It's possible the FBI's director has become a puppet for the sick neo-Stalinists running the Biden Administration. Credit: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images
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Thursday 22 May 1856, was a sunny, sleepy day in Washington, D.C. As Preston Brooks, the Democratic Representative from South Carolina’s Fourth District, strolled into the Senate chamber, the air felt hot and heavy. The Senate’s business had wound down; the galleries had almost emptied. Brooks glanced up, and waited for the last spectators to leave. It was important, he thought, that no ladies were present to watch what he had planned.
When he was satisfied, Brooks walked over to the desk of Massachusetts’s Republican senator Charles Sumner, who was busy writing and barely even looked up. Between the two men there was no love lost. Brooks, who walked with a cane after having being injured in a youthful duel, was a passionate defender of slavery. Sumner, by contrast, was one of the nation’s most outspoken abolitionists. Only days earlier he had delivered a blistering speech mocking Brooks’s cousin, Senator Andrew Butler, as a hapless Don Quixote-style knight devoted to “the harlot, Slavery”.
To Brooks, the speech seemed an intolerable affront. At first he had considered challenging Sumner to a duel, but decided against it on the grounds that the Massachusetts politician was no gentleman. But he remained determined to take his revenge. And now, as Sumner glanced dismissively up, Brooks spoke. “Mr Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully,” he said quietly. “It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr Butler, who is a relative of mine.”
At that, Sumner tried to rise, but Brooks was too quick for him. He lifted his thick gutta-percha cane, with its heavy golden top, and brought it savagely down on Sumner’s head, again and again. Sumner fell. Blood trickled down his face. He was trapped behind his desk; he could not get up. Still the blows rained down, Brooks lashing away like a man possessed. Sumner was unconscious now. At last, some of Brooks’s colleagues managed to pull him off. A pool of blood spread across the floor of the Senate.
Although Charles Sumner didn’t die that afternoon, the sheer violence of the assault struck many Americans, even at the time, as a terrible harbinger of the horror ahead. But while thousands of anti-slavery Northerners joined rallies in Sumner’s support, the reaction in the South was very different.
Ordinary people sent Brooks hundreds of new canes to replace his own shattered weapon; one was inscribed “Hit him again”. Many Southern politicians insisted that Sumner had exaggerated his injuries, dismissing the fake news of the abolitionist media. And on the fire-breathing wing of the Southern press, there was no doubt about who was really in the wrong. Brooks’s attack was “good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences”, declared the Richmond Enquirer. Ideally, it said, the “vulgar abolitionists in the Senate” should be “lashed into submission”.
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SubscribeUnfortunately, Mr. Sandbrook seems to be wearing the very clothes he critiques. Yes, the USA is divided. And certainly, this situation doesn’t help matters. But by speaking of those divisions while only quoting from one of the two sides, Mr. Sandbrook demonstrates how truly difficult objectivity is. His comments seem to indicate that were it not for the pro-Trump side, all might be well and peaceful. Had his piece instead delved into where the pro-raid side might have been misguided, and had he watched and quoted from MSNBC or CNN, I would have come away more satisfied. Rather, readers are left to rely on the likes of Mr. Hindman’s counters (two hours ago, see below) and seek out the other half of the argument (assuming one can bear watching the aforementioned networks). While readers should likely always do this, Mr. Sandbrook misses the chance to help UnHerd loyalists consider various arguments and come to conclusions that might close the ideological gaps about which he writes.
There is one important development that I should probably mention. The administrative state is now terrified of a Trump second term. It is a bit hard to explain, but he recently announced a plan to reclassify tens of thousands of federal employees as Schedule F. This would allow Trump to clean house in federal agencies and the plan would likely be adopted DeSantis presidency as well. Populist conservatives have long been looking to demolish the administrative state and for Trump, this would be sweet payback. This recent announcement pushes things far beyond typical partisan politics because Trump has directly threatened the jobs of many previously untouchable (for all practical purposes) and influential bureaucrats.
Jonathan Swan from Axios explaining Schedule F
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTH9jDfL82A
Would that we could do that here in UK! We could get rid of or get past ‘the blob’ in one bound!
A better idea would be to introduce the Swiss system of direct democracy. They have been doing it successfully for 150-plus years. Trouble is most brits suffer from the group-think neurosis the Germans call the fuehrerprinzip.
When people like you spew this kind of vacuous nonsense do you ever bother to look at the populations of these “Systems of Direct Democracy”? The US is the 3rd largest populace country on earth with 50 distinct states and about 330 million people rivaled by two of the largest populace countries CCP with 1.45 billion and India with 1.35 billion. India would be the closest thing you have to a true democracy, but I’d ask you how that’s fared for them. How much do you want to bet that the 8th billionth person born was either Indian or Chinese? Been to India or CCP lately? Now, look at the US and how it fared against those two countries.
And yet, you want to foist the “Swiss System of Democracy” on the US? Think harder.
Another excellent point by Mr. H. I’ll add that the FBI leadership is captured by inside the beltway thinking which is disdainful of middle class Americans in fly over country (like me). To wit, Peter Strozk’s text that he had to go in to a Walmart while traveling because there were no other stores and “you could smell the Trump voters”. Replace the leadership with rank and file FBI from across the country and problem solved. PS I apologize if I’m misremembering who made that text, perhaps it was Lisa Page or some other FBI higher up.
Polarisation means among other things entirely ignoring points made by the (perceived) ‘other side’ or indeed anyone putting a nuanced view on any contentious subject, and essentially denying that anyone could really be acting or commenting in a neutral manner. So you do here – the Director of the FBI is a card carrying Republican and was appointed by Trump. Anyone doing their job, as Mike Pence found out, is treated as a traitor.
A fair criticism of Sandbrook’s article on the other hand, which others have made on this forum, is that while he certainly acknowledges both sides are doing this, he gives more detailed examples on the Right wing, Republican side.
I just watched the YouTube about Schedule F and how a transition might be implemented in a second Trump term – excellent reference, thanks!
He could also get rid of the FBI if he wished to. One great weakness of the progressive power base in universities, K-12, and government is that it is all at controlled by government
Who Trump – get rid of the FBI? Why so you can turn this country into a Trump authoritarian state?
The interesting thing is that De Santis – who will be the candidate if Trump is forced out – would be a much more focused and ideological adversary to the deep state. I wonder what their game really is.
Exactly. Trump’s renomination would be the best thing that could happen to them, and DeSantis (with Haley or even Condi Rice) the worst.
If DeSantis would simply support Florida’s current abortion law, it’d be a slam dunk. Suburban parents–particularly moms–HATE transactivism and grooming. They just need to know that early term abortion is still available. And plenty of centrists Blacks and Hispanics are fed up with defund the police crap and with open borders.
The MSDNC bubble is so strong that I think they really don’t get how popular DeSantis and any other serious, non-misogynistic, non-bombastic populist really is right now.
Very good points!
I agree, but many on the Right as on the Left are prone to complete overreach. For example, it would be a complete disaster if the Republicans appear to be moving to prohibit abortion, as some are threatening. This is not a popular position among the US electorate!
Assassination, perhaps.
I agree with you there. A 2024 Trump candidacy would be a gift to the Democrats. It is extraordinary that so many people on the Right as well as seemingly many on the Left – don’t see this.
Yes, Trump has an extremely loyal base, but he actively repels a larger part of the American electorate.
Did you ever just think Trump led a raid on the Capitol and so the FBI is after him? We already arrested 500+ of the attackers who followed his lead, and now,of course, now the FBI is closing in on the ringleader. No need to wrack you brain for a conspiracy. You don’t get to lie and use violence to overthrow an American national election, then just go play golf.
Trump led no such attack, but he did rail against all the 2020 nation-wide attacks on private / public property that cost many lives and billions of dollars – while liberals looked on approvingly. Very few people in the US think J6 was anything but a few thousand malcontents invading the people’s house to express their discontent. To claim it was anything approaching some sort of coup is laughable.
William these people are lunatics on this forum – what you state is the truth – the people here don’t have those values
From what I saw of his speech he neither ‘led a raid’ or, even, incited one. NB, If your representatives have such a dread of the populace, are they sure they are in the right jobs? Do they ever hold ‘surgeries’ to listen to their voters complaints whether said voter actually voted for them or not?
The FBI has a long history of fabricating “plots” to secure convictions (civil rights, black panthers, Whitmer kidnapping etc etc). But what they are particularly good at is fouling them up. This one blew up in their faces with good old Ray Epps. Damning video showed Epps as one of of the prime instigators & he was placed high up on a “MOST WANTED” list. But Ray had to be taken off and “disappeared” quickly when the FBI discovered he was part of a covert op. One of them in other words. The bungling never stops, but it’s always worth a laugh!
P.S. Holt reminds one of those conspiracy theorists who believed Trump was a “Russian asset”. More comedy 🙂
This has been a long time coming. For decades in fact. The government despite economic and political woes continues to grow at such an increased rate year after year that it belies mention of how they expect their citizens to tighten belts, but extract even more of our hard labors and treasures. More and more government expands to over 2000 governmental agencies of various kinds. More and more nameless and faceless bureaucrats get hired to regulate our lives, to dole out our tax dollars on effectively what would be considered payback money laundering schemes, where special interests donate money to democrats, only to have it sent back out in bills that get passed with little to no review for what’s in them.
Government largess is the real national security crisis of our times. Not white supremacy, radical conservatives, or parents at school board meets as that Toadie of an attorney general would have you believe. Politicians see us as a fountain of money to be exploited in perpetuity. Where are the blue ribbon panels that were promised to review all government agencies and weed out old and redundant laws and old and redundant agencies? I’ll tell you where they are, nowhere. The bureaucracy gets bigger and the nation gets a fat, bloated, ever-growing obese pig of a government falling down on top of us all in slow motion. It will never end. There is no end in sight to how large it will continue to grow. Something has to be the circuit breaker that stops government spending and stops government growth. Otherwise, we are doomed to fail.
Maybe the blue ribbon panels do exist, collecting fat paychecks for doing nothing.
Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same authoritarian coin. They don’t even differ all that much as to where many of the payback dollars go anymore.
It’s called voter dependence. The aim, by the left, is to get the voters dependent on state benefits so that the voters vote for the party that promises them the most which will usually (if not always) BE the left as they work towards a marxist economy run by the state where everyone gets paid according to what the state decides they need, rather than the capitalist idea that they get what their labour/job is worth in the market.
An IRS army of agents the size of the marine corps just broke my ability to be alarmed. For a national income tax that was promised to be a temporary emergency war tax to fund the Spanish American War and promised to apply ONLY the robber baron class.
And we’re going to add 87,000 IRS employees to the stew. To curb inflation. Uh huh!
Clean house for who? You?
The guy had 4 years all he did was divide divide divide – with his supporters allowing him to push the legal boundaries.
People attempting to portray Trump as some pinnacle of patriotism have serious mental issues and should seek therapy
Divide – Divide – Divide ??
LOL – REALLY ??
The demonrats and the fake news media did all the dividing. There were calls to impeach President Trump shortly after the election – before he was ever inaugurated. Then he spent the 4 years of his presidency defending himself against false accusations by all you demonrats. Call me a liar – please – so that everyone can see how much cool-aid you’ve been drinking…
Given the topic of this article – i.e. the increasingly harsh and adversarial tone of political debate in the US (with the UK not far behind, come to that) – are your comments meant to be ironic?
The Administrative State in is need of deep reform. These unelected bureaucrats need to be made responsible to the public, as all public servants should be.
The piece, written by Mr. Sandbrook, was an essay. He wasn’t reporting the news. So you should expect a point of view supported by fact. And it has been my experience that the news reported in the United States often takes the form of an editorial and often lacks supportive information outside of the filtered current events being reported.
What I believe Mr. Sandbrook was saying is to forget Trump… there’s more of a critical issue breathing below the surface in America. The same monster that led to the American Civil War. And this time, unlike the first, where over 50,000 Canadians enlisted in the North to beat the South, America is on its own.
The really curious thing about the article is that, IF I were wanting no one to be above the law, then my main annoyance would be that nothing had been done regarding the democrats. Not the outcry over the things done to Trump and Republicans. Perhaps that is the problem for the author?
Obviously, Sandbrook and Fred both have a blind eye to any wrongs done by democrats. The fact that Killary deleted 33k emails that had been already been subpoenaed and then wiped the server hard drives with bleach-bit – and absolutely NOTHING was done to her- she was NEVER held accountable for her actions. Then add the false accusations against president Trump, the investigations, (that ultimately proved President Trump was innocent), Then include the partisan impeachment of President Trump and now this raid on Mar-a-Lago…. There is indeed a double standard in our Govt and our justice system and it also pervasive here at UnHerd. Even as much as they may want to deny and claim otherwise…
If Sandbrook really wanted to provide an honest and open essay on the problems with our nation and govt – he would have included the killary caper and the lack of any prosecution.
If Sandbrook really wanted to provide an honest and open essay on the problems with our nation and govt – he would have included the failure of the DoJ and FBI to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop and the obvious pay for play influence pedaling by the Biden family.
Right now, the FBI says it cannot locate Hunter’s laptop. That tells you ALL you need to know about the Biden Administration, the DoJ, the FBI and the Fake News Media…
If Sandbrook really wanted to provide an honest and open essay on the problems with our nation and govt – he would have mentioned the Swamp and all the nasty little bureaucrats padding their pockets…
The DoJ and the FBI are just the Democrats version of the Nazi Gestapo and Soviet NKVD. They are the Democrats upgraded extension of the KKK – being used to attack, persecute and silence anyone and everyone that does not bow to them and their Tyrannical idiocy…
There are several problems with the author’s spiel.
The FBI has spent years trying to destroy Trump on a fake “Russiagate” hoax. The accusations were proven false and the FBI was at the center of it that time. “The walls are closing in!”The Republican establishment absolutely hates Trump and has worked with the Democrat Party in the past to try and destroy him.Christopher Wray just happens to be part of a “law enforcement organization” whose history is littered with abuses against those the political establishment does not like and has been that way since its founding, including outright illegal behavior such as civil rights violations, illegal wiretaps, and falsifying evidence.You can believe that special care should be taken regarding using the law to go after political figures. Especially against political opponents to avoid the “politicization” of law enforcement proceedings and the breakdown of law and the system of government.You can also believe that no person should ever be above the law and that there should be no restriction against using the full force of the law against a person no matter what the consequences are.You cannot argue points 4 and 5 at the same time. Many of the people cheering this on, were all about number 4 for their candidate just a few years ago and now act like number 5 is what they believed all along. Look up some articles from right after the 2016 election. The FBI investigation into Hillary along with the “Russians” became the narratives for why Hillary lost the election.There is nothing normal about how this FBI operation is being handled and looks to be an excuse to raid Trump’s property to look for political dirt and not classified documents.
One can very much believe that no one should be above the law while simultaneously believe special care needs to be taken while applying this to powerful political figures, especially when they are backed by armed militia’s
HERE – let me FIX your statement:
“One can very much believe that no one should be above the law while simultaneously believe special care needs to be taken while applying this to powerful political figures” –
“especially when they are backed by an armed and compromised FBI, all the Alphabet soup agencies and the rest of the Swamp.”
The “armed militias” you are speaking about are concerned about protecting the Constitution and our Nation from a renegade political party. The “armed militia” of which you speak are not protecting or “backing powerful political figures”…
Well said. And what the author has apparently forgotten, or completely dismissed, is the fact that blindingly hypocrisy has been committed by Democrats ever since 2016. The MSM has gaslighted the world for too long and they don’t even hide from it anymore. Shove a radical progressive agenda down the throats of American because it’s win at all cost.
What are law abiding citizens supposed to do? We applaud the American Revolution and events like the Boston Tea Party, yet we cringe at the thought of a bunch of overweight, balding lite beer drinkers attempting to “end democracy” by storming the Capital without any weapons.
But the Boston Tea Party group didn’t call the ship’s officers to be hanged from the yardarm.
The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were not couch potatoes. They were part of a plot to use force or the threat of force to coerce an illegal political outcome, the intervention of a Vice President in an electoral count. What do you think would have happened if the Capitol Police had let them through?
I thought it was the Capitol Police who did let them through!
And then shot one at point blank range and ‘got away with it”! So much for the ‘Land of the Free’!
That riot was as much a serious coup attempt as The Mouse That Roared described a true war. While several of the rioters did have guns with them, they were never drawn and the only shot that was fired was from an officer who killed a rioter.
Take note! The MSM is the problem.
the MSM is PART of the problem –
they are just the propaganda wing of the demonrat party
Phew! I’m so relieved that this was the first response I read after finishing that deeply slanted “Orange Man Bad” article. The best example of the deep (and uninformed) bias of the author was: “To get a sense of what today’s successors to those antebellum Southern editorialists are thinking, I turned to Fox News.” Ergo, Trump and his supporters are like the slave-holding Southern States and their Southern apologists.
Dude, read the treatises by John C. Calhoun (Southern Senator before the Civil War) that derided the idea that all men are created equal, and note Christopher Wray’s reference to angry people after this unnecessary RAID as “deplorable” and you will understand how the left is trying to substitute a “progressive” constitution for the one that was agreed to and amended over the past 230 years (best and most erudite explanations of this split between two governing worldviews are Charles Kessler’s “The Crisis of the Two Constitutions” and Caldwell’s “The Entitlement Society”)
So many of these deeply slanted articles seem to be surfacing in Unheard lately!
I’ve been thinking that also. I can read this sort of politely biased stuff for free anywhere. Rethinks ng my subscription.
The title of Christopher Caldwell’s excellent book, which I’m in the middle of reading a second time, is ‘The Age of Entitlement’.
Oops, thanks for the correction – I agree that it is excellent!
The successors to those antebellum Southerners are — the democrats.
AMEN!
Most of the “erudite elite” were never taught that. They remain blissfully and willfully ignorant of certain pieces of history and factual information and wantonly reject any facts that do not fit their world-view…
They literally were the Democrats up until the resorting of the 80s. Then the Southern Democrats became Southern Republicans.
As a Brit, I thought that was well known! The Confederacy was Demoncrat & the Yankies were Republican.
I can’t really improve on this comment by Matt H. but I will add that I was a never-Trump republican who started warming to him in 2017 as he implemented policies that were fairly mainstream repub. Regarding the Russia collusion obsession, I thought “well it doesn’t seem to add up but lets wait and see”. I feel deeply burned by that as we now know literally NOTHING was true, it all came from the HRC campaign. I don’t want to get fooled again.
The author also ignores the fact that that Clinton, who had no presidential authority over classified documents as dies Trump, demonstrably did destroy thousands of documents while Trump is only suspected of thinking about it by his political opponents. There is no similarity at all between the two cases.
Correction: There is nothing normal about how this FBI operation is being handled and looks to be an excuse to raid Trump’s property to plant political dirt and not classified documents.
Hilary Clinton’s “private emails?” I think you mean Hilary Clinton’s **private email server, upon which she illegally received and stored classified materials.**
I’ve served in military intelligence, I had a security clearance. What she did with that server was a violation of Federal law of the sort that dishonorably ends peon careers and often puts such serfs in prison for years. Hillary’s not incidentally also destroyed hard drives and cell phones that were under subpoena, which is another Federal crime.
Barack, Bill and Hill have all done what Trump is accused of, namely taking classified materials with them upon leaving office. No one cared. This present hubbabooloo is all a great crock of seething malicious nonsense, like most of what these same cretins have attacked Trump with.
This is about the technocratic elite attempting to lynch then toss the people’s tribune into the Tiber. This is Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus redux, and the result will be the same as before: the death of the Republic in the imposition of an international fascist imperium ruled by the imperial technocratic elite.
Just please stop hypocritically squealing that this prosecution of Trump has anything to do with equality before the law. They’re dispensing with that pretense here. This is a class struggle, and it’s very clear in this essay you’re bearing the propaganda burden of your side.
An excellent synopsis of this ‘drama’ if I may so. I particularly liked your reference to the brothers Gracchi.
Perhaps to ameliorate the damage already done, the wretched Pelosi creature should treated in the same manner as Gaius Hostilius Mancinus, preferably outside Mar-a-Laga?
not quite sure Mar-a-Laga, dripping vulgarity and monied excess, is Gracchian. May I delicately suggest you and Charles Curtis, who came up with the reference, avoid drawing inappropriate and inaccurate historical comparisons. History is clearly not your strong point and you would be on safer ground sticking to the facts of the article.
To assist you: the author is not taking this side or that side. He is simply commenting on the growing antongonism and polarisation between left and right, blue and red, this “tribe” and that “tribe” and that the lack of common ground may well have serious consequences. The aggressive manner of your response and of Mr Curtis, both in tone and in content, seems, if anything, to confirm the author’s contention.
Then his use of English isn’t very good, as he appeared to be all in favour of investigating Trump etc and not at all appalled that it was not done for Clinton et al.
May I ask if English is your native tongue? Your powers of comprehension seem somewhat limited.
There is no suggestion that Mar-a-Lago is Gracchian, as you so politely put it. The reference is purely to do the with fate of Muncinus, as Numantia is obviously inappropriate.
I suspect that you may unfortunately be one of those to whom Cicero referred when he said:: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” Am I correct? If so my heartfelt commiserations.
awww bless Don Juan’s little heart.
Dont hurt his feelings by pointing out the obvious….
Reference your Cicero quote, I wonder if that explains why liberals behave as though they are 12 years old?
I have to say, I was waiting for when he would get to what he looked at from the liberal side, expecting a discussion of CNN or MSNBC to “balance” what he saw on Fox News, but it never came.
Don’t really agree with you but interested in the reach for classical models of politics as analogies. I don’t worry because it is ‘élitist’, though no doubt some will, but because I don’t think the parallels are that close and therefore that helpful.
Of course history can teach us but I am wary of reaching so far back and into such a different historical period when the culture, the expectations and the sense of ‘right and wrong’ were so markedly different from ours. I won’t try and offer alternative analogies – they will as easily be knocked-down – but the danger with historical exemplarism (my neologism for the day) is that, because dramatic everything is painted in bright colours, when ‘50 shades of grey’ (not the book) is more realistic.
Sandbrook sort of acknowledges that, at the end of the article, when he writes of ordinary people going about their business. I wonder though, if we recovered more of that sense of the ordinariness of life in our politics (on both sides of the pond), would we be better served? Politics might be less dramatic and ‘fun’ but I, for one, could do with less ‘sound and fury’ and a bit more competence.
With best wishes
Simon
You should move to Switzerland where ‘sound and fury’ is very low and ‘competence’ very high.
However I am sure you recall what Cicero said: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
LOL. Right. Switzerland wields no power. In recent years their “elite” have found it more useful to recognize their place and kneel before Mammon.
‘They’ have been successfully being doing that for some time now, and most are quite content. Who needs power when you have the Alps?
And a universal draft with appropriate guns and ammo required to be kept at home until they completely age out. It’s not just the mountains that protect them.
Those who forget history or, even worse, ignore its lessons are doomed to repeat it.
It’s that blinding hypocrisy that seems to avoid a leftist’s eyes only.
Your argument has a major fallacy. Without putting labels on it, you’re saying that the raid on Trump is wrong because the FBI didn’t raid/charge other high-profile individuals earlier and what they did was also against the law (taking important documents home). Argumentum ad antiquitatem (the argument to antiquity or tradition). The fact is Trump was a bad boy, and the FBI was finally doing its job.
Don’t know about Trump being a bad boy, but someone is seriously rattled. It was an an act of total desperation.
Whoa whoa whoa with the military academy horseshit nonsense bro! LOL I haven’t read such horseshit since G. Gordon Liddy had a radio show. Too many attack vectors to your grunt level view of reality so I’ll just say this: IF you knew the technical situation with Hillary’s servers including the content of all the hard drives etc. etc. (which you don’t because you’re a grunt and you don’t know shit about shit except that your mamma’s birth canal is also her asshole), then you would know it was a technicality and also a valid argument that her server did not abide by DOD security standards. Everything else you said makes it obvious you should be pushed back up your mammas asshole. If I see you around the Pentagon, I’ll dress you down appropriately and it will be fun. People say I can take the hair right off of a grunt with my morning dress down.
Keep dreaming there skinny! Trump is a traitor and a corrupt piece of human trash FAR EXCEEDING any executive leadership, even Nixon. Get ready for some surprise flexibility that puts you deep inside your mamma… you stupid grunt simp!
to quote an asinine idiot ” Whoa Whoa Whoa” !!
You seem to be the one that doesn’t know SH*T about SH*T
By the way – please fix your dress. Everyone can see that your panties are all bunched up where your head has entered your bum-hole and none of us want to see that.
(i know the term “asinine idiot” is a bit redundant – but it is more than appropriate in this circumstance)
That’s a great cartouche you have there!
“Seething malicious nonsense>” Well put!
Truly and well said !!!
Biden in his inauguration speech called for “Unity” about a dozen times. That was the theme of the whole speech – and many Americans, after the rancour of the Trump presidency, breathed a sigh of relief.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” Biden promised “We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.”
It was a bare-faced lie.
Biden immediately instituted impeachment proceedings against Trump, in a move that was without question going to cause more division.
Trump was out of office, there was no upside in hounding him. If Biden wanted unity and to heal division he could have left his predecessor sitting in a sulk in Mar-a-Lago, rather than martyring him in the eyes of his many millions of supporters. It was just another vindictive act of spite on the part of his opponents who were utterly deranged by his time in office.
It also might come back to bite them – Trump was mocked by Obama and it stung him into running. He got the last laugh by taking Obama’s job. If Biden fears Trump in 2024 then he’s just doubled the likelihood of Trump running, and wildly increased support for him.
I think the main reason for the impeachment, and all the subsequent proceedings regarding Jan 6th was so that the Democrats could tar all Republicans with the same brush, as though voting Republican in the future was akin to storming the Capitol once again. We saw a similar (indefensible) tactic used here, by those on the hard-remainer Left who tried to suggest that supporting Brexit somehow made one complicit in the murder of Jo Cox.
Now Biden instructs federal law enforcement to raid the home of a former President. No one, surely, can argue that this is not a political, rather than judicial, move against an opponent. It’s a move straight out of the S American Dictator playbook.
If Trump has classified documents then subpoena them, institute legal proceedings. Don’t send in federal law enforcement unannounced. It is needlessly inflammatory because it is such an overtly political move to discredit an opponent.
There is also the blatant double-standards at play. Where was the FBI raid on the Clintons after they packed half the White House into a U-Haul? Where was the dawn raid on Hillary after she deleted 33,000 classified documents that Congress had demanded she produce? Just imagine, if you can, the absolute media meltdown if Trump, on gaining office, had sent the FBI to raid Obama or Clinton. Yet most legacy media have revelled in the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
I’m no great Trump supporter, I recognise many of his achievements in office but think his temperament was wildly ill-suited to be President. But if we know anything about the man we know he can bear a grudge. Part of me – admittedly the more nihilistic part – almost wants to see him get his retribution. Even if he doesn’t run for President, if a Republican takes the White House, for Trump to make it his busines to see all the shady dealings of the Clintons, the Bidens and Pelosi exposed and punished.
For millions of American voters Trump made perfect sense when he told them, “In reality they’re not after me. They are after you. I’m just in the way.”
Biden and the Democrats might well come to rue the day.
I’d also say that it is probably not ‘Biden’ but Biden’s handlers who are after Trump. Biden is appearing to be even more disconnected from events than expected yet his handlers appear to be camouflaged and not generally open to scrutiny. The FBI may yet be shown to be useful idiots.
Yes, you’re probably right. I fear poor old Joe at this point couldn’t run a bath, let alone the country. But, as President, I’m afraid it’s on him.
Using federal law enforcement to go after political opponents – just beggars belief – yet watch the liberal news-anchors and the late night talk-show hosts, they’re loving this, whilst still insisting it’s the conservative right that causes division.
On that note, who do you think that is running the USA as it certainly isn’t Biden. His wife? Not really sure…
Somedays it looks like Biden is being handled by the puppeteers from Jim Henson’s Workshop – after a particularly long lunch.
It’s referred to as the “Deep State”. Thousands and thousands of unelected lifelong bureaucrats who meddle into our lives and create insane rules and regulations incessantly.
Right, we don’t have a three division government, there’s a fourth now that’s easily as powerful as the other three. Overwhelmingly democrats, they are terrified of a second Trump presidency.
Unelected bureaucrats which have been co-opted by the very powerful tribe that doesn’t know what a woman is.
LOL!
Former Obama & Clinton officials, Susan Rice and Ron Klain for sure.
Obama, Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, the coastal bundler crowd, and the beltline uni-party.
Biden did not institute impeachment proceedings against Trump. Do you actually live in the US and read the news here, or know how impeachments work?
Biden green-lit Congress instituting impeachment proceedings.
Without Biden’s support for the move there is no way it would have happened.
The basis for the impeachment was the accusation that Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to launch investigations into Burisma, to politically damage Biden. Central to that allegation was that Trump and the US Govt had no legitimate interest in seeing Burisma investigated.
The emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop mean this argument completely falls to pieces. Biden cannot claim ignorance.
The emails make plain that Hunter Biden was selling access to his father, then VP, and the Obama administration in exchange for vast sums of money.
Can anyone honestly, reasonably, suggest that Trump, as POTUS, cannot ask an ally to investigate credible claims of corruption involving the federal government?
Biden also pushed for the Jan 6th hearings – “It’s important the American people understand what truly happened and to understand that the same forces that led January 6 remain at work today,” “But I know together … we can unite and defend this nation, Democrat and Republican, allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy,” … “That’s what those hearings are all about. You’re gonna hear a lot more.”
Still pretending to seek unity whilst engaged in a partisan witch hunt to discredit a political rival.
But you’re right, it probably wasn’t Biden himself, the poor old man lacks the nous. But he is in office, so what his handlers do is, I’m afraid, still his responsibility and he is liable for the consequences.
Biden was not in office when the second impeachment proceedings started and once Biden took office, Trump was gone and no longer reachable by impeachment The only penalty if a President (or judge) is impeached and then convicted by the Senate is removal from office. What, if anything, goes on after that is a different legal kettle.
Technically you are correct, but it’s almost like saying the man who cut the rope on the guillotine killed the prisoner.
IF the guillotine fell and killed the prisoner, then he did.
You expressed my sentiments precisely.
This is one of the best posts I’ve read in quite some time.
It sums up my feelings on how things are here in the US. I didn’t support Trump either as I believe he did a pretty good job as president but someone really needed to take his phone away. His temperament is ill suited as you mentioned.
Still, it is obvious to anyone who can look at this situation remotely objective, that this is all about stopping Trump from running again. Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Mitt Romney, should be concerned about first, Republicans winning all over during mid terms and then Trump running again in 2024. Pay back is a b***h and Republicans are going to want their pound of flesh.
What most people, on either side don’t seem to see, is that this is about the Globalist politicians fighting against an loud mouth Elitist. The Globalists want to run the world and tell everyone what to do and proved during the pandemic that they have the power to do it. Trump just wants to feed his ego, which is also a problem but in my opinion, no where near the severity of the formers thirst for power.
These same Democrats who rail against Trump used to rail against the people that brought us the Iraq and Afghanistan wars yet are glad to get into bed with war mongers like Liz Cheney. How can they not see this?
Recently, we’ve been hearing “Anyone But Trump” but the people who voted him into the White House in 2016 had already adopted that thinking with “Anyone But The Usual Cast Of Characters” that make up most politicans on BOTH sides. Before Trump, it’s been “Bush’s and Clinton’s” for forty plus years starting with Reagan and despite both parties getting their turns in power, what really changed? Nothing that really effects the average American.
well – except that we keep getting the shaft and the bill for it
that is what never seems to change…
That said, one gets the distinct feeling that Biden is out to lunch (with the ice cream man!) and that he has handlers. Biden has never been a man of ‘vision’.
Maybe those who elected him are out to lunch, too. After all, they voted for a man who did not even campaign, and who, as Vice President, couldn’t be trusted to make a public comment without looking ridiculous. Even back them, I cringed every time he spoke into a microphone. They had fair warning, and STILL chose him.
I think it’s important to understand that It isn’t that the Democrats are out to lunch, but what stimuli they are trained to respond to. The democrat voters by and large respond most loyally to hate, hate speech, identity politics, and weave it all together with more frenzied hate. The Democrats no longer, if they ever did, have a platform of issues they stand for. Thus they can only oppose. This leads to the inevitable path of demonizing their opponents. But as most people learn in life, to keep the coals of hatred alive, it needs to be fed on a regular basis, with more hate and a further devaluing of their opponents, in this case the Conservatives and everyone else who isn’t them. Or else the fire dies.
The reason they hate what is right and correct is because they want something that is wrong and immoral. Their entire “platform” is based on plunder, taking from someone only to give it to someone else who didn’t earn it. Our entire Constitution and bill of Rights more then anything, was written to prohibit and end government plunder. Government was instituted to protect life, liberty and property, thus it would be a land ruled by law. The Law was instituted, again, to protect life, liberty and property and prohibit government plunder not to incite plunder.
But our Constitution and Laws have obviously been corrupted. Our current government now controls a vast apparatus and system of plunder. They no longer protect life, liberty nor property. Rather they oppose life, liberty and property ownership and believe themselves to be the rightful owners of this newfound vast hoard of American wealth, to do with as they please. I am not even certain that the subversion and damage to our Republic can be fixed any more. But I am not certain it can’t be either.
Cheers-
Phil
from one Phil to another
Your message has been read and approved 1776% !!!
One of the very few things I agree with Alexander Hamilton on was his fear that a Bill of Rights would turn into the idea that the government can do anything except what is explicitly forbidden to it.
Best comment so far.
Biden sounds just like the UK’s remoaners. The ‘bury the hatchet’ argument they use sounds fine, until you realise they aren’t talking about the original meaning, they are talking about burying it in the head of any of their opponents who aren’t going to recant their opposing views and accept theirs.
That quote is so true and also applicable to UK politics, the British media don’t hate the Tories because they are conservatives, “they are obviously not”, but hate ordinary working class Brits who are conservative by nature.
The “intelligencia” are imbedded in the Swamp, we desperately need an inspirational figure on the right like Donald John to have a chance of survival.
Donald Trump has been ordained by God as his holy king to rule over this Earth.
He is Christ Reborn and in this war, patriots will defend God’s dominion over creation.
Okay. Well, good luck with that
Don’t assume you know what you’re talking about there Paddy, because clearly, you don’t. You’re like one of those old men trying to convince people of expired facts LOL. FBI played by the rules, your guy is a scam/b***h and he just did his usual piss-down-his-own-leg routine like the weak cowering simp he is. Now he’s getting stuck like the pig he is. All your boys getting tar’d, you’re right about that. Dems are going to be controlling the show for a long long long long long long time there Methusela, catch up! Put your lips on that Jesus d**k and start sucking now!!! LOL
HEY – ILLOGICAL Circumstance –
You should have pulled your head out of your arse before you stared typing and making a fool out of yourself in front of everyone on this platform… just sayin…
Great piece Mr Taylor, get a job on here immediately
But that’s the point isn’t it? They didn’t do that, and it was one rule for Hillary, another for Trump. That’s largely why people are annoyed.
That the author, despite making some good general points about the tribal mood in America, fails to see this undermines this article.
They did announce they were investigating her emails before the election though, and strangely enough it proves the authors point. The red team were jubilant, and the blues said it was an affront to democracy to do so before an election. There was no middle ground
Yes they did. They announced it and subpoenaed her, allowing them the opportunity to delete them.
By contrast in this case there was an ostentatious, unannounced raid. Not a subpoena which would have been the more measured response
Yes I completely agree that if it were the other way round the same noises would be made just in reverse. But you have to admit the blatant double standards. You’ve made the same point I was criticising in the article.
How have I? American politics to me is a circus, and it is of no interest which side wins or loses. You however betray your partisanship with your response of complaining about the FBI because your favourite team in your eyes was slightly more harshly treated
I’ve explained it very clearly. Twice.
That you cannot understand that is not my fault. As opposed to your assuming I have a favourite ‘team’ and repeating the same points made in the article, despite apparently having no interest in which side wins or loses.
Like some of the democrats that have openly criticised this event, this is a massive own goal and will give a whole ton of legitimacy to aggrieved Republicans. This is something anyone apart from those Republicans should be concerned about.
Those (on both sides) now concerned with how this undermines democracy and faith in institutions are 100% correct. We have become desensitised to the rhetoric as we have been told everything every 5 minutes is a “threat to democracy” when it usually isn’t.
This however is, arguably far more so than some unarmed MAGA loons running onto the capitol. As it is a supposedly impartial unpolitical wing of government authority blatantly treating one side far differently from the other.
Your nom de plume is American country style and you call US politics a circus? Get a new avatar!
You really should have an interest in which side wins and which side loses. The future of the world depends on whether or not the Republicans get enough power (and use it) to stop the communists.
The USA is one of the last bastions of freedom. It is wonderful to see the protests in Europe but they don’t have the Constitution and Bill of Rights and will have to work through their own Brexit to regain sovereignty.
The Communist(s) (counting Russia in addition to China) are about to be brought down by their own demography. They have run out of young children. They have about run out of older children. And even running out of young adults and middle aged adults. Once the Baby Boom from after WWII finishes retiring by the end of this decade there aren’t enough younger people to step into their shoes and the generations behind them are even smaller and smaller. They are both about to run short of military draft aged men, so whatever they want to do militarily has to be done now or never.
But then almost all of the developed countries are in the same boat, just a little way behind. Instead of the “normal,” pre-industrial pyramid shaped demography with more children than young adults and more young adults than middle age adults and more middle age adults than retirees, theirs looks almost flipped With fewer and fewer people as they get younger. And it still takes 20 years to raise a 20 year old (Plus 9 months, but who’s counting?). No government program, no decree can change that. The American Baby Boomers did one thing that the Boomers in other countries didn’t do – have children. The suburbs make it easier to have children. The US population looks more like a bumpy chimney shape instead of being flipped upside down.
To farmers, children are an asset, almost free labor. Move into the city and they are only an expense and hard to deal with in an apartment. Birth rates drop wheneve people move to the cities. A lot. No developed country is having enough children to maintain its population level. Almost none of the developing countries are either. Even India is at or just below replacement.
Without young people, you don’t have consumers. With plenty of retirees, you have a lot of people that have to be supported by an ever decreasing sized population below them. There aren’t enough GenXers to fill the shoes of the retiring Boomers. The US Millenials (who at least exist here) are a larger generation than GenX, but still not near what the Boomer size was. The Zoomers are smaller than the GenXers. Those ages, that demographic shape cannot be changed. It’s baked in. We should all be grabbing every potential immigrant with two brain cells to rub together instead of trying to keep them out.
For most of the world, the only reason that the population is still growing is that people aren’t dying as young. And immigrants on a country scale. About the only region where more babies are still being born is in Sub-Saharan Africa and the rates are dropping there too.
What is this going to do in a world economy that was built around consumerism and free trade when there are fewer consumers? A lot fewer consumers. And trade not nearly as safe and inexpensive.
The US still has some consumer base and we never connected our economy with global markets anywhere near what the rest of the world did. Only about 15% of our GDP is involved in international trade and over half of that is with Canada and, especially, Mexico. Mexico has a considerably better demographic profile than we do. It’s starting to go vertical, but there’s still a huge reservoir of young people who have kids and buy cars and homes and college and daycare and all of that. Central America is about 10 years behind them and we’re covered on trade there with CAFTA (NAFTA with Central America instead of North America).
Get the government out of the way and we can be completely self-sufficient in fossil fuels, both oil and natural gas, within a year. Companies are finally leaving China in droves, many coming back to the US and even more to Mexico. China is no longer the cheapest place to make things. Their labor costs have gone up by 6 or 7 times while their productivity has barely changed. Others are moving to other South Asian countries that want nothing to do with China. Not to Japan or South Korea or even Taiwan. Those countries are all aging rapidly too. Japan is the only real failed demographic economy in the world so far. It’s not just a lost decade, but decade after decade being lost from here on out. They’ve dealt with it by automation to take the place of absent workers and by moving their factories where their customers are. South Korea’s going to be in the same place in just a few years and Taiwan’s not far behind.
Ukraine has temporarily beefed up the mutual military “guardianship” of the US, at least for Europe, but Russia’s not the USSR. It’s a nasty boogie man. We agreed to police the world if they joined us against the USSR. That was the deal made at Bretton Woods at the end of WWII. We’re getting tired of doing that, pulling our military back home from all over the world. Becoming more isolationist.
Who is going to defend the oceans now to make continued globally connected trade safe when we pull back? What happens when Saudi and Iran go to war again? Are the Europeans going to step in to stop it with their small navies as the US has done with our navy in the past?
China gets 85% of its energy as oil from the Middle East. How long can China even continue to exist as a country if that gets cut off? Their navy can’t do anything about it. They have a lot of ships but most of them are very small and only a few can operate at any significant distance from China’s bases. India could also cut them off if they don’t have to worry about the US Navy getting in the way.
There are 11 or 12 operational supercarriers in the world, with more being built, that are American. France has one but it’s been plagued with problems. England’s, I think, is still in sea trials. One or two US supercarrier groups could pretty well take on the rest of the world’s combined navies if there was a need to. We’re safe. Neither Canada nor Mexico is any threat to us and our other two directions are huge moats that our Navy could easily deny to anyone.
We’re going to pull back. Every President we’ve elected in the last 24 years has been a nationalist that really has little interest in what the rest of the world does. George H. W. Bush was likely the President best qualified to re-align ourselves with the rest of the world after the USSR fell, but instead, we elected Clinton. Downhill from there. Bush 43 was focused on one thing and one thing only. Terrorism. Obama just wanted the rest of the world to go away.
Trump? He did some good things, especially the renegotiation of NAFTA into the USMCA. There was no need to place all the tariffs on imports. It’s the buyer who pays those taxes, American buyers, not the seller. But there was also no need to make it easier for China to trade with anyone. The WTO should have been kept up. It’s about the only organization that China doesn’t flout because if they do, they no longer have favored nation trading status with everyone else. Biden, in case no one noticed, hasn’t done a thing to roll back any of Trump’s moves there. Just as much a nationalist.
Instead of the uni-polar world that we’ve had for the last 30 years, it will be a multi-polar world, possibly even back to the days of the self-contained empires that existed before WWII. The UK is out of the EU, has a decent navy and is best friends with us. France never really invested all that much into the EU and wouldn’t have much trouble itself in breaking away there either. Turkey is in good shape as well, if they could get rid of Erdogan. Germany is going to be a basket case. It’s energy policies were bankrupting the country even before the Ukraine war. Face it. It’s not a particularly sunny or windy country. At least the UK and Norway have the North Sea for both oil and mostly decent wind levels. Not enough to industrially count on the wind, but there. Germany can’t afford to keep shelling out to carry the southern European countries. Their population is aging and slimming down the fastest of the big EU countries. All those meticulous and skilled craftsmen and engineers are retiring, taking their experience and skills with them.
India never really invested in the American led world order. It will be in pretty good shape. Comparatively anyway. Everyone is going to be hurt some. Australia and New Zealand should be ok as well. Argentina, of all places, is set to come off ok if they could get over this continual borrowing problem. Possibly Columbia as well. Africa? Maybe South Africa. Possibly Botswana and Angola.
The US will probably still protect trade with the UK and some other European countries, at least their trade with us. Not with everyone else. We’ll probably keep a presence with the South Pacific and East Asian countries. Central and South American countries will benefit some from sharing the same ocean shores as we do. But I don’t see much more than that.
Obviously, this isn’t going to happen overnight. But it’s the path I see the world taking.
“Get the government out of the way”
Amen to that
US politics impacts the world Billy Bob, so it should be of interest to anyone who cares about topics such as war, inflation, immigration, supply chain issues, sanctions, energy prices, etc.
I’d definitely prefer a president and a US party who didn’t allow major conflicts to happen, and who had economic policies that didn’t put the world economy at risk.
I don’t care whether it is red or blue or something inbetween.
“More harshly treated”
Erm, isn’t that precisely what those criticising the article point out. The article doesn’t see that it talks as though both sides are treated equally, AND they aren’t. That alone is enough to explain why the ‘civilised’ status quo is failing. You can’t discriminate in a system and then complain when it stops working when those discriminated against opt for other means! The classic is the comparison of a Summer of Arson, violence and rioting with Democrats standing up for the rioters, and NOTHING being done, yet a weirdo’s day out in the Capitol is claimed to be a Coup attempt! The people involved in the “Coup” took selfies, purloined souvenirs and went home – and that is a Coup?!
What about Hunter’s laptop? A treasure trove of date, but crickets from the left except to delete the story and the NY Post from social media before the election. Blinding hypocrisy.
and now the FBI – cannot locate Hunter’s laptop which was in their possession…
The political and MSM double standard against the right has been going on for years, at least since the ‘90s. Americans may remember the time when vice president d**k Cheney (despised by the left) accidentally shot his buddy while out duck hunting in Wyoming. The buddy was not seriously injured, but the media uproar went on for weeks.
Contrast this with the Air Force 1 incident, shortly after the election of Obama, where the plane flew low over NYC and freaked the New Yorkers. (Obama was not on the plane.) Well, you may not be aware of this because the incident was dropped like a stone after the initial brief report. No other commentary was posted that I’m aware of. The video has been removed from YouTube.
Now, imagine if the plane belonged to a Republican president what the governmental/media reaction would have been. Not just weeks, but half a year! Congressional investigations! Perhaps even an impeachment attempt!
These are two examples out of multitudes that have happened over the years. Yes, those of us on the right do get very ANNOYED by this treatment.
They say that he only brought in some of the documents per the subpoena. But I’ve stopped believing anything any government agency or politician or bureaucrat says. And the conspiracy theorists are still going on about the Kennedy assassination almost 60 years ago. They only recently de-classified at least some of the Vietnam data to find out that there was actually no attack on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin that was used to trigger the Vietnam War.
Just like they are “investigating” Hunter Biden?
Sometimes an investigation is done to get someone (raid on Trump); sometimes it’s done to clear someone (investigation of Clinton’s emails); sometimes it’s done for both (Mueller – looking for dirt on Trump, but also getting unfettered access to information with his team of Democrat lawyers to clean up the tracks the Democrats and Republicans made with their collusion lying).
“To get a sense of what today’s successors to those antebellum Southern editorialists are thinking, I turned to Fox News”. Of course you did. You wouldn’t find any modern day bigotry on CNN. Given that “progressives” control the White House, both Houses of Congress, and the commanding heights of national academia, media, big business, big Tech, and public administration, it seems perverse to conclude that blue states like California and New York are more likely to secede from such an arrangement. Good luck to them if they do, they might stop imposing their border policies on everyone else.
AS
One never hears of CA and NY seceding – I thought this to be rather funny. However, Texans have loudly and often said they wouldn’t mind going their own way….and other southern parts as well. This British author, doesn’t quite have ‘the feel’ of Americans.
Well, @Cathy Carron, it’s certainly difficult to judge the strength of feeling on such a subject from across the Atlantic and most of the North American continent, but it is surprising to read an American claiming ‘One never hears….’, at least of California.
The legal barriers to seccession might prove insuperable, and maybe a majority don’t want to take such a step; nevertheless. ‘one certainly does hear’ of this from American sources. I had certainly ‘heard’ of it and a quick (California-based) Google search turned up these:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/calexit.asp (2022)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/will-california-secede-from-the-united-states (2017)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190221-what-if-california-seceded-from-the-us (2019)
And that is without considering whether California might break itself up into smaller parts, about which I have also ‘heard’.
God has given the world to Donald Trump, as he is Christ Reborn. He is the savior of Mankind.
All those who refuse the loving dictates of God shall in God’s war against the evils of Liberalism spend eternity in hell, sent there by God’s loving swords.
The Mar-a-Lago raid certainly riled Trump’s base, but I don’t think it achieved much else. The lines have already been drawn. Maybe a few fence-sitters jumped onto Trump’s side after the raid but the condemnation (and the applause) is coming from the usual suspects. The nation remains profoundly divided. Nothing new there.
I’m more concerned about the good news: inflation seems to have slowed; gas (petrol) prices seem to be stabilizing (although not electricity prices); the employment numbers are holding steady. These are all issues on which the Dems are vulnerable in November and I don’t want good news until December. I don’t want civil war. I want the Democrats out of power in DC.
“When I visited America before Easter, it didn’t feel like a country on the brink. The sun shone. The shops were busy. People wandered happily about, as friendly and hospitable as ever. In two weeks, I didn’t hear a single remark about politics. Nor did I see a single MAGA hat, or a Trump T-shirt — and this in Florida.”
I’m not sure you can read too much into those observations. I’m American but lived in the UK for a few years. In the UK you have pub culture and, more generally, the ability and willingness for friends and neighbors to socialize and discuss fractious issues such as politics and race without falling out. In America we’re strongly socialized not to discuss these issues except with family and close friends. This type of socialization results in the oft-heard remark that Americans are “superficial”: we appear friendly but the friendships never progress to a deeper level. We’re not superficial, we’re just cautious and we know we live in a deeply divided society.
I doubt there will be a civil war, but I do think the country will gradually split into red and blue enclaves. Federal guidelines and laws will be ignored, states will pursue their own paths and people will migrate to states where they feel accepted. It won’t be war; it will be multistate secession by another name.
…yep, that’s where things are going to go I reckon. And not just in the US. Technology is blurring where sovereignty needs to rest. A re-emergence of smaller multi-location entities, city states with their own digital currency, and city state confederations may well be a ‘natural’ progression. Brexit in Europe was an early sign, and Scottish independence, and Irish consolidation likely next steps.
Interesting that you see ‘Irish consolidation’ as an exception to a general trend for states to de-coalesce. If you’re interested in divided societies descending into civil war, you’ll love attempting to frogmarch 1m Ulster British into an island-wide imperium.
IF it happens, then I hope the US and the EU police the streets of Belfast, Derry and Dublin, I wouldn’t want any UK troops dying over it.
Sorry, I missed seeing your response earlier David.
It all depends on the terms of consolidation of course. NI could remain a sovereign statelet with strong links to both England and Eire to address the practicalities of the technologically enabled future, and the island’s history. But at some point significant subsidy from the East is not sustainable from a smaller England entity.
I also recognize that the sort of disruption to the existing nation state arrangements around the globe which I am alluding to, is very likely to involve a large measure of suffering.
It’s funny though, and encouraging, that when the excrement truly hits the fan, populations can adapt quickly. This seems to be happening in Germany right now, where the entrenched rejection of all things nuclear is dissipating rather rapidly in the face of the big chill coming this winter.
I would welcome that scenario, where more power transferred back to the States and would promptly move to a red state.
Agreed. Trump’s base is too basic. All they do is turn red in the sun. Democrats will be doing a whole lot of winning while this stuck pig bleeds out and teaches all those simple morons how the world works, so relieved.
It sounds like you look down on people who are different to you
Two things: first, the FBI is implicated in the fake charges of Russian collusion levied against Trump. Not a single news network or mainstream publication which supported this narrative has admitted that it was all a hoax. Journalists won Pulitzer prizes based on printing a story that was too good to check.
Second, it is the left in America which controls all of the nation’s institutions, the consequence of the cresting of a generation that grew up in the 1970s into the corridors of power and influence – from the media, to the universities, to all of the branches of government – except the Supreme Court whom its leaders have threatened with violence in their own homes. The riots after 2016 and the BLM riots a couple of years ago are more of the same – the use by the Democrats of street violence to advance their agenda. Actual violence. Actual threats against the Court by named, elected officials. AOC and company bailing out – i.e. sponsoring street violence which “will not stop. must not stop” – a Left wing Kristallnacht with the sole purpose of showing who has the real power. Then we have the pure got-up theatre of the “Coup” that never was – the Democrats own Reichstag fire moment.
The Biden family is irredeemably and manifestly corrupt and few state agencies or publications (apart from Fox and the WSJ and the New York Post) appear to be even mildly curious about this..
The violation by states of their own election laws prior to the 2020 election. The suppression by Big Tech of stories harmful to Biden and their studied ignoring by the MSM.
And you say: “…the local government betrayed the county’s free-living values by participating in California’s Covid protocols” as if it’s a conspiracy theory expounded by crazies. No. It is pretty, bloody, obviously true. Look at the mounting evidence that the lockdowns were both unnecessary and have done great damage to children. Look at the fact that the privately-educated children of California’s rulers could attend school while the union-whipped state closed public schools – so don’t take the right’s word for it that this was a mistake. Clearly Newsom didn’t believe it was necessary either – at least not for him or his family.
Very well said, indeed.
Humans are able to live in denial and no where is this more evident than with the pandemic.
While it certainly took it’s toll on the elderly and those of ill health, the number of healty people was small. Doesn’t make it any easier for those who lost a loved one but people believed to be healthy get sick and die or just drop dead every day.
The damage done by most governments during the lockdowns has been deplorable and anyone who can even remotely step back and look at the facts can see that. It was obvious from early on this was the case but most people failed to look past the sound bites spewed by the media and took what we were all being told as gospel. This was despite clear evidence that masks and lockdowns were not going to work. This was to gauge how most populations would deal with Globalist control and most of us went right along with it despite the harm done to our children and uncountable small businesses that couldn’t survive.
We should all be ashamed of our blind allegiance to the politicans and leaders who forced us all to stay in our homes while countless were caught maskless. Rules for thee but not for me was their moto and done by those on BOTH sides of the political spectrum. That alone should have told the average person how NOT serious it was. If it had been really serious, you wouldn’t have seen any politician appear in public.
The people in real power are glad to see the results of this experiment and to see how many of us really are mindless sheep, too engrossed in our Facebook, phones and other social media to really pay attention to what’s going on. Most of us will continue to be good sheep, especially our young people who now have grown up with smart phones.
We as people really should be concerned about such things but sadly, most likely won’t.
Those first couple of weeks seemed to be ok. Not to keep anyone from getting sick, but at least not all getting sick at the same time. That’s what happened in Italy. But then it morphed into the interminable weeks of staying locked behind your own four walls or you’re going to die. Except almost all the people who died were old – at least from the first couple of strains. Many places had half of their deaths in nursing homes. Then it was wait until there’s a vaccine. Then it was until everyone got vaccinated. Then it was … well … kind of forever. And now we have monkeypox to freak out about. But it’s only communicable via close physical contact, usually sexual, and while it’s nasty, it rarely kills anyone.
The normal suspects are popping up to go back to their ultra safetyism output that is even less justifiable than it was for COVID.
All of this really started with the Bush Administration. W, not the older one. I remember when he first labeled Americans “vigilantes”. Many of them were older people. They were all law abiding and veteran American patriots who posted up on the Southern border to try and stop the unfettered migrations coming across into the US. The dirty little seceret is that Republicans wanted this cheap labor to come into the US. This was one of the first massive orchestrated narrative controls I saw that targeted American people, most of whom had voted for him. It was the first government punching down that I remembered.
Then after Obama was elected after saying some very bitter things about traditional Americans who “cling to guns and religion”, there was a grass roots movement called the Tea Party movement that Nancy Pelosi called “Astro-turf” (artificial turf), and that narrative control was propped up from the Republican side, but carefully used by many of them, because there were some votes to still be harvested from these people. The Obama IRS was politically weaponized holding up Tea Party 501c3 startups approval for years, or at least until the momentum was gone. Then there were Democrat politicians on national TV saying that people who voted Republican wanted grandma to die, or anyone who dissagreed with Obama were clearly “racists”… This was more personal demonization of Americans. More punching down by the powerful, the connected, the ones with the mainstream narrative control on their side.
All we have really seen since Covid is all of this put into overdrive. All this division is driven from the top the narrative controllers. Trump was a populist, and Brexit was a populist movement. Both Trump and Brexit happening together caused the neoliberal ruling class to simply go apoplectic. The authoritarianism that had been slow rolling out for years got rapidly accelerated during Covid, and it was simply too much, too fast. It’s going to fail. Sir Lanka, Germany, these are neoliberal-eco-policy failures, or they in the process of failing. These out of touch, incompetent authoritarians will fail, it’s just that they will cause a lot of damage, and hurt a lot of people in the process. Civil War? I hope not, but failure? Yes, a lot of things will fail, but what really needs to fail is the ruling classes rigged, brutal, and divisive tactics. They set American against American on purpose, to keep American eyes off of themselves.
Another excellent post!!!!!!
I can tell you weren’t around in the 60s and 70s. Same thing. A couple of decades earlier it was the McCarthyites and the communist scare. We seem to cycle through these overreactions every so often. And if you see the FBI as a bad actor now (and it is), you should have seen it in the J. Edgar Hoover days.
America is getting to the point where ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’ are just stick-on decals over the reality of an autonomous ‘deep state’. Populist politicians challenge that comfortable status quo, so politicians like Trump (or Boris Johnson, or Nigel Farage) find the weight of the deep state against them.
In Britain the deep state is also called The Blob – “an amorphous conglomerate of civil servants, academics and unions that acted to gum up change and ensure stasis in the interests of its members.” No wonder it is so hard to get anything done.
Does anyone doubt after COVID that the administrative state truly runs the country, and our branches of government seem powerless to hold them accountable? Does anyone doubt that this same administrative state would resort to pretty much anything to keep the man they have spent the last 6 years labeling “the harbinger of death, the enemy of all free peoples, the herald of the apocalypse” out of elected office again?
Some truths are self-evident.
Many good comments. FBI raid almost certainly signals intent to indict Trump and take him out of 2024 election, prompted by growing fear that he could well win, and knowledge that he will dismantle much of the elite establishment in a second term. I think Dem operatives may already be worried this plan will result in DeSantis candidacy, and unprecedented Repub motivation. Look for attempt now to attack DeSantis in similar fashion. Should this happen all bets are off.
I think the way to understand the situation is to understand that, in 1856, the slave economy was coming to its end, and the South couldn’t stand it. Thus canes on the floor of the Senate.
In our day the educated-class administrative state is coming to its end, and the educated class can’t stand it. Thus FBIs raiding Trump’s lair in Florida.
The interesting thing about the US Civil War is, if we had all cooled our jets, would the South still have insisted on going to war over slavery in 1881? in 1891?
And would our present educated class be so proud and inflexible about its gigantic administrative state in 2032? In 2042?
It would probably be more accurate to say that the Red states economy of manufacturing and farming is no longer viable and that the modern US economy depends on and benefits the more highly educated, concentrated in Blue coastal States, New York, California etc. The archaic US Constitution is the only thing stopping the “Educated Classes” you speak of from exercising the political power one would expect given their dominant role in the US economy. Small Town and Rural America hates, resents and fears the prospect of this loss of status
But what real benefits do the ‘highly educated’ in the Blue states produce to add to the farming and manufacturing practised in the Red states (casually known as the flyover states)?
And to what end is the political power of the Blue states applied besides the overvaluation of their economic contribution?
The relative economic and political power of ref and blue state could conceivably be reversed, with tfarming and manufacturing becoming more important, if current international trading arrangements break down ( which is certainly not impossible) however, in the meantime the large, college educated populations of New York, California, Portland, Seattle etc will continue to be hegemonic
Perhaps. But there is another dynamic playing out – the Educated Class of service workers (finance, banking, engineers, programmers) that live in cities, don’t have to anymore.
Technology made cities obsolete in theory; COVID made cities obsolete in practice. If a young couple with children are teleworking in NYC, and are tired of the expenses, taxes, traffic, weather, and rising crime, they don’t have to move to the suburbs, they can move to Florida, or Texas, Tennessee, or Arizona, and still do their job. Same for those working in Silicon Valley. Small Town, rural America looks quite charming compared to human feces and needles on the streets of San Francisco.
Meanwhile, farming and manufacturing are not typically done remotely – so those folks aren’t going anywhere. And COVID lockdowns also showed that these industries are not only viable, they are critical, and also essential services where people still most go to work, as opposed to work at home.
The real interesting political dynamic in the United States will be, what happens as the high earning, mainly Democrat professionals in California and New York move to Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee, typically Red States? Will they change their politics, or will they change their new States…
IF they change their new states to resemble their old ones, then China’s going to be the next global hegemon far sooner than it expects.
LOL- someone still has to grow the food & ship it – or are they so awesome that they are going to start growing their own food & raising their own livestock?
California? A model for the US economy? Oh boy, then the US is really finished if what I read is correct.
“In our day the educated-class administrative state is coming to its end, and the educated class can’t stand it. Thus FBIs raiding Trump’s lair in Florida.”
Are we so sure of that? Unfortunately, it seems to be growing if anything.
To see what Nancy Pelosi means when she goes on about freedom and democracy in Taiwan or anywhere else, including Ukraine, then look at what has just been done to Donald Trump, with much more to come. Trump has been raided, although even conviction and incarceration would not preclude his contesting the 2024 Presidential Election, which he is expected to win or no one would have bothered to have staged this raid. It has proved thoroughly counterproductive.
I don’t despise Trump. And though I’ve always thought him unserious, I’ve always been confident that he’s more Long-Island-Frat-Boy than blooming tyrant. But the tone-deafness of the above quote is too much. The FBI didn’t seek a warrant against the Clintons. That’s the point. The FBI, instead, worked with the Clinton campaign to curate a total fiction about collusion between Trump and Russia leading up to the 2016 election. It’s a fiction that most Democrats still cling to. The FBI is now a political cudgel at the disposal of one party exclusively. That’s dangerous s***, buddy. That ain’t good. The WSJ editorial board can explain to you why it’s a bad idea to jump from step one to step ten.
Mr. Jones, Dominic Sandbrook is a writer and historian. He is also British, so he brings that point of view into his essay. And again, an essay is not subject to the WSJ editorial board. And what has the link have to do with the board? It is not reporting the news. It reflects the author’s point of view. Wall Street Journal?
I’m Canadian. I’ve lived in the States for 33 years. I have to agree with his “point of view.”…. from an outsider’s point of view. Americans do not walk the talk. They do not know their true history (how many Americans knew the story?), and they’re so close to the predicament America is in to see the problem for what it is. And the director of the FBI is a Republican. And isn’t the Judicial branch separate from the executive branch? And if it isn’t, what are you Americans doing about it?
True, I read the above article and laughed, for the fact is the Democrats haven’t been ‘pursued’. January 6th was allegedly a Coup. – It looked more like my image of the Monster Raving Loony Party on an outing. A few selfies of weird people at desks, a few souvenirs, they get bored then go home. Now the summer of riots and arson when Democrat Politicians actually stood on the same side as the arsonists, that reminded me of a coup!
Yes, and meanwhile, for all of 2020 while police stations and other government buildings were burned and looted by a maniacal Left, the authorities including at the federal level refused to do ANYTHING.
No MSM outlet makes any comment about the way anti-white racist “protesters” running amok in American cities for months, with no action by authorities to keep order, could possibly result in a breakdown of civic life in America.
The press truly is the Enemy of the People — just as Trump said.
Ready, I’ll say it – “nobody must be above the law”. And that includes District Attorneys, Prosecutors, Judges and FBI Agents.
Hillary Clinton’s home wasn’t raided. Her charity’s offices weren’t raided. Her lawyers’ offices weren’t raided. She was not spied on while a candidate. There was no special prosecutor appointed to investigate her. She destroyed thousands of emails Congress subpoenaed: nothing happened. The legal screws were not turned on her aides, her lawyers, or the IT person that set up her server and bleach bit her hard driver – as a matter of fact, many were given immunity deals in exchange for talking to the FBI. Any of her allies given gag orders, and placed in solitary confinement? She wasn’t subpoenaed to talk to the FBI (they just interviewed her at her home). And after it was all done, the FBI Director basically said, she committed a crime, but we’re not gonna do anything about it.
As for your intro story, it would take an immoral person to believe that words from Sumner were equivalent to the physical violence of Brooks – and all those sick immorals are Democrats, believing that words are violence, yet looting and burning businesses, and beating people are examples of righteousness and justice.
The magnitude of difference between what Democrats can get away with in Washington D.C. to what Republicans can get away with is directly proportional to their numbers in the D.C. Area – about 90% Democrat. Perhaps you missed the violent attacks near the White House when Trump was President, the Trinity Church they tried to burn down, among other things. Who’s investigating the people behind those riots? How many of those folks are in solitary? I can tell you this – those Antifa thugs didn’t need an Army of FBI Agents to inspire them.
As for Christopher Wray, he has a family, he has children, and he has to peacefully live among the 90% D’s. Of course, it helps to be part of law enforcement, so he can always carry a gun. And in his position, he’s also blessed with armed guards. (The position deserves that protection.) But to be a permanent resident Republican in D.C. he still better behave…and clearly, he does.
This is not one of Unherd’s best pieces.
Mr. Sandbrook doesn’t seem to understand the US system at all; it all reads a bit like a foreigner trying to decode England’s class system.
Well if, as you seem to imply, this issue is so trivial, then why did the FBI batter their way into Trump’s home all guns blazing?
But they didn’t. And they wouldn’t. This only goes one way, as with the police and Boris versus police and Keir Starmer. And bear in mind Russiagate and the endless failed impeachments. This is not paranoia – they are out to get him to stop him running. The FBI are a tool of the “Democrats” – as corrupt as it gets.
Regarding the idea of “blue states demanding more autonomy”… we conservatives would welcome that if the Left were willing to grant the same to our states. They’re not, since their worldview requires their political positions to be universal truths, not just personal preferences. But let’s say they would. I’m sure there’s a name for that… a federal government that provides limited services and otherwise leaves states free to chart their own paths… where have I heard of something like that before?
Oh! Yeah! The US Constitution.
Lincoln made that possibility impossible in 1860. He cemented federal power once and for all, with a brutal war that killed 30% of men in the South, and with the 14th amendment, “ratified” under duress, that essentially changed America from a federalist republic to an egalitarian dictatorship run from D.C.
This is why there is a huge shrine to Lincoln in D.C. Why don’t the leftists dynamite that, instead of pulling down statues of Columbus? Answer: because they are bigoted egalitarian totalitarians.
To see what Nancy Pelosi means when she goes on about freedom and democracy in Taiwan or anywhere else, including Ukraine, then look at what has just been done to Donald Trump, with much more to come. Trump has been raided, although even conviction and incarceration would not preclude his contesting the 2024 Presidential Election, which he is expected to win or no one would have bothered to have staged this raid. It has proved thoroughly counterproductive.
Boris Johnson is to face a kangaroo court of his most abusive enemies, chaired by a person who was morally unfit to sit in judgement on him or anyone else, and with no remit except to force a by-election that the 2019 candidate, the Corbyn-supporting Ali Milani, was not being lined up to contest. Someone from the Left should. Jeremy Corbyn himself faced similar treatment from the Deep State in the form of something called “the Equality and Human Rights Commission”. Its findings and those of the Forde Report cannot both be correct, and even this Government has sacked the Blairite operatives, the agents of a terrorist state, who had written the EHRC’s.
Trump, Johnson, Corbyn, the oft-assaulted Nigel Farage, the nearly murdered George Galloway, the Alex Salmond whom they tried to send to prison for the rest of his life, and numerous others, of whom there must be hundreds of thousands in Britain alone since even I am among them: they are not going to stop until we are dead. Nor are we.
Bravo for that!
I look forward to more on Harmon and the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange with which she is forever tainted.
Nancy Pelosi’s recent diversion (and we’re seeing a hell of a lot of them) deserved to get her the sack – and she would have in any well run organisation.
Kangaroo Court! Don’t let your right wing paranoia get in the way of facts. Johnson was removed from office by his own MP’s who were sick and tired of his never ending stream of lies and appalling behaviour. The MP’s deemed Johnson an existential threat to their reflection at the next GE.
The so called Kangaroo Court, i.e., a duly appointed committee of seven MP’s (four are Tories) is charged by parliament to investigate whether Johnson knowingly lied to the HoC. When the Kangaroo court publishes its findings the whole world will know what is obvious to a blind man and his dog: Johnson is a proven serial liar. The same is true of Trump. Once a liar, always a liar. The electorate on both sides of the pond deserve better.
I’m confused. Trump has been impeached twice and is the most thoroughly investigated politician in US history. They’ve found nothing to hang him with. Yet you just randomly call him a liar.
Next you’ll be telling us that Trump was a warmonger.
TDS is clearly still a thing.
It doesn’t take much to confuse you.
I wonder how many of them were remainers after revenge?
Are you perhaps confusing lying with hyperbole?
No. I have a functioning brain and can read.
What absolute codswallop!
It gives me the colliewobbles!
This article is written as if the Republicans or the Right are the aggressors in this deepening conflict, and you associate them with the antebellum south. It’s really the other way around. The Democrats and the Left are the aggressors and obviously have been since Trump first came to office. They are the “reactionaries” seeking to cling to power despite their manifest unfitness (and no, I’m not defending Republicans).
One-sided article, but I do agree with the author that the purpose of the raid is largely irrelevant now.
What is so shocking to me is that apparently no one at DOJ got up Monday morning and said, “Is sending a platoon of armed FBI agents to raid the house of the former President, current party kingmaker, and likely future candidate, 90 days before a major election, just to get a few stacks of documents really a good idea?”
Either DOJ is such an echo chamber that they didn’t realize how this would be perceived by 30-40% of the public, or they’re so convinced Trump is a Nazi and his voters are all little deplorable Eichmanns that they don’t care. Neither bodes well for our future as a republic.
The fact Sandbrook cannot see how the Republican traditionalists – whose ranks include the FBI’s Wray – loathe Trump, fatally undermines his “essay”. Populist anger is surging, but not along the simple lines posited by the writer.
And I am not quite sure why this piece is not classified “opinion”. Approvingly quoting Pogue’s sniffy dismissal of northern Californians’ “resistance to expert advice” on official Covid protocols shows his partisan ignorance on that subject too.
Where are Unherd’s editors?
There is no such thing as “news” anymore, and no such thing as a “journalist.”
There is only opinion, and opinion-makers.
I stopped reading at the point where it questioned if there would be the same uproar if Hillary Clinton’s house was raided. She deleted 30,000 emails and no-one said a word
Did they ever find Hunter Biden’s lap-top? Or didn’t they look for it? Did he promise Zelensky that in return for favours, his ‘dad’ would have the Ukraine’s back if they poked the bear in the Donbas again? Or didn’t they bother trying to find out?
A Trump attorney who was present during the raid saw the warrant and said it was “thin” and concerned The Public Records Act covering the National Archives. Not military or diplomatic intelligence.
If this is true then the 30-agent, 9-hour raid is the equivalent of sending a SWAT team to look for your overdue library books.
Every reasonable and grown-up liberal knows what should be done to quell the divisiveness this act reflected and exacerbated. President Biden should request to see the warrant — assuming he hadn’t seen it before — and ascertain what was its predicate.
If it is for what Trump’s lawyer says it was for, then Biden should fire Garland and Wray. He should also issue a public apology to former President and Mrs Trump for invading their home and privacy.
Nothing would do more to restore normality and calmness to the American public.
It would also result in a 25 point (minimum) jump in Biden’s approval rating.
On both questions — that of the warrant and that of Biden’s statesmanship and desire to tamp down the flames of acrimony and help bring us together again — we shall see.
“If this is true then the 30-agent, 9-hour raid is the equivalent of sending a SWAT team to look for your overdue library books.”
Hmmm…. let’s assume America is still a responsible, upstanding, honourable country with a mirrored government. It would seem that there is something serious to justify a search of this magnitude than meets the eye.
On the other hand, America is going so far right with its political spectrum that it is approaching a dictatorship, autocracy, or fascist state. If that’s the case, a 25% minimum jump in Biden’s approval rating means what?
Why assume anything, Mr Paul?
Why not examine the warrant in sunlight, ascertain its seriousness and then act in the best interests of the peace and tranquility of a great nation?
Why? What an amazing question.
Every Democrat and Democrat-leaning pollster knows that the second biggest threat to congressional Democrats this year is Biden’s poll numbers.
Yet here’s a perfect opportunity to raise those numbers 90 days before the midterms and no one on their side is making the case for it.
Yet I, a Trump supporter, am the only one saying this.
Sorry, but America is not a “nation” at all.
It is a multicultural polity that has only stayed together by massive coercion from D.C.
The coercion now required is beyond the power of D.C. to administer. At this point, only dictatorship can forestall partition.
America will come apart, as it should have long ago.
You are spot on! The fall of the USSR sealed the Republic’s fate, with no enemy to surveil the massive infrastructure of the deep state turned to the only alternative it had to insure it’s survival, the American Citizen!
The only would-be dictators in view are the egalitarians who have been ramming their equality-obsession down everyone’s throats from their D.C. empire/Lincoln shrine for over 150 years.
Equality, as you can see by observing American culture, is dysgenic. We have had enough of it. Time for all egalitarians to be reformed, or if they cannot be reformed, to be hanged.
There is no “bringing us together again.” The divide is unbridgeable.
The author compares apples to oranges. Hillary Clinton was never elected President of the United States, Donald Trump was. Furthermore, Hillary Clinton sent Emails containing classified information. If Donald Trump had any classified information, it was locked in his safe. That’s a huge difference. Third, the FBI was complicit in the effort to accuse Trump of anything and everything during his presidency and they seem to be working with Democrats now. Fourth, there is an upcoming Congressional election. The timing of the (unnecessary) raid is very suspicious. As for it promoting a revolution, it’s too early to tell what’ll happen. A lot is going to depend on what the DOJ does about it. There’s one thing for certain – about half of Americans are fed up with the Democratic Party and the Biden administration. By the way, the National Records Act is a bad law brought into being by Jimmy Carter and the Democrat Congress in the wake of the Watergate fiasco.
As I read the various responses, it occurs to me that the the two sides of argument being hashed out here have fallen into two camps: those who fiercely believe DT and his supporters are being unfairly singled out by the elitist left (ostensibly represented by the author of the article) And those, including the author, who believe they were making a balanced argument that both political extremes have turned their backs on our federal government and political life. It is too bad that the author did not balance his “Fox News” example with a likewise “MSNBC” example. His failure to adequately give the “Russia Hoax” false narrative (now found to have been deliberately created by high-level political operatives on the left and browbeat excessively in much of the media) that hamstrung the Trump Administration from the get-go belies the author’s supposed evenhandedness. I would have been much more disposed to believe the author’s sincerity if he had gone the extra mile and held both sides’ feet to the fire to the same extent. But alas, academics leaning left have such a hard time doing that.
sandbrook does not “lean left”. He is essentially a conservative and writes pieces for the conservative Daily Mail
This is all part of the fascist/Marxist attempted overthrow of democracy by Central governments and their agencies. Firstly, we’ve been watching fake climate science built on lies and propaganda for 40 years. Predictions about disasters caused by climate change have been made one after another after another. Of course, the fake predictions failed to materialise. So what did the corrupt climate lackeys do? They repeated the same fake predictions to a new generation of primed puppets and promoted the same lies and propaganda. As with the fake pandemic the MSM are the tool and their corruption enabled the government scam to be repeated ad nauseum.
However, one thing we didn’t have until 20 years ago was the Internet, and this is killing the lies. No one needs the BBC or CNN when we can get the truth from independent media, and this was demonstrated by how quickly the fake propaganda about Ukraine crashed and burned. It was the same with the fake pandemic and fake testing methods – lies and propaganda.
This brings me to the second point. What’s being hidden is the truth about the covid “vaccine” killing more people than the virus itself – another fact covered up by government agencies and censorship.
Donald Trump is playing the corrupt FBI and CIA like a fiddle. The decision to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago House using a corrupt Epstein associated magistrate to issue a warrant was a completely crass move. The question is, what were they looking for? Word is leaking out that the FBI, involved in the fake January 6th investigation, were caught on a wiretap discussing assassinating Trump if the Democrats’ January 6th enquiry failed to prevent him from standing for re-election. The FBI also had a fake warrant to open Trump’s safe but when they did it was completely empty. At the time Trump was under protection in Trump Tower.
However the blowback for this FBI raid is already building up with senior Democrats criticising the action and calling it corruption to attack Trump for a few unimportant documents wanted for the State archives. If there was anything it certainly wouldn’t be in Trump’s safe in Mar-a-Lago. The Democrats are desperate to stop Trump standing for election in 2024 and this corrupt action will rebound on them because, make no mistake, it confirms their corruption to a shocked America.
Re the Covid outbreak and governmental reactions to it, I thought then that the timing was just too, too perfect. Perfect for democrats to utilize in taking Trump down, and the positive direction the country was headed ( anybody remember our great economy, destroyed by Covid policies?). The Covid scam was able to accomplish everything the political persecution of Trump couldn’t. If the Covid management scam had not happened, Trump would have been re-elected. I believe the virus was lab leaked, and wouldn’t be the least surprised to find out it was deliberately leaked. I was never a conspiratorialist, but the past six years have made me one.
Not shocked at all. With all the lies and corruption we’ve seen, nothing is surprising. I’m just waiting to see the next WHO overreach, which will be fully supported by the Bidens, Clintons, Obamas, Fauci and the like, and appreciated by those with big investments in pharmaceuticals. An unprecedented power grab is coming, and it won’t matter who is in office anywhere except China.
The only worthwhile question is “How could they have been so stupid?” But then one realizes that we’re talking about the Democrats, who can be relied on to do the stupidest thing imaginable, at the worst possible moment.
This wll be the absolute end of any image of cooperation. The next Democratic president can be certain that the other side will be relentless in their attempts to impeach him or her. It will immediately become a technique for making sure that nothing gets done.
And as soon as the White House flips back to the Republicans, the Democrats will be on the same warpath; rangeing for revenge. (None of these people are what I would call “mature”.)
I’ve voted the Democratic line for 45 years. All I can say noow is “I should’ve stayed home.”
A civil war, as opposed to terrorist insurrection, or widespread civil disturbance, involves formal military units facing off.
I’m surprised that these articles never seem to include any real analysis of the capabilities, loyalties and command structures of National Guard units, Federal forces, militias and whatever other disparate military structures there may be in the US.
I’ve always wondered about that. Would the red states National Guard stand up for their States and vice-versa? Then what would the Army do?
I think some commenters should re-read the article. Sandbrook is a historian and is looking at the *reaction* to the event rather than analysing the merits of the event itself. As this is an event that has annoyed Republicans, do you all expect him to go to CNN and find anger there about what happened? People having a go at Sandbrook are rather proving the point of the article. Take a chill pill.
It’s an event that annoyed Republicans but also one that thrilled Democrats. To examine the phenomenon, public response to an event, requires attention to both sides, which are inextricably tied to each other.
Exactly – well said. Thanks for the first calm comment on this well-balanced and sensible article. V amusing that most of the preceding comments prove the author’s point exactly – diving in feet-first, blinkers on, shrill, partisan, bumptious, unable to see the bigger issue which is nothing less than the break-up of the US, and its decline into a ragbag of squabbling, individually-impotent smaller countries. Just like Europe. The incident itself – Trumper’s attempt to conceal documents – is hardly surprising, given his shallow TV show host personality, but it’s not the focus of the article. The q is whether the hyper-partisan reaction, with tedious hyperbole on all sides, is a straw in the wind which foretells the breakup of the USA. A good mate of mine in the US is a die-hard Vietnam-vet Republican, and he’s hated the Democrats for 20 years. I mean, OTT, ludicrous levels of hatred. To me, it’s ludicrous. Viewed objectively, many Dems are right-wing free marketeers anyway. To me, US politics has always been a centre right guy debating with a hard right guy. The “divisions” are exaggerated. Most Americans wouldn’t know a socialist if he bit them in the unmentionables. But it’s been apparent to me for several years now that, despite the superficiality of the “differences” between their main parties, many Americans prefer Russians to their so-called fellow Americans. That is, Americans of all stripes increasingly view their fellow countrymen and women as “other”. I love America, and I have good friends who are both Dems and Republicans. It saddens me, frankly. I really hope America survives. I think Fox and CNN should both be scrapped, as it feeds into this national split. The US needs one mainstream broadcaster, disliked by both sides.
Even though they are both ridiculous stations in their own way, I don’t think scrapping them is the way forward. Apart from that I agree with most of what you wrote though would point out that on social issues, the Dems are a long way from being right-wing.
Only the left believes that a 300 pound gorilla is balanced on a scale with a 45 pound schoolgirl.
Like the BBC? Which steadily became disliked by one side in particular.
If you interpretation is correct, then he hasn’t done a very good job of appearing to be ‘impartial’.
D Oliver contradicts his/her own argument–if Mr. Sandbrook’s intent was to look at “reactions” to the event, why only look at one side’s reactions?
And Mr. Sandbrook negates his own argument by his false and baffling equation of Fox News and Republicans with the pro-slavery Democrats of the 1850s, simply because they are angry at the moment due to a perceived injustice. Such anger will be justified if the evidence supports it, unlike the anger of Southern Democrats at the idea of freeing their slaves.
Then his use of English to describe the situation and the two sides must be one of the most incompetent I’ve read. The impression from his language is that the Republicans were the wielding the cane! The very event is enough to demand a reaction because as ever, it is not balanced, the Democrats not only seem to be above the law, they appear to make it up as they go along. Though I am English and perhaps the myths of the Wild West has meant that the events of the summer where riots, arson and murder were sanctioned by Democrats is what was deemed normal in the US and fancy dress protestors ‘storming’ the Capitol taking selfies then disappearing with a collection of pilfered souvenirs is beyond the pale and so a Coup. In England most ordinary people I suspect see it the other way around.
Curiously enough this man of the left appears to have a more balanced yet alarming view of what just happened.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-third-world
“That, I thought, is a pretty bleak thing to say about your own government. An odd thing, too, since the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, is an avowed, card-carrying Republican.”
That settles it! The incisive analysis and deep research …
I clicked on this piece with low expectations. They were not exceeded.
They must have known the documents were not at his house but had been correctly stored in the archive. So this is not an attempt to directly take Trump off the table. But it is an attempt to manufacture additional division and encourage violence to discredit Trump, further capitalising on the Jan 6th manipulation and attempt to implicate Trump as inciting violence.
It is pretty clear to me that fascist tendencies run the US and these are spreading to Europe.
Agree. Author doesn’t get it. A difference in essential (existential) worldviews is squarely in the viewport. Author sorts supposed facts and compares now to antebellum angst. But author excises any hint of a spiritual battle undergirding the physical. Examining the latter puzzle piece invites an objective discussion of the presence of “Evil” in our world. What happened in Florida is the tip of the spear of Evil intent upon devouring our Republic. Party affiliation is merely make-up in this final passion play.
LOL. Hilarious. Rhetoric from a talking cow. Existential… LOL. Well… Dems are about to run a train on your world so maybe you have a point, going to be hard to find a bootlicking god fearing moron when we done with you. LOL
There is a lot of t*t-for-tat in the comments here. Perhaps this is why the CCP and Putin are not scared of a unified Western Alliance? Because there isn’t one…The MSM have become “Shock Jocks”. The trash they peddle is so counter-productive.
The actions taken may very well force the notion of a national divorce more into the public eye. The partisan divisions have become more deeply polarized than usual. The raid was uncalled for and deeply offensive to one party and troubling for the other. The pendulum is certain to swing again as it always has and the precedents may not be welcomed. Those in power have done much to anger a public already trying to recover from pandemic missteps. I suspect they imagine gains by both sides in the coming election but one side is likely to be severely disappointed because of voter anger. They all seem to need a lesson on fairness and appropriate attention to long held traditions.
I have to roll my eyes at yet another attempt, by an outsider, to try to explain the delicate intricacies of a country of which he is not a citizen. And yes, you have to be an American to understand what we are going through. Don’t assume you understand simply by reading media reports and talking to Americans when you “visit”.
And to paraphrase a quote from Mark Twain, the reports of our demise is greatly exaggerated. No matter how desperately some of you would love to see it.
Well said.
I would add, “the imminent demise of egalitarian totalitarianism in America is vastly under-reported.”
The writer clearly does not understand “America.”
The American and French democracies are both headed for civil war or partition, and for the same reasons: the balkanization and weakening of their nations by bigoted, myopic egalitarians, who would like to establish a dictatorship of “equality” everywhere on Earth…
…with themselves at the top, to ensure that the “equality” is maintained, of course.
To paraphrase Orwell, “One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard muh equality; one promotes muh equality in order to establish the dictatorship.”
Hillary’s “controversial private emails”? That’s a tell about the author. Uh, no they were sensitive state department emails that were on her private server instead of the more secure government provided server.
The best thing I can say about this article is that it is at least self-conscious about its naivete.
“Christopher Wray, is an avowed, card-carrying Republican.”
With ‘Republican’ in italics! As if that were salient, as if that were the point which makes his case!
My friend, it’s not about (D) versus (R) now. Read this very newspaper (might I recommend Aris Roussinos?) to understand who are the actual belligerents.
Mr. Sandbrook’s opening anecdote was apt enough, but he overlooked several key nuances that distinguish the current situation:
1. The raid didn’t happen in a vaccuum; we have been dealing with deliberate gaslighting from the Left and partisan attacks from the bureaucratic state—with impunity—since 2016, and likely more like 2012. Trump opened our eyes to it.
2. Conservatives are not defending Trump so much as they are defending themselves from these outrageous overreaching affronts to the US Constitution. He is the avatar, the champion, the lightning rod, and ultimately, the bait. The abuses heaped on him set the new standard that will be returned in droves.
3. You cant “what if” the situations like Hillary Clinton because it DIDN’T happen to her when it SHOULD have. Therein lies the problem. Not that this is happening to Trump per se but the egregious double standard. Don’t say that “no one is above the law” if the lone person held accountable is the Republican leader.
4. To suggest that conservatives should be rooting for Kit Wray is to ignore, obtusely, the reality of modern politics. The line between Republican and Democrat no longer defines the struggle. This battle is between We the People and the corrupt statist Establishment that wants to tear down what America has long represented for a quasi-democratic uniparty dystopia (just look around). If the R by the name was all that mattered, then we would not be seeing so many mainstream media reports about Trump’s pull on the primaries.
5. Conservatives WANT to see what is in the search warrant. The media is pivoting now to try to paint this as an effort by Trump to cover something up. But as far as we know he has yet to see what was in the warrant. Garland could end all this by putting his money where his mouth is. Not some redacted version but the whole thing. And if what Trump had stashed away was worse than Obama and Biden and the Clintons (or if he is planning to prosecute them next) then there might be some consensus.
The fact is we will not see that because this IS a politically motivated prosecution. Like his Democrat predecessor Sen. Brooks, Merrick Garland has bludgeoned the entire opposition with his cane. But unlike Sumner we will come back swinging hard.
Above all, let’s keep it in perspective: this brinksmanship is a deliberate psy-ops campaign by the Establishment party to distract us from what it is doing with the other hand. Conservatives—and the American people writ large—did not ask for this fight. It was brought to us by the overreaching authoritarians in power who are seeking to turn our democracy into a permanent Biden administration.
The fall of the USSR sealed the Republic’s fate, with no enemy left to surveil, the massive infrastructure of the deep state turned to the only alternative foe it had to insure it’s survival, the American Citizen!
What a long-winded way of obfuscating the fact that the real issue is whether or not the FBI, Justice Dept and administration abused their power, not the reaction of Trump supporters which is both predictable and understandable. The divide between liberal and conservative is already a mile wide. Much of the commentary in the conservative media is pointing to the fact that Trump’s lawyers had been cooperating fully on the documents issue. A subpoena is all that would have been necessary, not a search warrant, especially when it is obtained from a known Trump-hating judge. On top of that the relevant legislation re presidential records gives the president considerable latitude to decide what he wants to preserve for ‘the record’. Couple that to the suspicion this has a lot more to do with the Jan 6 hearings which are highly partisan and ignore the basic principles of jurisprudence. All up, a very unsatisfactory effort by the writer. He just fuels the partisanship he laments. Journalistic hypocrisy.
This author misses the point. The raid was clearly NOT about any document. https://youtu.be/hG1R60ARKHE
And you miss the point of the article. It’s not about documents, it’s about the break-up of the US. Read the article, for heaven’s sake.
F-ck no. No, no, no.
Anyone with any brains prays every single morning that things stay peaceful, and that we use our present system to govern and implement change. Any person with any level of intellect understands that civil war is not some patriotic, glamorous, proud endeavor, fought for honor and courage.
Civil war is beyond hell on earth.
It means no food in the grocery stores because the shelves have been cleared, the stores looted, and the buildings scavenged. It means no medicine, no hardware, no gasoline, and no anything because the trucks that deliver everything can’t get diesel, and the roads are too dangerous to travel. It means no police, no fire protection, no jails and no courts, because the entire civilization has exploded into violence. It means no hospital care because there’s no electricity, and the staff is too afraid to come to work. The medical facilities have been looted too.
Roving bands of criminals will kick down your door, rape your female family members, and kill everyone else to steal a jar of peanut butter because they’re starving, or just for the thrill of murdering someone. Bodies pile up in the streets because there’s no way to dispose of the dead. Disease is rampant, and people die because there’s no antibiotics to treat simple infections.
Don’t take my word for it. Read the accounts of the Bosnian civil war. You’ll soon learn that hoping for civil war means you might as well be hoping for death.
Whoever the a–holes are who are promoting this BS of “civil war” need to be told to shut the hell up before they inadvertently summon the demons of hell.
Morons, all of them
And another thing conservatives need to understand darn quick.
Leftists don’t post, speak or disseminate vicious, annoying, or disturbing content to change minds, convince you of anything, or win some virtual debate.
They say insane things to get a reaction out of their enemies. When some idiot conservative sends death threats, riots in the Capitol building, or shoots at a police station, those actions give leftists the perfect ammunition to discredit, attack, lock up, and disenfranchise their enemies.
Martin Luther King knew he and his followers could not beat Bull Connor and the rest of the racist south by themselves. They needed help from the racists. So what did they do? They followed Saul Alinsky’s advice, and provoked the racists. Poked them, Annoyed them. Got them angry.
When he got the racists angry enough, they reacted. Fire hoses, dogs, beatings, bombings. All caught on camera, and broadcast for the world to see. And King beat them at their own game.
Every single time a conservative, or white male, or Republican does something stupid in anger, in response to something some Democrat said or did, they hand the Democrats the rope that will be used to hang the right. No matter how angry you get, no matter how nasty, personal, and horrible the behavior and speech on the left, we have to smile, wish them a good day, and walk away. The way to beat them is at the ballot box, to remove them from power, shut off their funding, and send them packing. Peacefully, legally, and done within the system. Just look at how much mileage the Jan 6th morons handed the Democrats. Their stupidity cost Trump the election.
It is impossible to win at the ballot box when the opposition is in full control of it. After sixty five years of living in Illinois I can assure you voter fraud is real, I have seen it and reported it, nothing was done.
Thank you, Ask Barack. Well said. Though I think the sentiment of your last statement is a little off. The only stupidity that lost Trump the 2020 election was his own. Case in point: the first debate with Sleepy Joe … what a disaster. IMHO.
The United States is under attack, by elements both foreign AND domestic, as the Founders foresaw might happen.
While I didn’t vote for Trump in either election, and recognize he is not a noble man, he is less abominable than his opponents, who seem bent on bringing down all of the ideals and practices that made America, America.
There can be no compromise with someone trying to destroy you.
The foundation of American culture is based on its value of personal freedom… individual liberty and the right of the individual to seek their own prosperity. This is the impediment the Left has sought to destroy for decades.
The Left has gone about this through a campaign of promoting tribalism, Balkanization, and disunity. They have successfully come to dominate the educational system, traditional media, social media, and civil services and have the capability to indoctrinate future generations to be hostile to traditional American values.
The Left has also brainwashed the African-American community, and much of the Hispanic and Asian communities, to view traditional American values- and those who wish to preserve them -as the enemy.
And it isn’t about Trump – Trump is an interloper, and an ego-maniacal opportunist who hijacked and radicalized many Americans for his own personal gain. The Left has simply used Trump as a straw-man.
So here we are. We would still be here if Trump was never in the picture.
This clash was long in coming and inevitable.
America is in a macabre way shadowing post revolution Russia: equality of opportunity has become leftist and woke egalitarianism, ” multi cultural” is the absence of any culture whatsoever, the decline of the intelligentsia is manifest in the destruction of The Ivy League schools that produced the WASP self made ruling educated elite, and the elimination of WASP power: wind forward to Russia and the US today… a new elite of vulgar, brash, style devoid super rich, a mass ill educated proletariat , a totalitarian ruling politician not a million miles from Trump, the chronic decline of all industry bar capital markets and IT ( Russia obviously not), but oil and gas self sufficiency.
At least the US has the Fed and The Treasury, the dollar and the T bill!
Nice try..! Assuming the focus points are actual (actually not) what is the reason for an article presenting only the one side of a said division..? Are you fishing or are you fish..?
That was your best shot? We don’t know you, so from what you said, we’re supposed to think what?
The USA has arrived at it’s French Revolution moment. It would take several pages to list all of the reasons. However the most glaring is the outright disdain the elites have of the middle class. We have gone from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers! That itself will cause the demise of the Republic and it was predicted by many of the Patriots that founded the Country initially. We will emerge from this mess, certainly much different but likely better! Politics is an entropic system, just as Everything in the known Universe is.
The first American “civil war” (which was a failed war of Southern independence, not a “civil war” at all, by definition) was started by bigoted egalitarian totalitarians.
The second will be, as well.
I don’t think it will go so well for the egalitarian bigots this time around.
As at 21.25 BST there has been some very heavy handed and inept censorship of the comments on this piece, why?
It only diminishes the reputation of UnHerd and irritates the readers.
Chuck Schumer, the head of the Democrats in the Senate, warned against getting on the wrong side of the intelligence community “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” Prescient, that. It is strong, invulnerable, and feeling its oats as the war against Trump shows. Hillary had 33,000 emails,many with highly classified material, stored on the server kept in her bathroom. When word of this got out, she had the hard drive pulverized and nothing was done or said by the deep state, the umbrella under which the intelligence community operates..
The fallacy of “Term Limits” effecting change, is that it is bureaucrats that write the 3000 page bills that “We must pass so that we can read what’s in it”. I have been saying, since before 2015 and Donald Trump, as has legions of others, that “Washington “ is broken and that it will take an outsider to fix it. Maybe that explains why so many support Trump. Maybe Mr. Sandbrooks’s “ Civil War” is not so much between liberals and conservatives, but between those who want the status quo, and those who want to see it fixed.
Yes we are, just waiting for it to kick off
There is an obvious and fundamental difference between 1860 and today. Both sides expressed their opinion and outrage based on their interests and reasons for their subsequent actions with the expected hyperbole and outrage. What we have today is a belief in alternate ” facts” that have been strengthened by social media and the internet at large. I am a former Reagan Republican and though biased like everyone commenting here, I will give my own. I am wary of “deep state” theories that assume ” they” are all in collusion on a given issue. Each side has their talking points many times not from a sincere attempt to separate fact from fiction or speculation, but from confirming each day through less than objective reporting their already fixed opinions. Extremes on both sides are programmed to fixate on the opposition’s wrongs while ignoring the same. What I cannot fathom is the conscious decision to minimize the truth around an election that but for a few refusing to go along, would have sent us into a stalemate at best over an election that nearly was overthrown. Even today despite no credible evidence, there are politicians still claiming the election was stolen. When challenged to state the evidence they deflect by attacking with “what about …”arguments or citing a QAnon claim that has no merit. As much as I am tired of knee-jerk liberalism it is the claim that all media not just CNN Huffington post, etc are reporting ” fake news”. And it’s grooming more and more to mindless, programmed violence.
It is strange how the current path of our country mirrors that foretold in The Ecstasy of Carbon, especially the section describing the election of a flawed but powerful and sincere leader who tries to dismantle The Imperial City and its entrenched, corrupt bureaucrats… and is tormented and hounded for his efforts. The description of the collapse of Empire that follows is chilling.
After finishing the column and reading the comments, Mr. Sandbrook made some interesting points but the fundamental flaw in his drawing connections to the lead up to the U.S. Civil War was that there was the single and central unresolved issue since the country’s founding of slavery that dramatically impacted the nation’s understanding of itself (the expansion of federal authority as the nation grew) and the delicate balance between free states and slave states as new states were added. As such, the U.S. Civil War was never really a civil war in the more traditional sense (i.e. an internal conflict of neighbor against neighbor) but as the South liked to describe it: the War Between the States. Prior to the Civil War, loyalty to one’s state was more the normative condition than loyalty the federal government.
While one desperately hopes this country is not heading towards civil war, if it were to end up there, it would be more of a traditional civil war and it would not run along partisan lines (i.e. Republican v. Democrat) or even traditional ideological lines (conservative v. liberal, or what those those terms used to mean). I think the divide is best described by Peggy Noonan in her WSJ column back on February 25, 2016 when Trump, was starting to gain traction, as the “Protected Class” v. the “Unprotected Class” (her column is well worth reading as it was prescient then yet the MSM still fails to comprehend it six years later).
Whether Trump ever cared about or even understood the Unprotected Class (beyond using them for his own objectives), he knew how to speak to them and how to speak their language, which tapped into an unleashed their frustration and their anger towards the establishment/Protected Class which was well deserved.
A large swath of Americans see the Protected Class as DC, Wall Street, Hollywood, the MSM and Silicon Valley. That select group make policy and shape culture but are insulated from its consequences. Despite having all of the money and power they keep sticking small businesses, the working, and lower classes with the bill (i.e. you don’t see homeless communities in wealthy zip codes; they aren’t sending their kids to failing public schools; and they didn’t lose their business when the government shut down everything to funneled commerce through big tech with the bottom rung of the social ladder, risking COVID to deliver food and goods to the laptop class that were scolding them on social media about wearing a mask and staying home.
Trump has stopped being a person or even a politician. He isn’t even a cartoon anymore but he is a symbol. He is a symbol of everything the establishment hates, and although some of the hatred may be justified, much of it is not and for that reason, the more the establishment hates him, the more the Unprotected support him (they may not love him or even like him but they see him as my enemy’s enemy is my friend). Then the cycle continues because the more powerful he becomes, the more the establishment hates him. Ironically, Trump is a fire that needs the oxygen of his enemies. If they just ignored him, his flame would go out, but they can’t, so they keep feeding him oxygen and his fire continues to burn.
The Protected Class has become like Versailles in which they believe that only what they think is important is important and they have no idea nor do they care what those outside their bubble think or are experiencing. Perhaps, the Treaty of Paris in September of 1783 is a better harbinger than May of 1856 because that is when the bill came in for Anglo-French War in which France had supported the American Revolution, which combined with the Crown’s other lavish spending, required it to step up its tax collections among the poor (87,000 new IRS agents sound familiar?) and you know the courtiers weren’t going to pay, which ultimately led to the French Revolution in 1789.
As Thomas Jefferson famously stated in his letter of 1787 to John Adam’s son-in-law, William Stephens Smith: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.” Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that but both Republicans and Democrats need to spend less time on their internal Game of Thrones and more time on the people’s business or they may receive a rude awakening that has nothing to do with Trump.
The crux of the matter is that Hilary Clinton was NOT treated the same way!
What else would you expect from Marxist Historian Dominic Sandbrook?
One of the stupidest comments I have ever read on here, unless you are being ironic but somehow I doubt that.
Thank you for this accolade. Although, despite you knowing me so well, I am in fact being ironic. I am a huge fan of Dominic Sandbrook. I am a member of his Rest is History podcast club, (though, not yet a Wang), one of his 35 hour long history books is always my non-fiction Audible listen. The Marxist historian tag is an in joke amongst his many fans. After reading the negative comments about one of the greatest living historians, I posted my comment in the hope that should Dr Sandbrook read it, it would make him smile.
Ah I withdraw the comment with apologies. I too am a fan of the podcast and have read a number of books by both him and Tom Holland. I have exchanged emails with Dominic and he seems a genuinely nice guy and with a sound sense of humour.
Inevitably I suppose, you do get certifiable fruit bats on websites like this, I am suitably rebuked for my error in assuming you to be one of them!
You are a scholar and a gentleman
I aspire to be both with mixed fortunes.
I think the Democrats’ encouragement of the burning and looting of many cities in the US in 2020 is more important than the raid on Trump’s home. Or the politicisation of the Covid lockdowns and vaccines used to collapse the US economy before the 2020 election and then reversed after the election. Or even the use of lockdowns to drive businesses into bankruptcy and then the use of QE to finance the purchase of the resulting cheap assets by their Wall Street funders.
Trump lost the 2020 election because Middle America was tired of his antics and his initial reaction to the pandemic showed his genuine indifference to the welfare of poor Americans. These people are increasingly opposed to the Democrats but will suspect that the FBI did have a reason for the raid.
I am not an expert on the Civil War but I have always been interested in it. A civil war today would not be anything like the first. States all had militias made up of military units formed from towns and the soldiers were neighbors and family. Union soldiers fought for the Union, Southerners mostly fought for the rights of their states. That’s how armies ended up on the battlefield. No armies would be formed today against the Federal Govt. Most likely if organized resistance formed it would look like Afghanistan or Viet Nam. The thing is it doesn’t have to happen but there has to be compromise on both sides. Laws have to be applied equally in our nations capital and on government officials of both parties. Democrats in power could accomplish this but it would mean sacrificing some of their cronies for the peace of the nation. It would also ensure they stay in power for the foreseeable future
I think it’s important to understand that It isn’t that the Democrats are out to lunch or stupid, but rather what stimuli they are trained to respond to. The democrat voters by and large respond most loyally to hate, hate speech, identity politics, and weave it all together with more frenzied hate. The Democrats no longer, if they ever did, have a platform of issues they stand for. Thus they can only oppose. They can only take. Democrats never create wealth and expand the economy, rather they only take, destroy and corrupt, and in their wake downsize the economy. This leads to the inevitable path of demonizing their opponents. (more hate) Most people learn in early in life that to keep the coals of hatred alive it needs to be fed on a regular basis, with more hate and a further devaluing of their opponents, in this case the Conservatives and everyone else who isn’t them. Or else the bonfire of hate dies.
The reason they hate what is right and correct is because they want something that is wrong and immoral. The entire Democrat “platform” is based on plunder, taking from someone only to give it to someone else who didn’t earn it. Our entire Constitution and bill of Rights more then anything else, was written to prohibit and end government plunder & to insure that people had more power then the government. Government was instituted to protect life, liberty and property, thus it would be a land ruled by law. The Law was instituted, again, to protect life, liberty and property and to prohibit government plunder, not to incite organized government plunder under the color of law.
Our Constitution and Laws have obviously been corrupted. Our current government now controls a vast apparatus and system of plunder. They no longer protect life, liberty and property. Rather they oppose life, liberty and property ownership and believe themselves to be the rightful owners of this newfound vast hoard of American wealth, to do with as they please. I am not even certain that the subversion and damage to our Republic can be fixed any more. But I am not certain it can’t be.
The real problem is no longer the figureheads of this Socialist takeover, (the Marx’s, FDR’s, LBJ’s, Clintons and Schumer’s) it is the overwhelming masses of people who believe a Republican form of government can coexist with a government that is fueled by organized government plunder. And it can’t. They are mutually exclusive. A Republican form of government, of the people, for the people and by the people cannot coexist with a government fueled by organized plunder. It is an oxymoron, as the very foundational reason for government and the reason it is instituted is to protect life, liberty and property.
They want free everything. They want assurances the government will be there in their time of need. For their every need. Unless these throngs and masses of ignorant people can be diminished, through knowledge & education, then this Republic will eventually find itself in the throes of death with no recourse, a dark future and no moorings to it’s past.
The enemy of our Freedom and our Republic is organized government plunder and it’s inevitable corrupting influences on government, institutions, laws, liberties, and people.
Cheers-
Phil
Civil War is already on full display. Yes, the DOJ and FBI have been weaponized, and soon the IRS even more so. How else could you explain Strzok, Comey, et al with Russiagate and zero accountability? How about Hunter Biden and “the Big Guy?” And Hillary’s email server? Zero accountability.
Trump represents an existential threat to America’s unelected ruling class — both Democrats and Republicans. He accomplished what Bernie Sanders could not — a populist revolution of a major political party.
The FBI raid was a direct affront to American values in the eyes of any objective citizen — in broad daylight. This is EXACTLY what has fueled Trump’s support for the better part of six years. And it will likely sweep him to another four years. Corrupt Democrats don’t understand THIS IS WHAT GOT HIM ELECTED IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Yes, people will rise up when they see the integrity of elections compromised under the guise of a pandemic (regardless of outcome), FBI, IRS and CIA persecution of political rivals, and the unequal application of justice. These are core values they hold dear. How can you expect compromise?
Mr. Sandbrook unfortunately reverses the roles in his Civil War analogy. The cane is, in fact, the FBI raid. Abolitionists are those — Republican or Democrat — who call out this grotesque abuse of government power and complete disregard for average, working-class Americans. Vote for Bernie, vote for Trump or vote for Desantis.
Just get rid of the filth and stench that permeates today’s halls of Congress and DC Corridor.
To what extent is the media’s coverage of the militias and activists a case of giving grease to the squeaking hinge?
“As soon as news of the FBI raid broke, Republicans almost unanimously rushed to denounce the agency’s abuse of power, and to defend the former president as the victim of a witch-hunt. Would they, I wonder, have said the same thing if, say, the FBI had raided Hillary Clinton’s house in search of her controversial private emails? I doubt it, somehow.
And it works the other way around, too. The same Democrats glorying in Mr Trump’s embarrassment today would have been appalled if the FBI had applied the same tactics to Mrs Clinton yesterday. You don’t hear many liberal Democrats wondering if the FBI was a bit heavy-handed, just as you don’t find many conservative Republicans insisting that nobody must be above the law.”
I don’t really understand most of the comments that imply that Dominic Sandbrook is criticising Republicans and Fox News exclusively. He is just using the most recent example to illustrate his point about the polarisation of politics and the apparent absence of a middle ground. Surely the two paragraphs above make that abundantly clear.
No, I don’t think you would have taken a rosy view in the summer of 1856. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was already a best seller and the fire was smouldering.
This piece is the closest thing to an objective analysis that I’ve seen in months.
Supposedly, from what I understand, based on what has been released so far, it was no casual “documents” that he should never have taken out of the White House, but top secret military papers. We’ll have to wait and see more to find out if that was an accurate description. But they also could not have not known that such an action would immediately stir up a hornet’s nest of politically (or tribally) based angst in both directions.
Supposedly (there’s that word again) he was asked for the papers. He was served a subpoena for the papers. The search warrant was the only way to get them. Supposedly (and again) there is a “mole” in his organization that told them what Trump had and where he had it.
You can’t take the politics out of the politician.
I remember when there were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. It was a lot easier to work across the aisle in those days. Bipartisanship was relatively common.
But then in the 80s everyone resorted themselves into all liberals being Democrats and all conservatives being Republicans. Well, almost all. They both get the odd one popping up every now and then. But rarely. Manchin is from a deep red state. He’s probably the only Democrat that could ever get elected from West Virginia. And Rand Paul still pops up every now and then with a bit of sanity.
It can’t be a civil war, as one is usually described. There’s no geographical way to split the states up. One state is red and the one next to it is blue and the next one after that is red again with conclaves of the other shade within each state.
The scorn and rejection of conservative values is absolute among America’s progressive elite. The NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, academia, Wall Street, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the all powerful “deep state” all agree if the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights or social tradition or even common decency conflict with their objectives then those obstacles must be changed, obfuscated or ignored.
Don’t like a Supreme Court decision? Then pack the court. Find the words of Martin Luther King inconvenient? Then empower Black Lives Matter. Want to change the demographics of an entire nation in one generation? Then have open borders. Unruly inner city youth? Then let them have guns to shoot each other. Too few opportunities for non-college educated men? Let them have fentenyl. Don’t like what Donald Trump says? Then put all the resources above to work to bring him down and disgrace and demoralize his followers.
Wait until you see what they do to Ron DeSantis.
Does he want to persecute women for wanting to control their reproductive rights? In which case, they can do what they like to him.
I’d be surprised if blue states like California pushed for more autonomy. The Democrats have long favoured a more centralized federation with a strong central government, although they may have assumed they would be in charge. Few Republicans would object to expanded states’ rights.
No. I think CA, especially as led by Newsom, would be eager to leave. I don’t think it will happen, but I think there are plenty who would encourage it.
I am here. And it is discussed by people on both sides of the political spectrum as a welcome possibility.
Always a divided, violent country and now one that is on the verge of becoming a theocracy. Pity the women who simply want to control their reproductive rights living in that country. They are in the same position as Irish women in the fifties who had to flee Ireland because they were pregnant like my cousin Irene.
What is most telling is how we keep “taking the bait”. The elites want: black vs white, men vs women vs whatever you can dream up, democrat vs republican, Christian vs Muslim vs Jew, the West vs Russia, doctors vs patients and on and on.
Why does everyone keep falling for it. The politicians are all on the same side, just puppets owned by the banks, they have been for decades.
What don’t you see?
The West vs China.
Pay attention to the big picture workings.
America is way too lazy, pampered and neurotic to actually fight each other over twitter comments and woke disagreements……the social media dueling will continue though….
I would suggest that Mr. Sandbrook misses a basic reality about the United States. We are, and have been from the start, an historic, ongoing experiment in civil war – a fact perhaps more easily seen in our early days, when we were a new society presenting the then radical notion of self government. Over time (a very short time in historic terms), passions have waxed and waned, loosely held in check by, but not completely bound by, a somewhat vague construction called the Constitution. The very heart of our existence is the eternal question of how should be run our own lives? We are not warring tribes – we are individuals, all along the political spectrum, passionately interested in this question. And while passion can be painful and disruptive, it uncovers the truths that resignation and obsequiousness try to bury.
Is not all violence a failure to verbally communicate? Who wants to hands up to being a failure? Oh, ok, soldiers. Well apart from the soldiers, who wants to hands up to being a failure? Oh, ok, the police. So apart from the soldiers and the police, who wants to hands up to being a failure? Oh, ok, and the… ad infinitum…
One world, one love, no borders ✌♥️
There are several problems with the author’s spiel.
Does it not occur to anyone that Trump himself has set this up with the FBI so as to garner support?!
Huh?!?! Have seen Trump’s Rallies? Trump may be a polarizing figure, but he’s also possibly the most popular political figure ever. And that’s why he was raided…
The rallies that he exaggerated and lied about, because they were not even as big as the previous President. This ‘most popular political figure ever’ who is a one-termer? And, err, politicians get their houses raided is they are too popular? Get a grip man.
Collectively, US culture is not mature, could be said to be in it’s adolescence. The social and political schisms resemble Mods vs Rockers, Jets vs Sharks etc. At an individual level there is often profound, shocking lack of sophistication. I saw this first hand living there in the 70s’, 80’s. Some examples – at a diplomatic party, a US Defence Attach answer to problems in the middle-east – answer, ‘Nuke ’em’; the sudden, twisting rage erupting from a senior officer…why? He’d spotted a mixed race couple. Such vignettes are of course dwarfed by slavery, racism, cults and ‘religious’ excesses (including several forms of Woke, gun worship, and Trumpism), Iraq war II, the war on drugs, McCarthyism….
If the Trumpilites in these comments feel that there is an equation between the moral reprobate Trump, a Mafia affiliate and conservativism go back and start reading a conservative philosopher like Michael Oakshott. Defending Trump after January the 6th is pathetic. A ‘cult of personality’ has nought to do with a serious, political philosophy.
The weirdos Capitol Day Out on January 6th bore less resemblence to a coup than the Summer of the Democrats supporting riots, murder and arson across many cities in the US.
They were just the ‘useful idiots’, they were used. I’m referring to those who plotted to keep Trump in power, including Trump, Bannon, Meadows, Flynn, etc. Ask the Police who were injured, those who later died, they felt the rage of those so-called ‘weirdos’: ‘Hang Mike Pence!’ A Summer of riots, murder, and arson doesn’t justify overthrowing a legitimate election results.
How many ‘later died’? Provide figures, don’t just do a New York Times – their ‘take’ has already been badly damaged by the very man who wrote the ‘take’.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/03/13/the-new-york-times-mask-has-slipped
The conservatives are fools, as Kazcynski said. There is now nothing left to “conserve” in America.
Now that the Left has completely won the culture war and taken over the institutions, including nearly all important media, academia, education etc., what is needed is not “conservatism” at all but a reactionary revolution.
The only ones currently willing to admit this are the libertarians, and they are also useless because they are individualists who don’t give a damn for their group, making them just as degenerate as the egalitarians.
Trump is a tool, nothing more. But he is a very powerful tool. The proof of this is that, like Hitler, even after he’s lost, you just can’t stop talking about him, obsessing, condemning, etc — mostly using ad hominems.
Looks like there is no central ground in U.S 7politics…sad to hear so many comments that just bash the other party…what America needs is more central ground…a third party…someone willing to say ‘Clinton’ is wrong and maybe so is Trump…
All I hear from American politics nowadays is both ‘sides’ throwing insults trying to incriminate the other side.