There was a time when @RichLowry writing something this nakedly despicable would have been unthinkable. Accusing a man of helping provoke a crime via something he wrote FOUR YEARS BEFOREHAND is the kind of ethics you want Buckley's life's work to be associated with, Rich? Really?

Beyond that stunning abandonment of conscience, @RichLowry naturally neglects to include a link to the Flight 93 Election essay, because when you're lying about something it's better the readers you're trying to deceive not have the original on hand for quick comparison.
Here is that link, where you will find that, contrary to @RichLowry's journalistic malpractice, Anton does not "valorize" Trump's flaws, argue that Trump is a "savior," or suggest that "character and norms no longer matter."
https://t.co/OALypR35Qf
If you don't have time for the the full essay right now, at least read the following passages and ask yourself how well they match @RichLowry's misrepresentations:
There is a strong case to be made for the Flight 93 Election essay being the single most impactful piece of political writing of the decade. I can think of no other work that has provoked so many responses, over so long, of so much anger and yet so little substance.
It makes these people so personally, uncontrollably angry not simply because they've never been able to comp up with a good response to its main point, but because it directly implicates THEM.
It nails them for just how far they deviated from standing athwart history, for how their failed stewardship of conservatism brought the GOP and the country so low that a Trump could rise. Deep down, @RichLowry et al. can't deny it -- and they can't handle it.
And, in the case of @RichLowry and the many objectively-bad people he allowed to stain @NRO's pages over the last five years, they simply lack the character to not lie in response, to not lash out with the very demagogic tendencies they claim to abhor.
If William F. Buckley was half the man most of us (myself included) think he was, it is inconceivable that he would be proud of @RichLowry this week, or what Lowry has done with the magazine WFB entrusted to him.

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1/ Imagine that as soon as the referendum result the EU announced that it was looking forward to the end of free movement of UK citizens in the EU


2/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those retired Brits in the EU27 could go home

3/ Imagine if the EU said finally all those Brits in the EU could stop driving down wages, taking jobs and stop sending benefits back to the UK

4/ Imagine if the EU said it was looking to use UK citizens as “bargaining chips” to get a better trade deal

5/ Imagine if the EU told UK citizens in the EU27 that they could no longer rely on established legal rights and they would have to apply for a new status which they have to pay for for less rights
THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)
This idea - that elections should translate into policy - is not wrong at all. But political science can help explain why it's not working this way. There are three main explanations: 1. mandates are constructed, not automatic, 2. party asymmetry, 3. partisan conpetition 1/


First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/

Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/

Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/

Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/

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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.


I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.