UPDATED (8/22): Someone Doesn’t Know The First Thing About America First

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, War

POTUS, in outlining a “new” Afghanistan plan, has declared that “the American people are weary of war without victory.” Promising to increase American presence in Afghanistan, by sending 4000 additional soldiers there, Trump alleges he is fighting terrorism, not undertaking nation building. This is tantamount to talking out of both sides of his mouth.

There is no way to tease those two facets apart in war. If you’re sending “about 4,000 more soldiers to add to the 8,400 now deployed in Afghanistan,” you’ll be doing what Obama was doing in Afghanistan, and Bush before him: Killing some civilians mixed in with bad guys. Sitting down with tribal leaders to mediate and bribe. Basically perfecting the credo of a global fighting force that doesn’t know the first thing about America First.

We are weary of WAR, full stop. We thought Candidate Trump understood that there is no victory to be had in Afghanistan.

Apparently he didn’t.

A lot of very bad men are thrilled with Trump’s Afghanistan commitment. There is no chance of Lindsey Graham being blinded by the solar eclipse; he’s already deaf, dumb and blind to the Deplorables’ plight. And now, Graham is overjoyed with Trump’s Afghan plans. The presidency is going his way. Hopefully, Deplorables understand what that means. I bet all three amigos—Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham and John McCain—are currently smiling upon Trump.

RELATED: “Trump lays out plan to continue Afghanistan War.”

UPDATE (8/22): MAfgGA: Make Afghanistan Great Again.

Ending nation building with a surge. What a joke.


You can’t say America First and stay in wherever Afghanistan is.


Who did 9/11?


Talking, talking, in Phoenix, Arizona:


Not even the misnomer “radical Islam.”

UPDATED (8/23): Barcelona and Beyond: How Politicians & Policy Wonks Play God With Your Life

Business, Homeland Security, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Terrorism

NEW COLUMN: “Barcelona and Beyond: How Politicians & Policy Wonks Play God With Your Life.” An excerpt:

… On TV, June 1, 2017, Alex Nowrasteh, immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, argued that “foreign-born terrorism is a hazard,” but a “manageable” one, “given the huge economic benefits of immigration and the small costs of terrorism.”

Spoken like a collectivist, central planner and utilitarian rolled into one.

This is the Benthamite “utilitarian calculus” at its cruelest. It requires, first, for someone to play God. Whether she sits in Downing Street, D.C., Brussels, or Barcelona; the Godhead has determined that Muslims in our midst are a must in bringing “the greatest good to the greatest number of citizens.” Along the way, a few people will die. For the greater good.

In the words of “Stalin’s apologist” Walter Duranty, ”You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

However, a natural-rights libertarian values the life of the innocent individual. Only by protecting each individual’s rights—life, liberty and property—can the government legitimately enhance the wealth of the collective. Only through fulfilling its nightwatchman role can government legitimately safeguard the wealth of the nation. For each individual, secure in his person and property, is then free to pursue economic prosperity, which redounds to the rest.

See, statistics are silly unless given context. If you have one foot in fire, the other in ice, can we legitimately say that, on average, you’re warm? Hardly.

Probabilities, in this case the chance that any one of us will die-by-Muslim, are statistically insignificant—unless this happens to you or to yours, to me or mine. …

… READ Barcelona and Beyond: How Politicians & Policy Wonks Play God With Your Life” at American Thinker.

This column can generally be read on Townhall.comUnz ReviewDaily Caller, American Thinker, and others, where The Mercer Column usually appears. And it’s always posted, eventually, on IlanaMercer.com, under Articles. Please share.

UPDATE (8/23):

“A great article. It truly explains how the political elites and their minions think. The issue President Trump alluded to when he spoke of how General Pershing treated Muslin terrorists and insurrectionists were dealt with in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century would be the way, in my opinion, to deal with these Muslin terrorists.”

UPDATE IV (10/23): Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over’

Donald Trump, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy

“’The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,’ Bannon said Friday, shortly after confirming his departure. ‘We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.’”

… Bannon may have resigned, but it was clear from the time that Kelly became chief of staff that Bannon’s remaining time in the West Wing was going to be short. Kelly undertook a study of the West Wing’s operating system, and let it be known that he kept hearing about Bannon as a disruptive force and a source of leaks aimed at undermining his rivals. One of those, with whom Kelly is deeply in sympathy, is National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who clashed forcefully with Bannon over such policies as strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

It is plainly Bannon’s view that his departure is not a defeat for him personally, but for the ideology he’d urged upon the president, as reflected in Trump’s provocative inaugural address—in which he spoke of self-dealing Washington politicians, and their policies that led to the shuttered factories and broken lives of what he called “American carnage.” Bannon co-authored that speech (and privately complained that it had been toned down by West Wing moderates like Ivanka and Jared)…

The writing’s on the wall, Deplorables. As Steve Bannon goes, so goes the promise of America First.

Bannon says that he once confidently believed in the prospect of success for that version of the Trump presidency he now says is over. Asked what the turning point was, he says, “It’s the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on this. They’re not populists, they’re not nationalists, they had no interest in his program. Zero. It was a half-hearted attempt at Obamacare reform, it was no interest really on the infrastructure, they’ll do a very standard Republican version of taxes.

“What Trump ran on—border wall, where is the funding for the border wall, one of his central tenets, where have they been? Have they rallied around the Perdue-Cotton immigration bill? On what element of Trump’s program, besides tax cuts—which is going to be the standard marginal tax cut—where have they rallied to Trump’s cause? They haven’t.”

Bannon believes that those who will now try to influence Trump will hope to turn him in a sharply different direction.

“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”

MORE: “Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over.‘”

UPDATE I (8/19):

UPDATE II (8/21):

Always Ivanka.


And Jared.

UPDATE III (8/22): Rationalization is a defense mechanism, in this case against disappointment. Steve Bannon said the presidency was over. Believe him.

“Trump has systematically elevated outsiders in his operation while alienating or firing allies like Bannon and Priebus.”


More ridiculousness from The Donald:

UPDATE (10/23): Stephen Miller Still Standing:

Comments Off on UPDATE IV (10/23): Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over’

Charlottesville: The Facts vs. The Fiction Of Fake News By Jack Kerwick

BAB's A List, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Propaganda, Race

Particularly disappointing were “conservative” commentators and showboating politicians who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their “liberal” counterparts of inhabiting.—JACK KERWICK

As everyone who cares now knows, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday “turned violent.”

It “turned violent” just as did so many of Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, the “free speech” rallies that have been held over the last seven or so months, and Trump’s inauguration.

Of course, it is only within the fantasyland of the Fake News media that any of these rightist (or pseudo-rightist) events “turned violent.” The latter is one of the many stock phrases that Fake Media trots out whenever it is leftist “counter-demonstrators”—another of its terms of choice—crash the events in question with every intention of stopping them by whichever means necessary.

The happenings that unfolded in Charlottesville on Saturday fall all too neatly into a pattern stretching back for the better part of two years, a pattern that has become nearly an ironclad law.

Listening to the coverage of Charlottesville, one could be forgiven for thinking that those in Big Media, whether “liberal” or “conservative,” were oblivious to the existence of this phenomenon.  Commentators struck the unprejudiced observer as either scandalously ignorant or just as scandalously (but predictably) dishonest.  Particularly disappointing were “conservative” commentators and showboating politicians who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their “liberal” counterparts of inhabiting.

First, while there were indeed some self-styled neo-Nazis that were present among the rally’s attendees, they were, by all appearances, a tiny minority.  And they constituted a far smaller fraction of the totality of the group than, say, that which on multiple occasions comprised the totality of Black Lives Matter demonstrators that marched through busy city streets shouting such murderous slogans as, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon!”

Second, the Charlottesville demonstrators organized their rally months in advance of its occurrence. Their application for a permit to march was initially denied. To its eternal credit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a left-leaning organization, came to the organizers’ defense and helped them to appeal this decision. A federal judge eventually ruled that it was illegal for the city of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia to prevent people from exercising their Constitutional right to peacefully assemble.

And this is a crucial point: Those in attendance at the “United the Right” rally did peacefully assemble. They had speakers lined up to speak at Emancipation Park (formerly known as Lee Park).

Hordes of “Anti-fascist” (Antifa) and “Black Lives Matter” agitators assembled to “bash the fash.” As always, it is they who initiated the violence. Even the Washington Post admits that it was the fear of leftist violence that provoked Governor Terry McCauliffe’s State of Emergency. Yet it was this move legitimizing the “Heckler’s Veto” that rendered a lawful event unlawful.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Third, but even then, it wasn’t the rally attendees whose rally was being sabotaged who unleashed the violence. According to reports of those who were on the ground, police turned violent upon some of those who, evidently shocked upon hearing that before things even began they were ended, didn’t leave the area as quickly as the officers—and their superiors—would have preferred.  The boys in blue sprayed mace at rally-goers and kicked them.

Then, the police, upon breaking up the group, redirected them out of the park through the sea of Antifa and BLM terrorists who proceeded to besiege them with an arsenal of weaponry, from bricks and bottles filled with cement to baseball bats, bows and arrows, urine, feces, bear mace, and—this is no lie—a “makeshift flame thrower from a spray can.”

A flamethrower.

Fourth, a life was indeed lost on Saturday. A counter-demonstrator was killed when someone who was allegedly one of the demonstrators plowed his car into a mob that had filled the street. The suspect has since been identified as James Alex Fields, a 20 year-old white man from Ohio. About 19 or so others were also injured.

This is the one event of the day on which the media have fixated. No doubt, it was the most serious of events, given that a person was killed. But insofar as it is abstracted and isolated from the context of violence that, to repeat, the Antifa and BLMers had been unleashing long before it happened, it is Fake News in the extreme, a tactic by which the day’s violence can be dropped exclusively upon the shoulders of those who exhaustively pursued legal measures to express themselves.

Confessedly, when I initially heard that “counter-demonstrators” had been struck, I immediately assumed that the motorist’s car was surrounded and his life imminently imperiled. This was the most reasonable assumption given that Antifa and BLM regularly block thoroughfares and subject to violence those who they regard as “fascist” and “racist.”

If the driver is guilty of malice, then, being the proponent of capital punishment that I am, I submit that Fields will deserve nothing less than death for his crime.  Yet there is evidence that my initial suspicion is correct.  Although he is being blasted as a homicidal neo-Nazi, what we do know for sure of Fields is that he was an active duty service member of the United States Army. Until Saturday, he worked in law enforcement as a security officer, and he has no history of violence.

And, according to a writer for the The Hill, those Charlottesville police officers who she spoke with think that Fields may have not acted with malice, but from fear for his life. Video seems to show a pedestrian hitting Fields’ car with a bat.

The point, though, is that no one knows for sure, at this point, all that happened.

Yet none of the moral exhibitionists who unleashed the tsunami of denunciations of the “white supremacists” (there were some unsavory characters in attendance, to be sure, but many present, and certainly the event’s organizers, explicitly disavow this moniker), uttered a peep concerning the brutality of those who started the violence.

Mike Cernovich, a Jew who reportedly declined an invitation to speak at the Charlottesville rally, reminded his followers this weekend of when he attended a White House press briefing some months back and called out leftist journalists for refusing to disavow Antifa.  They still refuse to do so.

Nor do they dare to wax indignant over the violence of BLM.

To those who object to any of my assertions, I challenge you to present the video footage of “white supremacists” initiating violence against the thousands of masked agitators who came to greet them with weapons.  In this day and age, when everyone has a camera, it shouldn’t be hard to find—if it exists.

That there are plenty of reasons for objecting to both this rally and the ideology that is associated with it is grist for another mill.  The purpose here is to establish that the consensus among the “respectable” folks that “white supremacists” are responsible for the bloodshed in Charlottesville while the “counter-demonstrators” are victims or bystanders is a Gargantuan Lie that every lover of truth, decency, and, yes, Constitutional liberty must expose for what it is.

****

Beliefnet columnist Jack Kerwick has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master’s degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. He teaches philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.