Goodbye Chile, Hello Venezuela

And another one bites the dust:

Wild celebrations have been seen across Chile after the country voted to rid itself of its dictatorship-era constitution left behind by Augusto Pinochet’s regime.
Chileans voted overwhelmingly in a landmark referendum on Sunday to replace the constitution, long seen as underpinning the nation’s glaring economic and social inequalities.
Thousands of people flocked onto the streets of Santiago amid a cacophony of horn-blaring to celebrate a crushing victory for the ‘Approve’ campaign – by 78.28 percent to 21.72 percent, with over 99 percent of the votes counted.

And its replacement?

People hope a new constitution would expand the role of the state in providing a welfare safety net, ensuring basic rights to health, education, water distribution and pensions.

Ah yes, an expanded state… [sigh]

And why not?  After all, they voted for it, despite the dismal track record of an “expanded state” failing everywhere it’s been implemented.

My post title says it all.

Milestone Election

I read Roger Kimball’s A Momentous Election, and not for the first time I was struck by the thought in his conclusion:

The prospect of that malign dispensation is why I believe the 2020 election is the most momentous of my life.

The expression “this is the most important election” (or similar) has become so common it risks losing its meaning.

But it shouldn’t.  Several elections — most especially in recent times — have qualified for the title, such as Trump’s near-massacre of Hillary Bitch Clinton’s latest attempt to become Nanny-In-Chief in 2016.  That election was hugely important, because had Her Filthiness won, the country would have continued along the slide down to perdition started by Obama’s destructive social- and foreign policies.  Trump’s victory in 2016 at least delayed that process, and in places halted it altogether (and reversed it in lamentably few).

But that was when the socialist welfare- and malignant state was still a work in progress, and to many people (such as NeverTrumpers), the dark purposes of such policies were not as apparent as they are now.  Hillary Clinton, for example, may have been on the side of the anti-gun faction;  but she certainly did not threaten to send police around to confiscate guns.  (That’s not to say she wouldn’t have, at some point;  but at least she didn’t come right out and say she would, as Joe Biden has certainly done since, in saying he would appoint arch-antigunner Beto O’Rourke as his firearms commissar.)

Now, however, the Radical Left (a.k.a. Communists) have not only taken over the Democrat Party, but made no attempt to hide that fact from us — and the proof thereof is that after winning the Democrat Party primary, Biden and Harris have made no attempt — in the slightest — to back away from their more radical primary proposals and tack back to the center, as both parties have had to do in the past.  And the implications of that takeover, in terms of this coming election, have made voting choice about as simple as it’s possible to do so:  on the one hand, a return to a more conservative — more originally-American — ideal in voting for Trump, and on the other, a handing over of power to a movement that will set about undermining everything — every institution and every Constitutional freedom — that has made this country the envy of the world.

By the way, I have no time — absolutely none — for those people who absolutely hate the Left but can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump and are going to chuck their vote away on the Raving Loony Party / Libertarians [some overlap]  or write in some cutesy choice like Mickey Mouse.  That’s really dangerous this time, because every vote that’s not for Trump will reduce his voting support, and once again we’ll have to put up with the tiresome chants of the Left calling for a “popular democracy” to replace our Electoral College.

To refresh our memories, G.W. Bush absolutely trounced John Fuckface Kerry in 2004 in the popular vote, largely because of Fuckface himself as well as because we were still fighting a full-blooded war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Now, thanks to Trump, we aren’t fighting a war in Iraq and are in the process of ending the stupid adventure in Afghanistan;  but the overseas wars have been replaced by a domestic war — and believe me, it’s very much a war, ask anyone who lives in Seattle or Portland — between two political philosophies that are not only mutually incompatible but mutually destructive.  There are no compromises between the Communists and the Conservatives.  Not any more.

Every conservative voter, of whatever stripe, needs to forget all their misgivings about Trump because now more than ever, a vote that isn’t a Trump vote is very definitely an enabling vote for Communism, at best, no matter how you try to justify it.  Forget that “protest” vote bullshit — it was bullshit in 2016, and it’s bullshittier in 2020.  The stakes are just too damn high, this time.

This is especially true when it comes to conservative voters in places like New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey.  Yes, your vote may not achieve anything in your state — but in the big picture, your vote is critically important in helping to take away one of the Communists’ most strident talking points — and yes, it could make the difference if they try to win the vote by fraud.

And I’m not even going to talk about how important it is for us to take back the U.S. House and increase our majority in the Senate.  Unless, of course, you want to flirt with the idea of Speaker Nancy Pelosi hooking up with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and sending their anti-Constitutional Communist bills to President Kamala Harris (forget Biden;  he’ll be pushed out within 96 hours of his inauguration) for her rubber-stamp signature.  (Here’s a slam-dunk prophecy:  if the Communists control the House, Senate and White House, there will not be a single presidential veto of any legislation during the next four years.  Not one.)

Do we really want to live under those circumstances?  I’ll spell it out:  if the Communists take over, say goodbye to your gun rights, your freedom of speech,  your children’s school curricula, your history, the Supreme Court, and (eventually) your vote, to name but some that they have targeted.  The United States of America will become no different from the average Third World nation, and misery, not the pursuit of happiness will become our currency.

And that is why this 2020 election is the most important one we’ll ever face — until the next one, if we get to have it.  There is no magic wand.  There is just a long, grinding and quite possibly an unending struggle.

There is a great saying that says (from memory), “Civilization will flourish as long as old men plant the trees whose shade they’ll never see.”  Well, I’m an old man;  and I’m going to plant as many trees as I possibly can because our republic deserves it.

Thieves

Ugh.  Yesterday in Comments came some apprehension about the godless Socialists preparing to steal the election via vote fraud.  Then I saw this:

A total of 353 counties in 29 U.S. states have 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens, according to an analysis by Judicial Watch.
In addition, eight states, including Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont, were found to have statewide registered voter totals that exceeded 100 percent of eligible voters, according to the nonprofit government watchdog.
Judicial Watch compared the registration data available for 37 states with the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recently available American Community Survey (ACS) numbers for the period 2014–2018 on a county-by-county basis.
“This new study shows 1.8 million excess, or ‘ghost’ voters, in 353 counties across 29 states,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a statement announcing the study Oct. 16. “This data highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections.”

I’m not quite sure what we can do with this — by “we”, I mean us ordinary folks — but I sure as hell hope that POTUS has a contingency plan or two up his sleeve.

And then there’s this:

Trump Resistance Plans ‘Mass Mobilization’ After Election To Shut Down The Country If Biden Doesn’t Win
What kinds of actions these might be are stated in a “Strategic framework for action following the 2020 election” that sketches out their plans for rioting and attacking American institutions and life until Biden is installed as president. It claims if Trump declares victory that will mark “the start of the coup.”

And this:

President Trump supporters in two small New England towns have gotten menacing letters threatening to burn down their homes.

And this:

A supporter of Democrat candidate Joe Biden was arrested after he shot at two Trump supporters who honked at him in a pick-up truck while he was putting up a Black Lives Matter sign.

I think I’m going to spend the rest of the day at the range.

Not kidding, either.

Sleeping Dragon

I’ve heard the conservative-leaning electorate described as the “slumbering giant” or similar, and this article gives several good reasons why we are quietly waiting our turn to vote rather than burning down Harvard or the New York Times  building.  (Okay, also because that would be illegal, and we have jobs and such.)

More to the point is why we are quiet at the moment.  Just out of curiosity, can anyone give me a single instance where a conservative voter has gone around yanking “Biden” or “Clinton” yard signs out of people’s gardens?  Not one?  I can’t think of any either.  Nor, by the way, have I read any reports of cars being keyed or otherwise damaged simply because they sported a “Howard Dean For President”, “Clinton/Gore” or “Biden/Harris” bumper sticker — and in both the above, had there been any such incidents, you can be damn sure that it would have got full coverage on the nightly news or in the Washington Post.

No:  all such hostility has come from the Left, pretty much as it always has.

That said, just because we aren’t crucifying the board of the Soros Foundation en masse  or hanging random Pantifa rioters from lamp posts does not mean that we aren’t seething with rage — and believe me, we have every good reason to be enraged, not just at the above but also at the way that Big Government has become the equivalent of a giant weight pressing down on all of us.  (Here’s a little boo-hoo article from City Journal which talks about the topic in detail.)

In three weeks’ time we’ll see of all the above is true enough to bring out the conservative vote in droves, and keep the Left away from the levers of power.

Just don’t believe the polls.  As the first linked article suggests, they’re asking questions in a frame which no longer exists, and in any event, the Left has a real interest in making us think that we don’t stand a chance — just as they did when that Trotskyist bitch Hillary Clinton ran for office in 2016 — so the polls are not to be believed.

Here’s what I think:  the sleeping conservative dragon is going to wake up, and I don’t think the Left are going to like the results.  If it were me, I’d be warming up the helicopters’ engines and handing out pre-noosed ropes — we already have sufficient guns and ammo — in preparation for the Glorious Day (as Mr. Free Market puts it).

But like all conservatives, I’d be satisfied with a massive Trump / Republican electoral victory next month.  And for that, the Left should be grateful.

Sun Sets In West

…and Democrats lie.

A Texas Democratic House candidate voted as recently as last year using her parents’ Dallas address while she was living and working in California.
Helane “Lulu” Sawsan Seikaly, who is challenging Republican incumbent Van Taylor in Texas’s Third Congressional District, worked in California until at least last year as an attorney for a Sacramento-based law firm and as a professor at the University of California Davis. Using an address linked to her parents, however, Seikaly voted in Texas in both 2016 and 2018, public records show.
A couple of weeks after filing to run for the House last December, Seikaly switched her registration from Dallas to Collin County, Texas.

Not that it matters, because she’s going to get her ass handed to her in November.

How do I know this?  Because this is my district, and in the last presidential election Taylor had a greater margin of victory (64%) than Trump (62%).  He has an A+ from the TSRA, and we loves us our guns here.  (From memory, Seikaly declined to answer the TSRA’s questionnaire on guns and gun rights, which is a dead giveaway in Texas.)  Taylor’s also a serious conservative — I’ve met him — and he has pretty much continued in the tradition of our long-time, beloved (and much-missed) paisan, Sam Johnson, who retired in 2016.

“Lulu” has no chance, none.

A corollary to all this is that if the polls are showing that Seikaly is only one point behind Taylor, the polls are hopelessly biased, just as they were in 2016.  But we all knew that anyway.

Just Like The Bloody Romans

Those who remember Monty Python’s Life Of Brian  will be familiar with the line “What have the Romans ever done for us?”  followed by the recitation of roads, laws, plumbing, a supply of potable water, etc.

This via Insty:

So whenever some stupid Marxist [redundancy alert]  suggests that eliminating capitalism will help the Pore & Starvin, we should use one of their own arguments against them by saying:  “So really, what you want is for 80% of the world to live in poverty, again?”

But logic has never been a particular strength of the Left, especially when it contradicts dialectic.