RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dear President-Elect Trump,

You have gone on record expressing a presumably laudable desire to “bind the wounds of division” between your supporters and opponents—anti-Trumpers and pro-Trumpers, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, left and right—that have torn the nation apart during and after your electoral campaign. Perhaps this is the kind of political rhetoric deemed necessary in the wake of a hotly contested election in which violent passions have been unleashed. Or perhaps you truly believe that a therapeutic healing of psychic lesions is now called for and is somehow feasible.

In the event that the latter is the case, I suggest this would be a serious mistake on your part. Not every question has an answer and not every problem a solution. That is simply the nature of life or, as some would have it, the condition of fallen man. It is certainly true of the political world and, in particular, of the competing theories of what constitutes the ideal or best possible political state. In modern times in the Western world, the conflict has been between a collectivist, command-economy philosophy held by a managerial elite, whether Marxist, Socialist or Progressivist, and a democratic, free-market dispensation predicated on the franchise and a government responsible to its citizens.

It is fought on both a domestic and international scale, and is a war that will never be resolved. It will continue indefinitely, despite the demonstrably historical fact that the collectivist faction has failed wherever it has imposed its hegemony, creating only misery, destitution and virtual enslavement for the majority over whom it rules. Nevertheless, failure after failure, it will always be with us, for it is a function of the utopian quest inherent in the human soul that inevitably leads to a dystopian finale. Nemesis invariably follows hubris, but hubris is perennial.

Thus I believe it is either naïve or disingenuous—one way or another, an egregious error—to assume that the political fissure between collectivism and individuality, Socialism and classical liberalism, fantasy and reality, can ever be closed. As I wrote elsewhere, “the rift between a part of the nation committed to the values of work, family, and creative expenditure and a part of the nation mired in ignorance, pride, and destructive sentimentality—in effect, between heartland and coast, rural and urban, conservative and left-liberal—is permanent. The attempt to heal the chasm, however laudable, is doomed to fail.”

My sense of realpolitik tells me that, although the “healing” rhetoric may have a prudential value, it remains an intrinsic misconception. By definition, one cannot pacify an implacable foe, and one should not fall into the deceptively alluring trap of believing that social, cultural and political harmony can ultimately prevail on any imaginable level. Your enemies on the left—the media, the academy, the brainwashed student cohort, the entertainment industry, the Democratic Party—and your enemies on the right—the Republican aristocracy, the Muslim sector, the fringe fascists—will not go away. They will work against you indefatigably regardless of your best intentions. CONTINUE AT SITE

On Thursday, Obama at a press conference in Germany with German chancellor Angela Merkel again offered useless unsolicited advice to Trump.

Obama spent the last few months ignoring his job as president while campaigning every day for Hillary to win his third term. Now that the voters elected Trump and rejected him, Obama is touring Greece, Germany, Italy, and Peru. While in Greece, he attacked Americans who voted for Trump by labeling them as voting for the “dark side” of populism.

Thursday, Obama said:

He ran an extraordinarily unconventional campaign and it resulted in the biggest political upset in perhaps modern political history[.] … What I said to him was that what may work in generating enthusiasm or passion during elections may be different than what will work in terms of unifying the country and gaining the trust even of those who didn’t support him.

Obama, with his outsized ego, is lecturing Trump on how to act as president. He is lecturing that Trump must unify the country and gain the trust of those who did not support Trump. Obama ignored the separation of powers to bypass Congress by issuing executive orders and agency regulations. He bragged that he had a pen and a phone to issue executive orders. Think of the DREAM Act to defer deportation of illegal aliens brought here as children, passing Obamacare with only Democratic votes on a parliamentary trick by Harry Reid to avoid the filibuster, calling the Iran deal an agreement instead of a treaty to avoid the two-thirds vote in the Senate, and amending Obamacare with waivers and executive orders and agency regulations.

Obama did his best to divide Americans by race and income. He did not attempt to gain the trust of Republicans; he attacked, mocked and ignored them.

He told Republicans that he won, so Republicans need to get in the back of the bus.

He told Senator McCain during the Obamacare debate that he won, the election was over, and that was that.

Obama attacked Trump as a racist endorsed by the KKK and unfit for the presidency. Now Obama is desperate to salvage his legacy, so he attempts to act as a wise and experienced statesman.

Trump is showing class by ignoring Obama. Let him talk – nobody now cares what he says.

Trump ran an “unconventional” campaign because he fought back against the lies of the Hillary campaign and its cheerleaders in the MSM and challenged the debate moderators. He worked much harder than Hillary in the battleground states by making more appearances and rallies than Hillary. He took his message directly to the voters with “yuuuge” rallies and social media.

Trump is in New York at Trump Tower, taking calls from Putin and Netanyahu and meeting with the Japanese prime minister. Trump is meeting with his rivals, such as Cruz and Romney, acting presidential. Meanwhile, Obama is doing a useless overseas trip, craving attention to remain relevant, and alternating between criticizing Trump voters and offering advice to Trump.

The mainstream media, having failed to derail or even anticipate Donald Trump’s victory, have now seized on discrediting one of the architects of his victory, calling Navy veteran, entrepreneur, and Breitbart publisher Steve Bannon a “white nationalist”. They cite as evidence some Breitbart headlines designed to provoke and attract readers as being beyond the pale. Compared to what? The New York Times, perhaps?

Publishers don’t necessarily control every jot and tittle of content in their publications, but if one concedes the point of Bannon’s critics, those who have problems with Bannon advising Trump had no problem with race-baiter Al Sharpton serving as adviser to President Obama on, of all things, race relations: As Politico magazine reported:

A few days after 18-year-old Mike Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri, White House officials enlisted an unusual source for on-the-ground intelligence amid the chaos and tear gas: the Rev. Al Sharpton, a fiery activist who became a household name by provoking rather than pacifying….

In Ferguson, Sharpton established himself as a de facto contact and conduit for a jittery White House seeking to negotiate a middle ground between meddling and disengagement. “There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official familiar with their dealings told me. “He gets it, and he’s got credibility in the community that nobody else has got. There’s really no one else out there who does what he does.”

Let us be grateful for that. If one wanted to send a sane message about justice and peace, Al Sharpton is arguably the worst person to call. He is an instigator, not a peacemaker, someone who rose out of obscurity by propagating the false Tawana Brawley rape case in which New York city cops were accused of raping a black teenager. As Investor’s Business Daily noted, Tawana Brawley paid for her part in that big lie. Al Sharpton never has.

Sharpton embraced the “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra meant to indict racist cops and police departments after the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri after he committed a strongarm robbery on his way to assaulting Officer Darren Wilson. Blessed are the peacemakers, but Al Sharpton is not one of them.

The Sharptons of the world don’t want to solve the real problems of the black community, preferring to exploit back unrest with clueless race-baiting such as when Sharpton and his National Action Network organized the “Justice for All” March in Washington, D.C. last December:

“You thought you’d sweep it under the rug. You thought there’d be no limelight,” he said. “We are going to keep the light on Michael Brown, on Eric Garner, on Tamir Rice, on all of these victims because the only way — I’m sorry, I come out of the ‘hood — the only way you make roaches run, you got to cut the light on.”

As IBD notes, Al Sharpton has made career of anti-Semitic and racial agitation:

Sharpton has made a career of racial incitement. He once called Jews “diamond merchants” and described whites moving businesses into Harlem as “interlopers.”

WASHINGTON—Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a top national-security adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, said Thursday he would sever his relationship with his consulting firm if he is tapped to serve in the administration, amid scrutiny of his company’s relationship with a Turkish businessman.

Trump has offered the job of national security adviser to Gen. Flynn, people familiar with the process said later Thursday.

In a statement released to The Wall Street Journal earlier in the day, Gen. Flynn said: “If I return to government service, my relationship with my company will be severed in accordance with the policy announced by President-elect Trump.”

The announcement comes as Gen. Flynn faces questions about a lobbying registration his company filed to represent a firm founded by Ekim Alptekin. The Turkish businessman says he hired Flynn Intel Group Inc. to help pursue the interests of his client, a non-Turkish energy company considering exports to Turkey.

Gen. Flynn’s statement also reflects what some of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers are facing as they seek to staff the White House while abiding by various rules and campaign promises regarding conflicts of interest and lobbying businesses.

Mr. Trump announced this week that he wouldn’t allow registered lobbyists to work for his transition team. He also said he wants to get influence-peddling out of his administration.

The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Flynn is a vice chairman of the executive committee of Mr. Trump’s transition team. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-flynn-offered-role-as-donald-trumps-national-security-adviser-1479442042

President-elect Donald Trump has offered the job of national security adviser to retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, people familiar with the process said Thursday, a move that would elevate a longtime top intelligence officer who became known for criticizing the country’s counter-terrorism policies from inside the military.

If he accepts Mr. Trump’s offer, Gen. Flynn will become the third person named to the president-elect’s administration, alongside Steve Bannon, selected earlier this week as chief strategist, and Reince Priebus, named chief of staff.
All three are White House appointments that don’t require Senate confirmation. As national security adviser, Gen. Flynn would counsel the president while also overseeing a White House staff of specialists who help formulate policies that are instituted across U.S. security and foreign policy agencies. Though he had been floated as a possible secretary of defense, Gen. Flynn would have required a waiver from Congress to serve in that post, because he hasn’t been out of uniform for seven years. ​

A few months ago, I popped into a Winnebago parked at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, right across from Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman. This was the Mitzvah Tank, a roving synagogue on wheels operated by the Chabad Lubavitch movement. The “tank” brings old-school Judaism to high-traffic parts of New York. In five minutes or less, anyone can drop by for a quick blessing and some Talmudic wisdom.

I wanted to honor my dad—it would have been his 98th birthday—by putting on tefillin, the miniature black box containing verses of Torah that observant Jews attach to their forehead to be physically closer to God. As a child, I had watched him go through the ritual with his father and found it spellbinding, though I always need a tutorial.

Stepping into the tank was like entering a rabbi’s study, with biblical texts on the table and laminated prayers taped to the cabinets. Also displayed were portraits of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late, charismatic leader of the Lubavitchers known as the Grand Rebbe. Versions of the tank have been driving around New York since 1974.

The tefillin part was over in a flash, including a reciting of “Hear O Israel” and a rousing cheer for the imminent arrival of the Messiah—whom many Lubavitchers believe was personified by the Grand Rebbe.

“So, what’s going on?” asked the cheerful Chabad rabbi who helped me through the prayer, including wrapping my arm seven times with the long leather strap.

I told him that my daughter was getting married in a few weeks, immediately regretting it, knowing what the response would be. “Mazel Tov!” he announced, before asking me if the man was Jewish.

I had to admit he was not, which drew stern clucking from the rabbi. “It could be worse,” he said. But will he convert? Highly unlikely, I told him. The rabbi reassured me that at least my grandchildren would be Jewish, then a look of urgency came over him.

“Does your daughter have a Mezuzah?” he asked, referring to the sealed parchment of Torah portions that Jews traditionally affix to their doorjambs—the universal sign of a Jewish household. I meekly shook my head.

He asked for her cellphone number, offering to go put one up for her. I wasn’t used to such personal attention from a rabbi. In 20 years of attending a shul on the Upper West Side, none of the rabbis ever offered a house call. I doubt they would consider a missing Mezuzah grounds for an emergency visit. I politely demurred.

Yet I kept visiting the tank for more tefillin and schmoozing. Lest I forget, I received regular text and phone messages from my new friend Rabbi Stone reminding me that it was Wednesday—the tank’s regular day on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes he was out making office visits when I came, so I went through paces with Rabbi Baumgarten, a youthful father of eight who’s been running the tank since 1989. His son Avi also helped me enunciate every word of the bracha. CONTINUE AT SITE