Observations From The Front

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Yesterday, professional conman David French posted this ridiculous sob story, where he nails himself to the cross, claiming he was sent to save mankind from Donald Trump. The result of his efforts has been a journey of suffering. It’s all nonsense, of course. Put yourself or your opinions out into the pubic and you will attract all sorts of nuts. I get on-line stalkers and weirdos all the time and I’m just running a blog. Go on TV and the pool of potential jerks and meanies goes up exponentially. It’s one of the trade-offs.

I’ve been pointing out for  along time that French is a nutter.  He’s the sort of guy that lives by the credo, “whatever is worth doing is worth overdoing.” These sorts of people can never dabble in anything, They get into something and it becomes all consuming. They begin to organize their lives around the obsession. Then all of a sudden, they lose interest in it and find some new obsession. You see that with French, who lurches from one fanaticism to the next. In every case, he goes well beyond what is reasonable.

Glenn Beck has this same defect. He could not be just a guy at the bar, he had to be a legendary drinker. Then it was drugs. Then it was religion, politics, history and I think now he is working on the details for his planned Utopia. The thing you see with Beck, that you see with French, is that their obsessions are not internal. They get into things that they can make a grand show of in order to impress people they see as their betters. Beck’s Blaze operation is an obvious attempt to replicate what Roger Ailes did with Fox News.

Whether or not nutjobs like French and Beck possess the self-awareness to know what they are doing is debatable. My hunch is the guys with the religious aspect to their lunacy secretly see themselves as the second coming. Beck and French both pitch themselves as prophets sent to save mankind. It’s not explicit, as that would get them locked up, but it’s just under the surface. If Beck’s thing ends like The People’s Temple, no one would be surprised as he increasing sounds like a cult leader.

The only reason I’m aware of French piece is Jonah Goldberg was flogging it on Twitter last night. Goldberg used to wave Beck around like a Medusa head back in the day. Before that he was fond of using Rod Dreher as his spear catcher. The fact that both were becoming religious nuts at the time suggests something. Now he is using French to step on mines for him, suggesting it is getting near the end of French’s run in the big foot conservative press. Maybe Beck has an extra purple shroud for him.

Anyway, what I pointed out on Twitter is that this is pretty much a classic response from a conman when his scheme falls apart. They also play the victim card. Their whole raison d’être is to exploit the virtues of others. They prey on the trust of good people. When that runs aground, they prey on the sympathy of good people. The game here is to shift the focus away from the traitorous behavior of the NeverTrump loons and onto a few potty mouthed villains on Twitter. It’s just another grift intended to victimize good people.

One of the responses had a pic of French on one of his TV appearances. This was on MSNBC and it occurred to me that a good lesson for the alt-right, one the Left learned long ago, is to punish collaborators mercilessly. All of the big shot “conservatives” have a habit of working for media outlets at war with decent Americans. If you are working for the enemy, regardless of your reasons, you are working for the enemy. After liberation, the French shaved the heads of women who slept with Nazis.

That’s the lesson from the failure of Conservative Inc. They sold their collaboration as part of their clever plot to convince the enemy of the rightness of their cause. They were not collaborating. No! They were going into the lion’s den to confront Lefty in his own lair! We know now that that was always bullshit. They were paid actors in league with Progressives to fool decent people into quietly going along with the madness being foisted on us. It’s why these rocked ribbed conservatives are now on the side of the Left opposing Trump.

The alt-right and affiliated movements are suddenly getting many new recruits from the disbanding armies of the Official Right. With a bigger audience, the opportunities to make money inevitably creep into the minds of the entrepreneurial. There’s nothing wrong with making a living, but anyone doing so by going on the cable shows or collaborating with the major media should be assumed to be a collaborator. If Mike Cernovich wants to sell books and videos, that’s fine. When he starts turning up on Fox News, he should be assumed to be Cypher.

All wars are media wars and all wars require sacrifice. If the people offering themselves up as leaders of your thing are easily tempted by offerings from the other side, you can never trust them. No man is so virtuous that he can resist the highest bidder. If being on TV is your goal in life, you will sacrifice your cause for it. That’s what happened with National Review and the rest of Conservative Inc. Like petty nobles bribed with a few extra acres of land or merchants bought off with title, they decided it was better to live a lie than suffer for the cause.

74 thoughts on “Observations From The Front”

  1. I don’t know what the Presbyterians are doing this Sunday but the Catholics were reading Luke 18:
    “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”
    I was laughing, thinking of that virtue signaling Jeremiad, when my wife elbowed me. I declined to share, mainly because I don’t want to give that website any more clicks.

  2. If you only read Mr. French’s piece and missed the one by MRS. French in the Washington Post, then you were deprived of the insanity bookend. She was molested, or had a Harlequin romance love affair, (I’ve worked w/abuse victims for decades & even I’m not sure what to call that), and became a lib Goth, then a holy roller wife & mother, and it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.

    Or, at least, that’s what I got out of it…

  3. I always thought that Glenn Beck wanted to be the next Andrew Breitbart. Watching his self-inflicted empire collapse has been entertaining but rather sad as well. I tune into his show now and then to hear how pathetic it has become. He really boxed himself into a corner and he’s paying for it big time. It’s getting harder and harder for him to have a show that’s actually something you want to listen to. And knowing Beck, he’ll probably endorse Trump the day before the election just to cover his ass and get attention.

    • I’d never heard of David French until reading this column. Am interested in this as a fellow Tennessean. Also, I cannot understand how the local talk radio station (1510 AM WLAC) STILL has the Glenn Beck show on in the mornings. Also, wasted air time in the evening w/ Marc Levin on WTN 99.7 FM, which I sometimes turn on for a few minutes before they air Michael Savage’s program which is live in the middle of the day elsewhere. As you can tell, I’m sort of a talk radio junkie and try to find stuff worth listening to on my frequent drives for family reasons to C’bus and CLE Ohio. The excitement of the Cleveland Indians winning the American League pennant had almost erased my angst over the looming General Election in two weeks. As a volunteer, I will be making calls from TN to C’bus Ohio Republican voters as part of the ABC — Absentee Ballot Chase — reminding the folks who requested the absentee ballot to fill it in and return it by mail ASAP, voting for Donald Trump. Turns out TN’s Governor Haslam is almost as creepy as Ohio Governor John Kasich in not supporting the Republican nominee. TN will go for Trump, no problem, but I wouldn’t put it past Kasich to screw around w/ the various boards of elections in the Ohio Counties. Remember, he “won” Ohio in the spring Primary Election there. I am trying to remain calm.

  4. The Cubs *and* the Indians getting in must be a sign, a portent, of something, right?

  5. Is it not telling that all the headlines this morning gasp about Trump’s comments yesterday about suing the liar/accusers? Not too much mentioned about Trump setting all time record for attendance to the rally in Gettysburg.

    I’m over the ‘news’ and the shills who push it, I don’t believe the polls, and I cannot for the life of me understand how the merchandisers can have so many ways to profile the American public and not have a clue who we really are and what we really think.

    We know they are working overtime to rig the numbers. Even so I see the handwriting on the wall. Trump may win the popular vote but lose the Electoral Collage. Isn’t that ironic? Wasn’t it Clinton who called for an end to the EC?

    If that’s the end of this – I sure will miss you people and this blog when Hitlery shuts down all speech that doesn’t align with the ‘narrative’.

    • Brexit 52, Remain 48. The seven major final polls were biased to Remain by four to eleven percent.

      • It’s a problem for the fixers. They can’t skew the numbers for HC with too big a percentage because it would just be too fishy. They don’t want to be exposed by the machines being audited.

        So what to do? They do not really have a clue how many millions plan to vote for Trump because a huge block of folks are keeping it to themselves. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there are many who say they are voting for Hil but will vote otherwise once in the privacy of the voting booth.

        Let’s just say, who doesn’t believe that she will protest any outcome other than her winning? And, of course, the MSM will say she has every constitutional right to do so.

        • Supporters of HRC have become very cocky 2 weeks out. They fully believe the polls. Let’s hope our people are smart and mad enough to vote anyway.

  6. At the end of The Terror in the French Revolution people who were practically communist in their approach to politics were accused of being monarchists, and the people of Paris simply accepted the ridiculous accusations as being true. And whether the accusations had any truth to them mattered not to the officials in charge, either. The only thing that mattered was power. Trump may be our Danton going to the guillotine.
    It’s up to us to get him off of that tumbril and go after his accusers.

  7. Fir3Cubed
    ‏@Fir3Cubed
    @jaketapper @DavidAFrench let’s ask the price the Palin’s paid Joe the Plumber the millions affected by the Obama fiasco, this ain’t beanbag
    3:41 AM – 22 Oct 2016

  8. Your readership is exceptionally well connected, Z, something that reflects very well on you.

    One small defense of those fighting our post-modern wars: the definition of what constitutes the “front” and the “rear” is pretty fluid these days. I would hazard that if you found yourself in some FOB getting rocketed 3-4 times a week or were on some advisory team driving through Injun country to the ministry of justice five days a week, you might consider that combat. No movie I have seen or book I have read does justice to what modern warfare has become. Though it might be coming to a theater very near you if we don’t resolve our current political crisis. Which is why I bother to comment here I suppose. You really don’t want to view modern warfare up close and personal.

    • Hear what you’re saying. But somehow French doesn’t seem as though he was ever within 100 miles of anything very hazardous. Just something about him. Maybe a total lack of humility and gratitude for getting back here safe after only one year. Some don’t last anywhere near that long in those war zones. Just looks and sounds like the same A-word he has always been. Her dopey book (or is it theirs?) on the angst of their one year separation doesn’t help with that image.

  10. Got my sample ballot in the mail the other day. An astounding number of “No Party Affiliation” candidates are on the ballot in this once staunchly Republican neck of the woods. It’s over for these guys. Other things are beginning to jell.

  11. Excellent essay, Z.

    I think this quote applies equally to Beck, French, Goldberg, 3/4ths of the “Republican” members of congress, NRO-Type cucks and to Conservatism Inc. equally:

    “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
    ~ Eric Hoffer

  12. I said this before in this blog, the “Right” media is made of Liberals that are pro-War Zionists, they’re the modern day Pharisees, heck, they work for the Pharisees!

    It’s no surprise they want Hillary, she is one of them.

  13. If being on tv is your goal in life, you have no life.

    “No man is so virtuous that he can resist the highest bidder.” Don’t agree, and not because I consider myself a paragon of virtue. Some of us truly don’t much care about money and the mostly extraneous crap it buys. Selling out is too costly for some of us when shaving time rolls around and there’s the stubble-faced sell-out staring back.

    One thinks of Richard Rich and St Thomas More’s famous rejoinder about selling out for Wales.

  15. Spend enough time down in DC and the beltway to know there would be little fun being a ne’er do well conservative journalist who never gets invited to the really cool parties in Chevy Chase. And gets treated like a leper on the street. So they collaborate.

  16. David’s wife Nancy also wrote her own piece of victimization in the Washington Post yesterday using an incident from her own childhood. This has the feel of a coordinated attack from a couple who have spent their lives trying to break The GOP establishment elite. I am from the same town as Nancy and the same church, though a different congregation. I talked to a mutual friend who would have been witness to all of this and he was shocked, but reminded me Nancy had always had “more than one identity” as he put it. Knowing the minister Nancy is talking about, I don’t doubt it could have happened. Still, her article seems rather disingenuous. I attended David Lipscomb University in Nashville after high school before transferring to a sister school. Nancy attended there as well, though I don’t recall her wearing black and smoking as her article claims she did after leaving home. That’s where she met David. In him she found a kindred spirit. In high school Nancy was popular, beautiful, known for her writing and for being a BIG Republican. (Being Republican was still rare in West Tennessee in those days.) She was very into politics. I didn’t know David as a youth, but he and Nancy hit it off. She left Lipscomb with David before graduating to accompany him to Harvard Law School. She wrote of their early years in a book A Red State of Mind. I have a copy of that book. I remember being angry when I read it because of the way Nancy played up being a rare flower in a corn pone garden. What infuriated me most was her use of the term Catfish Queen. (Paris, TN does celebrate the World’s Biggest Fish Fry, but the “Catfish Queen” is called the Hostess Princess and has been for decades before Nancy moved to town from Mayfield, KY). At any rate, that’s when I saw Nancy’s mission – crafting the narrative that would help break her into the elite circuit. I admit being jaded, but David is doing this as well. Together, they’re on the same mission. They left the church of Christ and joined the Presbyterian church. They still get credit for being church-goers, but embrace a belief system that allows gay marriage, women ministers, gay ministers, etc. to cover them with left/moderate elitists. David joined the Army – check. Nancy wrote a book about being an Army wife – check. David and Nancy have multiple children but the only one that merits frequent mention from Nancy on Facebook and Twitter is her black daughter. Nancy will frequently remind you she has a black daughter. David did yesterday as well. Their son did receive a few mentions recently, but he had to break his jaw in football practice to do so. Now that he is healing, they’re back to black. David was honored with an award at a national conservative function (CPAC, perhaps) in 2008 or 2012. I remember watching it on television. Nancy positioned herself (holding their black daughter) just behind David and just far enough into the left side of the frame so everyone could see. No sign of their other children. When Sarah Palin was all the rage amongst the base, Nancy quickly put out a book ghost writing for Bristol Palin. Now that the Palin popularity has subsided, do you ever hear them mention Sarah Palin, Bristol Palin, or 2008? David and Nancy have invested much time and money into achieving a status they dreamed about as kids. So I can understand how they’d be angry at the jig ending before they really got to dance. They’re so angry they’ve resorted to leftist tactics – playing victim and hurling “RAACISS” at anyone who stands in their way. I appreciate this post and I’m happy to see someone besides me sees the charade.

    • I was at Harvard Law School at roughly the same time as French (I don’t remember him or Cruz). I was older than him, but could not imagine a girl “accompanying” me to Law School! I think we all looked and behaved like precocious teenagers. I would not have known what to do with a girl who “accompanied” me there! Was she sent to watch over him?

      • Ha! Well, I believe they did get married somewhere around that time. Nancy mentioned in Red State attending classes at NYU and people hating her because she was Southern. She also mentioned writing a brief column for a Philadelphia paper where, as she tells it, she received more hate mail than any columnist ever had.

    • I think everyone who was ever on the “gifted” track (or whatever they called it; doubt such a thing exists now) has run into one of these people. I have to admit, they fascinated me — we’re both 14 years old, but while my main concerns are zits and figuring out how to talk to girls, they’re lining up extracurriculars for Ivy apps and figuring out where best to get their second Master’s Degree. We’re both worried about getting dates for the Homecoming Dance, but while I’m shooting for the prettiest girl who might conceivably go out with me, they’re thinking “should I go black, handicapped, or black and handicapped?” Just bizarre. And for what? Some segments of mankind will always be a mystery to me

    • Very, very interesting, Brock. And somehow not unexpected. Just informed local details to fill out an outline (the Frenches) that looked and sounded familiar. They are types. Found amongs Democrats and Republicans. Trying desperately to shake the straw out of their hair and BE SOMEBODY!

      When will one of their younger children- the invisible ones – get fed up and bolt the suffocating nest?

    • Thank you for this insight, I’ve been studying the French duo a bit this last few months & appreciate the additional details.

  17. My impression is that French and his wife both strongly imply that French was involved in combat in Iraq. From what I can tell, he was nothing more than a lawyer behind the lines, but they both leave it marvellously vague.

    • His wife wrote a book on the stresses of having him in Iraq for a year. They are a matched pair. And hey, we actually SELL our whining!!!

      • He was a squadron JAG. All I’ve heard that he did was arrange leaves back to U.S. for soldiers who needed them. A major in the Army Reserve, he got a Bronze Star for being there.

        • It is very easy for officers to get Bronze Stars without the “V” device. A V on a Bronze Star stands for Valor. Those indicate actual combat and there far fewer of them. I would wager DF’s medal did not have the V.

    • That’s the popular thing with these guys. The military has enlarged the definition of “combat zone” to mean pretty much anywhere on earth. They have also come up with some clever hair splitting so that everyone can use the word “combat” to describe their service. Jag officers serving in purely administrative roles now say they served in a combat zone. That’s technically true, but the greatest danger they faced was an infection from a paper cut. In some narrow cases they were forward deployed handling prisoner interrogations, but they were never trying to shoot at anyone that was shooting back.

      From what I understand, the impetus behind the enlarged definitions of combat duty was to mollify the women. Girls are not going to be serving in combat units and that would hinder their careers. By letting everyone get “combat duty” even if they are just pushing paper in an office, it solves that bit inequity. It’s like everything else these days, everyone gets a trophy.

      • I often wonder if the Pentagon quartermasters/desk jockeys who see as much combat as you or I are eligible for the very generous life-long veterans benefits (free health care, pensions, etc.) that are soldiers receive and fully deserve.

      • There are JAGs who are deployed with very forward units, for example JAGs embedded in SF units. Often (but not always) have prior infantry background. Always have extensive qualifications – Airborne, Ranger, etc., and are often in very vulnerable positions. Marine Corps JAGs go through the same 6-month Basic School as all Marine Officers and were involved in door-kicking at the Battalion level in Iraq. This is a very small proportion of the overall JAG force, and no idea what French’s deal was. But just FYI.

        • I’d daresay it’s a quantum leap from an Army Reservist JAG to a Marine Corps JAG! And Airborne Rangers are a class apart as well. ZMan was right about paper cuts.

      • I remember seeing an interview, a long time ago, with William Safire. The host asked him a question about having served in the Army, like it was a big deal. Safire said something on the order of (quote from memory) ” Yeah I was drafted and sent to Germany in the 50’s . I’m not sure I should get any extra credit for such non-hazardous duty.” It would seem we have more Frenches and fewer Safires today

    • JAG-weenie behind the lines? Enforcing ROE compliance on the real combatants, from what I can tell.

  18. YES!!!

    I thought you’d topped yourself with The Big Rake. Now this. So eloquently articulating the thoughts so many of us out here have been having for a long, long time. We would think something simple like: “Why does he talk that way when he is supposedly Conservative? What exactly is he up to?”

    French has been a transparent fraud for quite a long time. He gets a lot of boosting from his fellow frauds. It was interesting to see Fred Barnes wiggle a bit but actually smile and kind of nod when Lou Dobbs was reaming the corrupt media last night. Dobbs showed no mercy and Barnes almost seemed to agree. Yet his publication The Weakly (sic) Standard is home to weird little Bill Kristol, who tried kingmaking with French.

    As in all difficult times it is important to really pay attention. It’s all there for good attentive well-informed minds to see.

    • I think Kristol was helping David raise his profile a bit. David and his wife Nancy live in Columbia, TN. He was interviewed by WKRN in Nashville this past week on his refusal to support Trump. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam also refuses to support Trump (and supports Common Core, etc. etc.). Interestingly enough, Gov. Haslam is term-limited as governor. Sen. Corker is also up for reelection in 2018 and isn’t popular. Tennessee has no readily-recognizable Republicans. I suspect David has political ambitions of his own. To see him try for governor or senator wouldn’t surprise me at all, but he’ll need the financial backing of the establishment. No wonder he hates to see it crumble.

      • Brock, it’s probably a pretty sure bet they are operatives George Soros States Attorneys General operation to install cultural marxists actors disguised as elected representatives in various key state positions.

  19. Saaaay…whatever happened to the discovery phase of Michael Mann’s liable/slander
    “civil” case?
    Mr. Gore not available as an expert forensic character witness?

  20. Rock ribbed Conservatives joining with the Trump hating Left is an example of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The left will use them as long as they are useful and then chuck them under the bus.

    • On November 9th, after we shake off the hangovers from our glorious Trump victory and begin assembling the public gallows, the Cucks will be the first to swing through the traps.

      Because at least the Democrats were honest enough to hate us out in the open.

    • It’s one thing to emblazon Conservative on one’s sweatshirt or have it tattooed somewhere. It is quite another thing to believe in the simple things it stands for and try to make those prevail in our land.

      David French and his cronies “virtue signalling”? You betcha. Just words.

  21. When I’m dictator, the various tax-code dodges that allow “think tanks” to exist shall be eliminated. If anyone wants to *pay* French and the rest of Cucky’s Own Virtue Battalion for their thoughts, so be it… but contributions shall not be tax-deductible, and contributions of over 3 figures shall be prominently listed *before* the table of contents (if an NR-type outfit has to put out a 400-page issue each month, with 398 of those pages devoted to listing small contributions so be it — figure out a viable business model, “conservatives”). Violations, of course, to be punished by whatever method the Commissioner of Ballistic Punishments deems fit.

  22. “whatever is worth doing is worth overdoing.”
    I thought all men lived by this motto. Real men do it for things worthwhile: sex, rock and roll, what’s right.

    • I like Hunter Thompson’s “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
      Wow, they are really turning pro as of late.

      • I really miss him. Probably the only journalist that could have made sense of this mess.

  23. This year has sowed so much distrust in me in regards to Conservative, Inc. that I no longer give guys like French the benefit of the doubt when I read what they write. I saw this yesterday and the words that immediately popped into my head were – Michelle Fields. In the year of conservative media hoaxes, I just can’t uncritically assume that French and his buddies are telling the truth about the harassment they’ve received. I don’t have any doubt that they’ve received some nasty e-mails. I’d bet they used to get a lot of nasty e-mails long before Trump from people on the Left too back when they were pretending to be conservative. But now the alt-Right is somehow tapping into his father-in-law’s phone to yell at his wife? For that matter, a claim by that phony Erickson that somebody yelled at his kid doesn’t strike me as particularly convincing either. Given how thoroughly the phonies in Conservative, Inc. have begun to use the tactics of the Left, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they’re trying out the faked hate crime for themselves too.

  25. I laughed. This virtue signaling cuck has been made to cry. He boasts about his service in Iraq, he was an Army lawyer. I suppose he could have received a Purple Heart for his severe paper cut. I do judge people by their looks and I have found this method to be quite accurate. He looks like one would imagine a cuck in real life looks. Look carefully at the rest of the NR writers, there is definatly something going on there. The rest of never Trump has a similar (((look))).

  26. That whole article reads like an SJW trolling parody. The comments are even worse. What a gaggle of utterly clueless buffoons.

  27. “…attending a veterans’ charity event in D.C…” “..friends at church…” “…my youngest daughter is African-American…” “…more victims are coming forward…” “…attending lunch with friends after church…” Nauseating virtue signaling.

  28. We have yet to see a “conservative pundit” go down in a blaze of glory telling an audience that the show he has been appearing on in a branch of the left wing media complex has been using him as a shill to engender the impression that the medium has a semblance of objectivity. Hasn’t happened.

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