There has never been a government with such a high approval-to-incompetence ratio

Guess who that is? And guess what it’s about. The first two minutes should make you sick. Do not watch too much more since it will be bad for your health. Much more dangerous than CV-1984.

So this is where we are with Mr Stupid: Andrews threatens border closures over Kiwi arrivals. There has never been a government with such a high approval-to-incompetence ratio. Bumbling fools comes nowhere near covering it. Twenty-one years of almost continuous Labor Party management have brought community expectations for their governments to the lowest level in history.

Mr Andrews said he had previously told the federal government Victoria was not part of the travel bubble and blamed federal authorities for the arrivals, saying he did not know they were coming and they should have been stopped before they boarded flights to Melbourne. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian made it clear her government would not prevent passengers travelling to Victoria, with a spokeswoman saying the issue was a matter for the southern state. Victoria’s borders are not closed to NSW…. Victorian authorities spent much of yesterday trying to track down the travellers, with Mr Andrews conceding the state’s health department had no power to stop passengers, detain them or force them into quarantine if they had arrived from interstate, rather than overseas.

They arrive from places where there are no cases of the Corona Virus, so what’s the problem? And if you want more evidence just how incompetent these people are, try this although there is much much more:

A spokeswoman for the federal Department of Health confirmed Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton was present at a meeting on October 12 when the matter of onwards travel of New Zealanders from Sydney to Melbourne was discussed. Mr Tudge also tweeted that Professor Sutton “did not raise any concerns” in the discussions. It also emerged Mr Andrews’ own department had given one of the arrivals from NZ the green light two weeks ago to travel onward to Victoria although the advice, from the Department of Premier and Cabinet, was issued before Mr Andrews had officially declared his state was not joining the travel bubble. The Age has also seen an email from the Premier’s Department, sent on October 12 in response to a query about travel from NZ via Sydney, that clearly advised that Victoria’s borders were open and that the traveller was free to arrive in the southern state.

I can only think Dan is still there because the rest of his cabinet has joined Michael O’Brien (the unknown leader of the Liberal Party) in not wanting to become Premier until the present Victorian mess is limited to the level of “Ongoing Catastrophe” from its present level of “Major Calamity”.

The Oz is the New York Times of Australia

For myself, there is no insult I could make that is greater than that, but so it seems. Having discussed here  just this morning how bizarrely anti-Trump The Australian is, I now come across this from The NYT. A series of vague general statements with a complete absence of policy issues over which they might prefer Joe Biden instead.

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump’s term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country’s future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

The newspaper of broken-record disseminates the lies for every shallow nitwit across the world to repeat ad nauseum. Let me just return to the comments section on Van Onselen,  and pluck just this from the hundreds of criticisms of his sophisms listed according to “Best”. This is from “Spud”; obviously from his aristocratic name a well-known and highly regarded non-deplorable:

“Trump’s poor performance”
He’s led the US into no new wars
He’s routed ISIS (remember them?)
He’s rebuilt the US military (you know, the military we depend upon)
He’s stood up against China’s rapacious trade policies
He’s forced NATO countries to front up more for their own defence
He’s relocated the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem (long promised, never delivered until Trump) and recognised the Golan heights as being part of Israel (a must-have for Israel’s defence)
He’s brokered peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (Nobel Peace Prize 2021?)
He’s curbed illegal immigration, including with a wall (OK, the Mexicans didn’t pay for it)
He’s replaced NAFTA with an improved trade deal with Mexico and Canada
He reduced regulations and taxes, producing US energy independence and, before COVID hit, the lowest Black and Hispanic unemployment on record; combined with an upsurge in real wage growth
He’s brought back manufacturing jobs when Obama and those in the know said it couldn’t be done
He’s promoted and signed the First Step Act to lessen the over-incarceration of black offenders
He’s established business opportunity zones in the inner cities to help minorities escape despair
He’s supported school choice and charter schools for disadvantaged children
He’s promoted and signed a bill to provide permanent funding for traditionally black colleges.
He’s appointed objective federal judges and Supreme Court justices to defend the constitution, as distinct from politically motivated activists.

It turns my stomach how straight-out ignorant our supposedly educated class actually is.

Proving by the absence of a contrary argument why Donald Trump should be re-elected

These independent columnists at The Oz are for the most part a pretty shallow lot when it comes to discussing American politics. There are not one but two anti-Trump articles today. I read all such articles religiously wherever they show up, since I am in an ongoing pursuit of the contra case which has been utterly invisible up until now. There is, of course, no case for Biden, But after four years of his presidency, there must be an anti-Trump case somewhere. But if there is, you won’t find it in The Australian.

This is Peter Van Onselen’s take, who, he writes, “seriously toyed with renouncing his [American] citizenship four years ago when Trump won”. I’ll bet. Just like all the folks who threatened to move to Canada. From what he has written today, he is obviously unable to have learned anything since 2016. Here’s what he has to say four years later: US election 2020: For decency’s sake, Trump must not be returned. Why then is that?

“The damage four more years of Trump would do to American society, its standing in the world, the Republican Party and conservatism as an ideology isn’t worth thinking about…. His mocking of people’s looks, gender, sexual orientation and those with a disability makes him unfit to run a corner shop much less a country…. The cause of conservatives will continue to drift further from what conservatism is supposed to represent: a defence of institutions and respect for process and good governance.

“[There is] his ongoing (near endless) personal abuse of anyone who challenges him. His profound mishandling of the COVID crisis. Despite the way Trump threatens to tear down institutions and denigrate the fourth estate at every opportunity. All the while bringing American democracy into disrepute….

“[There is also] Trump’s flippant attitude towards the dangers COVID-19….

“Trump has never been about anything other than his own aggrandisement. But the way so-called conservative commenta­tors and politicians have abided Trump, even spruiked for him, is much harder to forgive. Doing so exposed how shallow their collective beliefs and ideological understanding really is.

There it is. That’s the case. If anyone can find anything else, they are welcome to add it in. Especially absurd is his telling conservatives what to believe as if he has even an inkling of a notion what conservatism is. How do people like that get paid real money to write such trash?

There is then the equally dense Troy Bramston in his US election 2020: Voters are tired of Trump’s catastrophic presidency. Same challenge, to find anything of substance from one end of the column to the other. Not that there is much effort made to make such  case. The entire article is about polling and how Trump is almost certain to lose which he may well do, in large part because of the full court press all across the media. These are, in full, his reasons why he ought to lose.

Trump has been a catastrophic president….

The most important election issue is COVID-19. Trump’s handling of the pandemic has been disastrous.

Both are an embarrassment to The Australian and to journalism. The Murdoch Press is gung ho in opposing Trump’s re-election. Their columnists have apparently followed the boss’s orders in trying to make the invisible case for voting for Joe Biden instead. What their writings show beyond anything else is that no such case exists because if it did, someone would be able to make it.

In every generation they rise up against us, even in this one

This article by Bari Weiss is mainly addressed to Jews about the dangers the Jewish community faces from the new factions of the left within the politics of the West. I’ll come to the Jewish element at the end of this post, but first I wish to note how accurately she has outlined the liberal traditions that developed over the past two hundred years that is now almost entirely the ideology of the conservative right. She naturally takes sideswipes at Donald Trump since otherwise no one in her intended audience would listen to her, and for all I know that is what she actually believes. But what she outlines is what I believe, and she outlines the dangers that now confront all of us as well. She is a very brave woman, and brilliantly articulate. First she pretends there is a danger from we conservatives, but then she goes on to make her genuine point.

There is another danger, this one from the left. And unlike Trump, this one has attained cultural dominance, capturing America’s elites and our most powerful institutions. In the event of a Biden victory, it is hard to imagine it meeting resistance. So let me make my purpose perfectly clear: I am here to ring the alarm. I’m here to say: Do not be shocked anymore. Stop saying, can you believe. It’s time to accept reality, if we want to have any hope of fixing it.

To understand the enormity of the change we are now living through, take a moment to understand America as the overwhelming majority of its Jews believed it was—and perhaps as we always assumed it would be.

It was liberal.

Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy.

The liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things—indeed, the most important things—in life that were located outside of the realm of politics: friendships, art, music, family, love. This was a world in which Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be close friends. Because, as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes.

Crucially, this liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised.

Racism was evil because it contradicted the foundations of this worldview, since it judged people not based on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin. And while America’s founders were guilty of undeniable hypocrisy, their own moral failings did not invalidate their transformational project. The founding documents were not evil to the core but “magnificent,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, because they were “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” In other words: The founders themselves planted the seeds of slavery’s destruction. And our second founding fathers—abolitionists like Frederick Douglass—made it so. America would never be perfect, but we could always strive toward building a more perfect union.

I didn’t even know that this worldview had a name because it was baked into everything I came into contact with—my parents’ worldviews, the schools they sent me to, the synagogues we attended, the magazines and newspapers we read, and so on.

I was among many millions of Americans cosseted by these ideals. Since World War II, American intellectual and cultural life has been produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, labor unions, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, historical museums, art museums—that aligned, broadly, with those principles. As such, they had incredible power—power that demanded our respect because they held up the liberal order.

No longer. American liberalism is under siege. There is a new ideology vying to replace it.

And here in describing what is replacing the liberal world order, she gets it unfortunately exactly right.

No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology”—as in, the successor to liberalism.

At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly—and then to explain it to others.

The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game—due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself—must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with—designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” as the writer Audre Lorde put it. And the master’s house must be dismantled—because the house is rotted at its foundation.

The beating heart of this new ideology is critical race theory. The legal scholar Angela Harris put it concisely in her foreword to Critical Race Theory: An Introduction:

“Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”

Critical race theory says there is no such thing as neutrality, not even in the law, which is why the very notion of colorblindness—the Kingian dream of judging people not based on the color of their skin but by the content of their character—must itself be deemed racist. Racism is no longer about individual discrimination. It is about systems that allow for disparate outcomes among racial groups. If everyone doesn’t finish the race at the same time, then the course must have been flawed and should be dismantled.

Thus the efforts to do away with the SAT, or the admissions test for elite public schools like Stuyvesant and Lowell—for decades, the engines of American meritocracy that allowed children of poor and working-class families to advance on their merits, regardless of race. Or the argument made recently by The New York Times’ classical music critic to do away with blind auditions for orchestras.

In fact, any feature of human existence that creates disparity of outcomes must be eradicated: The nuclear family, politeness, even rationality itself can be defined as inherently racist or evidence of white supremacy, as a Smithsonian institution suggested this summer. The KIPP charter schools recently eliminated the phrase “work hard” from its famous motto “Work Hard. Be Nice.” because the idea of working hard “supports the illusion of meritocracy.” Denise Young Smith, one of the first Black people to reach Apple’s executive team, left her job in the wake of asserting that skin color wasn’t the only legitimate marker of diversity—the victim of a “diversity culture” that, as the writer Zaid Jilani has noted, is spreading “across the entire corporate world and is enforced by a highly educated activist class.”

The most powerful exponent of this worldview is Ibram X. Kendi. His book “How to Be an Antiracist” is on the top of every bestseller list; his photograph graces GQ; he is on Time’s most influential people of the year; and his outfit at Boston University was recently awarded $10 million from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

According to Kendi, we are all either racist or anti-racist. To be a Good Person and not a Bad Person, you must be an “anti-racist.” There is no neutrality, no such thing as “not racist.” Indeed, Kendi wants to ban those words from the dictionary.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech would not meet Kendi’s definition of anti-racism, nor would the one Barack Obama made about there being too many fatherless Black families. Indeed, nearly everything that Americans have been taught about how to be anti-racist for the past several decades is, according to Kendi’s explicit definition, racist.

It’s a rhetorically brilliant strategy. Racism is the gravest sin in American life. Who would ever want to be anything other than an anti-racist? And so under the guise of a righteous effort to achieve overdue justice and equality of opportunity for Black Americans, Kendi and his ideological allies are presenting Americans with a zero-sum choice: conform to their worldview or be indistinguishable from the likes of Richard Spencer.

And just in case moral suasion is ineffective, Kendi has backup: Use the power of the federal government to make it so. “To fix the original sin of racism,” he wrote in Politico, “Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals [sic]: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals.” To back up the amendment, he proposes a Department of Anti-Racism. This department would have the power to investigate not just local governments but private businesses and would punish those “who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” Imagine how such a department would view a Jewish day school, which suggests that the Jews are God’s chosen people, let alone one that teaches Zionism.

Kendi—who, it should be noted, now holds Elie Wiesel’s old chair at Boston University—believes that “to be antiracist is to see all cultures in their differences as on the same level, as equals.” He writes: “When we see cultural difference we are seeing cultural difference—nothing more, nothing less.” It’s hard to imagine that anyone could believe that cultures that condone honor killings of unchaste young women are “nothing more, nothing less” than culturally different from our own. But whether he believes it or not, it’s obvious that embracing such relativism is a highly effective tool for ascension and seizing power.

The rest of her article is about the dangers all of this poses for Jews. Go to the link for the rest, but this is the first para of that next section.

It should go without saying that, for Jews, an ideology that contends that there are no meaningful differences between cultures is not simply ridiculous—we have an obviously distinct history, tradition and religion that has been the source of both enormous tragedy as well as boundless gifts—but is also, as history has shown, lethal.

She knows there are all too many Jews who will be unable to see it or understand it, but what is invisible to the older generation of post-War Jews is all too obvious to younger Jews today who wish to live a Jewish life. Go to the link to read all this and make your own assessment. I will here add in this to supplement the same points made above. This is from an article titled, Orthodox Jewish Rabbis Sue Cuomo for ‘Blatantly Anti-Semitic’ COVID Order. Here is the issue, and we are discussing New York, New York.

According to the lawsuit, Cuomo’s October 6 executive order “is blatantly anti-Semitic, creating religious-observance based color coded ‘hot-spot’ zones directed towards particular Jewish communities.”

The order “not only flagantly flies in the face of scientific evidence and the Soos Injunction” — a legal injunction preventing New York from subjecting religious services to extra restrictions over secular gatherings — but it also “specifically singles out the orthodox Jewish community in what has proven to be the latest extension of Governor Cuomo’s streak of anti-Semitic discrimination.”

And then there was also this today: New York’s beleaguered Jews strike back against Governor Cuomo. More of the same and where you should least expect it. “Governor Andrew Cuomo has gone full medieval, accusing Jews of spreading the Wuhan virus and attacking them with all of his political power.” It’s on the radar, at least for some.

It can’t happen here, maybe. Better to believe it could and then do what can be done to make sure it doesn’t. This may be where to start: How to Fight Anti-Semitism by that same Bari Weiss.

I’m sure Bruce will like things on Manus Island

Talk about undesirable migrants: ‘I’ll see you on the next plane’: Bruce Springsteen says he’ll ‘move to Australia’ if Donald Trump is re-elected – after accusing the president of ‘dividing’ America.

He made the remark – which wasn’t intended to be taken seriously – after sharing his thoughts on Trump’s re-election campaign and its chances of success.

Pop stars now share the same ideology as leading academics, virtually the whole of the public service and most of the media. Lowest common denominator among the generally unproductive, I suppose.

Grifters and crooks, father and son

I have been waiting for this to show up in a more prominent way and now it has. The more interesting question is whether it matters. Obviously it does in some sense, since the Friends of the Democrats (ie the mainstream media + social media) have done all they can to prevent any of it becoming an election issue. Still, there is this.

The three tweets are from here: President Trump: Bidens Are ‘Grifters,’ ‘Crooks’. And so they are. But for a Democrat, it does not appear to matter. These people give democracy a bad name.

A $30m contract for three months’ work

This is what Daniel Andrews was dealing with. From Peta Credlin: Too much we’re not being told about Victoria’s hotel quarantine fiasco. And while who made the decision is important (here’s the answer, it was Dan), more important to me is why he chose some local mates over the ADF.

The Premier’s chief of staff was the first person Eccles briefed on the national cabinet decision to introduce hotel quarantine. Jobs Department head Simon Phemister then put the process in train that led to the engagement of Unified Security, a company not on the list of preferred tenderers, but that somehow won the lion’s share of the work — a $30m contract for three months’ work…. How could Phemister have set up the private security contracts without knowing how this had come to be authorised? What public servants would spend $30m without being clear about the authority for it?

So many questions, so few answers.

Australians watching American politics according to the NYT

If you have had any doubts about the quality of insights found in the New York Times, they can now be put to rest: Australians Watching American Politics: ???!!!!***$%%#. Here’s how it starts:

Australians used to talk about American politics the way they talk about sport — they followed the ups and downs, marveled at the competitor, and tried to game out who would win.

This year? It’s more like the discussion of a car wreck involving a neighbor or an uncle.

For months, friends and even strangers have been asking if my relatives are healthy, worried they may have perished in the American coronavirus catastrophe. And this week, after a debacle of a debate and the news that President Trump and Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus, I saw and heard more than just empathy — also shock, dismay, fear, heartbreak and just head-shaking alarm.

Van Badham, a commentator who often writes for The Guardian (and occasionally the New York Times Opinion section), replied to my tweet about Mr. Trump’s positive test result with what many Australians seem to be feeling:

“I just
I can’t
I mean
What
Oh god”

My very reaction and so well put. All the news that’s fit to be ignored.

Might also add in this from Paul Krugman on the NYT editorial page: Trump Is Killing the Economy Out of Spite. So much to choose from but this will have to do:

Last year Donald Trump called Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, a “nasty, vindictive, horrible person.” Actually, she isn’t — but he is.

Trump’s vindictiveness has become a major worry as the election approaches. He has already signaled that he won’t accept the result if he loses, which seems increasingly likely though not certain. Nobody knows what chaos, possibly including violence, he may unleash if the election doesn’t go his way.

Even aside from that concern, however, a defeated Trump would still be president for two and a half months. Would he spend that time acting destructively, in effect taking revenge on America for rejecting him?

Well, we got a preview of what a lame-duck Trump presidency might look like Tuesday. Trump hasn’t even lost yet, but he abruptly cut off talks on an economic relief package millions of Americans desperately need (although as of Thursday he seemed to be backtracking). And his motivation seems to have been sheer spite.

Why do we need economic relief? Despite several months of large employment gains, America has only partly recovered from horrific job losses in the early months of the pandemic — and the pace of recovery has slowed to a relative crawl. All indications are that the economy will remain weak for many months, maybe even years.

How long it takes for recovery to be complete, in spite of all the employment gains already, will depend on who wins the election. Obama-Biden couldn’t effect a recovery following the GFC although they had eight years to try. Not in a single year did the economy grow faster than three percent! You know Einstein’s definition of political insanity about continuing with policies that fail. I only hope we are not given the opportunity to find out for ourselves as the Democrats once again try their Keynesian economic magic.

Further reflections on the first debate

The mainstream media is filled with as many liars as the Democrat Party, is totally untrustworthy in passing on the news, but more importantly cannot be trusted to interpret events. Below are more reflections on the first debate from the conservative side [here are the first set] which provide straightforward explanations as we would see it, and no doubt as most observers saw it whose madness has not distorted their view of the world.

What is there to be said about people who defend putting to the torch major cities such as Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis? Crazy, yes, but there is a psychological derangement so bizarre that no one may ever work it out. Are these people sick at heart to find that socialism doesn’t work and that it is capitalism provides wealth and security? Do they really believe there is some alternative means of creating communities that will provide better conditions and individual happiness? Are these people so deranged that they believe that we really must throw over all of our forms of power generation right now to save us from an environmental catastrophe in fifty years time? Do they actually think we who are the least racist communities which have ever lived can create more harmony through armed and violent division? Who knows? I just think they are crazy, but what help is it to know that if they steal the election and put their mates in charge? Anyway, here are amplifications of what the President said during the debate that again emphasise how crucial this election really is.

The Debate Segment on Race Was Appalling and Not Because of President Trump

Rush Limbaugh: Joe Biden, Chris Wallace Were ‘Ganging Up’ on Donald Trump

Joe Biden is Not a Nice Man and He Hasn’t Been Nice to Israel

Democrats’ only path to victory: Violence, smears and cheating

Joe Biden and Chris Wallace Started It by Interrupting Trump Numerous Times First

Biden and the ‘No Wrongdoing’ Mantra

Biden claims Senate report about son getting $3.5 million ‘discredited’

Debate Commission Decides Chris Wallace Was an Insufficient Tool

Biden Falsely Claims Antifa Is an Idea, Not an Organization

Biden and the ‘No Wrongdoing’ Mantra

Facebook Regulatory Counsel Joins Biden Transition Team As Zuckerberg Commits To Silencing Trump Victory Claims

Chris Wallace Knows Better than to Let Biden Get Away With These Four ‘Whoppers’Hell Freezes Over: The New York Times Fact Checks Biden On The Economy, Rates His Claim As ‘False’

Brazil’s President Lights Up Joe Biden After Ridiculous Threat

Journalists Covering Antifa Blast Joe Biden: People Aren’t Being Assaulted in the Streets by an ‘Idea’

Yes, Trump has a health care plan — he has been implementing it

TRUMP: ‘We Won the Debate, Biden Looked Very Weak, He Was Whining’

[Nigel] Farage Bashes Biden On ‘Biggest Lie’ About AntiFa

CHRIS WALLACE, AMERICAN MEDIA FIDDLE DURING DEBATE AS BLM, ANTIFA BURN OUR COUNTRY

Presidential Debate Number One: A Biden Fact-Check

The Pandemic On Biden’s Watch Killed 13 Times As Many Children As COVID

CNN claims Biden never called Trump xenophobic for China travel ban … Here’s a tweet for you, CNN

Civilised societies do get put to the torch from time to time by their own citizens. We are looking at the madness of crowds and the formation of our own modern Committees of Public Safety.