 84 percent of white murder victims were white

2. Whites kill more whites than black people kill each other

3. White people commit more crimes than any other race


5. Gang murders are most common among white gangs






-In 2008, the homicide victimization rate for blacks (19.6
homicides per 100,000) was 6 times higher than the rate for
whites (3.3 homicides per 100,000).

offenders per 100,000)














  • 2.91 Whites
  • 7.13 Blacks
  • 3.48 “Hispanic/Latinos”
  • 1.34 Asian/Pacific Islander
  • 3.4 Native Americans


  • 577 Whites
  • 300 Blacks
  • 193 “Hispanic/Latinos”
  • 27 “Other/Unknown
  • 24 Asian/Pacific Islander
  • 13 Native Americans









Dr. StrangeRod, or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the H-Bomb

The Democratic nominating process has finally begun, which being the Democrats means that the first allegations of impropriety have been lodged.


But what’s a potentially stolen primary when measured against the vast tally of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s malfeasance? It’s a credit to her immense and transparent corruption that she’s managed to make a septuagenarian socialist Jew from Brooklyn (by way of Vermont’s Senate delegation) seem like a reasonable alternative for the nomination of the Democratic party (another glass ceiling shattered by Hillary!).

For all that, I find myself almost fond of the diabolical crone, not so much for herself, but for the case she makes against the Democratic party and (especially) the mainstream media. This is, after all, the same media that considered sexual harassment in the workplace a pressing concern… right up until it was time to slip on their presidential kneepads.

With that in mind, let’s look at some issues where Hillary forces her supporters and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) to swallow positions that they have previously condemned (and in some cases, continue to condemn).

Secret Emails are Shredding the Cons… err, never-mind…

The year is 2007; the battle rages between Hillary Clinton, heir apparent to the Democratic nomination and the upstart Barack Obama. One issue they agree on is the perfidy and secrecy of the bush administration. Obama promises “We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.” While today Obama’s promises of transparency have increasingly gone from a punch-line on the right to a shared consensus, some forget the clarion call of alarm issued by Hillary.


Apparently the Constitution is safe so long as the emails are under the steely eye of Eric Hoteham…

Those who have observed the evolving Clinton strategy of defense on the email matter will note that Hillary has moved subtly from “There is no Classified Material” to “nothing marked classified”. This is, however, a distinction without much legal difference; among the statutes she is suspected of potentially violating is 18 USC 793. Without going too much into things, gross negligence, as well as  willful and malicious action, is enough to secure a conviction for “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information”.

Put another, simpler way: if the material on Hillary’s server falls under the aforementioned code, then the excuse “it wasn’t marked classified” is about as legally useful as “I swear officer, I didn’t know she was 13…”

Lawyer for Evil, Incorporated;

Critical writers, such as those of Mother Jones magazine, have made a bit of a cottage industry of criticizing GOP candidates for actions they took during their private legal representation of clients. The criticism is especially sharp when directed at Ted Cruz, ranging from who he represented,

…But much of the time, Cruz represented corporate clients.

To the degree he has highlighted his clients;

Cruz’s years as a highly paid private lawyer who often defended powerful corporations. And there are several significant cases he handled—politically inconvenient cases—that he has photoshopped out of his personal narrative.

And the implication that acting zealously for his clients makes him traitor to his Conservative principles;



That an attorney has an ethical and legal responsibility to zealously represent the interest of their client seems to be no exculpation… well, at least it doesn’t until they have to explain away Hillary’s representation of Thomas Alfred Taylor. Who’s Thomas Alfred Taylor and why would he appear in Hillary’s biography, you may ask?

In 1975, the same year she married Bill, Hillary Clinton agreed to serve as the court-appointed attorney for Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old accused of raping the [12 year old] child after luring her into a car.

The specifics of Hillary’s defense of Mr. Taylor are not the subject of this post (they deserve a specific and in-depth treatment). What is relevant is the simple question: if a corporate attorney’s actions should reflect poorly on his character, how about the defense of the accused rapist of a 12 year old girl? How about securing for that accused rapist a sentence of one year?

Taylor, who pleaded to unlawful fondling of a chid, was sentenced to one year in prison, with two months reduced for time served.

How about securing a one year sentence for an accused rapist of a 12 year old girl when their attorney thinks they are guilty?

“I had him take a polygraph, which he passed – which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,” {Clinton] added with a laugh.

No doubt we can look forward to the media expressing as intense an interest in the case of Thomas Alfred Taylor as, say, Mitt Romney’s high school experience. I wouldn’t hold my breath though.


The Darker the Money, the Sweeter the Juice…

This is not to say that all of Hillary Clinton’s trespass are all of old vintage, far from it. In the ongoing Democratic party attack of paranoid lunacy regarding the Koch brothers, the new book that is making the rounds is Jane Mayer’s Dark Money. In it, Mayer… well, let’s let the NY Times describe it;

“Dark Money” relates the personal story of the Koch family in considerable detail — an engineer father who made a fortune building oil refineries, then spent the last years of his life as an angry member of the John Birch Society; an early conversion by Charles and David Koch to the radical libertarian economics of Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises; a web of sibling rivalry among all four of the family’s brothers, ending in painful legal confrontations that dragged on for years.

Ah yes, Hayek and von Mises, those dastardly fellows! You can practically smell the mustache wax… Thank goodness Hillary Clinton is, of course, above such shabby and obvious graft, such tawdry peddling of influence for cash.

That’s what the Clinton Foundation is for;

Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department;



Hillary Clinton’s State Department Increased Chemical Arms Sales To Middle East Countries That Gave To Clinton Foundation


But behind the scenes, Clinton pursued contrasting aims. … Her State Department cleared Egypt to continue purchasing arms the U.S. government classified as “toxicological agents,” a broad designation that included chemical and biological weapons, …




This list is, of course, far from comprehensive. Nor is it my point to claim that there is no possibility that any given one of these episodes or elements is evidence of irredeemable corruption. My point is that the Left and the Media (once again, I repeat myself) have established a code of conduct, a framework of right and wrong and applied it strenuously to Republicans whenever they get the chance. It is the unfortunate reality of the moment that these traits, found individually in various people on the right, seem to be present all at once in the person of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This is the singularity that is Hillary, and the best explanation for the Berne being felt: Hillary embodies all of the traits that the Democratic base has grown to despise, yet the Clinton’s possess such a death-grip on the Democratic Party machine they seem determined to either drag the party to a Hillary coronation, or strangle it in the process.