JOSEPH BOTTUM: What explains the sudden mania for toppling statues?

The glory of the Internet is that it allows like-minded people to find one another. And the horror of the Internet is that it allows like-minded people to find one another. Coin collectors, baseball-card enthusiasts, and used-book readers have all benefited from the opportunities offered by online connection. So have neo-Nazis, child-pornographers, and Communist agitators. Where they were once connected only by the sickly sweet smell of the ink from the mimeograph machine clumping away on the kitchen table, the forces of anger now have instantaneous links.

And that instantaneity allows a radicalizing more rapid than the world has ever seen. Back in a 1999 study called “The Law of Group Polarization,” legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein suggested that discussion among people with similar views causes a hardening of opinion. “In a striking empirical regularity,” he wrote, “deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments.” It hardly matters whether the groups are pro-gun, pro-abortion, or pro-anarchy. With sufficient group discussion on one side of an issue, everyone involved takes a step toward the extreme: The mildly supportive become strongly supportive, the strongly supportive become wildly supportive, and the wildly supportive become fanatical psychopaths.

These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.

COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: She Carried a Garrotte!

SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Capitol Police Arrested Male Dem Operative For Assaulting Female Trump Admin Official.

COME AND SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Democrat suggests ‘Second Amendment’ remedy vs. Trump.

Man charged with threatening to murder Va. congressman over marijuana dispute.

That’s a marijuana policy dispute, not a drug deal gone bad.

GAY COUPLE FACES DEATH THREATS FOR BACKING TRUMP:

CELEBRATE DIVERSITY: Woman Brutally Assaulted in D.C. Restaurant After Professing to be a Trump Supporter.

BROWN M&Ms AND RELIGIOUS ILLITERACY: A pair of tweets spotted by Rod Dreher highlight the smug ignorance of the MSM when it comes to religious matters.

Linda Greenhouse on the recently-deceased Judge Stephen Reinhardt: “Doctrinal purity mattered less to him than extracting even the most gossamer claim to a favorable result.” Greenhouse comes not to bury Reinhardt, but to praise him, but I don’t find the notion that judges should reason backward from the result they want generally praiseworthy. I don’t think Greenhouse would, either, if it had been a conservative doing so.

In Honor Of Kevin Williamson’s Firing: The Atlantic’s Worst Takes. My favorite is the one about the eclipse being racist. But who can forget Trump Is Probably Sleeping With His Daughter.

COMEY: ‘MY WIFE AND GIRLS’ MARCHED IN ANTI-TRUMP WOMEN’S MARCH.  When it comes to shooting straight, Comey is almost as objective as Dan Rather…

“PARTS UNKNOWN” TRAVELING FOOD CRITIC VENTURES TO EXOTIC … WEST VIRGINIA: And for a liberal Anthony Bourdain sounds like not such a bad guy. He actually likes going to new places, meeting new people and getting to know them (even when they’re “only” his own countrymen). He says, “You know, the contempt with which we speak of West Virginia in the political circles that I’m inclined to vote with I think is sort of disgraceful and counterproductive and unlovely. A little understanding and a little empathy — the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes for a few minutes — has got to be a good thing.” With a few more like Bourdain, maybe the Republic will survive after all.

EXCESSIVE DRINKING CAN LEAD TO BLACKOUTS. OR IN SOME RARE CASES, MEDIA BLACKOUTS. Oh My: National Review Finally Asks, “Does Hillary Clinton Drink Too Much Alcohol? And Did the Media Cover This Up?”

‘THIS IS WHY PEOPLE HATE YOU:’ Politico’s hit piece on Hillsdale College backfires spectacularly.

ANOTHER RUBE SELF-IDENTIFIES: I’m A Brown Woman Who’s Breaking Up With The Democratic Party: I realize now that the love has been one-sided.

LINDA SARSOUR: You Have No Right to Tell Us We Can’t Kill Jews.

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO HOSTILE TO THOSE WHO FIGHT OPPRESSION? Woman accused of racism by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is human-rights activist.

I AM SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO LEARN CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY HAS DONE SOMETHING OFFENSIVE:  Cards Against Humanity gets blasted for selling ‘Jew Pack’.

SHELBY STEELE: Black Protest Has Lost Its Power: Have whites finally found the courage to judge African-Americans fairly by universal standards?

An English professor at Linfield College has developed a checklist that is intended to help individuals determine whether they are white supremacists. Believing in meritocracy, promoting a “collegial” environment, and even deciding “to stay out of all of this ‘identity politics’” are all forms of tacit white supremacy, she claims.

Paper: Circular Reasoning in Climate Change Research

BUT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED:  New fossils are redefining what makes a dinosaur.

I GUESS IT’S OKAY, SINCE THE PIECE PORTRAYS MEN AS INFERIOR, BUT THIS IS STILL A PROBLEMATIC STATEMENT IN 2018: “Biologically, there are differences between men and women.”

Sorry.  Not a fan. STEPHEN HAWKING WROTE A POPULAR BOOK ABOUT PHYSICS AND SPENT THE REST OF HIS LIFE CRUSADING FOR AWFUL CAUSES

EVER GET THE FEELING YOU’VE BEEN CHEATED? Dershowitz: I Wouldn’t Have Campaigned for Obama If I Knew About Farrakhan Pic.

OBAMA’S SHOWS HIM LOST IN THE WEEDS:  Smithsonian Reveals The Obamas Official Portraits And They Are Interesting.

DAMNING: More Evidence the Obama White House Deliberately Deceived on the Iran Deal. “Ben Rhodes formally joins the Ploughshares Fund.”

EVEN MOTHER JONES WONDERS WHAT WAS WRONG WITH OBAMA: “Why the Hell Are We Standing Down?” The secret story of Obama’s response to Putin’s attack on the 2016 election.

IT ISN’T BOMBSHELL IF IT ONLY CONFIRMS WHAT EVERYBODY KNEW: Ex-Obama Campaign Director Drops Bombshell Claim on Facebook: ‘They Were on Our Side.’

Well duh ... CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Obama used executive powers to benefit close friends’ private investment firms.

2012: Obama Congratulates Putin For Election Win.

2018: Trump faces backlash after congratulating Putin on election win.

QUICK, WARM THE GLOBE:  The sun is growing colder.

AN UNDERWATER ECOSYSTEM HIDDEN FOR 120,000 YEARS:  Scientists to explore hidden water world exposed by iceberg’s split.

 SCIENCE: Biologist Gets a Fake Star Trek Paper Accepted by 4 Dodgy Science Journals.

The Coming Polar Bear Battle In Toronto

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Deep Bore Into Antarctica Finds Freezing Ice, Not Melting as Expected.

NOT SUCH AN ENDANGERED SPECIES AFTER ALL:  There’s a penguin colony so large you can see it from space

VERY STRANGELY, NOT POLITICAL NEWS:  Spectacular dinosaur stomping grounds discovered just outside D.C.

WINNING: EPA Ends The Use Of “Secret Science” In Crafting Regulations.

PREPPER MATH: “Do the same math as we did above with the floodplains, in precisely the same way, and we see a 37% chance that any American of average life expectancy will experience at least one nationwide violent revolution.”

KEVIN BOYD: More Proof The Left Really Does Want To Abolish Legal Gun Ownership.

CIVIL RIGHTS/CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE UPDATE: Illinois counties declare themselves ‘sanctuary’ counties for gun owners.

The Missing Obama Millions.

Our analysis shows that while 9 percent of Obama 2012 voters went for Mr. Trump in 2016, 7 percent — that’s more than four million missing voters — stayed home. Three percent voted for a third-party candidate.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: Not ‘Toxic Masculinity,’ but None: Most Mass Shooters Are Fatherless.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Joe Biden took his son Hunter on official trip to China – ten days before communist regime’s bank signed deal with private equity firm Biden jnr runs with John Kerry’s son, book reveals.

SHARPTON LIKENS HIMSELF TO JAMES BOND VS KOCH BROTHER ‘VILLAINS.’ If Sharpton opposes the Kochs, that makes him anti-gay marriage, pro-police state, pro-Patriot Act, and anti-legalized drugs. Talk about being a contrarian at MSNBC

from waaaaay back in March: Documents suggest possible coordination between CIA, FBI, Obama WH and Dem officials early in Trump-Russia probe: investigators.

FROM AL HUNT, SOME ACTUAL GOOD ADVICE FOR DEMOCRATS: When You Insult Trump Voters, You Make It Hard To Get Them Back.

HOW’S ABOUT NO?   Democrats’ Midterm Playbook: Repeal the GOP Tax Cuts…and the Second Amendment.  And don't forget impeachent!

RUSS ROBERTS:

The current state of the country and the current state of political and intellectual conversation depresses me in a way that it never has before. You have to understand — I’m never happy with the state of the country — that’s the inevitable fate of holding an ideological position that rarely gets any traction — I’m a classical liberal who’d like government to be dramatically smaller than it is now.

But the world today feels different. Everything feels angrier. . . .

Maybe it’s paranoia but it’s been a long time since I felt the thinness of the veneer of civilization and our vulnerability to a sequence of events that might threaten not just the policy positions I might favor but the very existence of the American experiment.