Reactions to Biden's Fascist Call to War Against His Political Enemies

I have a more substantive post about Biden's speech in the queue. I was going to publish that first and this one later, but, for reasons you'll see later in the post, I think we should just get this one out of the way first.

I'll post the more serious post after this one.

Noted True Conservative and Norms-Defender Jonah Fatgunt agreed with the speech's call for actual war against the left's political enemies, but would have preferred if Biden kept his intentions hidden and accomplished his goals under cover of shadow.

How strange for a NeverTrumper!

CNN loved it!

The left admits this was a "wartime" address -- they're declaring war on Republicans.

Like I said, Kevin McCarthy offered a prebuttal yesterday, so we're all set.

Allah wrote his last post tonight, admitting the speech had the air of a wartime call to arms, but that this was necessary and proper, Because Trump.

As fate would have it, this is the last post I’ll ever write for Hot Air. Others are in the queue and will publish later tonight and tomorrow but they're already written. The stars have aligned to make a presidential speech on Trump's threat to democracy the last topic I have to tackle.

Here's the F*** You, Righties he had loaded in the queue:

At this point I must be the only strident critic of Donald Trump serving a pro-Trump populist readership across all of conservative media. And that's been true *for years.* Since 2020, at least.

It was possible only because of Townhall's sufferance, a show of integrity for which they don't get enough credit. But I think all of us knew it couldn't last. When you hire someone to run your hot-dog stand and he starts telling the customers that hot dogs are bad for them, that relationship won't endure. Even if he's right about the hot dogs.

Thank you to my critics -- the earnest ones, who weren't just axe-grinding because I wouldn't join a cult. I am not dishonest but am frequently stupid and you were right to call me on my moments of stupidity. Accountability is good. The right needs more of it from its own side, urgently. If the average populist slobberer had a few like you in their ear, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in.

Lastly, to those who spent the last seven years barking insults at me in the comments for not genuflecting to Trump, I'll give you this: You're not phonies. You believe what you say. We have that much in common. I respect honesty and paid you the respect of being honest. It would scandalize you to know how many of your heroes sound like you in public and like me in private. Audience capture has brought most of conservative media to ruin by making it predictable and shrill.

I hear Lincoln's words in my head as I write that: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies." Let's hope. But let's also be real: To a certain sort of Very Online Trumpist weirdo, having the right enemies is what politics is all about. To any who insist upon having me as one, I'm okay with it. Few badges of honor shine as brightly as the scorn of authoritarians.

*

As to the state of the right.

Partisan media serves two masters, the truth and the cause. When they align, all is well. When they conflict, you choose. If you prioritize the truth, you're a traitor; if you prioritize the cause, you're a propagandist....

That's one reason why, when I've been forced to choose, I preferred to be a traitor than a propagandist. Here's another: What is the right's "cause" at this point? What cause does the Republican Party presently serve? It has no meaningful policy agenda. It literally has no platform. The closest thing it has to a cause is justifying abuses of state power to own the libs and defending whatever Trump's latest boorish or corrupt thought-fart happens to be. Imagine being a propagandist for a cause as impoverished as that. Many don't need to imagine.

Oh fuck you. What the right is right now is in a state of evolution, away from your preferred neocon/neoliberal politics. You don't like us moving away from those politics, so you say we "stand for nothing."

No, we just stand for something that isn't "The Democrats But We Bomb More People and Cut Taxes For the Wealthy."

The GOP does have a cause. The cause is consolidating power. Overturn the rigged elections, purge the disloyal bureaucrats...

People support the power loci they have. The left, including Allahpundit, has an extraconstitutional power of bureaucrats who illegally impose their own, not-blessed-by-a-popular-vote policy choices by refusing to execute policies they don't like and substituting their own.

Lefties like Allahpundit like this illegal arrangement, because most bureaucrats are leftwing. There are righties in the mix, but when the great majority are on the left, only leftwing policy can emerge from the bureaucracy.

So of course he's campaigning for respect to the unelected, unconstitutional, illegal "Fifth Estate," the permanent bureaucracy that is proudly defiant of the public's choices because they think they know better, and work to cancel the public's choice in favor of their own.

There is no legitimate authority to do this -- they just do it because they can.

And when someone proposes changing the system so that they can't do what they already should not do -- by, say, firing the chronically insubordinate and #ResistanceWarriors -- people who love this extra, unconstitutional check on the choice of the voters start spitting venom.

... smash the corrupt institutions that stand in the way.

Yes, smash them.

Give the leader a free hand.

No, not a free hand, asshole, but the opposition to the President must come from political institutions which are empowered by the Constitution to resist him -- not his employees and subordinates in the executive branch.

It's plain as day to those who are willing to see where this is going, what the highest ambitions of this personality cult are.

This guy continues defending Biden, and liked his speech last night.

...

I agree with others who say that, fundamentally, the last six years have been a character test.

I do too. We got to see who was capable of standing for themselves, and who must always align themselves with the soft fascism of popular public opinion.

Some conservatives became earnest converts to Trumpism, whatever that is. But too many who ditched their civic convictions did so for the most banal reasons, because there was something in it for them -- profit, influence, proximity to power, the brainless tribalism required by audience capture.

Some of us just noticed that most of the promises made for NAFTA -- for example, that the middle and working classes would be held harmless by the changes it brought -- were false and wanted a change in the system.

Some of us noticed that the Professional Managerial Class had become unbearably, oppressively high-handed in its dealings with its subjects.

I've never been on board with the full Ron Paul style call for pacifism and isolationism, but for a long time I have noticed that my support for George W. Bush was premised on his promise to fight wars and not engage in nation-building as Clinton did, but for TWENTY FUCKING YEARS we have been engaged in gigantic, costly, bloody, limb-stealing nation-building projects which seemed to be accomplishing very little. And so perhaps we should reconsider this project, and we should very much reconsider the trust we had foolishly reposed in a gang of imbeciles.

Did you not notice that, self-professed Truth-Teller? You're still Secretary of the George W. Bush Fan Club, huh?

But no cult of personality for you!

I don't even like Trump. Many don't.

But I am very much determined that Trumpism, or something very much like it, must prevail.

I hate the neocon -- really, the neoliberal -- agenda of AllahPundit and his fellow leftwing invaders into the party.

Goodbye to all of that.

Most of the criticism of AllahPundit isn't about his attacks on Trump -- but by his absolute refusal to apply the same standards to the Democrats he supports in lieu of Trump.

He's constantly claiming that "Trumpists" make excuses for Trump, while he completely ignores the fact that Biden is the first president in history to declare war on his political enemies.

But you know -- gotta stop those "authoritarians" and "demagogues."

Allahpundit is a dishonest, mentally-ill cunt.

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket," Eric Hoffer wrote. We've all gotten to see who the racketeers are.

Right. Enjoy working at a political shill site which pretends to be "conservative" but which is funded mostly by leftwing Democrats.

That's not a racket, feller.

I would rather fail as a writer than succeed if success means being some demagogue's footstool.

Well you managed to both fail and be a footstool for the demagogue Biden.

And for those of you wondering "Dispatch or Bulwark" -- he dishonestly chose the Dispatch. The Bulwark would have been the more honest choice. But The Dispatch occasionally attempts the pretense that it's not just a Democrat shill outfit, even though it's being bankrolled by most of the same Democrats bankrolling the Bulwark.

I'm grateful to have a new job.

I was set to hoof it over to Substack and start rattling my cup for subscriptions, hoping to make enough to cover rent. But after I posted the news on Twitter that I'd be leaving Hot Air, I got a call from Steve Hayes at the Dispatch. Would you be interested in writing for us, he asked? Uh, yes, I'd be interested. I've enjoyed the Dispatch since it launched and was reading Steve, Jonah Goldberg, and David French for years before that. You can count on one hand the number of successful right-of-center sites willing to hold populism to account for its excesses and the Dispatch is a very distinguished member of that distinguished group. Of course I'd be interested in writing for it.

Go S a D, miserable brokebrain leftie cuck.

posted by Ace at 12:00 PM

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