Erick Erickson is not as much fun as he used to be, no doubt because he’s inherited the seat of one of the great propagandaists of the era, and as propaganda has hardly any connection to truth, truth which is required for having said fun, he’s no fun.
In other words, the fun that occurs when Erickson critiques his own side.
One of his most recent missives, after a pro forma acknowledgment of the January 6th insurrection, simply ignores the entire matter while predicting victory in the midterms:
Yesterday, Joe Biden posited that January 6th, a day when the only person killed was a Trump supporter, was the greatest attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Lee Harvey Oswald and a group of terrorists aboard Flight 93 might laugh at that from the depths of Hell.
Ah, math applied to human beings. Let me ask: are human beings fungible? Could we exchange Stephen Hawking, when alive, for, say, Erick Erickson, and get the same results in their respective roles?
No.
And why? Because contexts differ. One is trained as a physicist, the other as an election lawyer. Put them in the wrong roles and they are unproductive.
And these contexts, which he so nonchalantly strips off, matter as well. The 9/11 attack and the assassination of JFK were not threats to our very system of government. They were, respectively, an attack involving a foreign adversary, and as assassination. In the latter incident, the motivation remains obscure, so we can’t say if it was Oswald acting independently, or if he was paid by a foreign adversary, but killing a government official, even a President, isn’t an existential threat.
The January 6th insurrection constitutes an existential threat. Symbolizing the deliberate claims that the election was rigged, despite all lack of evidence, it’s a play to destroy the very foundation of American society: rationality. As a secular nation – and that’s what we are, despite the frantic shouts of No! No! from a peanut gallery motivated to disagree by religious zeal rather than that rationality of which I speak – the danger is not of violence from outside or even inside, but of a cultural disaster, the turning of a substantial part of society to mass irrationality as a way of life, people convinced by nothing more than their desires and the words of a mendacious half-wit, rather than loyalty to the ways of our country.
This is why I occasionally call the January 6th Insurrection The Revolt of the Five Year Olds.
On top of that, while the Democrats insist otherwise, we continue to have ongoing mobs burning down cities across America who are of the left. Portland, OR gets little attention, but is still under assault by the left. On a weekly basis, leftwing mobs threaten and shakedown American businesses, burn cities, and obstruct daily life.
While Portland may indeed be having continuing problems, I’d guess this is the woke mob, burning itself out, or possibly anarchists, friends to no one, even themselves. My suspicion is they’re discrediting themselves rapidly with everyone. Nor would I be surprised if there are right-wing agitators involved, but I have seen little on the matter. Here in the Twin Cities? There’s been little worry about it, especially now that the Chauvin trial is over and there was only somber celebration in its wake. We don’t go about worrying about riots.
As an aside, there is worry about crime. It’s noteworthy that the fringe “defund” movement, which differs from the police reform movement, has begun to disappear. There are certainly people who really believe in replacing the police with some other form of law enforcement, but my impression is that most of the population of the Twin Cities do not see that as a viable approach to the problem. They want to see some reforms, and some partitioning of duties. But the “defund” movement has, at least at the moment, disappeared.
During Biden’s speech last night, he made the case for ever more expansive government, tax hikes that will punish small businesses in the name of taxing “the rich,” and massive growth of a welfare state that will further disincentivize work.
Standard conservative cant. Taxes are bad (no, they’re not, and given our Republican Party-generated debt, they’re not nearly high enough). People hate work, especially if they’re not from a particular religious background. However, experiments with Universal Basic Income suggest otherwise. People hate unpleasant, low paying work, sure. I approve. But working on something personally interesting? They love that.
This is all boilerplate that disappears on study.
But this here is what I suspect is the beginning of the creation of a cultural fact:
Part of this rush to more government is a recognition by the Democrats that the Republicans will take back the House next year.
I don’t have any special connections to the Democrats, so maybe that’s the rumble in Democratic circles, but it’s worth noting that I haven’t heard a single statement to that effect. Moreover, this is an echo of a comment Erickson made yesterday here. I think we may be seeing the creation, on the right, of momentum for the next election, by making it seem like an inevitable historical fact.
But here’s the strategy I expect will be used on every GOP member of Congress running for reelection who voted against accepting the Presidential Election results on January 6th, 2021, a simple statement:
XYZ voted against accepting the 2020 Presidential Election results despite multiple recounts, and a failure to win a single court case by local GOP officials as well as President Trump. Furthermore, they did so during an attempted coup by far right militia members. If you think they were liberals, go talk to the FBI.
Given all that, who, in their right minds, could even consider voting for XYZ? They are a traitor, in spirit, to the great pillars of our Republic, and I won’t even bother to debate him, because that would bring a blot upon my honor.
I think the Democrats will have a clear opportunity to pick up more seats, and the Republicans will be shell-shocked to discover their third- and fourth-rate candidates are not going to win just “because it’s midterms.” The right-wing mob handed the Democrats a huge club on January 6th, and I expect the Democrats to wield it with great enthusiasm in 2022.
If they don’t, they deserve to lose.
