And I can't find any record of The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan wringing her hands in a column over the dire implications of this assassination for the country like she did for Charlie Kirk's. In June and July Peggy was all about thinking, not emoting. In September she's losing her shit.
A nut killing some Democrats is no reason to lose your head, I guess, but killing a Republican, now that's different.
... A last note. If I were a fervent Trump supporter, I would worry about that movement’s hyperemotionalism. We have written in this space that with the rise of social media, Americans are becoming a people of feeling and not of thinking, a people in search of sensation and not reflection. It isn’t promising that this is increasingly true in our political sphere. I follow on social media fixtures of the MAGA movement. They say of each other in public what in politics 40 years ago people said in private and when drunk. FRAUD, LIAR, GRIFTER, WHORE. What a hothouse. Do they expect that with a nature like that they can go into the future as a serious force and a movement that coheres? They don’t seem to worry about it. Why not? ...
Here.
And here she was the week before lol:
Isolationism is essentially emotional. You’re angry at the cost in blood and treasure of your country’s international forays and adventures and want to withdraw from the world. Emotionalism can hold sway and dominate politics for a time, even an era, but you can’t build anything on it. It doesn’t last because emotions change because facts change. ...
... We are in big trouble.
We all know this. We don’t even know what to do with what we know. But the assassination of Charlie Kirk feels different as an event, like a hinge point, like something that is going to reverberate in new dark ways. It isn’t just another dreadful thing. It carries the ominous sense that we’re at the beginning of something bad. Michael Smerconish said on CNN Thursday afternoon that normally after such an event the temperature goes down a little, but not in this case, and he’s right. There are the heartbroken and the indifferent and they are irreconcilable. X, formerly Twitter, was from the moment of the shooting overrun with anguish and rage: It’s on now. Bluesky, where supposedly gentler folk fled Elon Musk, was gleefully violent: Too bad, live by the gun, die by the gun.
But what a disaster all this is for the young. ...
No, we are not in big trouble.
We are simply in the same trouble we've always been in, but that doesn't sell newspapers or drive clicks.
But surrendering to hysteria will misguide us, as surely as Tyler Robinson's feelings misguided him when he pulled that trigger, allegedly.
Didn't the country just get over surrendering its mind to its feelings?
Or are we, left, right, and in between, going to do this all over again?
Fear of death made 270 million Americans trust a completely novel vaccine in 2021, only for over 20 million new infections in early 2022 to rip the mask off the whole thing.
We found out that we were not going to die.
We found out that the experts oversold the threat and the vaccine, ka-ching ka-ching, that after taking it "the virus didn't stop with me". We got sick anyway, and we continued to spread it. The adults knew that the virus was mutating to spread at the cost of its deadliness, but the adults were not in charge. We ended up learning the hard way.
The virus of violence is endemic to the world. Woke is a counterfeit. Summer 2020 was not a summer of love. Christianity is Uberwoke and explains that hate lives in us all.
The spectrum of hate's evidence is wide: By intentional homicide rate, Canada ranks 111th in the world in 2023. Mexico ranks 18th, and the United States ranks 66th.
But in 1975 the intentional homicide rate in the United States was 9.6 per 100,000. 9.6 is 43rd in 2023, Iraq-like. In 2023 the United States is 5.8. The rate is down 40%.
We have become far less violent, not more, in the last fifty years, even as religious faith supposedly has declined.
Maybe we should rethink that. Or maybe for starters we should just think.
Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.
-- I Corinthians 14:20
But there was something quite inhuman in what the left-wing activist did. She treated human beings as if they were mere means to her end. She acted out admiration to perform reputational harm. She presented herself falsely to inflict damage. That the content she produced was disseminated by honest grown-up journalists is to their discredit.
She claims to oppose polarization but fans it, further alienating those who already lack trust in institutions like the court and professionals like journalists. She presents another warning to those who hold or are adjacent to high office: You can’t assume good faith on the part of fellow citizens who seek you out.
More than that, it is deeply Stalinist. In Stalin’s time private life was dead, and private comments too. Neighbor spied on neighbor and reported back subversive comments to the Central Committee. People became spies, rooting out ideological error.
More.
The weaker sex recommends you give in. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
That right there is the whole history of conservatism, from the advent of the Progressive Era 130 years ago until now.
Currently, Democrats are miles ahead of Republicans at targeting specific races and voters. Through mail balloting, they put those voters in the bank early. ... Republicans can complain about the current rules all they want, but what they need to do is wake up and start competing with the Democrats where they are. Otherwise, they're just leaving winnable races on the table.
Florida Republicans certainly have figured it out. In 2018 and 2020, the Democrats went into Election Day with more ballots cast than Republicans in early voting. This year, Florida Republicans flipped that on its head. Republicans in other states should take note.
-- Salena Zito, in her conclusion here
It is rude of Arizona and Nevada to keep the country waiting to know the composition of its Senate. Why, days after the election, don’t we know which party controls the House? Why can’t the late-reporting states get their act together on vote counting? It’s the increase in mail-in ballots? So what? You roll with life and adapt. Florida, which spans two time zones, reports its tallies with professionalism and dispatch.
-- Peggy Noonan, from her lede here
From her irresponsible column, here:
Mr. Putin talks about nuclear weapons a lot. He did it again Wednesday: In a meeting with politicians in St. Petersburg, he said if anyone intervenes in Ukraine and “creates unacceptable threats for us that are strategic in nature,” the Russian response will be “lightning fast.” He said: “We have all the tools for this that no one else can boast of having. We won’t boast about it, we’ll use them, if needed.”
He’s talked like this since the invasion. It’s a tactic: He’s trying to scare everybody. That doesn’t mean the threat is empty.
There are signs the Russians are deliberately creating a historical paper trail, as if to say they warned us. On Monday Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the risk of nuclear conflict is “serious” and “should not be underestimated.”
No he doesn't. No he hasn't. And neither has Lavrov. Listen for yourself. It's Peggy who is supplying "the risk of nuclear conflict", not Lavrov. Lavrov is clearly referring to the dangerous increased rhetoric about the possibility of nuclear conflict, which is precisely the hysteria Peggy Noonan is engaging in. The Russians have been very circumspect. They don't actually use the terminology. They're not bluffing. They're beating around the bush to create uncertainty, to keep their enemies off balance.
Putin has never used the phrase "nuclear weapon" in any of these examples which have been reported in the press since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Putin's hypersonic capability is clearly in focus in his statements. He has them and the West does not. He's threatening to use them with conventional warheads against Western targets, which is bad enough. But nuclear warheads? That's what he wants us to think, to create fear. But he's never actually said it.
The nuclear talk is all Western hype, exaggeration, and lying. And Drudge is a major aggregator of such headlines. It's irresponsible and it must stop, because to continue it is to make the unthinkable, thinkable, and then actual.
Try exercising your free speech absolutism then, as your tongue vaporizes inside your mouth.
Meanwhile Peggy Noonan appears not to have considered that Putin has daughters, to whom he might really want to leave something other than smoking embers.
Hysteria has a way of blinding one to important facts.
NOONAN: Putin Really May Break the Nuclear Taboo in Ukraine!
Moscow warns 'do not underestimate threat of nuclear war'... ^
Putin test-fires 'Satan' nuclear missile... ^
Cronies 'flee to bunkers' in sign might turn nuclear... ^
UN Warns: Nuclear War 'Within Realm of Possibility'... ^
Putin actions trigger long-buried fears of nuclear war for generations of Americans... ^
Accused of Nuclear 'Terrorism'... ^
Putin nuclear threat part of new escalation policy... ^
Even Putin's generals look stunned after being ordered to put nuclear forces on 'alert'... Decree that shocked the world... ^
PUTIN WARNS HE'LL NUKE WEST ^
Nuke-capable missiles loaded onto subs... ^
NUKE BOMBER BUZZES UKRAINE... ^
POPE NUKE WARNING ^
ZELENSKY NUKE WARNING TO WORLD... ^
CIA Director: Nuke threat not taken 'lightly'... ^
Nuke Fears Stoked With Atomic Weapons Warnings... ^
Senators mull unthinkable: Vlad detonating nuke... ^
FEAR: More Putin Nuke Threats... ^
Likely More Nuke Threats... ^
PUTIN NUKE FEARS GROW ^
NUKE CONCERNS RISING ^
Nuke threat part of new escalation policy... ^
NUKE CRAZY! ^
ORDERS NUKE FORCES ON HIGH ALERT ^
ORDERS NUKE FORCES ON HIGH ALERT ^