Trump fires acting AG for defying immigration ban, by AP. “President Donald Trump on Monday fired Sally Yates, the acting attorney general and a Democratic appointee, after she refused to defend in court his controversial refugee and immigration ban.” You’re fired!
Leftist Identity Politics is Creating The White Tribe, excerpts from readers in an article by Rod Dreher.
I’m a white guy. I’m a well-educated intellectual who enjoys small arthouse movies, coffehouses and classic blues. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably mistake me for a lefty urban hipster.
And yet. I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. … It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.
I am very lower middle class. I’ve never owned a new car, and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege, and America will be a much brighter, more loving, more peaceful nation when I finally just keel over and die.
Trust me: After all that, some of the alt-right stuff feels like a warm, soothing bath. A “safe space,” if you will. I recoil from the uglier stuff, but some of it — the “hey, white guys are actually okay, you know! Be proud of yourself, white man!” stuff is really VERY seductive, and it is only with some intellectual effort that I can resist the pull. And yet I still follow this stuff, not really accepting it, but following it just because it’s one of the only places I can go where people are not always telling me I’m the seed of all evil in the world. If it’s a struggle for someone like me to resist the pull, I imagine it’s probably impossible for someone with less education or cultural exposure.
It baffles me that more people on the left can’t understand this … They have no problem understanding, and even making excuses for, say, the seductive pull of angry black radicalism for disaffected black men. They’re totally cool with straightforwardly racist stuff like La Raza. …
If the Left can’t let go of identity politics, then let me be clear: What comes next is on THEM. A lot of us don’t want to live in a world of tribes, and we never asked for it.
Here’s another:
I totally get where this guy is coming from. I’m in his shoes for the most part: white, Christian, male, straight. …
I remarked to my wife a couple of weeks ago that witnessing the left’s histrionics for the past several months has made me more racist, more sexist, and more homophobic than I ever would’ve been otherwise. …
What the left doesn’t get is it’s turning people like me — reasonably moderate, go-along-to-get-along types — into full-blown reactionary radicals. Ideas that I once would’ve rolled my eyes at I’m now willing to give a hearing. I don’t think I’m some paragon of rational thought and self-control by any means, but it concerns me that if I’m willing at least to entertain some of these ideas.
Yep.
Society either aims for universalism, or it aims for tribalism. The new left, whose strategy for votes is to try to get all the votes for groups other than white mean by hating on white guys, has turned western society away from universalism where everyone is treated the same, towards tribalism. Brilliant move for a few votes, such forethought.
Three ‘triggers’ for Islamic uprising under Trump presidency, by Leo Hohlmann.
A former Homeland Security officer who spent years screening Muslim immigrants points to three “triggers” of confrontation between the new administration of Donald Trump and the global Islamic movement. These three issues will spawn a violent backlash in response to Trump as he attempts to implement what many believe are long-overdue reforms.
- Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem
- Declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization
- Restricting Islamic immigration into the U.S.
As Trump tries to rein in concessions given to the Muslim Brotherhood by the previous administrations of Clinton, Bush and Obama, he should expect the Brotherhood and its allies on the left to push back with hell’s fury, Haney said.
There will be lawsuits, ugly protests, and an all-out effort to create chaos in the streets of U.S. cities, he predicts.
The observant Muslim base has been building up in the US for decades:
This isn’t 1968 or even 1978, when Islam in America consisted primarily of a few thousand Nation of Islam and Black Panther activists.
Islam, particularly the Salafist brand of Sunni Islam promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goal is to spread Shariah throughout the world, has been allowed to establish a major foothold in America.
More than 300 U.S. cities and towns have been stacked with Sharia-compliant Muslims through refugee resettlement and myriad other visa programs that have been expanding for four decades.
Meanwhile, groups that agitate for Muslim “civil rights,” which tend to manifest as special privileges not afforded to Christians, have been empowered. Thanks to the expanded immigration, the U.S. Muslim population has exploded to 3.3 million, the number of mosques has grown exponentially and the Council on American Islamic Relations or CAIR is now a force to be reckoned with despite its ties to extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, Haney said.
The left is eager to join in with the Muslim Brotherhood against Trump:
As seen at protests in major U.S. airports Sunday, the radical left is eager to take up the crusade of Muslim activism. … Airport protests just the start of ‘chaos’ planned by Muslim Brotherhood …
This is just the beginning of what will be an ongoing battle of wills between Trump’s administration and the Shariah-supportive Muslim community that feels emboldened by its allies in the media and among what are mainly Marxist and left-leaning professors, lawyers and community organizers, Haney said.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
Islam-critical Kirralie Smith seen as potential Australian libertarian leader, by Nick O’Malley.
Smith received relatively little attention during the last federal election as a NSW Senate candidate for the Australian Liberty Alliance, the political offshoot of the Q Society, which describes itself as “Australia’s leading Islam-critical movement”.
(“Q Society supports an integrated multi-ethnic Australia and rejects racism … Since Islam is not a race or ethnicity, being critical of Islam is not racist,” its website explains.)
But she is likely to receive far more press in the coming weeks as the co-defendant in a defamation action being brought by the businessman Mohammed El-Mouelhy, who was the subject of a critical video produced by the Q Society and presented by Smith. …
A recent video of Kirralie Smith
She rejects the suggestion she is right wing, rather, she says she a part of the silent majority of mainstream conservatives whose voices are now being heard due to victories of Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign.
Smith says she does not believe there is an imminent threat of adopting Sharia law, but is concerned about what she calls “creeping sharia”.
“We are being encouraged very strongly to tolerate sharia finance, halal certification, the hijab,” she says. “Sharia is definitely present in Australia … I believe there are honour killings and it is all reported under domestic violence or another name,” she says. As evidence she says she has close friends who are pastors who work in churches who have provided sanctuary to victims. …
Potential leader for a new Australian conservative movement:
During the US election she was horrified by Hillary Clinton’s support for abortion rights. She opposes political correctness, Safe Schools and big government regulations imposed upon farmers by distant bureaucrats.
“I pretty much oppose everything the Greens stand for,” she says.
She was also appalled by the Liberal Party’s abandonment of Tony Abbott for Malcolm Turnbull.
This broader political outlook, and Smith’s articulate direct manner, has led some observers to speculate that she is a potential leader for a new conservative movement, one energised by the international populist surge.
She is, says John Adams, a former Coalition adviser who has written about the need for more intellectual depth in the new conservative movement, a more capable and charismatic messenger than, say, Pauline Hanson. (“I think Pauline has a lot of good sentiment, I am not sure about the ability,” says Smith of Hanson.)
hat-tip Stephen Neil
