Jay Jones, Bad Texts, and the AG Race in VA

Two collections of links from Instapundit re: some Very Bad Texts from AG candidate Jay Jones. To summarize:

[1] The reason Dems keep getting busted for talking about perpetrating violence against Republicans is that that's just the way Dems talk amongst themselves.

[2] The Pubs finally manage to pull off a deft October surprise, waiting until now to release Jones's bad tweets.

   The first Jones text message that came out, about shooting then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert, struck me as dark humor. It's a joke template people use quite a bit--if Iwere in an elevator with X, Hitler and Stalin (or Pol Pot, in Jones's text), and had a gun with two rounds, I'd shoot X twice. Refusing to recognize this as a humor template is rather like Dems refusing to recognize Trump's Russia, if you're listening quip as humor. It's intentional obtuseness for rhetorical political ends. They're both joke templates. Perhaps they're in bad taste (well, Jones's, anyway)--but they are well-known templates.

   I've seen/heard both red- and blue-team types make this kind of joke (and worse). I'm skeptical that this is really the way Democrats routinely speak among themselves...though leftists do seem to say such things--even publicly--an awful lot anymore...

   Of course it's an old rhetorical tactic to take humor seriously.

   It's very common on the left, in "cancel culture." That's part of their notorious humorlessness.

   However...

   The texts about pissing on Republican graves...not so easily excused. The ones about killing their children...right out. In those texts, Jones references an actual view on the left: that the only way to "fix" "Nazi" (scare quotes--not direct quotes) Republicans is to cause them pain. e.g. by killing their children. (I recently saw a talk in which a fantasy about killing the babies of slave owners (by Franz Fanon?) seemed to be referenced approvingly. Or at least: not-so-disapprovingly.) This is basically what that crazy weirdo "Destiny" said after the Kirk assassination: the murder was warranted in order to instill fear in conservatives so that they would push back on Trump.

   (Sidebar: VA Pubs recently tried to make a big deal about an anti-Earl-Sears sign at a Spanberger rally, reading: "If trans can't share your bathroom, blacks can't share my water fountain." This was represented as racist by the Pubs. Well, maybe it's giving the Dems a taste of their own medicine...but the point of the sign was clearly supposed to be that both things are bad/wrong/bigoted. That is, that sex-segregated public restrooms are analogous to race-segregated water fountains. Which isn't racist. (though, TBF, it's the blue team that declared, a decade ago, that "transness" and race can't be compared...b/c if we did compare them, then, given that Rachel Dolezal isn't black, we'd have to admit that e.g. Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner isn't a woman...which is verboten, bigot!...).)

   Anyway...

   Look, there are plenty of reasons not to vote for Jones. For example: not wanting to turn the OD into San Francisco, with violent felons running amok in the streets. I don't know whether Jones gets funding from Soros...but he is, in spirit, a Soros prosecutor.

   But, on a more practical note: Jones isn't going to win anyway. So I'm not sure how much any of this matters. Miyares is the incumbent, and he's done a good job, and he's ahead. That's probably the only Commonwealth-wide office the Pubs are going to keep.

   Spanberger almost certainly doesn't have the 10-point lead the polls are reporting. Polls are basically analogs of the MSM: a large percentage of them aim not at reporting the truth, but in helping the blue team. And maybe this will give Earl-Sears a boost...maybe enough to win. But I doubt it. Especially if Trump follows through with his threat to fire federal workers sent home for the shutdown. The OD is NoVa's state now...the rest of us just live in it. But, hell, I don't really even blame them in this case.

   Too bad Youngkin can't run again--he's been an excellent--and fairly centrist--governor. Though Dems might disagree.

   None of this would matter so much if the Dems weren't likely to keep both houses of the General Assembly--but they are.