The Flight 93 Election

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This article and its clever metaphor is making the rounds, it's worth linking here. It's written for anti-Trump conservatives, but its imagery and stick-poking of mainstream conservatives can be appreciated by both sides.

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/ ... -election/

Some highlights:

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.
...
One of the Journal of American Greatness’s deeper arguments was that only in a corrupt republic, in corrupt times, could a Trump rise. It is therefore puzzling that those most horrified by Trump are the least willing to consider the possibility that the republic is dying. That possibility, apparently, seems to them so preposterous that no refutation is necessary.
...
A Hillary presidency will be pedal-to-the-metal on the entire Progressive-left agenda, plus items few of us have yet imagined in our darkest moments. Nor is even that the worst. It will be coupled with a level of vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent hitherto seen in the supposedly liberal West only in the most “advanced” Scandinavian countries and the most leftist corners of Germany and England.
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The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes. Their reasons vary somewhat. The Left and the Democrats seek ringers to form a permanent electoral majority. They, or many of them, also believe the academic-intellectual lie that America’s inherently racist and evil nature can be expiated only through ever greater “diversity.” The junta of course craves cheaper and more docile labor. It also seeks to legitimize, and deflect unwanted attention from, its wealth and power by pretending that its open borders stance is a form of noblesse oblige.
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Yes, Trump is worse than imperfect. So what? We can lament until we choke the lack of a great statesman to address the fundamental issues of our time—or, more importantly, to connect them. Since Pat Buchanan’s three failures, occasionally a candidate arose who saw one piece: Dick Gephardt on trade, Ron Paul on war, Tom Tancredo on immigration. Yet, among recent political figures—great statesmen, dangerous demagogues, and mewling gnats alike—only Trump-the-alleged-buffoon not merely saw all three and their essential connectivity, but was able to win on them. The alleged buffoon is thus more prudent—more practically wise—than all of our wise-and-good who so bitterly oppose him. This should embarrass them. That their failures instead embolden them is only further proof of their foolishness and hubris.
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The election of 2016 is a test—in my view, the final test—of whether there is any virtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.

What a load of garbage. It actually doesn't work that if you lie about something often enough or loudly enough it becomes true. It particularly doesn't work when you lie about people's motives in places where they can read or hear what you are saying. The author is a Lying SOB.

As for the "clever metaphor," If anyone tries rushing the cockpit on flight I'm on and they are not an Air Marshall, I will do my best to disable or kill the bastard before he can seize the plane, especially if they think they are doing it because of the purity of their damned cause or ideology.

You are foolish if you don't think political calculations don't play a role in why some leftists so support globalism, the Democrats have taken their traditional base for granted because of this zero-sum calculation. Now Democrats are the biggest defenders of 'free trade' and outsourcing and mass immigration, no surprise that this happens simultaneously with the oligarchy now concentrating themselves in the Democratic party. The ruling class has the big guns when it comes to cash and they usually get what they want.

It's a good analogy since it explains the mindset like it or not, it's basically what the hell do we have to lose at this point?

EDIT:
Jacoby beat me in saying it ^

Clinton is more conservative.

Most of Trump's ideas are far left.

Yeah, I mean why worry about truth or reality or any of that crap, right?
Anything for the cause.
/sarcasm

The trash Mikah linked to is polemic propaganda and piles lie upon lie to build itself into a furious argument for irrational thinking and behavior.

There may be some tiny number of people who make the kind of Machiavellian calculation the lying bastard who wrote that piece was describing, but the majority of people who oppose Trump and support Clinton do it because of fundamental political principles.

Some of us actually believe in the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, for example.

As for Trump being more left or right than Clinton, who gives damn how you want to label the man--the salient point is that his ideas are nonsense. His plan will create trillions in debt, but he proposes to cure that with magically obtained growth. It's just rubbish.

As for his trade "policies" (fairy tales would be more appropriate) he is somehow going to snap his finders and make supply and demand irrelevant in the movement of capital. Abra Cadabra, Detroit makes cars again!

Clinton may be politically center-right, but at least her plans are based in economic reality.

His stuff is voodoo economics, round 2.

Not only that, but Trump is a laughingstock internationally.

America will just become "another country" under Trump. There will be a reduction in our prestige.

America just being "another country" is quite dangerous, in my opinion.

Indeed. Don't forget

Diversity is our strength.
Men and women are the same.
All religions and cultures are equal.
People are the gender they identify as.

Put to one side the truthfulness of the claim, you can't really complain when someone else starts beating the elite at their own game using their own weapons.

Despicable codswallop.

"diversity is our strength"

This is a one of the foundational beliefs of America, proven by our history time and again, not some lie perpetrated in recent times by propagandists. "E pluribus unum" is the principle. Out of many, one, not "out of one, one" or "one over all the others."

I'll see your "ein volk" and raise you one Jesse Owens, one Ralph Bunche, one Maya Lin, one Nikola Tesla, one Albert Einstein, one Daniel Inouye and one Barbara Jordan. Our diversity kicks your monoculture's ass, every time.

"Men and women are the same."

Really? How very quixotic!
Equal justice before the law doesn't mean "the same" -- You can't just trot out these preposterous straw men and not have people catch on to the emptiness of the argument.

"All religions and cultures are equal."
Before the law, yes, except when they violate other key ideals, the first church of cannibalism and pedophilia, for example, is not going to happen. I realize it must be hard for you to understand this, coming from a culture with a national institutional church and a terribly weak one, but religious freedom does not weaken a nation.

"people are the gender the identify as"
Just trying to hit all the buttons on the way down, eh? I think that's been debated enough elsewhere. It's your right to be rude to people if you want to, as long as you don't institutionalize it in some way.

"Put to one side the truthfulness of the claim, you can't really complain when someone else starts beating the elite at their own game using their own weapons."

Who is this elite of whom you speak? Would that be Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, the Koch brothers, the Kennedy family?
Oh, right, it's not a real thing. So there isn't a "their own game" to beat "them" at.

It's just one liar using flight 93 as a way of symbolically suggesting that people who want to preserve the constitution of the United States are somehow the moral equivalent of 9/11 hijackers.

Totally beneath contempt.

don"t know what its all about, more blingbling is more distraction, take away the little layer of civilisation and the petty gangleaders are what they are, comedians in a mediocre caricature

the thread of whatever

Enjoyed those.
The Sarkozy plane was very funny.

It is all a bit grand guignol, sans doute.

9/11 is an intensely strong memory for me. It inspired murderous rage in me.
To have some lying, sniveling, right-wing polemicist use that horror as a cheap rhetorical tool in his screed is enraging too.

Comedy is a good (possibly the best) antidote. Merci bien pour cela.