In the midst of death we are in life.
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Ross Douthat
@DouthatNYT
NYT columnist, National Review film critic, author of The Decadent Society (2020) and The Deep Places (2021), newsletter: tinyurl.com/2wy5kz4v
Ross Douthat’s Tweets
Dear God, next thing you know the president will accuse a political rival’s family of being implicated in the JFK assassination!
By late 2019 Trump will be tweeting about suspending the constitution and making himself dictator & nobody will pay the slightest attention.
Worth noting that in the 50 yrs since Roe, men have become less likely to find a spouse, less likely father kids or live with the kids they father, and less likely to participate in the workforce.
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There are millions of men whose lives would have been much worse without abortion. Men who wouldn't have found their big loves, wouldn't have their kids, wouldn't have been as successful, wouldn't have taken big risks. Many of them don't think about it. Some don't even know it.
It's fascinating how the Trump presidency and the Republican Congress are simultaneously disastrous in such completely different ways.
It appears that any electoral advantage accrued by going forward with an election during a pandemic may be offset by the electoral penalty for being the asses that insisted on going forward with an election during a pandemic.
Increasingly concerned the Steele Dossier may not have been entirely on the level.
Everyone understands that the House is crazier than the Senate, and he isn't seen as a traitor to the Ivy League, but still there should be more condemnation for Kevin McCarthy as opposed to just for Hawley and Cruz.
When you can't just "trust the science" because the scientists keep lying to you and then saying, "oh, that was just a noble lie, sorry about that."
nytimes.com/2020/12/24/hea
The thing about trading your principles for power is that once you do it the Devil always come back offering variations on the same deal.
"King David had five hundred concubines for crying out loud." Sean Hannity, who I can't believe I'm watching but there it is.
Main takeaway is that if Republican senators had removed Trump in January this race would be a lot closer.
Good rules for life:
Don't let your Catholic school's students wear MAGA hats on a field trip for the March for Life.
Don't *immediately* make a teenager a symbol of everything you hate about your political enemies based on a short video clip. Give it a day at least.
The entire commentariat is going to feel a little silly when Marco Rubio wins every Republican primary.
Yeah that Trump statement was why we didn't need a Trump statement.
The CNN Plus thing is just so fundamentally mystifying, for all concerned -- the suits who conceived it, the talent that decided to join it, all mystifying.
Nothing about Trump's behavior in office has surprised me. What's surprised is everyone else's behavior - investors, foreign govts, even to some extent his opponents, all of whom have entered into a tacit conspiracy to act as if his behavior isn't really part of the presidency.
Pretty impressive amount of anti-Catholic content being generated at mainstream outlets this week.
Twitter's editorial voice is basically late Soviet if Pravda were run by concern trolls:
Possible silver lining is that Youngkin just won an election running against a set of personalities, ideas and institutions that the Weekly Standard opposed throughout its entire existence:
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brb -- looking for silver linings...
Congratulations to my kids on entering my homeschooling academy starting tomorrow AM.
A speech to make Republican elites feel sickened (as they should be) by what their party has nominated.
I am respectfully asking Senator Graham to read the second half of Julius Caesar.
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Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?
The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.
You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.
If your *journalistic* instinct seeing, let's say, the undercover Planned Parenthood videos is "these must be selectively edited" but yr journalistic instinct seeing the 1st Covington video is "here's the true face of hateful whiteness," then you aren't a good gatekeeper. Period.
Now we're just being asked to pretend that Trump is a good president when he's obviously an incompetent one. No thanks.
Nothing is more characteristically Hillary Clinton that going in on a particular partisan talking point only *after* it has been extensively litigated, fact-checked as false, etc.
It was who noted that Trump doesn't really take people's dignity; he just reveals their willingness to give it away:
twitter.com/charlescwcooke
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Just a reminder that every human being alive today exists because their ancestors had children under conditions -- pestilence, famine, war -- that would beggar the modern imagination.
Total genius move to follow an election in which your party overperformed with minorities by going all in on a narrative about how the minority vote is totally fraudulent and shouldn't count:
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Nonwhite voters in Georgia per preliminary exit polls:
Black voters:
November: Ossoff (D) +76
Jan runoff: Ossoff (D) +86
Hispanic voters:
November: Ossoff (D) +9
Jan runoff: Ossoff (D) +30
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“The U.S. Army 39th regiment wear masks to prevent influenza in Seattle in December of 1918. The soldiers are on their way to France.”
via theatlantic.com/photo/2018/04/
Everyone major figure who participated in this grotesquerie has disgraced themselves on a level unique in the history of our republic.
Today I acquired enough at-home tests to test my family twice over the holidays before larger gatherings. It only took visiting four different pharmacies and spending $150. God bless America.
It's the totally-flat blue line that tells you this chart is super-serious.
fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-t
To say again when I said in expectation: Kavanaugh could be innocent, memories of trauma can be wrong, but absent more dramatic exculpatory evidence than a calendar this is too credible to elevate him.
What if, just work with me here, instead of passing a hugely unpopular HC bill in the dead of night, the GOP tried to do something popular?
A lot of words here, but "we helped Trump win the GOP nomination, and we're sorry" are strangely missing:
Politics aside, we should all die full of years, with 28 grandchildren, in our sleep after quail hunting. Antonin Scalia RIP.
Your reminder that the liberal model of a healthy 21st century polity has one-party rule, multiethnic middle class outmigration, and the Gini coefficient of a Central American republic:
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Replying to @ezraklein
I think there are more examples of this being done successfully than people tend to admit. California, for instance, is imperfect, but it's a functioning, proud, multiethnic liberal democracy.
Ah, perhaps the future of multi-racial conservatism *wasn't* served by implying that hundreds of thousands of urban votes were fake.
tulsaworld.com/news/local/gov
Definitely worth saying a prayer for the President of the United States.
The Weekly Standard has always published some of the best writers, word for word -- not just the best conservative writers -- in American political journalism. To kill it because its brand is too anti-Trump is ultimately an act of philistinism.
Strictly from an authorial perspective it does seem like the Stormy Daniels storyline is the natural one to actually bring Trump down.
People pointing out that an Ivy League degree doesn't necessarily affect lifetime earnings for the children of, say, a successful TV star misunderstand the real function of meritocracy, which is not the facilitation of upward mobility but the legitimation of a ruling class.
People who think my newspaper shouldn’t have published The Op-Ed are nuts. People who think its author shouldn’t have written it are reasonable.
The fact that we lifted a pregnant woman robed in red high above our chief religious festival and the aliens didn’t come and take her suggests it’s probably just Chinese drones after all.
You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the cuck.
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Bannon has apologized for his comments about Trump Jr and others in a statement provided to @mikeallen. Says his comments about the Trump Tower meeting being treasonous "were aimed at Paul Manafort"
My Sunday column: The Coronavirus is Coming For Trump's Presidency:
No one will believe a Florida poll showing Dems ahead for the duration of my lifetime.
But to vote "yes" under these circumstances - dead of night vote for a bill with no scrutiny that nobody wants - is just disgraceful.
Look if you name your child "Reince Priebus" and he ends up as a functionary in an authoritarian regime you only have yourself to blame.
If the alternative theory is that this happened in much the way she described but someone else was the assaulter then it seems like if you were Brett Kavanaugh and you wanted evidence supporting that theory you would need to ... get testimony from Mark Judge.
Time to mildly suggest that some of the street turmoil of the summer was a response to the closure of every normal institution rather than a sign that we've hit a tipping point into low-grade civil war.
This is one of the two major political parties in the most powerful nation in the world. Don't laugh. It's not funny.
Rest in peace, and may God treat with the American republic now according to His mercy, not our deserts.
It is not news that Barr is scrutinizing the origins of the Russia investigation, it is reasonable to ask relevant governments for assistance, this revelation is categorically different from the Biden/Ukraine/aid issue and conflating the two is a mistake.
I will admit that the regime transition around here from opaque bureaucratic rule to personal monarchy is fascinating:
My view is that post-Gorsuch, the reluctantly pro-Trump right should be like a gambler who won big. It's okay to walk away from the table.
It's only fine if you vote for it.
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20.94% Corp. rate to pay for tax cut for working family making $40k was anti-growth but 21% to cut tax for couples making $1million is fine?
Truly remarkable that Trump, facing impeachment, decided this was the time to make a FP move calculated to alienate his most stalwart evangelical supporters:
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TODAY join me in praying as the Turkish army has invaded Syria in the area that the US military withdrew from. The Turks have a dismal record on human rights & they can’t be trusted. Pray for the Kurds, Christians, & other minorities in this region. washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e
The true test of whether Harvard admits the smartest kids is how many of them defer.
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JUST IN: Harvard announces all course instruction will be taught online for the 2020-21 academic year.
Undergraduate tuition of $49,653 remains the same.
Tomorrow's column tonight: The 25th Amendment Solution:
The path for forward for parties of the center-left in Europe begins with an acknowledgment that the challenges of collapsed birthrates + migrant integration ARE the central challenges of 21st century Europe, not far-right distractions that will vanish in some restored normalcy.
I'd like to wake up tomorrow and find everyone from Steve Bannon to Tucker Carlson publicly hammering the president and the party on this issue. That would be nice. But assuming they don't, this thread is my way of saying to professional Populist Conservatism, to hell with you.
John McCain, though a Boomer, was really a throwback to the post-WWII era: A would-be bipartisan dealmaker with a career founded on military courage. His strengths were often ill-suited to the times and his weaknesses amplified by them. But we shall not see his like again. RIP.
You are responsible for inciting violence if you actually incite or organize or bless violence. Otherwise, not. True under Obama, true now.
One difficulty with the "Trump is a Russian asset" theory is that you would expect a real Russian asset to pretend he isn't one publicly while quietly pursuing pro-Russian policies behind the scenes; Trump has basically done the reverse.
TRUMP HAD A CEILING HE ALWAYS HAD A CEILING I TOLD YOU HE HAD A CEILING I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU I TOLD YOU YOU LAUGHED BUT I TOLD YOU
Of course it would also be in character for Trump to be a Russian asset who's really terrible at the job.
"I'm a Christian"
- basic/normie
- youth pastor energy
- yeah, so are my parents
"I worship the lamb slain from the foundation of the world"
- mysterious
- ominous
- maybe you have a sword
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“I’m a political scientist”
- boring
- academic
- not a real science
“I look at power”
- mysterious
- ominous
- maybe you have a sword twitter.com/davideastUK/st…
This was always the obvious point of the stunt, not to show that NE liberals would mistreat migrants but to provoke a huge mobilization - National Guard! - and imply a contrast w/a liberal WH failing to help border communities dealing w/far larger influx.
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HAPPENING NOW: Migrants, flown into Martha’s Vineyard by Fl’s governor, are boarding buses. They’ll be heading to Joint Base Cape Cod, according to officials. 125 Mass National Guard members are being activated to assist. @NBCNews
0:07
Firing Mueller right now seems so obviously insane that even I, Captain 25th Amendment, do not believe that Trump will do it.
The American system increasingly has two real branches of government, plus a vestigial legislature.
Team Trump's handling of the Fields incident is basically a blueprint for turning a minor airspace issue w/China into thermonuclear war.
Tillerson and Mattis can share the Nobel Peace Prize if we all get through this in one piece.
Comey is such a great character for the drama of a declining republic: The archetypal G-Man hero gradually exposed as a pompous bumbler.
This Twitter-liberal belief, that the sustained ideological controversy that has roiled every liberal institution for the last several years does not exist, or does not touch schools, or was made up by one right-wing activist dude, is a sign of really serious brain-poisoning.
Moore's gonna win this because God has chosen to punish the GOP with horrible soul-destroying "victories," not defeats.
Thirty second distillation of why Biden is likely to win, right here.
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This is a usefully nuanced treatment of Jordan Peterson. This passage especially:
theguardian.com/books/2021/mar
Years of reading about my church's sex abuse scandals have definitely persuaded me that conspiracy theories involving networks of powerful sexual predators are never, ever true.
I'm going to stick with the same assessment till the last: Trump is unfit and proves it every day, but he's incapable of an authoritarian coup and in the event of a FL-in-2000 tipping-point-state tie, his toxic rhetoric only makes him more likely to lose the post-election battle.
One issue among many for Bloomberg is that he got rich off a product that no ordinary American has ever encountered, let alone eagerly purchased or felt gratitude for, in their everyday life.
If I have one professional goal it's to get smart people to stop using "it's a simulation" to describe the manifest power of Almighty God.
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If there's a 269-269 tie then maybe it's a simulation.
Just kidding. I think.
Annnnnd in the evening's *other* news, this document is quite possibly a truly historic bombshell in the life of the Roman Catholic Church.
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4784
Memo: You can think that Trump's leadership is terrible and certain red-state governors reckless, without carrying water for Andrew Cuomo's disastrous response.
The Republicans get what they deserve: He did well enough that they're definitely stuck with him.
So we just watched Marianne Williamson win the race portion of the debate.
There was absolutely no good reason to overrule this couple's basic parental rights.
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Good Biden speech but everyone should stop calling for Trump to speak; the next time he speaks will be too soon.
Ted Cruz may not be the best at figuring out when to buy into the market.
May I suggest, as a happy medium between debating Richard Spencer and sucker-punching him, that people consider ignoring him for a while?