Access Granted: Flying the 5EX Eagle

TFP: Former DSA Organizer Explains How Radical the DSA and the Rest of the Left Are

Yeah, I was just starting to write this post while I was still watching the video. He was saying that the DSA has a two-tiered structure, with radicals setting the agenda and running the show, and a far-less-radical majority that either doesn't realize or refuses to admit that the radicals run the show...

I was yelling at the screen: "That's the whole left! Not just the DSA!"

But almost immediately, Altman started making just that point--I could have just waited.

As Altman says--and I've said for years--that's the Democrat base now.

Jimmy Carter on the Need to Show ID to Vote

It's the same story over and over and over again: the left has moved farther and farther from reasonable centrism in my lifetime, rocketing off the edge of sanity over the course of the last decade or so. As others have said: conversations with progressives now consist largely in them pretending not to understand things that everyone understands. Thus we find ourselves trying to explain to them that women don't have penises, men can't have babies, children should not be indoctrinated with fetishistic sexual perversions, the USA is not composed entirely of racism, not all whites are racist, some nonwhites are racist, nations need borders, speech is not violence, words have meanings and you can't simply change them at will, some things are true and others are false...and on and on and on...:

Jimmy Carter in 2005 on voter ID: "It will not restrict people from voting."

He even described Voter ID as “a move forward in getting more people to vote."

Republicans need to share this video far and wide. Voter ID was bipartisan then. It should be bipartisan now. pic.twitter.com/szZarfscjw

— Jenn Pellegrino 🇺🇸 (@JennPellegrino) August 6, 2026

Aaron Brown: Oft-Cited Lancet USAID Study; the Math Doesn't Add Up

First locally-acquired case of Dengue fever in VA

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First NBA Player Declares for the WNBA

Girl, get some. https://t.co/zNuINnOlHV

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) August 7, 2026

Strassel: Can Democrats Resist Socialism?

Well, they couldn't resist Woketarianism...which is far crazier than socialism...so...I'm not optimistic...

   I've long predicted that the Dems will revert to sanity...any day now!...any week!...

   Shows what the hell I know.

Strassel:

For more than a decade, the Democratic Party has been stuck in a reactive anti-Trump loop, made worse by its unwillingness to offend its extreme leftist base. So instead of offering a full-throated defense of traditional Democratic ideals and criticizing socialism, they sit silent as the left pulls the party ever further.

Yeah, well, the problem is that extreme leftist base.

   It's already absorbed most of the insane woke agenda. What's a little more crazy on top of it? Socialism is nuts...but about 1/10th as nuts as Woketarianism. Once you get your faction to believe--or pretend to believe--the women have penises...just about everything else is sane by comparison...

   The smart play for the Dems is probably to squash the DSA insurgents and proclaim a return to sanity and centrism...and hope people fall for it. That is: hope that you've moved the Overton Window enough that people fall for it...

   Of course we have to work to make sure that shit does. not. work.

   Going insane, then pretending to be sane again because you kicked some very-slightly-more-crazy people out of your party...no way, dude.

   The best thing that can happen to the Dems--and for the country--is for them to get absolutely crushed in '28. I don't see what else stands any chance of slapping sense back into them.

Sean Davis: Hard Truth About the Sanctuary Movement

Madness

Brian T. Allen on the Woke Smithsonian

I would normally have dived into this story and wasted days of my life on it...but for some reason I haven't. I haven't even read the report--though I've skimmed bits.

It's really, really bad.

This is just one of the many awful characteristics of the woke left--it's tendency to take over organizations and institutions and turn them to its nefarious purposes. It's a totalitarian worldview that sees all other things and all other human activities as subordinate to it--ergo to be subordinated.

NRO: Cambridge has itself to blame for the Jason Arday debacle

Obviously.

Incidentally, I'm not sure that he was protected directly because of his race. When you become beloved of the academic Brahmin class...well, you're in, man. You're in. Academic superstars and those with connections...there just seem to be different rules for such people. Being a young, black allegedly disabled superstar in an extremely lefty discipline--those all helped him gain the favor of the establishment...but he might possibly have been able to pull off something similar even if he were white. If, say, he claimed to be "trans" or something...

   But there's no doubt that he race was a huge factor.

   Note also that he wasn't fired--he quit.

   Though, TBF, he seems to have quit because he was finally going to be investigated--so that's something.

Corruption Watch: Trump's Latest Graft: early access to "truth social" posts for $100k/month

Unfuckingbelievable.

I really do wish the guy would experience a health crisis just bad enough to force him to resign (as if he ever would). Not only is he an embarrassment to the nation, but his antics are the only hope the increasingly nutty Democrats have.

   It's astonishing that he thinks this is permissible...but even more astonishing that none of the (generally very competent) people around him can dissuade him.

   As I've said before: I understand why he's raking in as much cash as possible. (Note: he didn't do that his first term--he lost a lot of money then.) He knows that the left will come after him and his family when he leaves office. So will some on the right, actually. Anyway: I kind of understand it.

   But Jesus Christ, there are limits...

Jenine Pirro, the Reflecting Pool, and Trump's Denial of Reality...But Don't Forget the Left is Worse...

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So exactly what was going on with the reflecting pool I don't know. Sounds like this guy peeled off a strip that was already separating from the bottom of the pool. Trump claims there are other cases on video that are more clearly instances of vandalism.

   On the one hand, Trump is notoriously full of shit, and everyone knows it--with the exception of some hard-core Trumpistas. Much of what he says is true and important...but much of the time he just says what he wants to be true, no matter how obviously false it might be. A lot of this is close on a continuum with standard political bullshitting. E.g. he represented the country as crashing and burning under Biden (pretty true...but exaggerated), and now says we're in a golden age... Well, we're better off (bracketing the Iran war...about which...who knows?). Anyway, we can't trust Trump about things like the reflecting pool--and anyone who doesn't know that is just not paying attention. This is exactly the kind of thing he can't seem to resist bullshitting about.

   OTOH, vandalizing this Trump project is something the left is willing to and capable of doing. There was a lot of loose (?) chatter on lefty social media about using box cutters and whatnot to wreck it. Even if the thing was already peeling, why did what's-his-name reach in and tear the strip off? Not a crime, perhaps...but also not a perfectly innocuous reaction.

   My guess--just a guess--is that this is mostly Trumpian bullshitting. But who knows?

   Anyway: Trump's credentials as a liar and a bullshitter are well-established. (Acknowledging, again, that he often speaks important truths that the left wants to suppress.)

   However...

   It's eminently worth noting that the left remains far, far worse--whatever comfort that might provide to Mr. Trump's devotees...

   Note that this story (well, it's CNN...so...par for the course...) trots out the same old tale that the left recycles ever time this issue comes up:

His method of deciding what is true and requiring everyone to accommodate him emerged as a signature trait only hours into his first presidency. Fuming over unflattering comparisons between his inaugural crowd and Obama’s first swearing-in, he sent then-press secretary Sean Spicer into the briefing room to deliver a bizarre statement. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said.
At the time, it seemed absurd. But it was an important moment. Spicer was the the [sic] first Trump official to choose between observable reality and his boss’s false version. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway coined a presidency-defining soundbite for the ages when referring to the president’s “alternative facts.”

[1] What Spicer and Conway clearly meant (as context made extremely clear at the time) was that the Trump administration was looking at other facts--or, more accurately, other evidence--about crowd size. There are, in fact, apparently a couple of different ways to estimate crowd size. The Park Service does it one way (almost certainly the best way...this is something they do all the time) but there are others.

   The most important point here is that the 'alternative facts' claim was in no way some assertion of alethic relativism nor anything like it. It's--epistemically, at least--innocuous.

   The fact that the left always appeals to this same bogus story shows how little they have to work with on this front.

   [2] Really probably [1']...and just for the record: yeah, the Trumpistas were bullshitting. The best methods had already been used. Even the other methods, IIRC, indicated that Obama's crowd had been bigger. They really had nothing. The fact that Trump was so obsessed about this stupid measure was a bad sign...but, again: not relativism. I was extremely anti-Trump at the time, and I said the same thing then. This is the leftist media bullshitting while (in this case rightly) accusing Trump of bullshitting... This is very much like the left's Very Fine People hoax--it's just lies and wishful thinking resulting in twisting the other side's words.

   [3] The left, however is eaten up with insane views about truth, facts, knowledge, justification, objectivity, and all sorts of related ideas. It's flirted with a radioactive mishmash of relativism, skepticism, subjectivism and nihilism for as long as I can remember. From Lysenko to political correctness to multiculturalism to Woketarianism. Lefties love talking about "my truth" (an ambiguous phrase with an innocuous interpretation and a stupid one), and to pretend that your sex-or-gender (another loony pseudo-concept) is whatever you think it is... The journalistic establishment--far to the left, but in no way out of step with mainstream progressivism--published a big report two years ago titled "Beyond Objectivity"...guess what it was about? Every time I've raised the issue of institutional neutrality at my university--save for one single time--some other faculty-member (usually not from my department) has objected that objectivity and/or neutrality aren't possible... The left has flirted with relativism and other types of philosophical lunacy at least since the '30s...what the hell do you think Orwell was on about???

   And, again: few people believe Trump's bullshitting--and even fewer people that matter. 

   OTOH, the left's insane views end up becoming orthodoxy in our most important institutions...

   None of this is to defend Trump--who's a goddamned train wreck in this respect, and who deserves no defense.

   It's just an attempt to put things into perspective--FWTW.

   This is what a mess we're in: Donald Trump is NOT the biggest enemy of the truth on the contemporary American political stage...not by a long shot.

   Not to put too fine a point on it: that's a desperate situation indeed.

IDs for government groceries...but not for voting

You really can't make this shit up.

Rich Lowry: Yes, the DSA has a communism problem

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Again, I'm not entirely sure why this is a problem from the perspective of the Dems... They've already embraced cultural Marxist lunacy--for a decade now.

But it is good that they've finally found a line they are hesitant to cross.

As I keep saying, once you're ok with women have penises, seems to me that all bets are off. At that point you've already gone beyond War is peace and the rest of the Orwellian trinity.

Anyway.

The Pubs are still well-positioned to blow it--all because of Trump.

Hell, I'd consider voting for a sane/centrist Dem for the House just to get some kind of constraints on the Bull-In-The-China-Shop-In-Chief... (Probably not for the Senate, though.) But we've got a very good Pub Congresscritter--so I probably won't.

Trump has done a great job in so many different ways...but he's just such a damn train wreck.

Hey, is that war on or off today?

I can never keep track...

Jason Arday also lied about an affiliation with OSU

I'd have been thrown out of my mediocre academic job and I'd be flipping burgers by now if I'd done 1/10th the stuff this guy has done.

Yet he's still at Cambridge...

Wonder why?

Noah Rothman: "Autonomous Zones" are Back

In case I haven't mentioned it, the left is insane.

They're trying hard to manufacture another George Floyd incident.

This one was close: a career criminal commits another crime, and is busted by the cops. He resists arrest...but, sadly, Ruiz pulled a big-ass knife on the cops and stabbed one of them. So, though he did end up dead (useful) there was also the stabby part (very not useful).

Nevertheless, Madison--always up for some moonbat stupid--now had an "autonomous zone"...complete with port-a-crappers that may have been provided by the city.

The left is emphasizing race at every turn, e.g. like so:

"Ruiz (who was black or Hispanic" (actually: he seems to have, in at least one place, "identified as" white...(very, very NOT USEFUL)...

The cop "who is white"...etc.

The cult us fighting hard to drag the country down into its swamp of insanity.

Really, Bitch? AJW on Shoe0nHead on "Woke 2.0"

In the words of Shoe: really bitch?

Contra AJW: SJWism/Woketarianism was actually political correctness 2.0...which folks older than me tell me was itself really The New Left 2.0...:

Jeez Suey Park...I'd forgotten about that loony chick. LOL "I'm not going to enact the labor to educate  you..." That's gold, baby...GOLD. That should go into the leftard hall of fame.

Wesley J. Smith: Woke Newspeak Watch: DON'T CALL IT 'THE CIVIL WAR', BIGOT REEEEEEEEEE

LOL these people are so fucking tedious.

   Some dude at NYT, Anthony Cartwright Conwright shoots for progressive fame by doing what they do best: making up new words and phrases that (overtly or covertly) advance their fucked-up worldview...

See, 'the Civil War' is--he declares--SUPER-DUPER UN-PC! It decenters or whatever the somethingorother...it should be called 'the Slaveholder's Rebellion'...because...reasons...

   As tedious and exhausting as Trump is, the left continues to be so very much worse...

   And I say again: never, ever, ever adopt their neologisms and pseudo-technical vocabulary. It always aims to distort information, undermine communication, and advance their twisted worldview.

   'The Civil War' it is, and 'The Civil War' it will remain.

   (Though I like to hear lefties squeal when we refer to it as 'The War Between the States'...let alone 'The recent unpleasantness'...)

   Slavery was a dark chapter in American history...but basically only because, in that respect, we were not ahead of the rest of the world. Contrary to the picture the left likes to paint, slavery in America was not some unique evil, but a late episode in a complex, ancient institution. 'Ancient' obviously doesn't mean good...but it's nuts to expect a nation to leap completely out of history, rather than to slowly advance.

   At any rate, when I was a kid everyone with more than two braincells to rub together recognized slavery and the Civil War as a blot on the national soul, and a great but necessary tragedy, respectively. They've always hung like dark clouds over the nation. The insane left now wants to rip the wounds open and exaggerate their awfulness for political purposes--which include ripping the nation apart, the radical left's most cherished goal...

War's Off Again...No, wait...

I am so fucking sick of Trump I can't even express it adequately.

Dad Saves America: Mia Hughes on the conspiracy behind the trans rights movement

There seem to have been several factors, but people who are familiar with the way that the activist-industrial complex works have long argued that it was largely prompted by Obergefell: nobody really thought that same-sex marriage would be legalized nationwide anytime soon. When it suddenly was...well...what's the massive network of activist organizations, NGOs, grant-writers, DEI "educators," and "gender" "scholars" supposed to do? Pack up shop and find real jobs? LOL no way! They quickly spun up and even more radical cause--a truly insane one this time, that was unlikely to win quickly...and the grants and donations and wasted tax $$ keep rolling in...:

I have no doubt that this was a factor...but these people are true believers, not merely grifters...

"News"day: Some lefty propaganda pretending that Spain's absurd immigration policies didn't contribute to the invasion of Ceuta

This is such facepalmerific bullshit.

   The leftard socialist government granting amnesty to half a million illegal aliens had nothing to do with it! It was, uh...social media posts about amnesty and open borders...which...somehow had nothing to do with...y'know...amnesty and open borders...

   Also: contrary to right-wing propaganda, none of these 60k fighting-age (and raping-age) males will end up in the rest of Europe! Because Italy and some other countries have "passed some measures"...

   It's amazing the shit the mainstream media expects its readers to believe.

   This invasion was caused in roughly the same way the Biden invasion was caused: the government clearly signaled that it was cool with it. People considering trying to enter illegally got the message. Some via social media...which itself got the message from the government... Though the Biden admin was, of course, more advanced than Spain--it had an app illegals could use to be flown into the country...

Jean-Louis de Lolm vs. "Transgender" Pseudoscience: Parliament can do everything but make a woman a man and a man a woman

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The point was that Parliament is too powerful, of course, with making a woman a man / making a man a woman being obvious impossibilities.

   Of course there's no real need to formulate arguments against trans pseudoscience, since, per Hitchins' Razor, what has been asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence--and no reasons of any non-zero degree of strength have ever been given in support of the view. But, just because it's gratifying to kick the shit out of Lysenkoist pseudoscience:

The pro-trans left has never seriously tried to say where transgenderism came from. There certainly was no new empirical discovery that suddenly, scientifically revealed that some men are women etc.--though they sometimes try to suggest that by (falsely) claiming that some men have "female brains." Of course that's false--though, biology being filled with fuzzy lines, I'll bet that male and female brains lie on a continuum, with some brains being hard to classify. I wrote fairly extensively on this back when transgenderism was fresh, rather than stale. What might be somewhat interesting--though no more than that--would be a paradigmatically female brain in a paradigmatically male body--before hormone treatments or any such thing. Even that--though there are no such cases I've ever heard of--wouldn't really help their cause...since, even granting everything they want...that would be a male with a female or female-like brain. It would not make the person female. Furthermore, even stating this view undermines another, completely different version of transgenderism: that being a man or a woman has nothing at all to do with biology. That version of the view doesn't care about brains--or any other feature of biology.

   Certainly there were no discoveries in, say, the Harvard Women's and Gender Studies department... They don't make empirical discoveries in such places. They don't have, say, gender accelerators that smash genders together at half the speed of light, smashing them into genderons and whatnot... like Hey, we just discovered that masculinity is composed of 10 types of gender subparticles... 

No.

Such departments don't make empirical discoveries.

   We know there are no even vaguely plausible arguments for any of the many different views that get smooshed together in transgenderism...so that's out.

   Leftists sometimes suggest that transgenders have always been around and everyone has always known this--known, e.g., that man and woman are "genders" rather than species/sex/maturity kinds. This is probably my favorite origin story for transgenderism: it's always been around, and everyone always knew it. This is basically another massive leftist conspiracy theory, on the order of "the patriarchy"...but even bigger... This is the most delusional origin story...because it requires convincing the entire population, who never even heard of such a thing until 2014...that they always knew it... And that their parents knew it...and their grandparents knew it...and their great-great-grandparents knew it...all the way back...forever and ever.... But no books mention it, no dictionaries are consistent with it...nothing...

   And this is where the de Lolm quote becomes relevant: if everyone always knew it, then no one would use such a thing as an example of an impossibility. If everybody always knew that men can become women and women men, de Lolm certainly wouldn't have used to as a paradigmatic impossibility... The only reason that history isn't packed to the gills with people denying that men can become women is because it's so goddamned obvious. Unless you want to describe an absolute impossibility, you wouldn't even mention such a thing...

   So much for the laughably stupid "we've always known" version of the view...

   But we've already put more serious thought into this than all the Women's Studies departments in all the universities in the whole USA...when we really ought to just stick to Hitchens' Razor...