NRO's The Corner: Obamacare ‘like a house on fire’ with more flammable parts yet to come

A face mask is like a national Rorschach test. Some see a tool of oppression. Some see a means of self-protection. Some see a sign of respect for others. Personally, I think a mask is an expression of respect for others. But what a controversial piece of cloth, a face mask is.

— Jay Nordlinger (@jaynordlinger) September 16, 2020

Reminds me of that billy ray cyrus tweet, where he was thinking hard

some say love, it is a river

at least they're practicing saying nothing using fewer words

I would think the American press never recovered from their failure to confront the blatant lies that led to genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan

Lets check in!

Mike Pence Showed Trump How TV Debates Are Won

At some point during last night’s vice presidential debate, perhaps about 20 minutes in, it became clear that Susan Page wasn’t moderating the debate. Mike Pence was.

He obviously knows how to use this medium well. Hardly anyone remembers the moderators’ questions after these debates are over. The only clips that have anything more than an evening-long afterlife are those of the candidates’ soliloquies. The whole point of televised debates is to generate a few of these clips and then fire them around social media and the news networks like a pinball.

Vice President Pence, moreover, generated his own string of debate highlights last night more or less entirely on his own terms. When asked a question, he used the first portion of his time to reply to whatever Kamala Harris had just said before moving on to address the question at hand. Once he ran out of time, he often just kept speaking, though not in the whiny, aggrieved, confrontational manner in which the president treated Chris Wallace last week. Pence simply killed the moderator’s objections with polite deference while continuing to make his point all the while until Page’s protestations ceased.

He would not be rushed and he would not be herded or corralled by the moderator. On the one occasion on which Page put her foot down and forced the debate on to the next topic, the vice president simply waited his turn and then continued where he left off. Throughout the debate, he managed to provide himself with enough time to say everything he wanted in response to Harris and get off most of his own points as well. For all intents and purposes, he was the timekeeper.

Rich LOLwry surpasses himself.

Besides the occasional dissenting academic and brave business owner or ordinary citizen, Trump is, for better or worse, the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between.

He’s the vessel for registering opposition to everything from the 1619 Project to social media’s attempted suppression of the Hunter Biden story.

To put it in blunt terms, for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.

This may not be a very good reason to vote for a president, and it doesn’t excuse Trump’s abysmal conduct and maladministration.

It may well be that Biden will get over the top by implicitly promising a diminution in cultural strife, by which he presumably means a slower pace of woke cultural change (with the Left considerably less agitated than it has been in the Trump years).

If Trump wins, though, this cultural element will be the subtext, and maybe just the text — he’d be, even more so than now, the president as affront, and he would be felt as such by all the woke progressives and fellow travelers who are accustomed to believing that they represent a steamroller of history.

To put it in blunt terms, for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.

hmm, i weird way put that, but i guess i have to give rich lolwry the benefit of the doubt here!!

ah, the overwhelming woke cultural tide

that age-old question of american culture: who has the whip hand

The NRO has found the enemy and he is us. But not them. Just us woke progressives who have overwhelmed the nation on a relentless rising tide of cancellations.

Look at Quibi for example. A multi-billion dollar business. Cancelled!! It's madness gone mad.

Next Month: Slaves singing "Go Down Moses": cancel culture run amok?

subhed: Don't assume someone holds the whip hand just because they're holding a literal whip in their hand

A disgusting person, that Kevin Williamson. Dig what he says about AOC and Harris. But this'll piss off what remains of the NRO readership:

Which brings me to the practical case against Trump: He stinks at his job.

This also brings me to a lie that needs to be addressed — and it is not a misunderstanding but a lie, circulated with malice aforethought: that the conservative objection to Trump is only a matter of style, his boorishness bumptiousness and boobishness on Twitter, his gooftastical manner of speaking, his preening, his vanity, his habitual and often dishonest boasting in matters both small and great, etc. These things matter, of course, because manners and morals matter, and they matter more in a free society than they do in an unfree one, because free men govern themselves.

Trump’s low character is not only an abstract ethical concern but a public menace that has introduced elements of chaos and unpredictability in U.S. government activity ranging from national defense to managing the coronavirus epidemic. Trump’s character problems are practical concerns, not metaphysical ones. Trump is frequently wrong on important policy questions (including trade, foreign policy, entitlements, health care, and many others) and frequently incompetent even when trying to advance a good policy. His vanity and paranoia have made it very difficult for him to keep good people in top positions, and this imposes real costs both politically and as a matter of practical governance. Trump’s problem is not etiquette: It is dishonesty, stupidity, and incompetence, magnified by the self-dealing and cowardice of the cabal of enablers and sycophants who have a stake in pretending that this unsalted s*** sandwich is filet mignon.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpYvGU9VgAAUy3m?format=jpg&name=small

update

UPDATE:

Update Two: This proviso also would apply to women. Also, I forgot to mention conscription, because that would further weaken my already fatuous argument.

I see.

lots of things go without saying at the n4tion4l r3vi3w

Rod Dreher's been in Hungary a couple of months and it's really helping him be more comfortable with his fascism. pic.twitter.com/BbvC7mJ3fX

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) June 13, 2021

Champ Biden dies, Major lives on. The Biden family tragedy in miniature.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) June 19, 2021

🐦[Rod Dreher’s been in Hungary a couple of months and it’s really helping him be more comfortable with his fascism. pic.twitter.com/BbvC7mJ3fX🕸
— Roy Edroso (@edroso) June 13, 2021🕸]🐦

LOL

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/12/political-discrimination-as-civil-rights-struggle/

TLDR: Ivy League women won't date Trump supporters, which is a sign that all conservatives will soon be fired/not hired by elite institutions everywhere, and the government must intervene!

This reveals the predilection among many young elite Americans for progressive authoritarianism, a belief system that justifies infringing rights to equal treatment or free speech in the name of the emotional “safety” of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexuality groups. In this left-modernist worldview, conservatives’ resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism mark them as moral deviants. As Millennials take power, this generational earthquake is set to shake the foundations of the cultural elite to its core, leading to pervasive discrimination against, and censorship of, conservative views.

soon only the woke will reproduce

sounds like that JMU econ prof’s suggestion that incels be provided sex

guys

guys

Biden's vaccination mandate is unconstitutional!

somebody had to say it. eventually someone says it about every action taken by government, including the income tax. and mccarthy is just the dope for the job.

Andy McCarthy, in favor of torture and indiscriminate bombing when Bush sat on the imperial throne.

Dang, I kinda liked "St. Elmo's Fire."

it has come to my attention that rod dreher is getting divorced and has moved to budapest; no word on whether this experience will prompt another conversion

lmao of course

I hope he writes a novel

I hope he starts a suicide cult.

Why are these people so dramatic?

I think he’s having the time of his life.

I don’t know how he’s fixed for disposable income but being a weird natl conservative on the internet is key to that flow

I heard that these conservatives moving to Hungary for the fascism usual only last a year or so once they realize that, for instance, you get fines for putting the wrong kinds of plants on your balcony.

i miss these guys

was about to post the same

Even Mona Fucking Charen has joined the resistance:

https://www.thebulwark.com/what-country-is-the-wall-street-journal-living-in/

Hahahahaha https://t.co/nRaZhwvxqt

— noah kulwin (@nkulw) January 3, 2023

Minority opinion on here I'm sure but I kinda like French. I think he's wrong about a zillion things of course, but he's super critical of the current evangelical-political movement, and he and his wife have done legit investigative journalism in exposing some religious sexual abusers. I'll take him over Brooks and Douthat, however low that may be setting the bar.

I don't like French but, yeah, he's better than the others; it's just infuriating, though, that the NYT has a ticker-tape parade every time they add yet another conservative to their op-ed section.

Is there even anyone actually good in the NYT columnist rotation? Jamelle Bouie I guess. So tired of almost all of them.

bouie is excellent. michelle goldberg and zeynep tufekci are good.

check out what you're missing in the washington post op-ed section!

https://i.imgur.com/ze02A1i.png

bouie is in his element on tiktok and twitter imo

wrong thread?

lol AOC missed vote 3 and I think I heard her holler "Jeffries!" a few seconds later.

whoops def wrong thread

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-often-do-men-think-about-the-roman-empire/

Apparently, men think about the Roman Empire frequently. This is news to most women, who I’d venture rarely obsess over Marcus Aurelius.

A TikTok video of a woman asking her husband how often he considers the Roman Empire went viral this week. He responded without pause that it was an “everyday thought.” More women are adding to the trend, asking their spouses and boyfriends how much brain space Rome occupies.

So, men: Is this serious? How often do you think about the Roman Empire? There are many reasons to think about Rome — reasons one of my dude-brained colleagues will probably flesh out in the future — but women . . . don’t. Or, at least, we think about it less frequently. Although I’m reminded of Rome often, it doesn’t pop into my head randomly, except in the cases of a few Catholic or architectural queries.

That men and women are different is, it seems for many online, still shocking. To destroy, conquer, and build empires has historically been the stuff of men. While there’s room for sexes to blend their interests, women tend to care more about the social aspects of history and probably identify better with aesthetic traditions (Jane Austen’s romanticism, Renaissance art, qualities of various royal reigns) instead of specific eras.

There’s no cause for social uproar every time we notice another distinction between men and women — isn’t it enough to just admit that we’re different? This week’s viral trend will probably manifest into think pieces over how the Roman Empire came to be a male-exclusive interest, or how more women need history degrees.

The Rome discourse mirrors an office discussion we had the other week, about our favorite films. The men couldn’t narrow down their lists unless they devised categories, and even then, there was painful debate on the merits of each movie’s script, score, and technical quality. Meanwhile, I’ve had the same favorite movie for the past decade, and my girlfriends agree that we choose our favorite films based more on emotional appeal than anything else.

Thousands of years have passed, and hundreds of empires have burned, only for men and women to remain fundamentally different. Some things never change.