SOME VICTIMS DESERVE TO BE BLAMED.

First, some background. It's prudent to consider that people who confront difficult circumstances might respond to them differently.  In Trendy Circles, though, calling out people for Blaming The Victim can cross the line into rationalizing, excusing, or condoning dysfunction, or mau-mauing people who Don't Toe The Party Line.  "[S]ay anything about lottery outlets and thirty year old grandmothers and tribal conflicts disguised as drug wars and rampant delinquency in the big cities, and at a minimum, you're likely to be denounced for 'blaming the victim' and you might find yourself up on charges for 'dog whistling' that becomes some imagined -ism or -phobia and grounds for sanctions up to banishment."

Normals, however, are fair game no matter how difficult their circumstances become.  "Hillary Clinton Says Europe Must ‘Get a Handle’ on Migration to Thwart Populism."

Perhaps that's just gaffe-prone Hillary being gaffe-prone Hillary.  She is, after all, the failed presidential candidate who consigned a large portion of the electorate to the basket of deplorables, but that didn't really come as much of a surprise, she, also, famously touted her work as a lawyer by turning the baking of cookies into a pejorative.

With a single response in 1992 to a question about her legal career, Hillary Clinton became a radical feminist in her critics’ imagination, the Lady Macbeth who was an affront to the choices so many other women had made.

“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession,” she said during Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.

The blowback was intense and she spent weeks apologizing, saying that she respected women who chose to stay at home and raise children.

All that crack did was contribute to the discrediting of the 1970s cohort of feminists, who never did figure out how to make the case that expanding the opportunity set of women to include the law (and engineering, and aeronautics, and the rest) did not have to denigrate the stay-at-home moms as "just a housewife."  But I digress.  This is a contemporary post about gaffe-prone Hillary.

The more you pull back the layers on Hillary, you’ll see that she holds disdain for anyone who isn’t part of her inner political circle. She views conservatives as ignorant rabble who are beneath her contempt. Moreover, she sees migrants — either legal or illegal — as just a means to political ends.

Look closely, though: she's blaming the victims of Europe's open borders, which is to say the normal Europeans who have to bear the brunt of the New Dispensation.

Europe’s leaders need to send a much stronger message that they will no longer offer “refuge and support” to migrants if they want to curb the right-wing populism spreading across the Continent, Hillary Clinton warned in an interview published Thursday.

Mrs. Clinton said that while the decision of some nations to welcome migrants was admirable, it had opened the door to political turmoil, the rise of the right and Britain’s decision to withdraw from the European Union.

That set off critics to her left, for whom the old Democrat party isn't third-world-friendly enough.

The rise of xenophobic, right-wing extremists intent on stoking bigotry and prejudice against foreigners in Europe and elsewhere has startled observers around the world—but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered critics Thursday when she revealed her belief that the onus lies with European leaders to curb migration in order to appease those same extremists, rather than to protect the rights of asylum seekers.

In an interview with the Guardian, the 2016 presidential candidate perfectly illustrated the rift between so-called centrist Democrats and progressives as she suggested Europe should end its attempts to resettle the world's 25.4 million refugees whose home countries have become unlivable due to war, unrest, and poverty—frequently thanks to actions by the U.S. and its European allies.

"I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame" of right-wing power in Europe, Clinton told the Guardian. "I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message—'we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support'—because if we don't deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic."

Clinton's comments drew immediate criticism from European leaders and progressive Americans, who in addition to calling for Democrats to stand with refugees as they exercise their internationally-recognized right to seek asylum, denounced her remarks as a capitulation to extremists like President Donald Trump and his European counterparts.

Note how easy it is to blame the developed countries, to call out misbehavior on the part of European voters, and to suggest that public officials ought not be accountable to their voters, rather than to suggest that the migrants make an effort to adopt the customs of their new home, or perhaps to work to improve conditions in their countries of origin.  "What they are actually enabling is the plundering of the first world by the third and the destruction of civilization and the engine of creation and production that has lifted most of the world population to a level our ancestors would consider unimaginable wealth."

The "populism" Mrs Clinton fears is simply popular sovereignty.  Europe isn't dealing with huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

If there was a moment when public sentiment about mass migration began to swing, as if on a hinge, it came in the days after New Years’ Eve 2015-16. Hundreds of women reported having been sexually assaulted by gangs of immigrants in the center of Cologne that night, but police took such pains to play down the attacks that news of the disorder did not reach newspapers for days. Notoriously, the city’s mayor advised women to avoid such unpleasantness in the future by keeping suspicious-looking men “at arm’s length.”

Wait, what, it's not a microaggression to lock your car doors on skeevy streets or be alert to who is on the elevator?  You can't deplorable-shame voters into going along with transnational cosmopolitanism.  "Liberalism [meaning transnational cosmopolitanism] and democracy have come into conflict. 'Populist' is what those loyal to the former call those loyal to the latter."

It might be better for Europeans, including the self-styled progressives, to use electoral means rather than to make the populists angry.

Don’t let Europe’s current round of playing pacifist dress-up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.

THE historical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened – even when the threat’s concocted nonsense – they don’t just react, they over-react with stunning ferocity. One of their more-humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing.

That's Ralph Peters, who hopes that North American traditions of assimilation will still have some purchase.

The United States attracts the quality. American Muslims have a higher income level than our national average. We hear about the handful of rabble-rousers, but more of our fellow Americans who happen to be Muslims are doctors, professors and entrepreneurs.

And the American dream is still alive and well, thanks: Even the newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can truly become an American.

But European Muslims can’t become French or Dutch or Italian or German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain second-class citizens. On a good day. And they’re supposed to take over the continent that’s exported more death than any other?

All the copy-cat predictions of a Muslim takeover of Europe not only ignore history and Europe’s ineradicable viciousness, but do a serious disservice by exacerbating fear and hatred. And when it comes to hatred, trust me: The Europeans don’t need our help.

The insurgency in France shows no signs of stopping.  There are echoes of the Democratic court intellectuals in M. Macron's urban base, smugly ensconced in their coffee houses and art galleries.

They are men and women in their 30s and 40s — affluent, well-educated, in competitive jobs, able to afford the crazy rents in places like Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon.

Safe in gentrified neighborhoods, they welcome “diversity” and see themselves as morally superior. They welcomed a president in their own image, especially as he faced the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, the perfect foil, in last year’s election.

Somebody else has to live in the "changing" neighborhoods and deal with the diversity on the ground.

For years, [les déplorables] have seen their livelihoods threatened — by plant closures, inflation, the disappearance of public services like small train lines, hospitals, schools and local post offices. They need their cars, however old and beat-up, to drive their kids to school, to shop, to find and hold a job.

Their lives are fenced in by an ever-growing skein of nanny-state regulations. Before the fuel tax, there was the unpopular rollback of the speed limit on France’s roads to 80 kilometers (49 miles) per hour from 90 (56). The same week, bureaucrats added dozens of new requirements for vehicles, forcing many cars off the road. Macron’s government offered drivers a $4,500 bonus to buy electric cars: a Marie-Antoinette moment seen as an insult by [them].

The insurgency is apparently spreading to Belgium and the Netherlands as well.

While the thought of Brussels eurocrats cowering in their offices or pushing to get onto the last helicopter out, ominous signs proliferate in the United States as well.

Voters are searching for answers that the politicians aren't giving them. The frustration level is building and there is no consensus - no middle ground to find. It is either total victory or nothing.

Americans are generally slow to anger but one can sense a palpable unease in most of the country, from urban centers to the heartland. Meanwhile, government continues to grow and with the Democrats now in charge of the House, it is only going to get bigger.

Will the next economic downturn see Americans from both parties taking to the streets? I wouldn't rule it out at all.

Particularly if, as I fear, the Democrats and their enablers in entertainment, the news services, and higher education continue to be down for blaming victims if they happen to be privileged for the wrong reasons.