Washinton D.C. 2016: An "Imperial City" Controlled By - and For - the Psychopaths

Peggy Noonan writing in the WSJ

*  *  *

The most interesting thing Donald Trump has said recently isn’t his taunting of Hillary Clinton, rather, it's what he told Bloomberg’s Joshua Green during a recent interview:

“Many politicians, Trump told me, had privately confessed to being amazed that his policies, and his lacerating criticism of party leaders, had proved such potent electoral medicine.” Mr. Trump seemed to “intuit,” Mr. Green writes, that standard Republican dogma on entitlements and immigration no longer holds sway with large swaths of the party electorate. Mr. Trump says he sees his supporters as part of “a movement.”

What, Mr. Green asked, would the party look like in five years?

“Love the question,” Mr. Trump replied. “Five, 10 years from now — different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years.”

My impression on reading this was that Mr. Trump is seeing it as a party of regular people, as the Democratic Party was when I was a child and the Republican Party when I was a young woman.

* YES. AS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS WHEN PEGGY (AND MYSELF) WERE YOUNG.

* UNDERSTAND, FOLKS, TRUMP ISN'T USING THE LANGUAGE OF THE LEFT. HIS REFERENCE TO "WORKERS" ISN'T IN THE MARXIST SENSE. NO... TRUMP IS SPEAKING ENGLISH! BY "WORKERS" HE MEAN "PEOPLE WHO WORK FOR A LIVING." FURTHERMORE, I'M GUESSING THAT TRUMP - LIKE ME - INCLUDES STAY AT HOME MOMS AS "WORKERS." HE INCLUDES THOSE WHO WORKED ALL THEIR LIVES AND ARE NOW HONORABLY RETIRED AS "WORKERS." IN OTHER WORDS... TRUMP IS CALLING FOR THE RETURN OF THE AMERICAN WORK ETHIC AND FOR THAT WORK ETHIC TO ONCE AGAIN BE VALUED AND REWARDED IN PRACTICE!

This is the first thing I’ve seen that suggests Mr. Trump is ideologically conscious of what he’s doing. It’s not just ego and orange hair, he suggests, it’s politically intentional.

It invites many questions. Movements require troops — not only supporters on the ground, but an army of enthusiastic elected officials and activists. Mr. Trump doesn’t have that army. Washington hates what he stands for and detests the idea he represents policy change.

* I HATE WASHINGTON. DON'T YOU FOLKS HATE WASHINGTON? AND IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WORD "HATE," HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR FEELINGS TOWARD THE "IMPERIAL CITY" AND IT'S "OVERLORD DENIZENS?"

GOP elites will have to start thinking about two things: the rock-bottom purpose of the party and the content, in 2016, of a conservatism reflective of and responsive to this moment and the next. This will be necessary whatever happens to Mr. Trump, because big parts of the base are speaking through him. It is no surprise so many D.C. conservatives are hissing, screeching and taking names. They’re in the middle of something epochal that they did not expect. They’re lost.

* YES. THEY'VE LOST. AND THE PROBLEM WITH THAT IS THAT SOME ARE SO ANGRY AND BITTER THAT THEY'RE WILLING TO GIVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A GIANT MIDDLE FINGER VIA HELPING YET ANOTHER LEFTIST DEMOCRAT WIN THE PRESIDENCY RATHER THAN SEE THE "PRIZE" GO TO TRUMP - THE MAN WHO VANQUISHED THEM.

As to another part of the Trump phenomenon that does not involve policy, exactly, when Mr. Trump went after Mrs. Clinton over her husband’s terrible treatment of women (she was his “unbelievably nasty, mean enabler”) my first thought was: Man, I thought it was supposed to get bloody in October. This is May — where will we wind up by November?! But I was struck that no friend on the Left seemed shocked or appalled. A few on the Right were delighted, and some unsure. Isn’t this the sort of thing that’s supposed to turn women off and make Hillary look like a victim? But so far Mr. Trump’s numbers seem to be edging up.

* BECAUSE PEOPLE KNOW IT'S TRUE! AND PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE FOR TRUTH!

I was surprised that if Mr. Trump was going to go there early he didn’t focus on a central political depredation of the Clinton wars. That was after Mrs. Clinton learned of the Monica scandal and did not step back, claiming a legitimate veil of personal privacy — after all, it was not she who had been accused of terrible Oval Office behavior — but came forward on “Today” as an aggressor. Knowing her husband’s history, knowing his sickness, having every reason to believe the charges were true, she attacked her husband’s critics, in a particular way: “The great story here ... is this vast Right-Wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. ... Some folks are gonna have a lot to answer for.”

* YEP. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON DIDN'T JUST DEFEND HER LYING, CHEATING, PERHAPS RAPING HUSBAND; SHE ENABLED HIM... SHE ACTED ALMOST AS HIS PARTNER IN THE SERIAL ABUSE! AND DON'T FOOL YOURSELVES, FOLKS; IT WAS ABUSE. IT WASN'T JUST MONICA LEWINSKY. IT WASN'T JUST WOMEN WHO "WANTED" BILL CLINTON. IT WAS WOMEN WHO DIDN'T... WHOM BILL CLINTON GROPED, HARASSED, AND EVEN (SO IT'S BEEN CREDIBLY CHARGED) RAPED. AND WHOSE SIDE WAS HILLARY ON? SHE WAS ON BILL'S. AND WHO DID HILLARY TRY TO DESTROY? THE WOMEN! BILL AND HILLARY WERE A TEAM! THEY STILL ARE!

Mrs. Clinton was speaking this way about conservatives, half or more of the country. At a charged moment she took a personal humiliation and turned it into a political weapon, which further divided the nation, pitching Left against Right. She did this because her first instinct is always war. If you have to divide the country to protect your position - by all means divide the country! It was unprotective of the country, and so unpatriotic.

* HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON IS A PIECE OF GARBAGE. PERIOD.

The lack of backlash against Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mrs. Clinton, though, I suspect is due to something else. It’s that the subject matter really comes down to one word: decadence. People right now will respect a political leader who will name and define what they themselves see as the utter decadence of Washington.

* THE UTTER DECADENCE OF WASHINGTON... BINGO!

I don’t mean that they watch “Scandal” and “House of Cards” and think those shows are a slightly over-the-top version of reality, though they do.

* ARE THEY "OVER THE TOP?" REALLY? MAYOR MARION BERRY - CRACK HEAD. FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE BOEHER - ALCOHOLIC. FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE HASTART - PEDOPHILE. BILL CLINTON - SERIAL ABUSER AND SELLER OF PARDONS. I COULD GO ON AND ON... BUT... "DECADENCE" IS THE POLITE TERM FOR WHAT GOES ON IN WASHINGTON!

Now and then I meet a young person who, finding I’d worked in a White House, asks, half-humorously and I swear half-curiously, if I ever saw anyone kill a reporter by throwing her under a train. I say I knew people who would have liked to but no, train-station murders weren’t really a thing then.

(Someday cultural historians will wonder if the lowered political standards that mark this year were at all connected to our national habit of watching mass entertainment in which our elites are presented as high-functioning psychopaths. Yes, that may have contributed to a certain lowering of real-world standards.)

But the real decadence Americans see when they look at Washington is an utterly decadent system. Just one famous example from the past few years:

A high official in the IRS named Lois Lerner targets those she finds politically hateful. IRS officials are in the White House a lot, which oddly enough finds the same people hateful. News of the IRS targeting is about to break because an inspector general is on the case, so Ms. Lerner plants a question at a conference, answers with a rehearsed lie, tries to pin the scandal on workers in a cubicle farm in Cincinnati, lies some more, gets called into Congress, takes the Fifth — and then retires with full pension and benefits, bonuses intact. Taxpayers will be footing the bill for years for the woman who in some cases targeted them, and blew up the reputation of the IRS.

Why wouldn’t Americans think the system is rigged?

This is Washington in our era: a place not so much of personal as of civic decadence, where the Lois Lerner always gets away with it.

* OH, NO, PEG; AS PREVIOUSLY NOTED (BY ME), WASHINGTON D.C. IS FULL OF PERVERTS, CROOKS, DRUNKS, AND DRUGGIES - AND THIS IS AT THE TOP ECHELONS OF GOVERNMENT!

Which brings us to the State Department Office of Inspector General’s report involving Hillary Clinton’s emails. It reveals one big thing: Almost everything Mrs. Clinton has said publicly about her private server was a lie.

* YEP...

She lied brazenly...

* YEP...

...coolly...

* YEP...

...as one who is practiced in lying would, as one who always gets away with it could.

(*NOD*)

No, she was not given legal approval to conduct her business on the server.

No, she was not given the impression it was fine.

No, she did not comply with rules on storage and archiving.

Her own office told U.S. diplomats personal email accounts could be compromised and they must avoid using them for official business. She was informed of a dramatic increase in hacking attempts on personal accounts. Professionals who raised concerns about her private server were told not to speak of it again.

* AND THIS IS THE WOMAN TENS OF MILLIONS OF AMERICANS SAY THEY WANT AS OUR NEXT PRESIDENT? SERIOUSLY...?!?! YOU CLINTON SUPPORTERS SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES!

It is widely assumed that Mrs. Clinton will pay no price for misbehavior because the Democratic president’s Justice Department is not going to proceed with charges against the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

This is what everyone thinks - and not only because they watch “Scandal;” but because they watch the news.

That is the civic decadence they want to see blown up. And there’s this orange-colored bomb...

* TRUMP!

God Bless the White Man! (Even if he's not actually white!)

By Patrick J. Buchanan

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“Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group … death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”

The big new killers of middle-aged white folks? Alcoholic liver disease, overdoses of heroin and opioids, and suicides. So wrote Gina Kolata in The New York Times of a stunning study by the husband-wife team of Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and Anne Case.

Deaton could cite but one parallel to this social disaster: “Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this.”

Middle-aged whites are four times as likely as middle-aged blacks to kill themselves. Their fitness levels are falling as they suffer rising levels of physical pain, emotional stress and mental depression, which helps explain the alcohol and drug addiction.

But what explains the social disaster of white Middle America?

First, an economy where, though at or near full employment, a huge slice of the labor force has dropped out. Second, the real wages of working Americans have been nearly stagnant for decades.

Two major contributors to the economic decline of the white working-class: Scores of millions of third-world immigrants, here legally and illegally, who depress U.S. wages, and tens of thousands of factories and millions of jobs shipped abroad under the label of “globalization.”

* BINGO!

Another factor in the crisis of middle and working class white men is the plunging percentage of those who are married.

(*NODDING*)

Where a wife and children give meaning to a man’s life, and to his labors, single white men are not only being left behind by the new economy, they are becoming alienated from society.

(*STILL NODDING*)

“It’s not surprising,” Barack Obama volunteered to his San Francisco high-donors, that such folks, “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…”

We all have seen the figure of 72% of black children being born out of wedlock.

* ACTUALLY... I BELIEVE IT'S 73%. (PERHAPS IT'S DOWN?)

For working class whites, it is up to 40%.

* CULTURAL SUICIDE...

(*SIGH*)

A lost generation is growing up all around us.

* YEP...

(*SHAKING MY HEAD IN DESPAIR AND DISGUST*)

In the popular culture of the ’40s and ’50s, white men were role models. They were the detectives and cops who ran down gangsters and the heroes who won World War II on the battlefields of Europe and in the islands of the Pacific.

* GO WHITE MEN! WOO-HOO!

They were doctors, journalists, lawyers, architects and clergy.

(*TWO THUMBS UP*)

White males were our skilled workers and craftsmen — carpenters, painters, plumbers, bricklayers, machinists, mechanics.

* YEP...!!!

They were the Founding Fathers, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Hamilton, and the statesmen, Webster, Clay and Calhoun.

(*DEEP BREATH*)

Lincoln and every president had been a white male. Middle-class white males were the great inventors: Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers. They were the great capitalists: Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan. All the great captains of America’s wars were white males: Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, U.S. Grant and John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.

What has changed in our culture?

Everything.

* AND OUR CULTURE IS IN TERMINAL DECLINE. IF TRUMP ISN'T ELECTED... WE'RE DONE.

The world has been turned upside-down for white children. In our schools the history books have been rewritten and old heroes blotted out, as their statues are taken down and their flags are put away. Children are being taught that America was “discovered” by genocidal white racists, who murdered the native peoples of color, enslaved Africans to do the labor they refused to do, then went out and brutalized and colonized indigenous peoples all over the world.

* FUNNY, THOUGH... HISPANICS (FROM SPAIN... IN EUROPE... AND PORTUGAL... ALSO IN EUROPE) GET A PASS. MODERN DAY MEXICANS, CENTRAL AMERICANS, AND SOUTH AMERICANS APPARENTLY HAVE NO CONNECTION TO "EVIL WHITE EUROPEAN IMPERIALISTS." (THOUGH CERTAINLY THE SPANISH OF SPAIN AND PORTUGUESE OF PORTUGAL WILL INSIST TO ANYONE WILLING TO LISTEN THAT THEY'RE AS "WHITE" AS ANY OTHER EUROPEANS.)

(*WINK*)

(*SMIRK*)

In Hollywood films and TV shows, working-class white males are regularly portrayed as what was once disparaged as “white trash.”

Republicans are instructed that demography is destiny, that white America is dying, and that they must court Hispanics, Asians and blacks, or go the way of the Whigs.

Since affirmative action for black Americans began in the 1960s, it has been broadened to encompass women, Hispanics, Native Americans the handicapped, indeed, almost 70% of the nation.

White males, now down to 31% of the population, have become the only Americans against whom it is not only permissible, but commendable, to discriminate.

* NOT FAIR. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION HURTS ASIANS EVEN MORE THAN IT HURTS WHITES. THE CHILDREN OF ASIAN "TIGER" PARENTS HAVE THE HARDEST PATH TO SUCCESS - BUT USUALLY SUCCEED IN SPITE OF THE INSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THEM AND IN FAVOR OF OTHER MINORITIES.

When our cultural and political elites celebrate “diversity” and clamor for more, what are they demanding, if not fewer white males in the work force and in the freshman classes at Annapolis and Harvard?

* THE TRUE CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ELITES KNOW THAT THEIR RULES DON'T APPLY TO THEIR KIDS...

(*SHRUG*)

What is the moral argument for an affirmative action that justifies unending race discrimination against a declining white working class, who have become the expendables of our multicultural regime?

“Angry white male” is now an acceptable slur in culture and politics.

* HAVE YOU GUYS EVER TRIED "BITTER AMERICAN" AMERICAN PALE ALE BY 21st AMENDMENT BREWERY IN CALIFORNIA? AWESOME! UNFORTUNATELY... I JUST FOUND OUT IT'S BEEN DISCONTINUED. KINDA FITTING... HUH?

(*DEEP SIGH*)

So it is that people of that derided ethnicity, race, and gender see in Donald Trump someone who unapologetically berates and mocks the elites who have dispossessed them, and who despise them.

* GO, TRUMP, GO!

* BY THE WAY... THESE SAME FOLKS ALSO TEND TO LAUD ALLEN WEST... BEN CARSON... CLARENCE THOMAS... AND SO ON AND SO FORTH.

Is it any surprise that militant anti-government groups attract white males? Is it so surprising that the Donald today, like Jess Willard a century ago, is seen by millions as “The Great White Hope”?

* HE'S MORE THAN THAT. HE WANTS TO MAKE ALL OF AMERICA "WHITE" IN THE COLOR-BLIND CULTURAL SENSE THAT MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. SPOKE OF. HE WANTS TO MAKE AMERICA - AND ALL AMERICANS - GREAT AGAIN!