Saturday, December 02, 2017

Hell of a day

I picked one hell of a day to be away from the computer. No need for me to tell you that Michael Flynn has officially flipped. I'm actually starting to feel optimistic, even though optimism is against my religion.

There will be much more to say about this turn of events soon. For now, a couple of quick thoughts...

A matter of emphasis. People sometimes chide me for over-using italics. My defense: Emphasis changes meaning. Consider Michael Flynn's repeated denial of the charge that he committed treason. When a man in his position says "I did not commit treason" is he saying "I did not commit treason"? Or is he saying "I did not commit treason?"

The latter would imply that someone else did.

Flynn the younger. The elder Flynn's statements have made repeated reference to family, leading many to suspect that he did what he did to protect his son, Michael Flynn Jr., another target of Mueller's probe.

The younger Flynn is a real piece of Alt Rightist work, a red pill junkie whose addiction seems incurable. His twitter feed is a cesspool featuring retweets from professional assholes like Mike Cernovich. His last "normal" tweet, on November 30, offered a link to a site called FarLeftWatchOrg, a "Great account which tracks left-wing terrorism." Because we all know what a problem that is. (I can't find out who runs that account or the cognate website, but I would not be surprised if they have links to Jewwatch.)

When the guilty plea came down, there was a great stillness in Junior's twitter account. I was reminded of the book of Revelation: "And there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour." Finally, Junior posted a picture of himself with his own young son, accompanied by this text:
Family is the most important thing in life.....don’t ever take yours for granted. Thanks everyone for the support.
No expressions of outrage. No fierce indignation. No ATTACK!ATTACK!!ATTACK!!! An eerie cessation of all assholiness.

My suspicion: Flynn the younger was the first to be redpilled in that family, and he is the one who redpilled his father. ("Not all Russians are bad, Dad. There's this guy named Dugin whose stuff you really should read.")

I have some sympathy for the elder Flynn, despite his obscene (and, under present circumstances, sublimely ironic) chants of "Lock her up!" We should never forget that, before his fall from grace, the elder Flynn had been in combat and had served his country well. By contrast, the younger Flynn is an Alt Right nationalistic conspiratorialist Alex Jonesian paranoiac fleck of fecal matter who deserves no sympathy whatsoever. One Flynn is a hero who has disgraced himself; the other is just a disgrace.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

please stop using the term "alt-right" and call them what they really are: bigots, fascists, nazis, racists and/or white supremacists.

Joseph Cannon said...

Way I see it, Alt Right is not a euphemism; it's just another synonym.

Anonymous said...

just seems like it adds legitimacy to their point of view that is lost in translation for the uninitiated.

Tom said...

Joseph, you're going soft, now? I don't tend to believe it but, "I have some sympathy for the elder Flynn... served..." For a while, true. But then things changed; not too many 3 star generals get shit canned. What happened?

Most of those general officers are fascistic and his connection with Ledeen could only have been bad. But Flynn was worse and strangly altered.

The change that came over him was so drastic that only an extraordinary explanation would fit.

I think he's a Kompromatized individual, that the Russians have got compromising material on him and lacked subtlety in using it, or his brittle narcissism couldn't survive it. He cracked up and became desperate too.

He became unrecognizable to colleagues, lost his judgment, his future, even lost that schtick so essential to military command, the officer-like bearing. Or maybe close association with Trump destroyed that. Even Chris Matthews, in a rare moment of concise, accurate reporting, described those strange campaign appearances where Flynn was "dancing around like Trump's monkey."

And then, look at the fees he was getting. When Manafort was commanding tens of Millions, poor Flynn eked out tens of thousands. Hmmm.

Whatever it is, it's quite a story.

His son's a little piece of garbage. The only good thing about his staying out of prison is that he won't be in there proselytizing his right wing stupidity racist hatred.