And Yet Again

As I’ve said in the past, here and here, Chile’s Augusto Pinochet was a conundrum.  Others, it seems, are even more positive than I am:

Almost nobody is more reviled by the international intelligentsia and media than the late Augusto Pinochet, the late 20th -century Chilean dictator. He holds a prominent position in the political left’s “rogues’ gallery” comprised of those who stood in opposition to their goals.
His supposed “crimes” included conducting a military coup to illegitimately grab control of the Chilean government from a popularly elected president, rounding up and torturing huge numbers of innocent citizens (killing as many as 80,000 in the process) and corruptly stealing vast sums of money while ruling as a dictator.
But many of those claims are either false or exaggerated — most credible estimates of those killed are below 5,000 — or they must be viewed in context. More important, if we raise the examination of Pinochet from the bitter soil of leftist ressentiment to the question of human flourishing, he appears as one of recent history’s shining lights.

Read the whole thing — and my earlier posts on the topic too, if you haven’t seen them before.

I will never forget two things about my visit to Chile:  the sight of old women placing flowers on the sidewalk outside Pinochet’s modest private home (now a museum) in Valparaiso, and at a formal dinner one night, one of the toasts was:  “To General Augusto Pinochet, savior of Chile.”

It was delivered without irony, well received and supported by all the guests, and even more telling, it was said in English — no doubt for our benefit, and to make a point.

Interesting stuff.

Getting Real

I found this linked SOTI (can’t remember where, sorry):

And it gets worse:

Now I don’t know who these people are, but they sound seriously unhinged.  I’m trying to see how any rational person could define supporters of a Manhattan businessman (and one-time Democrat) as a “conspiracy-fueled belligerent death cult”.  Taking each word in turn:

What conspiracy?   The only people who have been obsessed with conspiracy have been Leftists — Russia, Ukraine — and this despite the fact that the real conspiracy has been by ex-Obama staffers, the various intelligence services and government bureaucrats against President Donald Trump.  Sheesh, just the Strzok-Page email exchanges alone are proof of that, and there’s so much more that I barely know where to begin.  This does not exist in the imaginations of Trump supporters:   it’s all been exhaustively documented — and despite that, Trump has only fired a few of the more egregious offenders, and prosecuted not a single one, not even the most obvious transgressors like Hillary Clinton (having a private — and illegal — email server while Secretary of State) or John Brennan (leaking classified information).

Belligerent?  Who’s talking about gulags, about the State coming to confiscate guns from private citizens?  And who is rioting in the streets, demanding to “burn it all down” and “destroy America”?  Trump supporters?  I wish we were that belligerent.  Every single act of belligerence — from attempting to assassinate a Republican Congressman at a ballgame, burning and looting, and threatening the lives and livelihoods of people working in the current Administration — has come from the Left.  Who screams invective at restaurant patrons, demanding support for the self-confessed Marxists at Black Lives Matter?  Not Trump supporters, for sure.

And a death cult?  What fevered imagination came up with that one?  Where are the Trumpian suicide squads, the Trump-sponsored bands of thugs roaming the streets and beating up political opponents, the conservatives en masse bellowing “Death to Marxists”?  (Although sometimes I wish we would, if only to drown out these assholes’ endless screams for a minute or two.)

No.  All the above are activities engaged in by the Left.

Ask yourselves this:  are these people to be taken seriously?  I mean, it’s all very well for lone loonies like this David Atkins to call for mass “deprogramming” pogroms (taking a leaf from the Stalinists of the 1950s, who must be nodding their gray heads with satisfaction from that Great Collective In The Sky).  But didn’t a former Cabinet Secretary (the snarling dwarf Robert Reich) first suggest some foolishness like this?  Is this suggestion of Atkins about to become policy, if Biden ever becomes President?

Just the magnitude of such an undertaking is astonishing.  Let’s remember that upwards of seventy million people either voted for Trump, or else were motivated to vote against “whatever it is that you Leftists want to implement”:  open borders, high taxes, gun confiscation, wealth redistribution, “hate speech” (we already have “hate crimes”), civil unrest and all the other foulness that the Left has been supporting and threatening for the past fifty-odd years.

But when a massive segment of the population says in no uncertain terms, “We don’t want that, because such lunacy has caused death, destruction, poverty and misery in every single country it has been implemented”, then we — all 70 million of us — are the ones in need of “reeducation”?

These twerps are getting worked up into a frenzy — anyone who’s ever had to deal with a thwarted child’s growing tantrum recognizes this progression all too well — and this unreasoning hatred towards people who reject their political philosophy is simply setting up a situation for bloodshed.  As much as we conservatives are called “Nazis” by the Left, the plain fact of the matter is that this demonization of political opposition has its roots in the Left:  whether by the Jacobins of Revolutionary France or by Hitler’s own National Socialist Party, we all know from their example that the elimination of political rivals begins with dehumanization and demonization.

My biggest fear, and it is very much a fear, is that the Left have been building themselves up into a febrile frenzy, and at some point, it’s going to burst into mass violence towards us conservatives.

And while we may chuckle and load up our spare magazines, I’m pretty sure that few of us want that mayhem to actually come to pass.

But I think they do, because when fanatics see that they’re losing, they often choose self-sacrifice as an alternative to failure.

And we’re the “death cult”?

Who They Are

From Issues & Insights:

Today’s Democrats are defined by policy choices and actions that are not consistent with liberty and independence. They are the party of:

    • A coup attempt.
    • Re-education camps.
    • Riots.
    • Intolerance.
    • Segregation (through its support for Black Lives Matter and racially divisive policies in higher learning).
    • Marxist indulgence. (see BLM again).
    • Election fraud.
    • Using government to punish political enemies.
    • Reparations.
    • A modern serfdom.
    • The cancel culture.
    • A job-destroying $15 minimum wage
    • Dependence on government.
    • Campus and workplace speech codes.
    • Crackdowns on dissenting political views.
    • Apologies for America being America.
    • Coastal elitism.
    • Crony capitalism.
    • Miserable health care.
    • More bureaucracy.
    • Second Amendment infringements.
    • Mandated masks.
    • Nags, scolds, and shrill ideologues.
    • Court packing.
    • Smothering regulations.

The Democrats’ plans also include robbing workers of their freedom; dictating Americans’ choice of automobiles; forcing on the country a crackpot green energy plan that will severely damage the economy while providing zero environmental benefits; transforming the country into a socialist “paradise”; and establishing single-party governance.

It’s not only what they plan on doing;  some of the above is what they’ve already done, and if not stopped, will carry on, and more besides.  You all know what to do;  if you haven’t already done it, get out and vote against these miserable asshole Marxist motherfuckers.

Quote Of The Day

From the comments to this article:

Beverly Hills business owners have been told to board up their windows by the local police department, as officials expect rioting throughout Los Angeles following the presidential election results

And the comment:

“So what happened to all the pontificating about accepting the results of the election, or does that only play one way?”

When it comes to the Left, things only go one way:  the way they want them to go.

Everything else is “fascist”, everyone else is “Hitler”.

As Usual

Following on from yesterday’s news about Chile voting to “change” their constitution — really, overturning the one passed into law by Augusto Pinochet and putting in a new, “progressive” (Marxist) one — the Left in Chile did the usual:

Violence, looting, and disorder erupted in Chile on Sunday evening after an overwhelming majority of people voted in favor of destroying the country’s constitution, replacing it with a new document more favorable to the nation’s left wing.

On the night of the elections, local media reported that police arrested at least 19 people for looting a pharmacy and a supermarket. In the commune of Melipilla outside Santiago, rioters attacked a police station, injuring eight officers, while also installing barricades on a carriageway to prevent the movement of traffic.

No doubt, this was all part of the “wild celebrations” that followed the vote result.

So just to be clear:  if the Left loses, they riot and loot;  and if they win, they riot and loot.

Something we can probably expect in the U.S. when Trump cleans their clock next week.  See the next post for details.

I think I’ll head off to the range as soon as it opens in a couple hours.  Handgun practice this time?  I think so.

Planning

In the above post, I pointed out that whether the Left wins or loses, they riot and loot regardless.  So here’s a little preview on how they’re planning to respond to a Trump victory:

Under the guise of seeking to “prevent a constitutional crisis,” a massive network of well funded left-wing activists and progressive groups are training, organizing, and planning to mobilize millions of Americans should President Trump “contest the election results,” refuse to concede, or claim an early victory.
More than 80 advocacy groups and grassroots organizations have joined in a broad coalition calling itself “Protect the Results” and proclaiming that “we cannot ignore the threat that Trump poses to our democracy and a peaceful transition of power.”
The coalition is a joint project of Indivisible and Stand Up America, two left-wing groups founded in response to President Trump’s 2016 election and whose goals are “to organize and resist Trump’s dangerous agenda” and “to defeat Trump and his enablers.”
Seeking to “protect” election results by use of its millions of members, the coalition calls to “take coordinated action” and “prepare for a potential post-election crisis.”

Note that even if Trump wins by an overwhelming majority, they’re still going to “mobilize”, because  of the “the threat that Trump poses to our democracy and a peaceful transition of power.”  (See the Chilean example above.)  As Roger Kimball puts it, channeling Commiespeak:

But what if Trump, you know, actually wins the election?
He can’t. And if he does, it won’t count. Listen to this statement gathered by Pullman: “At some point in the days following the election Trump will almost certainly either attempt to declare outright victory or attempt to invalidate the results of the election. That is the start of the coup.”
So what happens next? “We need to show that we’re ungovernable under a continued Trump administration. … That can mean blocking traffic at major intersections and bridges, shutting down government office buildings … or blockading the White House.”

Nice.  So the plan is to create instability and sow fear and discord, and then… what, exactly?

See how clever that is?  If Trump wins and they start their bullshit, and Trump responds with some kind of police action like calling in the National Guard, then he’s the one opposing a “peaceful transition of power”?   I, for one, am curious to see what will happen if their “coordinated action” is met with resistance from either police action or “counter-revolutionaries” (that, in case anyone is wondering, is us — people like you and me).

In the above article, Kimball is quite optimistic, by the way, ending with:

But if, as I expect, he wins, there will be much wailing and gnashing of liberal teeth, but widespread peace and prosperity will dull the pain and transform the anguish into the guilty pleasure of histrionic self-indulgence.

Me?  Not so much.

Which reminds me:  I need to go and pick up my ammo order.  The Communists aren’t the only ones who can make plans.