Michael Anton on some “former friends”

 

It’s a long weekend read.  At American Greatness, Michael Anton takes a deep dive into the personal dynamics of political disagreement:   

The Dishonest and Dishonorable Disagreements
of Former Friends

Most of us, at some point or another, fall out with friends. It’s a painful and, perhaps, inevitable part of life. It’s especially disquieting when former friends turn on you suddenly and publicly, devoid of any goodwill, charity, or benefit of the doubt that one might think were warranted by years of amity. All this, however disagreeable, is at least “normal” in the sense that it has been going on forever—though it massively intensified in the Trump Derangement Era.  . . .

Mr Anton’s concluding thoughts are not encouraging.

Opinion is the element or medium of society. These people, and many others like them, work to constrain opinion in order to rule society, to mark off what can and cannot be said or thought. Their education should have taught them that this is a disaster for human freedom. The books they claim to love make this point forcefully. 

But more prosaically, they are incapable of any honest disagreement. It will be their way or the highway, and woe unto him who dissents. These are the same people who speak of unity and democracy, but their unity is Xerxes’ unity of the lash, and their “democracy” is them getting their way on every issue while telling you how evil you are for disagreeing. 

Just as I find it astonishing to be accused of anti-Americanism by longtime denigrators of America, I find it even more astonishing to be accused of divisiveness by people who casually throw around the term “Nazi.” Is the cause an utter lack of self-awareness? When I encounter genuine surprise that their hate is not reciprocated with love, I am tempted to think so. 

Or is it deliberate, intended to provoke, so that those provoked can be more effectively identified and crushed? This explanation also fits the observable facts. 

When even former friends of decades standing can’t civilly disagree, where are we as a country? Where are we heading? 

Nowhere good.

The full article is here.  I posted this for the same reason I’ve been linking to some of Dr Robert Malone’s columns:  you are not alone.

# # #

Josh Mandel: just another dishonest RINO

 

Josh Mandel and William Kristol.  Photo credit: wksu.org

This latest report from BigLeaguePolitics --

"Ohio Senate Candidate Josh Mandel Pocketed Donations Intended for 2018 GOP Nominee, Paid Tens of Thousands to Mistress"

-- will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, although it is of concern that an Ohio liberty group has endorsed Mandel's candidacy for the US Senate seat presently held by RINO Rob Portman.  Richard Moorhead reports:

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel paid tens of thousands of dollars to a woman he was dating during his 2018 Senate campaign, while married to another woman.

FEC reports show that Rachel Wilson, Mandel’s finance director and mistress, was paid more than $100,000 between his 2018 campaign and a PAC supporting his candidacy.

. . .

Three dozen Republican women, including three women who left Mandel’s campaign citing a toxic work environment created by Wilson in her continuing duties with Mandel’s 2020 campaign, have urged Ohio Republicans to reject Mandel, warning he’ll “embarrass” the party if nominated as a candidate for the US Senate.  Mandel has run for statewide office five times in the past 12 years, with some Ohio Republicans criticizing Mandel, who has served in elected office since 2003, as a career politician who’ll put on the act he needs to in pursuit of the next political gig.

. . .

Questions of Mandel’s ethics go beyond his financial arrangements with his girlfriend while he was married to another woman. Mandel broke onto the scene of national politics as a protege of war criminal Bill Kristol, handpicked as an instrument to advance the nefarious neoconservative’s political views in the United States Senate in an ultimately failed 2012 campaign against Sherrod Brown. Kristol, an advocate of Middle East regime change wars Donald Trump partly ran against in 2016, had recruited Mandel as a candidate in Ohio’s 2012 US Senate election to challenge Sherrod Brown.

Read the full – ugly - report here.  Mr. Mandel says all the right things in front of the camera, but he is obviously just another self-serving hack.  Candidate Mike Gibbons looks better and better.

# # #