Triumph

It's over.

They threw everything they had at him. They mobilized the entire vast apparatus of the evil establishment for their shameful, lying campaign to take down a good man, a mild-mannered Catholic of impeccable reputation, and they failed. The effort backfired on the Democrats, hideously and spectacularly.

The disgusting and cynical attack on Kavanaugh will not be forgotten. If you come at the king, you best not miss. The Democrats missed, and they will pay the price in the midterms. And they will continue to pay the price in the form of awakened Republican anger, and a newly radicalized Kavanaugh who will, we can hope, exact his revenge from the bench of the highest court in the land.

 

Conservatives are beginning to discover what it means to win. It is an unfamiliar feeling for people on the political Right. We are so used to noble defeat and Pyrrhic victories, to endless, shameless betrayal by the Republican establishment. Fine rhetoric about muh Constitution and muh principles, and perhaps the occasional tax cut and pointless foreign war, while the greatest nation in the history of the world morphs into a continent-sized freak show. "Winning" meant George W Bush in the Oval Office. Now, for the first time in 30 years, under the magnificent God-Emperor, we are starting to win by ACTUALLY FUCKING WINNING.

Make no mistake, this is a landmark victory. We now have possibly the most conservative Supreme Court since 1934; this is real power. The Left is in disarray, but it is also dangerous, like a wounded animal that is still far from dead. Having failed to defeat Kavanaugh through the normal political process, and having failed to ruin his life through their despicable lies and machinations, the Left will now extend and widen the battle to the legitimacy of the Supreme Court itself. They are already laying the groundwork for this next phase of the conflict. "Kavanaugh’s confirmation will have poisoned the foundation of the judiciary’s authority." If they cannot keep the court, they will burn it down.

There is literally no institution, no custom, no tradition, no bedrock American value the Left will not eagerly demolish in its insane, totalizing quest for utopia. Do I exaggerate? Forget limited government, forget guns and border enforcement...  now they're attacking the freakin' presumption of innocence!!!

Mike Cernovich made the astute point that the establishment media has lost any remaining credibility through this fiasco. Even the formerly admired Ronan Farrow has completely jumped the shark, penning not one, but two ludicrous hit pieces against Kavanaugh in The New Yorker. Why would anyone even bother to refute a hit piece anymore? The media is totally, utterly fake and everyone knows it. If you're ever accused of something by the media, all you have to do is say "fake news" and you've won the argument.

But the damage runs deeper than that. As @Instapundit noted, "Trump's greatest gift is getting various institutions to make clear in obvious ways that they're as corrupt as he says they are." This was in reference to the story that hundreds -- ultimately more than 2,400 -- law professors had signed a letter arguing that Kavanaugh should not be confirmed based on his judicial temperament. As if the righteous fury of a good man falsely accused, when defending himself before the Senate and the nation in the capacity of a witness, has any bearing whatsoever on his temperament as a judge! And then there is the contemptible bias displayed by the ACLU and the American Bar Association.

The Democratic party. The media. The legal profession. All severely damaged, if not comprehensively discredited, in a matter of weeks.

The Right has won a huge victory, but there are many more battles to come. The Left will grow crazier, more desperate and more violent as their world continues to fall apart. Our political system will devolve into chaos and our institutions will continue to bleed legitimacy. There is little doubt that the United States is on a greased slope to collapse, but we need to keep winning or what replaces the US will be worse than we can imagine.

Kyrie Irving apologies for wrongthink

The heretic has seen the error of his ways:

Kyrie Irving’s unexpected apology tour made a pit stop at the Forbes Under 30 Summit on Monday in Boston, where the Celtics point guard apologized for saying the Earth is flat.
“I’m sorry about all that for all the science teachers, everybody coming up to me, like, ‘You know I have to re-teach my whole curriculum,'” Irving said, according to Boston.com. “I’m sorry. I apologize. I apologize.”

Flat-eartherism is, of course, stupid. The earth's roundness was established before the time of Christ. It is stupid, but it is also completely harmless and fun. As Irving told the New York Times:

Can you openly admit that you know the Earth is constitutionally round? Like, you know that for sure? Like, I don’t know. I was never trying to convince anyone that the world is flat. I’m not being an advocate for the world being completely flat. No, I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s fun to think about though. It’s fun to have that conversation. It is absolutely fun because people get so agitated and mad. They’re like, “Hey man, you can’t believe that, man. It’s religious, man. It’s just science. You can’t believe anything else. O.K.?” Cool, well, explain to me. Give me what you’ve known about the Earth and your research, and I love it. I love talking about it.

What's strange about this case is that Irving apparently felt the need to apologize for his comments. (Whether he was compelled to do so, and how serious his apology was, is hard to discern from the story.) The point is, we apologize when we injure or offend someone. Who could possibly be harmed by a basketball player questioning the shape of the earth? And please, if you're tempted to say some variation of "the children" or "the school teachers," you may be dumber and more gullible than anyone who thinks the earth is flat.

The irony is that most of the people sneering at Irving probably do not know the approximate age or size of the earth. They probably do not know its composition or how it was formed or how the moon was formed. They probably do not know the earth's orbital speed or why the sun and the moon appear to be almost the same size in the sky. They probably have no idea how the ancient Greeks apprehended that the earth is a sphere, and they probably have no idea that the earth may contain, trapped in minerals beneath its surface, a reservoir of water three times larger than all the oceans combined.

As far as they are concerned, Irving must be punished for having wrong thoughts. This is not a search for truth, but a social shaming ritual.

Mass hysteria and sneering, self-righteous ignorance: welcome to the Current Year.