Are Americans becoming Sovietized?

Are Americans becoming Sovietized?

Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review

What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?

Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin's lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?

Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism. Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.

1. There was no escape from ideological indoctrination — anywhere. A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much on merit, expertise or past achievement. What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.

Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion. Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.

2. The Soviets fused their press with the government. Pravda, or "Truth," was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned lies. Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Communist Party partners.

In 2017, a Harvard study found that over 90% of the major TV news networks' coverage of the Trump administration's first 100 days was negative.

3. The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.

Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments. The U.S. Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.

CNN recently alleged that the Biden administration's Department of Homeland Security is considering partnering with private surveillance firms to get around government prohibitions on scrutinizing Americans' online activity.

4. The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.

Currently, cash-strapped universities nationwide are hiring thousands of diversity, equity and inclusion staffers and administrators. Their chief task is to scan the admissions, hiring, curriculum and administration at universities. Like good commissars, our diversity czars oversee compliance with the official narrative that a flawed America must confess, apologize for and renounce its evil foundations.

5. The Soviet Union was run by a pampered elite, exempt from the ramifications of their own radical ideologies.

Now, woke Silicon Valley billionaires talk socialistically but live royally. Coke and Delta Airlines CEOs who hector Americans about their illiberality make millions of dollars a year.

What unites current woke activists such as Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James Mark Zuckerberg and the Obamas are their huge estates and their multimillion-dollar wealth. Just as the select few of the old Soviet nomenklatura had their Black Sea dachas, America's loudest top-down revolutionaries prefer living in Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills, Montecito and Malibu.

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6. The Soviets mastered Trotskyization, or the rewriting and airbrushing away of history to fabricate present reality.

Are Americans any different when they indulge in a frenzy of name-changing, statue-toppling, monument-defacing, book-banning and cancel-culturing?

7. The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.

Since when did Americans encourage co-workers to turn in others for an ill-considered word in a private conversation? Why do thousands now scour the internet to find any past incorrect expression of a rival? Why are there now new thought criminals supposedly guilty of climate racism, immigration racism or vaccination racism?

8. Soviet prosecutors and courts were weaponized according to ideology.

In America, where and for what reason you riot determines whether you face any legal consequences. Politically correct sanctuary cities defy the law with impunity. Jury members are terrified of being doxxed and hunted down for an incorrect verdict. The CIA and FBI are becoming as ideological as the old KGB.

9. The Soviets doled out prizes on the basis of correct Soviet thought.

In modern America, the Pulitzer Prizes and the Emmys, Grammys, Tonys and Oscars don't necessarily reflect the year's best work, but often the most politically correct work from the most woke.

10. The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing freedom. Instead, they boasted that they were advocates for equity, champions of the underclass, enemies of privilege — and therefore could terminate anyone or anything they pleased.

Our wokists are similarly defending their thought-control efforts, forced re-education sessions, scripted confessionals, mandatory apologies and cancel culture on the pretense that we need long-overdue "fundamental transformation."

So if they destroy people in the name of equity, their nihilism is justified.

Climate Change -- Extinction Rebellion Idiots

 

Climate Change -- Extinction Rebellion Idiots

Mike Walker, Col USMC (ret)

All,

Extinction Rebellion CO2 pollution radicals dumped manure at the entrance to the White House today.

How stupid can these morons be? 

If Extinction Rebellion really cared about CO2 pollution they would have dumped the manure at the entrance to the Chinese embassy on Wisconsin Avenue some three miles to the northwest.

Why are environmental radicals afraid to the tell the truth?

If China does not act then everything we do in the United States is utterly futile and doomed to failure. To understand why all you have to do is to look at this one image:

MLB swings and misses...

 

MLB swings and misses in political debacle to move All-Star game from Georgia

Charles Gasparino, NYPOST 

It’s clear Georgia’s new voter law is nothing close to the “Jim Crow on steroids” description attributed to our alleged unifier in chief, President Biden. Yet I’m pretty certain the law is an attempt by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to ingratiate himself with Trump voters who believe Kemp didn’t do enough to prevent the Peach State from turning blue in the last election. 

I’m also totally convinced that Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred shouldn’t be within a mile of this sordid political mess. 

I say this as someone who respects the MLB commish and likes him for his business acumen. For all the contretemps of the past year that hit the league amid COVID, he managed to cut a deal with the players ­union. It was a mess, but at least we had baseball during some dark times in 2020, and again this year. 

That’s why it’s confounding that he thought he should transform himself overnight into some sort of social-activist warrior for the sake of the league by moving this year’s All-Star game out of Atlanta, touching off a firestorm of criticism that some say may cost him his job.

No offense to Rob, but few great pitchers make great hitters, and there are few good businesspeople who can navigate the backstabbing world of politics. 

As I write this, Manfred is being vilified by fans for giving in to a left-wing mob, costing majority-minority Atlanta jobs, and being second-guessed by many MLB officials and owners for naively thrusting the game into one of the thorniest political issues of our time by taking a stand on Georgia’s controversial new law.

Still, you can sympathize with his predicament. The president of the United States falsely suggested the Georgia law was racist because people might have to show ID to vote. Biden then, idiotically, urged MLB to play the All-Star game somewhere else.

Once that fuse was lit, the usual group of corporate wokesters jumped into the fray: Delta, Coca-Cola and, of course, Larry Fink, the uber-progressive CEO of money-management powerhouse BlackRock that has seeded the Biden administration with its top executives. 

Then it was game on for the activists who descended on the commissioner’s office in droves. Manfred spoke with various players about the issue and was worried about protests and boycotts, people close to him tell me. 

Ultimately, Manfred feared that if the game remained in Truist Park in suburban Cobb County, Ga., he would be a pawn of progressive activists. An All-Star game that was supposed to be a celebration of Atlanta Braves great Hank Aaron (who died in January) would be reshaped into a political event to bash the Georgia law and possibly push other progressive edicts, such as legislation to nationalize voting regulations. 

Given the mounting pressure, Manfred believed the least political solution was to make a statement by taking a swipe at the Georgia law and then get out of town, I am told. 

The role of Stacey Abrams in this spectacle is note­worthy. Abrams, who nearly became governor in 2018, is credited with turning Georgia blue for the presidential election and creating a get-out-the-vote platform that elected Dems to two bitterly contested Georgia US Senate seats that made Chuck Schumer majority leader.

An Abrams spokesman says she never met with Manfred directly, nor did she support moving the game out of Atlanta since it would cost so many minority jobs. (An estimated $100 million in economic activity has now moved to the new site of the All-Star game, the majority-majority city of Denver.) 

However, the spokesman, Seth Bringman, confirmed that Abrams let it be known to MLB officials that she wanted the league to support her voting-rights efforts, including speaking out against the Georgia law. 

“In a single one-on-one conversation with an MLB senior adviser, she urged the league to keep the All-Star game in Georgia and to speak out against the law when they do,” said Bringman. 

A senior baseball executive has a less-benign take on Abrams’ part in the mess. In his telling, she was part of a group of activists, including NBA superstar LeBron James, who “wanted us to do more than just a pre-game ceremony . . . Baseball would have to be in the market for doing stuff” involving voting rights. 

One thing is certain: By mixing business with woke­ism, Manfred has satisfied no one. Abrams hasn’t stopped touting that she wanted the All-Star game to remain in Atlanta, even if only on her political terms. 

Even worse, many baseball fans (who trend conservative) want Manfred’s head. MLB officials are now worried about fan boycotts. 

In the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCon­nell: “Republicans drink ­Coca-Cola, too, and we fly and we like baseball. It’s ­irritating one hell of a lot of Republican fans.” 

It’s a lesson our increasingly woke CEOs should heed, or they may soon be in the same no-win predicament as Manfred.

GEORGIA SMEAR BLOWING UP IN BIDEN’S FACE

 

GEORGIA SMEAR BLOWING UP IN BIDEN’S FACE

John Hinderacker, Powerline

The Democrats, in their seemingly endless quest to profit from race hatred, have lied repeatedly about Georgia’s election reform law. Their lies were too bald-faced even for their own captive press, earning Joe Biden the maximum Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post. Now the push-back is under way in earnest.

It turns out that Joe Biden’s own state, Delaware, has voting laws that are more restrictive (i.e., do a better job of protecting election integrity) than the new Georgia statute. So a Georgia representative has introduced legislation to conform Georgia’s election law to Delaware’s:

“This law will have five key features to make us like Delaware,” the state representative began. “Instead of having up to 19 days of early voting like we have here in Georgia, we’re going to have exactly zero early voting days, because that’s how they do it in Delaware.”

“Instead of having no-excuse absentee voting, like we have here in Georgia,” Cantrell continued, “we’re going to make you have an excuse to have an absentee ballot, and that excuse will be you’re either sick or you’re disabled, because that’s how they do it in Delaware.”

“Instead of having secure drop-boxes where you can place your absentee ballot in one of those drop-boxes for security’s sake, we’re going to provide you with exactly zero drop-boxes, because that’s how they do it in Delaware,” he said.

“And instead of being able to get food or drink from anyone outside of the 150-foot buffer zone while you’re voting, or being able to be provided water inside the 150-foot buffer area, we’re going to make it illegal for you to receive anything of value at any point while you’re standing in line to vote, because that’s how they do it in Delaware,” Cantrell added.

No word yet from Joe Biden on whether his own state’s election laws are “worse than Jim Crow.”

Also no word from Biden on whether the Masters golf tournament should proceed in the land of worse than Jim Crow.

Less than a week after President Joe Biden expressed strong support for Major League Baseball’s decision to move its All-Star game to Colorado, he refused to say the Masters Tournament should also boycott Georiga over the state’s newest election law on Tuesday.

“I think that’s up to the Masters,” Biden said before expressing support for corporations enacting economic sanctions over political disagreements. “It’s reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are.”

And, what do you know? Major League Commissioner Rob Manfred is a member of the Augusta National Golf Club. So Marco Rubio has some questions for Manfred:

In a letter Rubio penned to Manfred, he wrote, “I write to ask you whether you intend to maintain your membership at Augusta National Golf Club. As you are well aware, the exclusive members-only club is located in the State of Georgia.”

The senator argued the decision will have a larger impact on several small and minority-owned businesses than the “new election law ever will.” Rubio claimed the move is one “that reeks of hypocrisy.”

He continued, “Will Major League Baseball now end its engagement with nations that do not hold elections at all like China and Cuba? Will you end your lucrative financial relationship with Tencent, a company with deep ties to the Communist Party and actively helps the Chinese Government hunt down and silence political dissidents?”

Of course not! There is no one as greedy as a liberal whose financial interests are threatened.

It turns out, too, that Major League Baseball is headquartered in New York. And–guess what?–New York has more restrictive election laws than Georgia. Can we expect MLB to pick up stakes and move to a state with truly lax laws, like, say, Minnesota? Don’t hold your breath. They wouldn’t want to take the risk that their headquarters may be burned down by the Antifa/BLM rioters whose cause they so fervently endorse.

So the Democrats’ anti-Georgia crusade has blown up like an exploding cigar. How long will it be until the press pivots to “Republicans pounce?”

Timeless Wisdom: The Age of Postman

Timeless Wisdom: The Age of Postman

Joshua Charles, ,Epoch Times

When I was 19, I read a book that would forever change my life. It was Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Though published in 1985, with each passing year, its insights have become more and more relevant and ominous.

Postman contends the following: electronic media is dumbing us down, transforming our dialogue into mere forms of entertainment driven by profit rather than substance, which in turn prevents us from not only speaking like adults, but even thinking like one. He traces this phenomenon in the realm of politics, religion, and education.

The introduction makes his terrifyingly prophetic thesis plain:

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. … In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

How can we read these words—surrounded by the ruins of a bankrupt and exhausted culture—and not conclude that, in Postman’s words, we have become “a trivial culture,” and are thus well on our way to becoming a captive one?

The Founding Fathers made two things exceptionally clear: for a society to remain free, its citizens must be both virtuous and knowledgeable. Freedom cannot be maintained by a society full of passion but devoid of reason.

And this is precisely why our politics has gone insane, and constantly extends itself deeper and deeper into our daily lives: we, as a culture, do not hold these values in high esteem. We denigrate them.

We do not value the pursuit of truth (do we even believe it exists?); we value the self-reinforcing echo chambers of our own creation.

We do not value knowledge; we value talking points and tweets (self-reinforcing, of course).

We do not value the self-control of virtue; we value the unrelenting narcissism of uninhibited self-expression and actualization.

We do not value history, and all the treasures of the human experience available for our training and growing in wisdom; we value anything new, fresh, hip, and contemporary that will satisfy our moment-to-moment desires and inexhaustible supplies of boredom.

We do not value substance, depth, and rationality; we value whatever can be sold, marketed, and peddled with glitz, glamor, and pizazz.

And all of these tendencies, in the “Age of Postman,” are now being used against us, to undo our capacity to think, and thereby dissolve our society which was always dependent on a thoughtful, informed citizenry to survive.

It is thus a great twist of irony that perhaps never before has America been so inundated with information and at the same time so bereft of wisdom. In a phrase I’ve used for many years, social media transforms adults into children with their own enthusiastic consent. This is exactly what Postman predicted: a time in which discourse would “abandon logic, reason, sequence, and rules of contradiction” in favor of mere entertainment. Aesthetically, Dadaism; philosophically, nihilism; and psychologically, schizophrenia.

And that is the great risk of a free society—that its people can become utterly corrupted, and that its government eventually, in one way or another, becomes a reflection of its people. Our politicians have obliged us, and in turn we experience the bitter fruits of a populace dumbed down by a constant stream of external stimulation that requires zero mental exertion. It is overwhelmingly sensory, appealing merely to our passions and our baser nature—the parts we share with animals. And yet it is the mind that distinguishes man from animals. Its debasement, therefore, is a debasement of our most fundamental human nature.

Postman warned of how this is precisely the sort of thing tyrants of all ages have sought to achieve:

“Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse. That is why tyrants have always relied, and still do, on censorship. Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment—and cares. How delighted would be all the kings, czars, and führers of the past to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest.”

But we didn’t need Postman to recognize this danger. We simply needed to heed the warnings of our Founders. They told us that while the American experiment was special, we ourselves were not. We Americans are human beings, the same as all the rest. “We make ourselves popular,” John Adams warned, “by telling our fellow-citizens that we have made discoveries, conceived inventions, and made improvements. We may boast that we are the chosen people, we may even thank God that we are not like other men. But, after all, it will be but flattery, and the delusion, the self-deceit of the Pharisee.”

As I wrote in 2016, “To echo our Declaration of Independence—when a long train of trivialities and amusements, pursuing invariably the same object evinces an obsession with comfort, fun, and entertainment, it is the people’s burden, their punishment, their harvest, to bear the affliction of a politics likewise made rotten and corrupt by their loss of moral health and intellectual energy.”

Absent what Churchill in the 1930s called “a supreme recovery of moral health and vigor,” a new age has dawned, or at least been consummated—one far more sinister and insidious than we realized.

Ours is the Age of Postman.

The Biden Conundrum

 

The Biden Conundrum

Bill O'Reilly, billoreilly.com

After six weeks in office, President Biden has not yet held a press conference, but his spokeswoman promises one at the end of this month.  That’s nice as a free country deserves to occasionally hear from the guy running it.

There is no question that Mr. Biden appears befuddled at times but, remember, he held his own in two debates with Donald Trump just a few months ago.  So, it’s hard to evaluate the 78-year-old President’s mental capacity in any kind of responsible way.

Having written “Killing Reagan,” I know about cognitive decline in the White House.  After President Reagan was almost killed by an assassin’s bullet, he was in and out mentally for a time.  Some days he simply could not do the job and there was quiet talk among some of his senior staff of exploring the 25th amendment.  That allows for temporary or permanent removal of a president if he or she is unable to function effectively.

In the book, we document what happened in Ronald Reagan’s first term and how it was kept from the public. Eventually, President Reagan made a stunning comeback.

Today, some anti-Biden pundits believe old Joe is being set up for removal using the 25th amendment, but I don’t see that. The President has been exceedingly accommodating to the progressive movement so why would the ardent leftists, who control almost all access to Mr. Biden, want him gone?

At this point, President Biden is supporting the Green New Deal, quasi-open borders, massive, pork-laden spending, and higher taxes.  This is like a greatest hits album for leftists.  So, there will be no “Joe Must Go” chanting by progressives.  No way.  Joe must stay because he’ll do exactly what they tell him to do.

The chief domestic advisor to President Biden is the infamous Susan Rice.  She of Benghazi fame when, speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, misled the world about the Libyan terror attack that killed the U.S. Ambassador.  Ms. Rice is also a major pal of Michelle and Barack Obama. Believe me when I tell you that Ms. Rice is the exact opposite of befuddled.  She is laser-locked into changing the United States.  She wants to impose a paradise of equity, where certain groups of Americans get special treatment and government perks courtesy of everyone else. 

Joe B. is absolutely on board with that even though it’s possible he might not understand what it all means.

The Biden administration is not going to end well. I could be wrong, but I don’t see perspicacious leadership in the Oval Office.  I see a figurehead who may be unable to calculate the consequences of his policies. Does Joe understand Americans are paying a lot more for gas since Inauguration Day?  Is he processing that thousands of undocumented foreign nationals, some with Covid, are now crossing the southern border? 

Does Joe know that his “green” envoy, John Kerry, is in the pocket of the Iranians?

It would stun me if Joe Biden is actually aware that after six weeks, a number of bad things have happened in this country. Maybe he’ll be asked about all that in his end of March press conference. 

But knowing the White House press corps, I kind of doubt it.

Trumpism without Trump?

 

Trumpism without Trump?

Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review 

Six weeks ago, Americans were assured that Donald Trump had left the presidency disgraced and forever ruined politically.

Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, and first to be tried as a private citizen when out of office. He was the first to be impeached without the chief justice of the United States presiding over his trial.

His nonstop complaining about a stolen "landslide" election was blamed by many as a distraction that lost two Republican Senate seats from Georgia. The current Democratic-majority Congress was the result.

Americans were assured by Trump's impeachment prosecutors and the media that the Jan. 6 Capitol assault was his fault alone. So Trump was condemned as a veritable murderer, responsible for five deaths at the Capitol. Many of his own advisers and Cabinet members had loudly resigned in disgust.

Yet six weeks after leaving office, a Phoenix-like Trump brought a crowd at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference to its feet. His 90-minute blistering broadside against Joe Biden's radical first 40 days of executive orders and hard-left appointments enthused thousands.

Polls show that while he has lost some support in his party, Trump still wins 75 percent approval in the GOP.

So why is a supposedly once-toxic Trump apparently back at center stage?

The infamous Capitol riot is still under investigation. Elements of the media narrative of an "armed insurrection" that led to the alleged murder of officer Brian Sicknick are being debunked and quietly retracted.

Many Americans disapproved of an outgoing president holding a massive rally about alleged voter fraud in a highly polarized climate. But evidence has not yet suggested — as the media once insisted — that Sicknick was assaulted and murdered by a rioter.

One of the four protesters lost in or near that melee died through violence. She was an unarmed female military veteran shot while unlawfully breaking into the Capitol by a still unnamed police officer.

So far, no one arrested inside the Capitol has been charged with either carrying or using a firearm. The "armed insurrection" turns out to have been more of a leaderless, thuggish mob riot "incited" by no one in particular.

For all the national outrage at Trump, 95 percent of Republican House members voted against his impeachment. Eighty-six percent of Republican senators voted to acquit him of impeachment charges.

Biden so far has not turned out to be the "good old Joe from Scranton" moderate healer of media and Never Trump fantasies. Instead, his executive orders and appointments are the most radical and polarizing of any recent president.

Getting kicked off social media by Silicon Valley moguls ironically turned out to be a plus for Trump. His once controversial tweets and posts no longer distract from Biden's frequent displays of ineptitude. And in the lull, attention has turned to Trump's fiercest critics — especially Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California. Both are now mired in scandal, and Newsom is likely facing a recall election.

Ever so slowly, the image of the now-muted ex-president is transforming from former bad-boy bully to current bullied private citizen.

In addition, the 74-year-old ex-president acted like he was just 60 at the CPAC event. The 78-year-old Biden increasingly appears bewildered — and more like he is in his 80s.

The current detention of undocumented minors at the border and presidential orders to bomb in Syria remind voters that Biden is doing exactly what the now-silent media used to blast Trump for doing. A Biden-created border crisis, climbing gas prices and renewed aggression from China suggest that the "Make American Great Again" agenda may be missed after a little more than a month of reset.

The United States leads the world in COVID-19 vaccinations, in part because Trump wisely hedged bets by enlisting and often subsidizing several different companies.

Right after the Capitol riot, there was talk in Republican Party circles about building upon the successful MAGA agenda — but by engineering a Trump transition to a senior statesman role.

Insiders think impressive possible 2024 presidential candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others might better advance the popular MAGA cause — with the endorsement of Trump himself. The new standard-bearer then supposedly would lack Trump's off-putting manner that alienated swing voters.

That may happen. But for now, no one knows whether Trump's ability to cut through left-wing platitudes revs up more to vote than it does to turn off others.

Events have radically turned political realities upside down in just six weeks. We should expect far more volatility in the next four years.

Party insiders may dream of Trumpism without Trump, fearing that he could never win a majority of voters. They may be right. But then again, who has been right about Donald Trump's final demise in the last five years?

San Francisco, trip down Market St, 1906

 Just before the devastating 1906 earthquake and fires...

Media’s censorious gatekeepers are mad

 

Media’s censorious gatekeepers are mad — because they’re losing power

Glenn H. Reynolds, NY Post. 

With Donald Trump out of office and de-platformed, you’d think mainstream media gatekeepers would be happy. You’d think wrong.

Though the media-Big Tech regime is doing its best to silence opponents and seize control of the high ground, the news from within is grim. They aren’t happy with how things are going. 

That’s because they know they’re losing. Some are losing audiences and revenues. But more important, they’re losing control of the narrative.

And since control of the narrative, and the power and self-importance that accompany that control, is the most important thing in their lives, they can’t be happy.

Consider the cri de coeur of Washington Post public editor Hamilton Nolan, inspired by Tesla’s decision to scrap its media-relations department. How could that happen?

Nolan knows how, and that’s what bothers him: Tesla scrapped its media-relations department because the media don’t much matter to it. Tesla has plenty of ways to get its story out without relying on the media, and that makes the media much less important — and much less powerful. And it’s the power part that hurts the most.

Writes Nolan: “We are living through a historic, technology-fueled shift in the balance of power between the media and its subjects. The subjects are winning. . . . As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. But this is about power.”

It sure is. And the media have less. Some of that is because of technology, but more of it is because reporters and editors have lost their standing with the people whose “right to know” they allegedly uphold.

The “right to know” claim rings hollow when The Washington Post, along with virtually every other mainstream outlet, did its best to kill the still-undisputed Hunter Biden stories published in these pages ahead of the election. Do the people have a “right to know” things in general? Or just the things Nolan would want them to know? Seems more like the latter, and people have noticed.

Right now, much of the media regurgitate news releases for those they favor — like the stories about President Biden’s firewood or First Lady Jill Biden’s scrunchie that were served up as news this week. And the media shut down stories they don’t want people to know about, like Hunter’s. Why should Tesla or any other news subject go along with that?

Meanwhile, The New York Times ran a hit piece on the “Slate Star Codex” blog, on the basis, apparently, that lots of Silicon Valley people read it and it says un-PC things sometimes. As Matt Yglesias wrote, the coverage boiled down to this: “Scott Alexander’s blog is popular with some influential Silicon Valley people. Scott Alexander has done posts that espouse views on race or gender that progressives disapprove of. Therefore, Silicon Valley is a hotbed of racism and sexism.”

As Reason’s Robby Soave commented, “one starts to get the feeling that the Times simply wants to tarnish every view that exists outside its own narrow purview, perhaps because the Times has appointed itself the gatekeeper of the unsayable and resents having to relinquish this role to newer media ventures.”

One starts to get that feeling because it’s true. The Times has also gone after the Clubhouse app, an audio forum that lets people talk about things in real time, also apparently because the paper doesn’t like the idea of free speech. In a tweet, the Times warned that “unfettered conversations” are taking place on Clubhouse. Quelle horreur! Bring out the fetters posthaste!

Actually, fetters seem to be what the Times wants. In an earlier episode, New York Times hall monitor Taylor Lorenz falsely accused Clubhouse participant Marc Andreessen of using the word “retard” in a conversation, then issued a non-apology apology when cornered. Other journalists complained that because Clubhouse doesn’t keep or allow recordings, there’s no way to hold people “accountable” for saying something controversial.

In all cases, the complaint is that people are bypassing the gatekeepers and saying what they want to say. Given the behavior of the gatekeepers, that doesn’t seem like a bug but a feature. Bypass away!

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.

Will Hard-Left Turn Lead to Pushback?

 

Will Hard-Left Turn Lead to Pushback?

Victor Davis Hanson, Daily Signal  

The corruption of the Renaissance Church prompted the Reformation, which in turn sparked a Counter-Reformation of reformist, and more zealous, Catholics.

The cultural excesses and economic recklessness of the Roaring ’20s were followed by the bleak, dour, and impoverished years of the Great Depression.

The 1960s counterculture led to Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972, as “carefree hippies” turned into careerist “yuppies.”

So social, cultural, economic, and political extremism prompt reactions—and sometimes counterreactions.

The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state. Trump and his “Make America Great Again” agenda were its pushback.

The counterreaction to the populism of the Trump reset—or Trump himself—is as of yet unsure.

President Joe Biden’s tenure may mark a return to business as usual of the Bush-Clinton years. Or, more likely, it will accelerate the current hard-left trajectory.

Either way, it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders—a tactic candidate Biden condemned.

On almost every issue—open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees—Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50% public support.

When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party’s hard-left wing of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues.

But he also soon became either unwilling or unable to stand up to them.

Now they—and the country—are in a revolutionary frenzy. The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to rename more than 40 schools honoring the nation’s best—Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln—largely on racist grounds that they are dead, mostly white males.

Statues continue to fall. Names change.

The iconic dates, origins, and nature of America itself continue to be attacked to meet leftist demands. And still, it is not enough for the new McCarthyites.

Social media are banning tens of thousands. Silicon Valley and Wall Street monopolies go after smaller upstart opponents.

A wrong word destroys a lifelong career. Formerly sane pundits now call for curtailing the First Amendment. Thousands of federal troops blanket a now-militarized Washington, D.C.

If Trump’s pushback tried to return to traditions ignored during the Obama years, Biden’s reset promises to become far more radical than Obama’s entire eight years.

Trump likely lost his second pushback term for two reasons—neither of which had anything to do with his reset agenda.

First, the sudden 2020 pandemic, quarantine, recession, summer-long demonstrations and riots, and radical changes in voting laws all ensured that 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day, derailed a booming economy, and finally wore the people out.

Second, Trump underestimated the multitrillion-dollar power and furor of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the media, Hollywood, and the progressive rich. Those forces all coalesced against him and swamped his outspent and outmanned campaign.

With 24/7 blanket ads, news coverage, endorsements, and social media messaging, Trump sometimes was easily caricatured as a twittering disrupter. The inert and mute Biden in his basement was reinvented as the sober and judicious Washington “wise man” antidote to Trump’s unpredictability.

Had Biden continued his moderate campaign veneer, the current left-wing radicalism might not have prompted a counterreaction.

Instead, Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical left-wing movement in the nation’s history.

Pundits thought Biden’s prior hints of a single four-year term would make him a weak lame duck. Instead, the idea of just one term has liberated the 78-year-old Biden. We forget that septuagenarians can be as reckless as 20-year-olds. Some old guys can feel their careers only have a few remaining years and might as well go out with a bang—and a legacy.

For now, Biden enjoys a congressional majority for the next 24 months. He has no plans to run for reelection. He sees both realities as a liberating blank check to accomplish what the much more heralded rock star Barack Obama never could.

Experts assured voters that Biden would work on a bipartisan consensus and bring back “normality.” He would “unite” the country.

That will not happen. How ironic that Biden will not just be pushed and pressured by the radicals whom he brought to power, but he may be leading them forward to cement an even harder-left legacy.

Will there be a reaction to this extremism?

The left is assured that radical changes in voting laws and demography, the fears of COVID-19, the Antifa-Black Lives Matter uprising, and anger at Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot have all permanently changed the electorate—and pushed it further leftward.

If they are wrong, they have instead alienated and insulted the American people, and will reap the whirlwind in 2022 of the wind they are now sowing.

(C)2021 The Center for American Greatness.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

Can Donald Trump Mount a Comeback?

 Can Donald Trump Mount a Comeback?

Bill O'Reilly, Billoreilly.com  

The “Turtle” snapped.  Powerful Senator Mitch McConnell, aka the Turtle, is not opposing the impeachment trial of President Trump, signaling the two men are no longer “Happy Together.”   If you don’t understand that reference, shame!

There is no doubt that the traditional leaders of the Republican Party want nothing further to do with Donald Trump.  However, they have a problem because so many Americans continue to support him, and believe he is being treated unfairly by the establishment.  

So the Turtle and other GOP power brokers should be very careful if they want to keep power.  President Trump is not a man to be easily dismissed.

The road back to authority for Mr. Trump is paved by just one person: Joe Biden.  And I’m not talking about running for President again which is a long shot, but not impossible, for Donald Trump.

No, I’m talking about political influence and credibility.

The conniving Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer well understand that President Trump will retain “people power,” much the way Barack Obama did when he left office. That’s what is driving this absurd second impeachment which could be worse than the first farce.

Donald Trump did encourage Americans to protest the election results.  Absolutely, he did that.  But he never even contemplated the violence that occurred on January 6. Maybe he should have.  But a misjudgment, even when it’s drastic, is not a removable offense for a president.  If it were, most of our Chief Executives would have been impeached.  Or am I wrong?

Therefore, the latest impeachment is designed for just one thing: to finish Trump forever in the political arena.  

At this point, the betting odds are that Mr. Trump will not be convicted.  Schumer needs sixteen Republican senators to support the democrats.  A few like Mitt Romney are salivating to cancel Trump.  But most are not.

Now back to President Biden.  The smart play would have been for him to discourage impeachment in the name of national unity.  

Instead, Biden did his best impression of Pontius Pilate and stood aside. Are you surprised?  It would have taken courage to go against the howling left wing mob.

Somewhere Barabbas is smiling.

The overreach by Democrats and their media allies is just getting started, and it is here where Donald Trump might benefit.

First, the cancel culture.  This despicable trend is owned exclusively by the left.  The cruelty and unfairness of the effort is obvious to any decent person.  The more traction the cancel thugs get, the more anti-liberal backlash there will be.

Immigration.  Soon the southern border will be under siege again because President Biden is sending open border signals.  The approaching chaos will anger many Americans.

And finally the economy.  Already gas prices are rising because oil companies know Biden will try to hurt them.  So the energy moguls are stockpiling cash.  Higher gas prices will hurt working people.

I could list many other examples but here’s the headline.  If President Biden’s liberal policies fail, and that’s almost a given, Americans will be looking for someone to stop the madness.

And it won’t be the Turtle.

 Good bye Mr. President, Hello Mr. Trump... The best is yet to come, not spelled Biden...

Where Does He Go From Here?

Where Does He Go From Here?

Conrad Black, American Greatness 

President Trump's political funeral has been celebrated often before, and that bell has still not tolled. The idea that Washington, D.C., will return to the status quo ante is nonsense.

There were no objections to President Trump’s address to his followers in Washington on Wednesday until several hours later, when the outrages at the Capitol had occurred. He did not incite violence or go beyond urging his partisans to show “strength.” He and his followers sincerely believe the election was stolen from them, and he explained those reasons, apologizing for doing so in such detail. 

Under the circumstances, there was nothing irrational about the president’s comments, and no excuse for raising the 25th Amendment, which applies to presidents who are physically or mentally incapacitated. Since the president did not break any laws, there is no serious question of impeachment. Congress lacks the time, the grounds, and the votes for it, and the only point of impeachment and removal would be to try to prevent Trump from seeking office again. Arguments that he should resign are fatuous. The invasion of the Capitol was a shocking event but the assault on the president is a confected storm of righteousness that will subside quickly. 

The real principal issue in this immense controversy is whether the presidential election was fairly decided or not. In 44 states, there have been no significant problems at all. As everyone who has followed it knows, there are a number of questions in the voting and counting methods of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—most undertaken in professed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures reduced the verifiability of ballots and increased the dangers of fraud; opposition to these changes was generally described as “voter repression” by the Democrats. 

To those satisfied that the election produced a fair result, everything President Trump and his followers have said and done that alleges otherwise is unfounded. To most of the 48 percent of American voters who supported Trump there are serious doubts about the fairness of the result.

Righteous Anger

The president and his entourage made serious mistakes. After warning accurately of the dangers of mass-mailed ballots, extended voting periods, and the invitation to ballot harvesting, they were inadequately prepared to film and document irregularities and to launch plausible, timely lawsuits. 

In practice, most such litigation claimed remedies that were not justified by the alleged facts. In many cases the actions of the state legislatures, to whom the Constitution grants the authority of organizing elections within their states, were apparently lawful. But the Trump campaign complaint was that the offending states had failed in their constitutional obligation to assure fair elections. Trump and his 74 million voters have a powerful grievance in the refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the complaint of Texas against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, supported by 18 other states. They argued that the four defendant states failed to assure that the election was conducted fairly in those states, denying Americans their constitutional right to fair elections.       

When seven justices, including all three nominated by President Trump, declined even to hear the Texas case, the court abdicated its constitutional duty and the judiciary as a result temporarily ceased to be a coequal branch of the U.S. government with the legislature and the executive. This is in profound contravention of what James Madison and the other authors of the Constitution established. It leaves the selection of the chief of state and head of government of the United States to an unruly, and as we have seen, potentially unlawful contest: a raw struggle for power between contending parties and factions.

For those who profess confidence in the fairness of the presidential election, all of the complaints about it are outrageous. Trump should just accept his defeat as Governor Samuel Tilden did in the disputed 1876 election (where he did extract significant concessions), as Richard Nixon did in 1960 (for which he has received little credit), and as Al Gore did in 2000 (when he received an adverse Supreme Court judgment). 

This election’s result is a far more contestable one than those. But the president has not helped his case by absurd claims of a landslide victory if the results had not been tampered with, and even less by his unconstitutional request that the vice president unto himself should have declared the election to be invalid.

Almost half the voters are in a state of righteous anger. Trump almost won, despite being sandbagged by 95 percent of the political media and outspent by his opponent two-to-one, and his enemies had to engage in unprecedented chicanery and rely on the unforeseeable cowardice of the Supreme Court to win. It is hard to line up conscientiously behind the Democratic establishment, the totalitarian Trump-hating media, Big Tech and the information dictators of social media, and the vast and generally nauseating mass of half-wits and pundits in the entertainment and celebrity communities, and say that the argument that the elections were tainted has been completely disproved.

President Trump had to choose between accepting defeat and splitting national opinion profoundly. There is no reason why someone who has real reason to believe that the world’s highest and most influential office has been taken from him unjustly should just roll over. 

Gradations of Integrity

Those who claim that it was a fair election are now claiming that the attack on the Capitol was racist, a complete fiction for which there is no evidence, and that the Capitol police were themselves racists. This was Biden’s theory as he compared Trump to the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and then incongruously called for national unity. It should be clear in the trials of the perpetrators whether the thugs in the vanguard at the Capitol were mainly professional hooligans who happened to be Trump supporters or serious Trump enthusiasts who happen to be hooligans.

There were gradations of integrity in the responses to last week’s events. U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) implicitly blamed the president for inciting the hope that the election could still be won, but acknowledged that the election result was questionable. Veteran Fox News commentator Brit Hume dismissed Trump’s allegations against the fairness of the election as “nonsense,” a disappointing capitulation to the iron grip of the anti-Trump media that he must know to be false. 

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and a large number of other Republicans who continued to express qualified support for the president departed on this issue with comparative civility; they are not unpardonable wafflers but they have been exposed as slippery ingrates. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) apparent belief that shooting the female Air Force veteran Trump supporter dead in the Capitol was more or less of a positive development, was disgraceful. The righteous weaseling of the Trump hating RINOs—Senators Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)—should at least be sufficient to ensure that they are not reelected. 

Words do not come easily to describe the hypocrisy and betrayal of former apparent cabinet loyalists: Elaine Chao, Betsy DeVos, and Mick Mulvaney. The Civil War was an “insurrection”; this was not. It was scores of millions of voters upset at what they think was a stolen election. Many will consider the spectacle of congressmen hiding under their desks in what look like tinfoil hats a representative posture of an institution only 11 percent of Americans think is doing its job well, as reported by a media that 85 percent of Americans don’t believe.

The Largest Faction-Head in Politics

Trump set out five years ago to cleanse the political establishment. In policy terms, he has been a very successful president who was effectively ratified in congressional and state elections, and he has reoriented the Republican Party. He made great inroads on traditional sources of Democratic support among minorities, too. 

Trump’s own status is to be determined; those who have not deserted him and can bring in robust traditional Republicans will be the winners if Trump supports them. These are Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), and Governors Ron DeSantis (Florida) and Greg Abbott (Texas), and most conspicuously, Vice President Mike Pence, if he quietly passes on attending the inauguration. There are others. 

Trump remains by far the largest faction-head in American politics. He has done himself serious damage but it is not necessarily irreparable, and he has smoked out his pretended supporters and has forced the political establishment to the last extremities of electoral misconduct to defeat him. Where it goes from here depends largely on how Trump plays his cards; he is going to have an easy target in the new administration and his supporters are certainly the majority among the Republicans.

Trump’s political funeral has been celebrated often before, and that bell has still not tolled. If he learns anything from all this (and learning from his own mistakes hasn’t been his strong suit), he may be around for awhile yet. The idea that Washington will just go back to where it was before he arrived really is nonsense. 

Why Is Media Stoking Disinformation Campaigns

 

Why Is Media Stoking Disinformation Campaigns

Yuri Vanetik, American Greatness 

Americans need to insist that legacy media be held to account as a treacherous culprit in the mass deception campaigns attributed to politicians, shady public relations operatives, and foreign powers.

Disinformation media campaigns operated by the Russians and the Chinese may also have a domestic origin. It is not what one would think. They don’t come from sleeper cells. Instead, the American legacy media, by way of its greed and lack of accountability, is responsible for the deception. 

Stealth public relations operatives drive conspiracy theories and smear campaigns using the complicit media of record as their echo chamber. Whether you are a supporter of President Trump or you consider him to be a lawless authoritarian is irrelevant because all Americans should be concerned that what is presented as news may actually be part of a paid public relations campaign or a sensation-oriented spin that is not newsworthy at all. 

Often the media is doing the dirty bidding of fringe groups and paid reputation assassins solely to maximize profits, knowing that their malfeasance is relegated to that of a protected class of free speech and free press. Media today is like the clergy in the middle ages—their profession considered sacred and their actions above the law.

Yochai Benkler, a Harvard Law professor, led a team of researchers that dissected the way information is amplified. Benkler’s team just published its study, which examines President Trump’s alleged “disinformation” campaign against mail-in voting and details the techniques the Trump world used to share Trump’s opinions on the election. Benkler and his team began from the biased position that a difference of opinion on policy questions qualifies as disinformation, nevertheless, the findings inadvertently run contrary to the popular idea on the Left that it is the Russian and Chinese foreign troll factories that are interfering with our elections with “disinformation.”

The research examined 55,000 media stories, 5 million tweets, and 75,000 Facebook posts. The researchers mapped the campaign out, showing a clear origin: Trump—whether on TV or Twitter or by close proxy. Yet, the legacy media insists that the Russians manipulated Trump’s election, that Trump is working for the Russians, and that now—again the Russians—foreign influencers are pushing misinformation to keep Trump in control or return him to the White House.

The American press magnifies this dramatically because news platforms cannot resist giving attention to the Trump White House. Calling his actions a disinformation campaign would be challenging for journalists who are desperate to project balance as if it is the same thing as fairness. More importantly, it is easier to get readers (and advertising dollars) if you advance a monolithic notion that foreign villains are sabotaging our elections. 

Media disinformation has real consequences and calling it “fake news” does not deter dishonest journalists or capture the depth of their betrayal of the trust our republic has bestowed upon them.

But whether the president tweets or goes on TV, the study says, it is media coverage of the tweets that amplifies the message—often uncritically—far beyond what the account accomplishes alone. Yet the American legacy media clings desperately to the distortions it publishes—like the theory that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians.

Whatever happened was most likely not much more than intelligence jousting between competing countries. To claim otherwise gives President Trump too much credit. The media, undaunted, amplifies the narrative even more, fulfilling Einstein’s definition of insanity. We see this everywhere. The New York Post recently had a compelling scoop on how Joe Biden, when he was vice president, met with a top executive of a shady Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, at the request of his son, Hunter. Burisma was paying Biden’s son $80,000 a month for his connections. Hunter’s emails show that he told people he was handing 10 percent to 50 percent of the foreign windfall to “the big guy”—President-elect Joe Biden himself.

The rest of the media ignored it—and focused, instead, on the possibility that this latest scoop somehow was the work of Russian operatives. Never mind whether the emails were authentic—they were. The media did this even after Twitter and Facebook brazenly muzzled the New York Post and blocked users from being able to retweet or open the online link to read the story.

The media continues this behavior despite a stunning revelation in late September: the CIA knew in July 2016 that Russian intelligence believed—or was pretending to believe—the Hillary Clinton campaign was plotting to smear candidate Donald Trump. This news came not from an anonymous and illegal leak, as did so many headlines in the Russiagate investigation. This news came on the record from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who declassified secret information and released it to Congress.

It follows, therefore, that the FBI and the CIA waged a full-scale investigation of the newly elected Trump Administration based on allegations they knew to be questionable, and possibly fabricated by the Clinton campaign or Russian spies. Then, the Mueller team investigated this farce: 675 days, 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 500 witnesses, 19 lawyers and 40 FBI agents. Cost: $25 million for a 488-page report that cited “no evidence” that “any American” had colluded with the Russians. The mainstream media outlets that spread this scandal have never explained how they got it so wrong. Nor did they explain why they became useful idiots for Russian spies. Unfazed by the knowledge of the lies they were spinning, some journalists and their editors continued to pursue a false, but politically useful, narrative.

I take media disinformation personally. In early 2018, I was collateral damage in this Russiagate smear, a part of the media-driven disinformation campaign (see my Wall Street Journal op-ed explaining this from last year). An absurd four-part series speculated that I might be a Russiagate co-conspirator. No one alleged this outright—because there was no basis whatsoever to tie me to anything nefarious. It was all insinuation and innuendo rife with ad hominem comments about me and my family, outright lies from anonymous, paid sources. Followed by the waffle: “It isn’t known what, if any, connections Mr. Vanetik may have to” so and so.

Various newspapers and websites picked up the bogus reporting. None of them gave me any chance to refute or even respond to the lies and bizarre insinuations. Nor did the three McClatchy reporters who started it all: Kevin G. Hall and Ben Wieder in the McClatchy Washington Bureau, and Angela Hart, then at the Sacramento Bee (and now at a Kaiser health policy website, healthline.com).

A well-known journalist and television personality who became a friend, told me after reading the stories that “it was a drive-by shooting into an empty window.” And now, in the same vein, Hall, Wieder, and Hart can’t be bothered to respond to my phone calls and emails. Whatever happened to the standards of journalistic fairness and professionalism?

The corporate media, unrepentant and blind to its own sins, should agree to strict standards: that no negative story can be based solely on anonymous sources; that news stories must disclose the motives and agenda of the identified sources they quote; that all targets must be given early notice that they are being investigated so that they could prepare their defense, which should include the right to be quoted fully and prominently.

The media will do this when pigs fly, to use a cliché that journalists favor. Perhaps the Supreme Court will revisit New York Times vs. Sullivan. That ruling in 1964 said any public figure, to win a libel case against the media, must prove reporters acted with malice or utter disregard for the truth. That is an impractically high hurdle. As soon as they cover you, you now are a public figure who cannot fight them in court and have a real chance of winning. Amy Coney Barrett, now a Supreme Court Justice, has come under attack from Trump haters and the Democrats boosted by media campaigns aiming to discredit her. Justice Brett Kavanaugh endured even worse vitriol in his confirmation hearings two years ago. Perhaps the high court, with these two newest members, will set in motion the measured change in law that puts victims of smear campaigns at a virtually insurmountable disadvantage. 

More importantly, perhaps, Americans will insist that legacy media be held to account as a treacherous culprit in the mass deception campaigns attributed to politicians, shady public relations operatives, and foreign powers. Keeping in mind First Amendment guarantees, something must be done to ensure that Americans can be confident that what is reported to them is factually correct and newsworthy. The stakes for our country are much too high to demand anything less.

If There Is a President Biden, Don’t Expect to See Him Around for Long

If There Is a President Biden, Don’t Expect to See Him Around for Long

Roger Kimball, The Epoch Times 

Several times during the election season, I noted that no matter who was said to have won the presidential contest, there never would be a President Biden, not really.

There were basically two reasons there would not be a President Biden, except, very briefly, in some strictly nominal sense.

The first reason is that Joe Biden is an empty cipher. He is a drowsy Howdy-Doody puppet, manipulated by a committee of woke ventriloquists.

They picked Biden out of the primary line-up because he seemed the least threatening and most pliable. Biden promised “normality” after the brashness of Donald Trump.

Biden’s painfully obvious flirtation with senility was as much an asset as a liability, because, though it made for some cringe-worthy displays of incompetence, it conspired with COVID to allow his handlers to keep him tucked safely away in his basement for most of the campaign.

Writing for The Epoch Times in August, I compared Joe Biden to the aged Achon, a character in Evelyn Waugh’s novel “Black Mischief.”

Achon, the legitimate emperor of the fictional kingdom of Azania, had been safely confined to a cave for 50 years.

After some elaborate negotiations among the real powers of state, Achon is set free and is carried to the capital to be invested as emperor. Alas, his long captivity left him bent and senile. He dies upon coronation.

Waugh did not record whether his last words were “Come on, man.”

Who knows whether Joe and Jill will actually move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come Jan. 20. Maybe they will.

It would be interesting to sit in on his first meeting with Jake Sullivan, the man Biden wants to be his National Security Advisor.

Sullivan recently disclosed that the “Big Guy” asked him to “reimagine national security” to include “the pandemic, the economic crisis, the climate crisis, technological disruptions, threats to democracy, racial injustice and inequality in all forms.”

I’m sure that will amuse the Chinese, as much for the fact that they didn’t make the list of concerns as for the many fatuous items that did.

I hate to introduce a discordant note into this green dream of perfect wokeness, racial inclusivity, and mandatory readings of Harrison Bergeron. But the current Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, has a different list of national security threats.

“It is that the People’s Republic of China,” he wrote, that “poses the greatest threat to … democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.”

It appears that when Joe Biden thinks about China, he thinks about that Chinese office mate that his son Hunter lined up for him.

Mention of Hunter Biden brings me to the second reason that Joe Biden’s tenure as President, if it happens at all, is likely to be merely nominal.

Many people wonder why Biden picked, or agreed to, Kamala Harris as his running mate.

With the possible exception of Elizabeth Watch-Me-Drink-a-Beer-With-My-Hubby Warren, Harris was the least popular of all the Democrat candidates for President. She was from a state that anyone with a “D” after his name would carry. She had no national following.

So why pick her? Sex and race were part of it, of course, but there are plenty other half-black females parading around.

I think Kamala Harris was chosen because she was an eager disciple of the left flank of the Obama-Clinton coalition.

It is they who have defined the Biden profile. And it is they who would staff his administration, assuming he has one.

But have you noticed the sudden flurry of attention to Hunter Biden and his travails?

There’s the $400,000 from Burisma he forgot to declare. There’s that “laptop from hell.”

There’s all that money—millions and millions—that had been shoveled to him and his family for … for what? For meetings with “the Big Guy,” i.e., dear old dad.

We knew all this before the election. But the media dismissed it when they didn’t actively censor it. “Just drag Biden over the finish line. Then we’ll talk.”

Well, he is almost over the finish line now. Maybe he’ll have a chance to put his hand on the Bible and recite the oath of office.

But it will not be long, I predict, that a reason will be found to cut him loose.

Maybe people will start noticing all the things he doesn’t notice and sound the alarm: “Hey, he’s President of the United States! He can’t remember what day it is!”

Or maybe “grave concerns” will be raised about all the nefarious revelations that are lurking on Hunter’s hard drive.

One way or another, it will be President Harris before you can say “Paris Climate Accord” or “Let’s Not Be Beastly to the Chinese.”

I thought the Dems were pretty cynical when they nominated Biden in the first place. I suspect I didn’t know the half of it.

Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is “Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the 21st Century.”

WALTER WILLIAMS’ LAST COLUMN

 

WALTER WILLIAMS’ LAST COLUMN

John Hinderaker, Powerline

Walter Williams, economist, teacher and columnist, died yesterday. His long-time friend Thomas Sowell writes movingly about Williams here. Williams’ last column appeared the day before his death. The information it contains is so remarkable and so timely that I want to highlight it. The subject is education, specifically the education of urban blacks:

Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore’s school system. What it found was an utter disgrace.

In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math.

In 13 of Baltimore’s high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math.

In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math or reading.

These schools nevertheless have a 70% graduation rate. They are, as Williams writes, a fraud that is perpetrated on parents and taxpayers.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District scored the lowest in the nation compared to 26 other urban districts for reading and mathematics at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels.

A recent video captures some of this miseducation in Milwaukee high schools: In two city high schools, only one student tested proficient in math and none are proficient in English.

Is there any exception to the disgrace of urban public schools? Not that I know of. What many have forgotten is that it hasn’t always been this way:

Should we blame this education tragedy on racial discrimination or claim that it is a legacy of slavery? Thomas Sowell’s research in “Education: Assumptions Versus History” documents academic excellence at Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High School and others. This academic excellence occurred during the late 1800s to mid-1900s, an era when blacks were much poorer than today and faced gross racial discrimination.

Also in Sowell’s “Education: Assumptions Versus History” is the story of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, a black public school in Washington, D.C. As early as 1899, its students scored higher on citywide tests than any of the city’s white schools. From its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of its graduates went off to college.

Dunbar’s distinguished alumni include U.S. Sen. Edward Brooke, physician Charles Drew, and, during World War II, nearly a score of majors, nine colonels and lieutenant colonels, and a brigadier general.

Today’s Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass high schools have material resources that would have been unimaginable to their predecessors. However, having those resources has meant absolutely nothing in terms of academic achievement.

Why do we put up with it? I don’t know. No doubt part of the answer is that the people who wield most authority in our society, of all races, have left the urban public schools far behind. They are content to pay taxes to support those schools, which far from being underfunded consume large amounts of money. But money, as Williams said, has nothing to do with it.

For those left behind in the public schools, the school environment has deteriorated alarmingly:

The school climate, seldom discussed, plays a very important role in education. During the 2017-18 school year, there were an estimated 962,300 violent incidents and 476,100 nonviolent incidents in U.S. public schools nationwide. Schools with 1,000 or more students had at least one sworn law enforcement officer. About 90% of those law enforcement officers carry firearms.

Aside from violence, there are many instances of outright disrespect for teachers. First- and second-graders telling teachers to “Shut the f— up” and calling teachers “b—h.”

Williams was a man of my era. His description of the role of the vice principal is exactly what we had in my youth in a South Dakota town:

Years ago, much of the behavior of young people that we see today would have never been tolerated. There was the vice principal’s office where corporal punishment would be administered for gross infractions. If the kid was unwise enough to tell his parents what happened, he might get more punishment at home.

The rot in our urban public schools is a disgrace, but it largely reflects, in concentrated form, the larger rot in our society. The incoming Biden administration will undoubtedly restore the Obama-era guidance that imposed racial quotas in school discipline, meaning that the urban public schools will become even more lawless and dangerous. For reasons that I assume have to do with the money and clout of the teachers’ unions, not a single Democrat seems to care.