Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~THE POST-DEMOCRATIC ERA (1): Since they took the tyre iron to him, whoever's really running the United States government has given up the time-consuming pretence that Joe Biden has anything at all to do with it. After his farewell address to the DNC, the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock puppet flew Air Force One for a week's vacation with some California billionaire. When that was done, he flew it again from the Golden State back to his beach house in Delaware for a second, week-and-a-half-long vacation:
Biden's schedule is absolutely blank. Meanwhile, Emily Goodin reports Biden was "visibly shaking" as he exited AF1 in CA on Tuesday morning, and needed a boost from Secret Service agents just to get into his SUV.
Who is running the country? https://t.co/bZb8ZjfmpM pic.twitter.com/BrRVme9xCC
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) August 26, 2024
If that question is of no interest to the media or the majority of the American people, then what is the point of being breathless with excitement over a two-year presidential election campaign? Or even the truncated three-month express-check-in Kamala Harris version?
~THE POST-DEMOCRATIC ERA (2): On June 9th the President of France dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap parliamentary election. He and his bloodless technocrat "centrists" lost. The far left won. Although they did not have an overall majority, in the normal course of events they would have expected to have first crack at forming a government.
Instead, Macron refused the resignation of his prime minister and announced that the devoted acolyte would remain in office "for the time being". "For the time being" has now gone on for two months - which, in the entire history of the Fifth Republic, is unprecedented:
Quite an incredible move in French politics today that might reveal that we're in fact witnessing nothing less than a coup by Macron.
Let me explain 🧵
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) August 24, 2024
M Macron has now rejected the lefties' proposal for a government under its choice of PM, the little-known though not unappealing French commie-totty who serves as "chief financial officer" of Paris, Lucie Castets. His grounds for rejecting the lefties are that the country must not be "weakened", and Mme Castets could not win a confidence vote in the National Assembly. The latter may be true, but it's not for him to say. It is for the elected members of the Assembly to say. As the designated head of government of the largest party, Mme Castets may come up short, or she may not. Either way, it is not for Macron to anticipate a decision that has not been made.
So the weeks roll on, and the guys who lost the election remain in charge of the government. Odd. Manuel Bompard of the crazy-left France Insoumise calls Macron's refusal to accept the results "an unacceptable anti-democratic coup", and his party has begun impeachment proceedings. All this is uncharted territory for the Fifth Republic.
~THE POST-DEMOCRATIC ERA (3): In Britain, unlike his two immediate predecessors, the present prime minister did at least come to power in an election. That election, however, delivered the most lop-sided result in two centuries: a party that won the support of twenty per cent of eligible voters nevertheless won two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons.
But, to reprise an old line of mine, when the left win, they're in power; when the right win, they're in office. Sir Keir Stürmer is a man in a hurry - which is one reason he's gaoling Tweeters and Facebookers minded to raise the question of the UK's cultural and demographic transformation:
Two Tier Keir Starmer is truly terrifying.
— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) August 27, 2024
NOT ONE WORD in his authoritarian state of the nation speech about the failure of mass immigration or concerns about the illegal invasion of our country.
NOT ONE WORD on the crime and carnage at the Notting Hill Carnival which has left... pic.twitter.com/uKa4UGKGm5
Sir Keir means it. Bringing up "the failure of mass immigration or concerns about the illegal invasion of our country" will result in a call from the Starmtroopers and an appearance before an appallingly politicised judiciary willing to trash centuries of Englishmen's rights in order to do the PM's bidding.
Which doesn't leave a lot of point to the democratic process, does it? The logic of der Stürmer's first weeks in office is to create revolutionary conditions.
~STAB THE MESSENGER: Following yesterday's column, here is an all too typical Euro-headline:
Tens of thousands demonstrate against AfD after stabbings in Solingen
Gotta love the commitment of the diversity lemmings. Even as they're on the ground punctured by multiple stab wounds, they'll be fretting that the amount of their blood all over the sidewalk risks provoking even more "Islamophobia" from the "far right".
~We thank you for all your kind comments these last grisly months - and especially all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.
