Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll advocates LITMUS TESTS BEST FOR ACIDITY VS. ALKALINITY, not HUMAN BEINGS. She writes:

This column will definitely not be in my Top 10 Most Humorous. There is something unfunny that I am compelled to discuss. I’ll be funnier next week.

I see a tragic mistake being made over and over again in the commentariat. And it’s one which will ultimately cost us the 2024 election and possibly even the saving of our republic. Some of it seems to come from trolls who oppose saving our republic. But part of it is from avatars I recognize as people who have appeared to be good conservatives.

It is the nasty attitude displayed toward anybody who isn’t ideologically perfect, but who is headed toward the good!

Bari Weiss recently gave a speech that, in my opinion as an experienced speaker who is VERY critical of speakers, was one for the ages. Just brilliant, inspiring and even funny. Now Bari Weiss is a Jewish Democrat who happens to also be a lesbian. So, some people commenting either dismissed her out of hand – “she’ll only vote Democrat anyway” – or expressed ridiculous bigotry based on her sexual orientation.

People, people, people! Bari Weiss is a courageous free speech absolutist. She is a mother who is against the mutilation of children. Like most Americans, she is against late-term abortion. And most importantly, she is against barbarism and for civilization.

Those are not small things. Give her some credit for moving in our direction. She has more courage in her little finger than most opiners hiding behind anonymity have in their entire beings. One commenter actually said Bari Weiss is “stupid” because she has been – and as far as I know, still is — a Democrat. But things happen in a person’s life that force a reexamination of long-held beliefs. Turning points. Crises. Revelations. Rubicons are crossed where there is no going back no matter how many jobs or friends you lose.

Some 25 years ago Joe and I were increasingly upset by the laissez faire attitude of leading Democrats toward street crime. Civil rights activists since our teenage years, we came to believe that both welfare and affirmative action were actually HARMFUL to the very people the leftists pretended to help. The bogus and plainly idiotic “Anita Hill” accusations against Clarence Thomas and my attitude to that travesty rendered me persona non grata to virtually all of my feminist friends.

In October 2000 we were appalled with Clinton’s disgraceful response to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in which we lost some 17 American sailors, with 37 wounded. When it came time to “investigate,” the Yemenites sent the FBI packing and Clinton basically said, “Oh, well. Nothing to do then.” At least he remembered to bite his lip in sorrow.

Then from August 31-September 8, 2001 came the Anti-Racism Conference in Durban in which leading American leftists and the international “We Hate the Jooz” Cabal spent most of their time passing Hate Resolutions against Israel. A leading columnist in the St. Paul Pioneer Press was totally on board with it. And there went the Pioneer Press from our home. The Red Star Tribune of the North was already long gone.

Finally, just a few days later, came 9/11. Four days later, at a big deal Democrat’s anniversary party, leading Minnesota Democrat women, at one time considered friends, whispered to me that “America had it coming” and “Thank God at least we got rid of Barbara Olson.” This not only rendered me uncharacteristically speechless, but I had to leave at once lest I be arrested for assault. Possibly even Battery. Events had hurled me to the conservative side for good. Who wants to associate with ghouls who cheer the murder of a fellow American just because she opined for Fox News?

Which brings us full circle to Bari Weiss and her awe-inspiring speech to the Barbara Olson Anniversary Memorial Dinner.

Bari Weiss may be many things, but “stupid” is not one of them. I’ll grant you that, along with half of our fellow Americans who identify with a party, she is a registered Democrat. If ever having voted Democrat makes her “stupid,” then, not only are Joe and I stupid, but so is Trump. So is John Hinderaker. So is Thomas Sowell. Okay, I’ll stipulate that it took some of us longer to see the light than Sowell or Hinderaker, but almost always there were two unsavory choices and you had to pick one. Kind of like the two choices in a school lunch line.

We were saved from any lasting regret for our most unfortunate vote choices because usually our guys lost. Bigly.

The three votes of my life that I most regret are for Gore in 2000 (my last ever Democrat vote), and McCain and Romney. “You mean you would have voted for Obama?” No, never! But Obama just did exactly what he SAID he was going to do, as destructive as that was. McCain and Romney BETRAYED me at every turn and are at least partly responsible for the nitwit grifter occupying the White House today. Romney has even stated that, if Trump is the nominee, he will vote for Biden. (Probably, again.) But, see what I mean? All three of those votes ultimately mattered not at all because my candidates all lost…

Ten years ago next March I began to write this column for Power Line. The comments were run through Facebook at that time and I wasn’t on Facebook and couldn’t even respond to my own comments. But that first intro column garnered 30 comments! I was so excited all I did all day was hit “Send-receive.” Two of those commenters have been with me since that first column – TonyP173 and Gary Davis. God Bless ‘em. They both said “Welcome aboard!”

BUT I remember that TWO of the commenters, reading that I had moved from Minnesota to Arizona, basically said, “Go home. We don’t want your kind here. All you’re going to do is bring your stupid voting patterns with you.”

Here’s the thing, friends. It really hurt my feelings at the time, but I’m a big girl who had been a standup comic who dealt with hecklers. The worst part was the commenters were just DEAD WRONG. I did not move to Arizona to get away from the winters. Or even the wretched taxes. I moved to Arizona, away from friends, family and what was left of my career after I became a conservative, to get away from the Democrat stranglehold on the state. And these fellas – both were guys – were not even willing to give me a sportin’ chance.

Everybody with even a modicum of experience in negotiation knows that when somebody is HEADING IN YOUR DIRECTION, you don’t spit on them even metaphorically. You don’t say, “Well, you don’t agree on EVERYTHING, so you are a stupid, no good doody-head.” No. You take him or her by the hand – again, metaphorically – and say, “Thanks for coming this far. Let’s see what else we can agree on or pleasantly agree to disagree on.” In other words, you act like a human being!

Let’s leave ideological purity to the Left. J. K. Rowling has been a feminist in good standing for years and years. Luckily for her, she is also richer than Croesus, real serious “screw you” money. But she happens also to believe the preposterous notion that was all the rage for the last several millennia that there are males and there are females and there are not 57 or 75 or even 5 different “genders.” And so the Left says to her, “Die, heretic!” And would make that happen if they could. Leftists can never be happy. So the goalposts always move.

Eve Ensler wrote the play The Vagina Monologues in 1996 and it has been translated into some 48 languages. I never saw it – not being interested in an embarrassing evening of yakking lady bits – but my own gynecologist did and did not care for it. That was good enough for me. So, Eve, who I guess now goes by “V” has feminist credentials up the Monologue, but apparently was somewhat skeptical about Minor Attracted Persons (the spiffy repackaging of that judgey old word “pedophile”) and also about men pretending to have actual vaginas. And she has been swarmed and hated on by loons wishing for HER death as well.

Is this who we want to emulate? I do not know how Bari Weiss will vote in 2024. But if we peel just an extra 20 percent of Jewish voters and maybe 20 percent of Black voters conservatives will win. I do not know what will happen in the next year with the grotesque anti-Semitism discovered in our grand land. Or how many tens of millions of invaders – 58,000 in just the last 28 days through Tucson, 10x the population of the town I grew up in — will render all elections moot. Or if a major recession/depression will cause immense social upheaval. But I do know that Bari Weiss is headed our way and that it would be a grave and tragic mistake to push her back to The Dark Side.

To people who say to those of us who ever voted “wrongly” — “Only WE are the pure; you are tainted at best” — I extend a hearty mazel tov at living an entire life wherein you have never made a mistake. And I also have to add: Yeah, well, then try winning an election with only the pure. Because I guarantee you that you had quite a mixed bag of a coalition that put together the win in 2016.

May that “mixed multitude”– even those terrible people who only agree with, say, 40 of our 52 litmus test issues — win in 2024 and take back this great country in a landslide. Time is running out.