Portland Unhinged, Untethered

I'll be heading downtown shortly to document the "freedom of speech" rally in support of Donald Trump and the Alternative Right. Here's the lay of the land (I'm not very good at reconnaissance, but:

 

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.

  Am-Boy, The Feeling Comes and Goes

Critique of Culture of Critique

Northwest Imperative

Interview with me starts at 1:09:35
 

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.