When political topics come up in conversation with my liberal friends, I tend to say: “Let’s not talk about politics. I’m a right-wing extremist; everyone knows that. So any discussion would be fruitless, and probably unpleasant.” My political opinions haven’t changed much in the last eight or ten years, but I’m much more of a right-wing extremist than I used to be, because the “center” has moved so far to the left.

Years and years ago I used to keep up with the latest news by checking Google News every day. Yes, it was obviously biased, but it still listed relevant news items. It might not feature or headline the ones I wanted to see, but they could be found. However, it gradually became more and more restrictive and censorious, so I gave up using it, and relied on the Drudge Report to headline the news stories that were most likely to interest me. Then a couple of years ago Drudge sold out, and his former site became just as useless as Google News. I had to cast about in other places to find relevant material. Doug Ross is an excellent aggregator, and provides useful tips. And Conservative Tree House is invaluable.

My most frequent stopping places are Power Line and Western Rifle Shooters Association, for very different reasons.

I’ve been reading Power Line since the “fake but accurate” Killian Memo days in the campaign season of 2004. Back then its contributors were Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker, and Paul Mirengoff. Since then they’ve added Steven Hayward. They’re generally more deplorable than National Review, but still well within the conservative mainstream. They live in the world of foundations, think tanks, and reputable right-wing journals. Which is fine with me; I’ve hung out with plenty of think-tank people since I started doing Gates of Vienna full time. I don’t fit in very well with that crowd — I’m more radical, and disinclined to zip my lip just to protect my income streams — but I like them well enough.

So I read Power Line to keep abreast of the right-wing mainstream. At least three of the contributors are lawyers, and often focus on legal issues, which is very useful. Two of them are from Minnesota, and feature the Woke absurdities of progressive Twin Cities political issues, which are as bad as those of Ann Arbor, Berkeley, or Portland.

But they don’t stray beyond the pale of the mainstream. That fact became glaringly obvious in the wake of last month’s election. All the massive, egregious shenanigans that came up in the weeks after the vote made it abundantly clear that the election was a complete fraud. There’s plenty of documentation available for those who care to look for it, but the Power Line guys are reluctant to discuss it, and tend to insist that the malefactions of the Democrats were insufficient to change the result. Joe Biden was the people’s choice, maybe not as much as the official tally would indicate, but still the winner.

I can understand their reluctance look the facts squarely in the face. Even if they dissent from liberal orthodoxy, they are still denizens of that environment where people have jobs talking politics and going on TV and writing books and papers and attending conferences. To admit that the election was a sham would be to acknowledge that their world is constructed of the flimsiest gossamer and can be rent asunder with the twitch of a pinky.

No, it’s better to pretend that conservatives can somehow manage to prevent the worst forms of electoral fraud in the future. They’re already gaming out strategies for the midterms in 2022, and thinking about Republican prospects in the 2024 presidential contest. As if future elections had any real meaning. As if Republicans differed in any fundamental ways from Democrats.

And maybe they’re right. Maybe the deplorables who descend on Washington D.C. next week will have no lasting effect. Maybe the new socialist regime will only be temporary, and Republicans will get another chance to pretend to be conservative in Congress and the White House. Maybe the earnest foreign policy wonks of the Right will get their hands on the levers of the military-industrial complex and initiate new military interventions to bring democracy to Berserkistan or engage in nation-building in Gondwanaland.

Maybe… Maybe…

But my intuition tells me that the country has been irretrievably changed, and not for the better. The gossamer fabric of the old political system will most likely be twitched aside soon by the Fickle Pinky of Fate.

For that reason, I tend to hang out more and more at WRSA these days. They’re so far beyond the pale that they don’t even register on the National Deplorometer.

Concerned American — whose avatar is Zippy the Pinhead — posts numerous links to a variety of sites that disagree on many issues, major and minor. What they all have in common is an absolute dedication to the Second Amendment, without all the restrictions and revisions that have hobbled it for the last fifty years or so. And they also agree that serious trouble — variously known as the Boogaloo, Spicy Time, and the Big Ugly — lies just around the corner for what was once known as the American Republic.

This time it will be a real civil war. The Recent Unpleasantness of 1861-1865 is usually described that way, but it was actually a sectional conflict. The two sides held well-defined territory, and clashed in the traditional manner of opposing armies. Yes, the war divided families. And yes, the situation in the Border States was not clear-cut. Still, the war was a sectional one.

The Big Ugly will be different. It will pit rural and small-town people against the major metropolitan areas, and urban neighborhoods against each other. We have no parallels in North American history for the type of conflict that is likely to break out here. We will have to look to the Balkans or Rwanda to get a feeling for what we can expect.

Or maybe not. Maybe the Power Line boys are right, and all this will blow over. Maybe people will put on their masks, get vaccinated, and plop themselves back in front of the TV, where they belong.

Earlier today I found an excellent essay linked at WRSA. It’s called “The Next Question” by someone who writes under the pseudonym Publius Valerius at American Partisan.

The author opens by laying out the facts of the stolen election of 2020. I agree that they are indeed facts — the election was stolen, in divers, clearly identifiable ways, as documented and attested by numerous eyewitnesses in affidavits and other forms of legal testimony.

It is also a fact that state and federal courts are largely refusing to receive the evidence of the attested materials, but that doesn’t make the latter any less facts. In the long run, the historical record will feature these demonstrable facts — that is, assuming that the historical record does not end up under the control of Google, Amazon, and/or the Red Chinese.

Below are excerpts from rest of “The Next Question”:

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