So, another thing our president said:

The President is asked to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and his answer falls incredibly short pic.twitter.com/y8XbL8ci9k

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 23, 2020

This is madness, full stop. We should never, ever hear a US president answer that question as Donald Trump did. If there is reason to think the election result is fradulent, then of course he should challenge it. But this or any president should affirm that if he loses the election, he will abide by the constitution.

This is the kind of statement from Trump that would have been political death in any other presidency prior to his. This even goes beyond standard Trump cray-cray.

So why would anybody support him after this?

I’m watching tonight on Twitter about the violence breaking out in Louisville. As I write this, there are reports of an officer shot. I don’t blame the Democrats for this, but I don’t believe that they will stand up to it. Here are the closing remarks of a prominent ESPN commentator. It’s pure demagogy. If you knew nothing about the facts of the case, you would be moved to fury by his words:

My closing remarks. pic.twitter.com/R5PHVpMNcP

— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) September 24, 2020

I received an e-mail this afternoon from a parent in Los Angeles (I’m going to write about it separately, tomorrow) who wrote in specific detail about how his child’s kindergarten is forcing hardcore “antiracist” ideology on the students. Little kids! He says that the kindergarten’s focus this semester is on teaching “activism” (their word). He gave details (again, I’ll write about it tomorrow), and added:

[When] we talk to other liberal parents…most of whom I would label “woke” to some degree – (and we are not woke!) but even they express genuine discomfort and concern with the critical race theory and anti-racism stuff being taught to kids so young…but none of them would dare say anything publicly for fear of being called racist or facing the mob.

I received an e-mail tonight from an employee of Fairfax County (VA) government, who sent “antiracist” information her boss sent down so his workers could learn more about “equity.” Lots of forthrightly anti-white stuff. The reader wrote, “I am afraid that the intense focus on racial identity and the vilification of a particular racial group that the county government is creating will disrupt our relationships with those we serve.”

Late this afternoon, I listened to Joe Rogan’s podcast interview with Abigail Shrier. I decided that I should listen to it now before Spotify’s management chickens out and removes it under pressure from its internal activists, who want it taken down because Shrier’s book criticizes how the trans movement is damaging the health of teenage girls. I strongly urge you to listen to it. Rogan is basically a pro-trans libertarian, but he asks Shrier all the questions people ought to be asking about this stuff. Shrier — who says repeatedly that she’s supportive of adult trans people — explains at length how trans activists and their allies have made it impossible even to have a conversation about this stuff. She says that doctors and mental health professionals tell her all the time that they cannot breathe a word about what they really think, or they stand to lose their licenses. Parents are intimidated into silence about their own children. And laws are taking the side of the revolutionaries.

Did you know that in Oregon, a 15-year-old can receive sex change treatment, and get it paid for by the state, without parental consent? Abigail Shrier said this on the Rogan show, and I thought, “Surely not.” Well, it’s true. This is what the crazypants progressives are doing to this country.

And on and on.

So: do we stand with the freakish president who will not commit to leaving office peacefully if he loses the election? Or do we stand with the freakish Democratic Party, which backs the people and the ideology setting races at each other’s throats, which stands with the gender radicals that are tearing families to pieces and harming girls — and which sides with the people who want to gag anyone who objects to any of this stuff?

Where is the sane, stable center? Does it exist? I’m not trying to “whatabout” this stuff. It’s all bad. But I’m not for one second buying that Trump is the only threat to stability and sanity. The terribleness of one does not obviate the other.

Something’s got to give.

UPDATE: To make it completely clear, I agree without qualification with Peter Suderman here. It is a complete disgrace that Trump is leaving this in doubt:

If you are the President of the United States, the only acceptable answer to a question that sounds anything like, will you commit to the peaceful transfer of power if you lose the coming election, is “Yes.”

— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) September 24, 2020

UPDATE.2:

Louisville Metro Police confirm that TWO officers have been shot and were transported to Louisville University Hospital.

— Charlie Gile (@CharlieGileNBC) September 24, 2020

UPDATE.3: Do you think most people are worried about the president sh*t-talking about how he might not leave office without a fight, or about being attacked by wokesters while they are peaceably going about their business in public?

Protestors are now going restaurant by restaurant to chant at diners on Beach Dr. in St. Pete. A lot of diners yelled back, starting multiple confrontations.

This one was the most significant. Protestors took over a couple’s table. Not sure why they were targeted specifically. pic.twitter.com/dzLM7KuCW9

— Josh Fiallo (@ByJoshFiallo) September 24, 2020

UPDATE.4: A reader sent in an uncharacteristically angry e-mail taking me to task for this “on the one hand, on the other hand” post. I asked him for permission to publish it so I can answer it. He said okay, but provided this more neutrally worded summary of what he said:

1) Trump is daily a clear threat to republican/ democratic norms, in a way that should terrify anyone who sees the news in other countries and what this leads to

2) Trump has proven to be ineffective at best and an accelerant at worse for various forms of left extremism (he’s not responsible for them per se, but I think it’s clear that he is at best not stopping them, save with symbolic gestures, and at worst actively accelerating them by whipping his adversaries into a rage)

3) The judiciary is already pretty conservative, and further attempts to push it that way will lead to court-packing, and a crisis of legitimacy for the courts

4) Most crazy woke stuff is coming from institutions Trump has no control over or even influence on (school boards, corporate HR, academia, etc.)

5) Therefore, since he’s a man of base character who is starting to sound like a serious threat to the republic itself, and the likely payoff of supporting him is ephemeral, even accepting as a given the current criticisms against the SJW left, we should not soil ourselves in this fashion.