RUTHFULLY YOURS

The news that billionaire investor Peter Thiel is decamping to Los Angeles to escape the stifling political conformity of Silicon Valley won’t shatter the republic, but pillars of the Valley would be wise to heed its warning. One reason the maestros of tech are becoming political targets is because they are seen as partisan and disdainful of middle America.

“Silicon Valley is a one-party state,” Mr. Thiel said last month during a debate at Stanford University. “That’s when you get in trouble politically in our society, when you’re all in one side.” He’s right.

Once such Valley icons as Intel and Hewlett-Packard were seen as nonpolitical. But the titans of recent vintage—Google, Facebook and others—are rightly seen as thoroughly allied with the political and cultural left. Google’s purging of conservative James Damore was something of a watershed of public recognition of this reality, and a declaration by a Facebook board member like Mr. Thiel is further affirmation of this bias.

Americans who once thought of Silicon Valley as a jewel of U.S. innovation are likely to turn against these companies if they see them as relentless political enemies. Mr. Thiel is giving his tech friends good advice.

Add 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz to the list of disturbed young men who have committed mass murder against other young men and women in their communities. A partial list of these awful incidents includes Chris Harper-Mercer at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College; Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook school; James Holmes in Aurora, Colo.; Jared Lee Loughner in Tucson; and Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007.

All these events have two things in common: guns and mental illness. From that fact flows the demand, every time, that we “do something.” Saying it, however, is not the same as doing something that would in fact mitigate this recurrent carnage. Doing something in our system inevitably means putting in motion an array of actors toward this goal—elected or appointed public officials, the police, the medical community and not least parents.

Guns first. When a Parkland happens, the liberal half of America’s politics puts forth the same two-word solution: gun control. There is a simple causality to this argument—fewer guns, fewer murders. Always left out is evidence it would work.

Gun-control laws—for example, to regulate bump stocks, AR-15s or ammunition magazines—foundered because advocates have never offered credible evidence they would deter mass shootings. Because gun proponents believe, not without reason, that the left’s ultimate goal is confiscation, the political prospects for a gun control solution have been and will remain about zero.

The selection of the artists painting the Obamas’ new portraits commissioned for the Smithsonian revealed much more than two pieces of “art.”

One would surely think that the chosen artists of the former president and first lady of the United States would have been carefully vetted – for quality of work, appropriateness of artistic style for the venue, and reputation in the community.

Barack Obama’s selection of Kehinde Wiley for his portrait is proving to be more atrocious than the painting itself.

The major media outlets, though, such as CNBC, were quick to observe a momentous occasion, breathlessly reporting that “The Obamas made history not only as the country’s first African-American presidential couple featured in the gallery but also for selecting the first African-American painters to receive a presidential portrait commission from the museum.”

That same CNBC piece also recounted the history of Obama’s personal selection of Wiley, writing that Obama “thinks ‘it’s safe to say Kehinde and I bonded'” and “how much he and Wiley had in common.”

It was the painting itself, however, and not the artist, upon which my friends in the conservative Twittersphere focused at first. I couldn’t help offering my own opinion, sarcastically tweeting my suggested title: “Obama Manspreads in Sea of Poison Ivy.”

The peculiarities of Obamagate keep growing.

John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, gives himself this description on his Twitter account: “Nonpartisan American who is very concerned about our collective future.” In other words, Brennan is still in the disinformation business.

Liberal partisan who is very concerned about our collectivist future — that would be a more apt description for one of the most politicized CIA directors ever, whose ascent to the top of the CIA began with a lie-detector test in which he revealed that he was a supporter of the Soviet-controlled American Communist party.

Brennan was the fox guarding the henhouse — a role he played to the hilt for Hillary Clinton in 2016 as he set in motion a sham investigation into the Trump campaign. NBC recently signed Brennan up as a “national security” correspondent. So the fox will now get to comment on the henhouse he raided.

Where are the successors to the Kalb brothers to tsk-tsk news programs for using as “correspondents” on a story figures who have a vested interest in its outcome? Brennan is under Congressional investigation for possible perjury. But instead of challenging his yarn-spinning about the Steele dossier, NBC gives him a platform to continue it. How much longer before the media adds Sally Yates, Susan Rice, and (if they could get him) Christopher Steele as “correspondents”? What a farce.