RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/21/

If the recent generic ballots tell us anything, it is that the Republican establishment should stop trying to run generic Republicans as candidates. The GOP of Paul “throw-granny-off-a-cliff-and-give-her-Social-Security-check-to-the-Koch-Brothers” Ryan has never been popular, and for good reason. This is why Donald Trump, despite having ostensibly low approval ratings, is virtually unstoppable compared to his purported “allies” in Congress. Against this alleged political party with approval ratings somewhere between those of Typhoid Mary and the man who ran over your dog, and with all the instinct to fight of said dead dog, a blue wave should surprise no one.

On the surface, therefore, the potential success of the Democratic Party would seem to be a banner day for #TheResistance.

Except it won’t be. Indeed, should a blue wave arrive in November, it will be the high water mark of #TheResistance’s influence. Within the administration, and even in Congress, the very policies that could shipwreck #TheResistance on the shores of its own extremism are closer than ever to coming to pass, and what’s more, #TheResistance knows this. Indeed, the campus-style freakout on the part of Democratic Party activists in response to the baseless accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently lobbed a Duke Lacrosse-level slimeball of scurrilous envy disguised as grievance at Judge Brett Kavanaugh, shows as much.

Hobble the Left: Here’s How
No serious party would latch onto the rhetoric of the most asinine #MeToo activist unless it believed that was the only way to avoid an extinction-level event. Republicans everywhere should be much more pleased with Kavanaugh’s nomination, knowing the Left views it as such a threat to their agenda.

But it isn’t just Kavanaugh. Over the past few weeks events suggest that the Trump Administration and Congress can, and will, hobble the far Left by dismantling their strongest weapons in America’s ongoing cold civil war.

Begin with news last week that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering a Department of Justice investigation of Twitter, Facebook, and Google in advance of his meeting with state attorneys general on September 25. Sessions apparently wants to sound out state officials on a question that many of us have been urging the Trump Administration to take up for ages—namely, whether the tech giants are the equivalent of early 20th-century monopolists in their ability to unduly influence the marketplace.

Indeed, we are at an even more perilous point with these monopolies because they have the ability to influence, not just the marketplace with their products, but also (and necessarily), the marketplace of ideas. If Sessions were to force the breakup of these companies with his investigation, #TheResistance’s main ability to keep their political opponents out of sight and out of mind would be crippled severely. And there is no reason why Sessions, who badly needs to get President Trump back in his corner, should restrain himself.

Nor is it only Facebook, Twitter, and Google that could be on the chopping block. Amazon is also seen as a likely target of Trump Administration scrutiny, so much so that stock analysts are now advising the company to split in two to avoid that very scrutiny. Not only is this good news for small retailers, including and especially independent bookstores—which are hurting badly given Amazon’s increasingly censorious behavior—but it also would be a major blow to a company that directs 90 percent of its political donations to Democrats, and whose owner Jeff Bezos owns the disturbingly partisan current incarnation of the Washington Post.

Amazon may have other investigations pending, given its scandalous attempt to rig the process for awarding a massive Department of Defense contract in its favor: an act that may itself be illegal. Combine this with the fact that Amazon pays its contractors in Trump states such pitiable wages that they have to go on food stamps, and again, it’s hard to see a political downside for the administration’s potential pushback against the retail giant.

Oh, and let’s not forget Trump’s China tariffs, which disproportionately impact tech in a negative manner—hardly surprising, considering Google and others are perfectly willing to cooperate with the authoritarian Chinese government in stalking its own citizens—something about which even some of its own employees feel queasy.

Combine all of this, and the only profitable hub #TheResistance has looks poised to have its proverbial portcullis smashed in by the Trumpian battering ram. This cannot be overstated: without that money, the entire edifice propping up the current elite consensus loses its gatekeepers. Suddenly, the prospect of 2016-level free discourse reenters the picture.

#MeToo Eats Itself
But it’s not just money. I opened discussing the Kavanaugh allegations, and I believe they have the potential to represent one of the most comprehensive defeats the Left has faced in years—a defeat that will be worse because it will have been self-inflicted.

Kavanaugh’s nomination is a test of the #MeToo movement. For the Left, #MeToo’s sexual Stalinism would be a godsend of a political weapon, because any and all Trump nominees, Republican officeholders, or anyone they dislike for any reason could be sunk by an evidence-free accusation propped up by a credulous media. And, perhaps because #MeToo has sunk so many prominent figures in the Left’s cultural enclaves, they deluded themselves into believing that it would have the same effect everywhere. Perhaps they think they have sacrificed enough of their own to have burnished an indestructible sword against the Right.

But what works in Hollywood and Manhattan does not work in Congress. Now, #MeToo is raging against the very thing that permitted its effectiveness in the first place: the necessity of evidence. The reason #MeToo began, after all, was the comprehensive and damning evidence Ronan Farrow brought to bear against Harvey Weinstein. But for those who aspire to make all of America’s justice system a campus Title IX tribunal, the mere fact that such evidence was necessary smacks of “rape culture.” They want to be able to make the accusation, and then force the accuser to twist in the wind, unsure of what he is accused of, and forever an object of suspicion.

Brett Kavanaugh, however, is a judge in America, not on campus, and a very smart one. He and his defenders know how real trials work, and they know how real guilt is assigned. And so, they are demanding evidence—not assertions, but evidence. Amazingly, Americans still agree with this standard. They’re not convinced by assertion alone. A recent poll showed only 38 percent of voters believe Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations are credible to begin with, let alone true. Those are not numbers that one wants to see for a star witness.

The Limits of #TheResistance
Which is why the whole affair is terrifying to the Left even beyond the fact of Kavanaugh’s likely being confirmed. If Kavanaugh prevails, and I believe he will, then the Left’s most potent political weapon—the weaponization of sexual assault accusations—will be shown to be a tool that they can only use on themselves, because only they believe those accusations without question. It’s rather like siccing a lion on someone, only to discover that the lion only likes the taste of your flesh.

In other words, the current signs point to #TheResistance being reduced to a footnote, even if it is able to drag the Dems to a photo finish in November. Its money and its control over the internet may soon be shattered by the Trump Justice Department, by the Trump tariffs, and of its cultural power to act as sexual grand inquisitors. #TheResistance may run into the small problem that their methods, which worked for them on campus among the dolts in academia, do not work so well in actual grown-up institutions of political and legal power.

Yes, generic Republicans are lagging in the polls, and rightly so. Fair enough. Non-generic ones eventually will emerge after seeing that Trump, in resisting #TheResistance, may end up breaking it.

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