Before I get started, I want to talk about the passing of Scott Adams.
I enjoyed his Dilbert cartoons back in the day, but in recent years I’ve watched some of his podcasts, and came to admire his clear thinking and frankness. He came out with some perceptive analysis of Trump’s persuasive strategies in 2016, when that carried some career costs, and back when I still feared that Trump was a leftist in conservative’s clothing. (I still think Trump is not a consistent conservative, and his unforced errors drive me crazy, but I’m happy that Adams’ view of Trump was more accurate than mine!)
I also admired the way Adams faced his death. Last May he announced that he had terminal cancer, and his conduct since then has been high-octane, old-school male: no drama or theatrical attention seeking, just a stoic acceptance and determination to soldier on and maintain his sense of humor. He wasn’t afraid to tell the truth and lampoon foolishness, and he seemed impervious to the slings and arrows of small-minded partisans.
Some people I trust have told me that his books are worth a read, so as soon as I finish the Jack Carr novel I’m reading now, I’m going to read a couple of Scott’s books. I’m going to start with How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
He announced a few weeks ago that he was going to be converting to Christianity, and he was clearly doing so for “Pascal’s Wager” reasons. After a lifetime as a non-believer, he respected Christian ethics and many Christians (among them were a lot of his fans), but he seemed to be pretty openly hedging his bets.
That struck me as disingenuous, to be honest. But as I’ve grown in my faith, I’ve realized more and more how much I have to be humble about, especially when it comes to judging what’s in others’ hearts. And I think Adams’ story is similar to the thief on the cross’ ending: the guy has been a reprobate right up to the end, but he asks Christ to remember him when He comes into His kingdom.
Christ’s response should be heartening to us all: “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” And if that was good enough for the thief – and for me – I feel pretty good about my chances of meeting Scott Adams some day.
Okay, on to the news of the day. Which unfortunately means discussing the continuing chaos in Minnesota. But because I’m a cautious optimist, I do see at least three silver linings amidst the scandals.
First, the cascade of revelations of the various fraud schemes there, as well as the insurrectionist violence and resistance to ICE and law enforcement, are drawing a ton of attention. And even in the frozen tundra, sunlight is still the best disinfectant. I hope the feds continue to flood the zone with investigators and law enforcement, and that conservative media and citizen journalists continue to expose the morally bankrupt leftist misbehavior in Minnesota.
Second, I’ve seen two stories within the last 36 hours of DOJ career prosecutors quitting over events in Minnesota. One story was about “at least six” federal prosecutors in the MN US attorney’s office resigning because the DOJ was going to investigate Renee Good’s partner, and the second was about other prosecutors who resigned because the DOJ refused their request to focus an investigation on the ICE agent who shot Good.
In a perfect world, prosecutors and investigators would be non-partisan, and look into all of the facts and players on both sides. But after eight years of Obama and four of Biden, no sentient creature believes that we live in that world. Which doesn’t mean that I want us to be as biased and dishonest as they were.
But in this case, as each day’s new videos and evidence have come out, they have more and more strongly exonerated the ICE agent, and implicated the Goods, and the anti-ICE “warrior” training and infrastructure that brought them to the criminal interference and obstruction that ended in Renee Good’s death.
Hence the successively changing stories from Jacob “Small” Frey and Tampon Tim: first Renee was just dropping her kid off at daycare and inadvertently ran into an ICE action; then it turns out she went there with the goal of impeding ICE after having gone through idiot bootcamp and learning how to do so; but the agent was never in front of her car and in danger, and shot her through the side window; then he was temporarily in front of the car and shot through her windshield, but he wasn’t anywhere near being hit by her car; then he was hit by her car, but not very hard. Etc. and etc.
But back to the wave of prosecutors who have been rage quitting, which I see as a win-win. Not only do we get competent prosecutors focusing on real problems, but we also get rid of a bunch of partisan, deep-state bad actors, and without going through the time, effort and bureaucratic hoops to fire them, from the initial firing to the inevitable series of drawn-out appeals and re-appeals.
In that way, the faithless prosecutors who quit are similar to illegals who self-deport – they’re solving a vexing problem for us. Not to mention that it’s entertaining to watch those whining officials just take their balls and go home.
Or, since they’re actually trans-prosecutors – they identify as non-partisan law enforcers, but are no more that than “Lea” Thomas is a female swimmer – I guess I should say they’re taking their ovaries and going home.
(No offense to the actual women who are reading this column!)
Third, as more videos of anti-ICE protests get out, I think average Americans are gaining more respect for LEOs, and getting more repulsed by the “protesting” insurrectionists.
I know that I don’t have what it takes to be in law enforcement, because just watching a few minutes of those videos makes my blood pressure spike. I wouldn’t last half a shift before I’d be violating half the moral code I was raised with: “A soft answer turns away wrath.” “Never kick someone when they’re down.” “Never hit a woman.”
Not to mention, “Never yank a belligerent moron out of a car, beat him like a rented mule, tase him repeatedly, and then administer a forceful pepper spray suppository.”
(That’s not the original King James, but I think it’s pretty close to my dad’s paraphrase.)
The sole moral teaching I would be able to live up to would be the Golden Rule, i.e. treating people the way I’d like to be treated.
But that’s only because if I ever dyed my hair purple, pierced myself until it looked like I’d fallen face-first into an open tackle box, and then attacked cops on behalf of foreign criminals preying on innocent Americans, I would like them to beat my arse up and down the block, and then bounce my head off the curb, the squad car door and door frame as they were tossing me in to take me to jail.
I am seriously in awe at the amount of abuse our ICE agents and other LEOs are able to endure, and shocked that more protestors don’t get treated more harshly than they do.
As far as the protestors go, I have to keep reminding myself that most of them should be pitied, because you only have to watch them for five minutes to realize that they are such obviously broken people. Their behavior is a toxic mix of childishness, narcissism and sociopathy. Their verbal output runs the gamut from screamed profanities to delusional insults to inane chants, and back to screamed profanities.
Take one look at their disheveled, unhealthy and bizarre appearance, and you know that they have no high-quality friendships, and they almost certainly hate their dads, if not both parents. They are unemployable, and they are most definitely ineffable.
Sorry, not “ineffable,” which means “incapable of being expressed or described in words.” (Because as long as we have words like “repulsive” and “beastly” and “Aieeeee! My eyes!” we’ll be able to describe them.)
I meant “un-F-able.”
Most definitely un-F-able.
Okay, I can’t end that way. Because just like Scott Adams and the thief on the cross, I need mercy and forgiveness.
So I’ll end by saying that the anti-ICE insurrectionists need prayer.
Prayer, therapy, and some penitential incarceration.
Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!
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Martin Simpson 