Displaying posts published in

January 2021

Joe Biden, high priest of the cult of woke Restoring mandatory critical race theory training is a dreadful idea. Peter Wood

https://spectator.us/topic/joe-biden-high-priest-cult-woke/

Do you think he died of dispossession?’ That’s the facetious question the nameless hero of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, Invisible Man, asks the audience at a rally in New York City in the 1930s. He is a smart and ambitious but naive young man who has fallen into the hands of a radical faction — no doubt the American Communist party — who want to use him to stir up black activism in Harlem. The audience warms to him as he admits his incompetence and compares the microphone to the ‘steel skull of a man’. Echoing his Marxist tutors, he asks, ‘Do you think he died of dispossession?’

I read the passage and think of the elusive charmer — ‘If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black’ — President Joe Biden. The poor man knows what a microphone is. He has been speaking his odd, sometimes plagiarized, often jumbled stultiloquence into microphones for over 50 years, since he was first elected to the New Castle County Council in Delaware. Along the way he discovered the important truth that the substance of what he said mattered far less than conveying a sense of his amiability. His statements are often the verbal equivalent of those famous shoulder rubs he gives, meant to impose familiarity on the recipient rather than win her permission. His words, C’mon man, are phatic: aimed at connecting, not at saying. 

But like Ellison’s Invisible Man, Biden has the microphone and the audience, and the audience replies, per Ellison, ‘We with you, Brother. You pitch ’em we catch ’em!’ 

And Biden has been pitching ’em non-stop. Whoever has been feeding him executive orders and dictating phrases into his earpiece has realized that Biden has no filters at all. He isn’t the Invisible Man. He is the Malleable Man. The best proof of that is his declaration: ‘I’m rescinding the previous administration’s harmful ban on diversity and sensitivity training and abolish [sic] the offensive, counterfactual 1776 commission. Unity and healing must begin with understanding and truth, not ignorance and lies.’

We catch ’em, indeed. Biden in so many words just put his office in support of critical race theory, that offshoot of Frankfurt School Marxism. Joe Biden probably has little idea what that ‘theory’ is. He knows it has something to do with ‘race’, and that’s enough. It would be a long day on a Delaware beach before he could tell the difference between the Frankfurt School from a Coney Island Footlong.

In a spirit of charity, I’ll offer some help. By the 1930s, original Marxism was running out of steam. Stalin wasn’t helping the brand by murdering millions of his countrymen. Some German thinkers — the Frankfurt School of Marxists — came up with the idea that instead of fighting the evil capitalists with rocks or guns, the communist revolutionaries should attack the main ideas that made the liberal, bourgeois social order so popular. Liberalism was already on the rocks in Germany, thanks to Hitler, so a fair number of these Marxists immigrated to the United States. Their project was to convince Americans that our sense of freedom and fairness was an illusion. Beneath the illusion lay the real but invisible world of capitalist oppression. Liberal tolerance was hiding this truth, and the task of the revolutionaries was to show us that, rightly understood, we were all under the thumb of the oppressors. 

Persuading people to feel oppressed when they are actually free is a tall order, especially when the supposed oppressor remained invisible. To make the Big O visible required creative techniques like staging riots. That was what the communists hoped Ellison’s Invisible Man would help to do. Riots bring police, and police beat people up, and presto, the oppression becomes visible.

Still, the American Communist party made little headway in efforts to persuade Americans that they were oppressed by the free market. But Frankfurt School Marxism did stumble onto something useful. Substitute something else for ‘capitalism’ and the idea that we are pushed around willy-nilly by a great, pernicious but mostly invisible force attracted a lot more believers. Some substituted ‘patriarchy’ for capitalism, and all at once a movement arose that blamed systemic patriarchy as the great source of oppression. Feminism, based on this principle, could indeed provide plenty of instances of injustices toward women, but the theory of patriarchy as an abiding, systemic premise of all civilization wasn’t open for debate or for the kind of interrogation that a genuine social scientific hypothesis would be subject to. It was (and is) treated as a transcendent insight, the denial of which merely shows that the skeptic is still in the grips of the illusion. 

Critical race theory is another branch of this tree, and it works in an identical fashion. Its proponents simply assume that America is an entirely racist country. Everything — economics, politics, popular culture, family life, entertainment, organized religion, science, shopping, our very language — is infected with ‘systemic racism’. We may not see it, but that’s because we are wearing racist blinders. We may be disposed to doubt that this insidious form of prejudice surrounds us like the air we breathe, but that’s because systemic racism plants those doubts in our gullible heads.

All we can really do is turn to the enlightened few who will lead us out of the dismal swamp of implicit racism into the sunlit uplands of ‘anti-racism’.

How to Deprogram Us Why not borrow the current Chinese “social credit system”? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/27/how-to-deprogram-us/

A new buzzword on social media, cable news, and among leftist activists is “deprogramming.”

Along with terms like “reprogramming,” “de-Baathification,” and “deplatforming,” deprogramming refers to cleansing the incorrect mentalities of former Trump Administration officials—and even those who voted for Trump.

Note that deprogramming does not refer to elites who peddled the “Russian collusion” hoax for years, despite the abject absence of evidence.

Not long ago, two Washington Post columnists offered some solutions to the Trumpist threat. One, Max Boot, wished to ban Fox News and other conservative stations from cable subscriptions.

The other, Eugene Robinson, suggested that there was a need to focus on mostly “white” Republicans to “deprogram” their thoughts.

Pro forma “diversity training” has already been upgraded to include coming clean about “white supremacy” and “unearned privilege.”

Graduates are supposed to emerge washed of their sins of entitlement. Only when thus vaccinated, can they become fully certified that they no longer pose a threat to the Other.

Still, how might a proper stepped-up deprogramming system deal with any diehard Trump refuseniks? Why not borrow the current Chinese “social credit system”?

Non-participating dead-ender Trumpers might lose so many social awareness points that they would be disqualified from staying at their beloved Holiday Inns or banned from Olive Garden restaurants.

John Brennan’s Dark Fantasies Become a Homeland Security Bulletin by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17008/john-brennan-dark-fantasies

Why did Brennan leave out communists?

We have every reason to suspect Schiff’s motives and the law enforcement legitimacy of his proposal. Combined with Brennan’s theories – this sort of thinking comprises the dark fantasies of people seeking to destroy liberty in the name of defending the Constitution.

The Biden administration, its allies, advocates, and television sock puppets are advancing a Constitution-threatening series of initiatives disguised as “safety and security” measures. This, combined with the Big Social Media-backed suppression of free speech, and not-so-subtle “shaming,” are all aimed at crushing opposition and stopping people from questioning decisions, motives and authority. The pressure is palpable. Our liberties are in grave danger.

In a shocking moment of honesty and clarity, Obama CIA Director John Brennan gave the rest of America keen insight into The Washington DC Establishment’s plans and actions for the Trumpsters and other “Deplorables” populating the land.

In an interview, Brennan lies and exaggerates to the public about a supposed domestic terrorist insurgency across the country that is gaining strength and threatening the republic. Brennan asserts that he knows that members of the Biden team:

“… are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks like insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country, and they gain strength, and it brings together an unholy alliance, frequently, religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians. And, unfortunately, I think there has been this momentum that has been generated as a result of, unfortunately, the demagogic rhetoric of people that just departed government, but also those that continue in the halls of Congress. And, so, I really do think that law enforcement, homeland security, intelligence, and even defense officials are doing everything possible to root out what seems to be a very, very serious and insidious threat to our democracy and our republic.”

Arab Medical Apartheid – Where Is the Outrage? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16989/arab-medical-apartheid

Lebanese citizens have launched an online campaign that says that they have the right to be vaccinated before any foreigner living in the country. The term “foreigner” mainly refers to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in Lebanon.

The campaign, which is being condemned by Palestinians and others as “racist” and “discriminatory,” has evidently failed to attract the attention of all those individuals and organizations who are making false, libelous accusations against Israel. They do not care about this racist campaign because an Arab country, and not Israel, is discriminating against Arabs (the Palestinians).

Israel, in fact, has vaccinated more Palestinians than any Arab country…. Given that tens of thousands of Arab Israelis and residents of east Jerusalem have received the vaccine without any problem, means that Israel is the only country that actually has so far given the vaccine to Palestinians.

While Israel has been falsely accused by some international media outlets and human rights organizations of “refusing” to vaccinate Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against COVID-19, no one seems to be paying attention to what is happening in Lebanon, an Arab country that has long been hosting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Syrians and other Arabs.

First, the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement states that “powers and responsibilities in the sphere of health in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip shall be transferred to the Palestinian side.”

According to the agreement, “the Palestinian side shall continue to apply the present standards of vaccination of Palestinians and shall improve them according to internationally accepted standards and shall continue the vaccination of the [Palestinian] population.”

Second, the Palestinians said they had refused to accept vaccines from Israel, and that the Palestinian government was working to get the doses from the World Health Organization and companies around the world.

Third, despite the Palestinian denial, Israel recently acknowledged that it gave 100 vaccine doses to the Palestinians, with another delivery expected shortly.

The “Constitutional Scholar” Serving as the Dem Impeachment Manager Pushed an Unconstitutional Coup Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/01/constitutional-scholar-serving-dem-impeachment-daniel-greenfield/

The Democrats and their media keep billing Rep. Jamie Raskin as a “constitutional scholar”.

Raskin did teach constitutional law. He also keeps claiming falsely that the 25th Amendment was meant to allow the removal of presidents you don’t like. That’s a coup. And that’s exactly what a majority of House Democrats voted for. But when Raskin, a supposed “constitutional scholar” keeps making the coup argument, then that’s a huge problem.

Yet here he is.

Congressman Raskin: The 25th Amendment is all about the preservation of the republic and the continuity of government. That’s why it’s in there. It was added to the Constitution in 1967, in the nuclear age, with the understanding that it could be extremely dangerous to have a vacuum or an unqualified person sitting in the Oval Office. And if you go back and you look at what Birch Bayh and Robert F. Kennedy were talking about, it was about the central importance of protecting the American system of government against destabilizing dynamics in the presidency.

The 25th Amendment was not about having an “unqualified” person, but someone who was deceased or otherwise medically unfit to hold office. It deals with “unfitness” in the physical sense, not the political sense.

Raskin and Democrats keep using “unfitness” in the political sense and that’s a coup. 

Since Raskin cites Bayh, here’s what the gentleman actually stated, “[T]he word “inability” and the word “unable,” as used in  . . . refer to an impairment of the President’s faculties, mean that he is unable to either make or communicate his decisions as to his own competency to execute the powers and duties of his office. I should like for the record to include that as my definition of the words “inability” and “unable.”

Just for the record.

Greek Archbishop Tells the Truth About Islam, Muslim Leaders Enraged Noticing the obvious is forbidden. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/greek-archbishop-tells-truth-about-islam-muslim-robert-spencer/

Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and all Greece touched off a firestorm in mid-January when he dared to note, according to the Orthodox Times, that “Islam was not a religion but a political party.” He added: “They are the people of war.” In response, Muslim leaders the world over have rained down condemnations upon the archbishop. He spoke inaccurately when he said that Islam was not a religion at all, but proof that he was wrong about Islam having a political aspect has not been forthcoming.

Muslims in Greece were outraged. The Western Thrace Turkish Minority Consultation Council (BTTADK) declared: “We condemn the statement of the Archbishop of Greece, Mr. Ieronimos….We hope a more peaceful language to be used instead of anti-Islamic discourse in such difficult times of pandemic.” The Xanthi Turkish Union added that Ieronymos’ words were an “Islamophobic attack” and even a “hate crime.” It thundered: “The fact that these statements, filled with insults, came from the number one name in the Greek church increases the gravity of the situation. We see this move as one of the typical examples of the rising Islamophobia and xenophobia in Greece in recent years.”

For its part, the Western Thrace Imam-hatip Schools Graduates and Members Association (BIHLIMDER) asserted that the archbishop was displaying “ambition and jealousy,” and stated: “We are leaving the examination of the psychological state of this person, who uses words that even the most ordinary people wouldn’t use, to the experts. We are condemning such a hostile attitude.” Ahmet Ibram, deputy head of the province of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, said fancifully: “One of Islam’s basic beliefs is to have life based on peace between religions. It can never be accepted to have grudge and hostility against other religions’ members.”

The Turkish Foreign Ministry also issued a statement: “These provocative expressions of Archbishop Ieronimos, which incite the society to hostility and violence against Islam, also show the frightening level Islamophobia has reached. Such malign ideas are also responsible for the increase of racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia in Europe.”

Campus Racial Thought-Crimes The consequences of perpetuating minority student victimhood. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/campus-racial-thoughtcrimes-richard-l-cravatts/

As the Maoist-like purges on university campuses continue, yet another faculty member has suffered the consequences of speaking words that may not be spoken and having views that are forbidden at universities where woke students, pretending to be supremely tolerant, indict others with their actual intolerance and join with faculty and administrators in suppressing views that they will not and cannot abide.

The latest victim is Charles Negy, an associate professor in the University of Central Florida’s Psychology Department. Negy’s thought-crime? In now-deleted tweets, Negy, who has taught at UCF for 22 years and presumably enjoys the protection oftenure, questioned one of the prevailing absolutes on university campuses: namely, that what is called “systemic racism” permeates and defines American society, and that even on university campuses—those places where the most enlightened and sensitive of all citizens reside—racism still shows itself in a dark undercurrent of bigotry, bias, and repressed hatred for non-white others.

The ubiquity of race obsession on campuses in the post-George Floyd age of Black Lives Matter has shown itself at schools other than UCF, as well. At Princeton University, as one noteworthy example, self-inflicted racial guilt was so prevalent that in September the University’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, published a self-flagellating open letter in which he bemoaned the fact that “[r]acism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton” and that “racist assumptions” are “embedded in structures of the University itself.”

A Genocide Test Faces the West We know what China is doing in Xinjiang. It’s now official. How will woke corporations react?By Eugene Kontorovich

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-genocide-test-faces-the-west-11611775797?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s determination that the People’s Republic of China is engaged in a systematic genocide of the Uighurs was one of the most significant recent developments in U.S. foreign policy. The State Department found that the atrocities have expanded to shocking reproductive coercion: “PRC authorities have conducted forced sterilizations and abortions on Uyghur women, coerced them to marry non-Uyghurs, and separated Uyghur children from their families.”

Because the announcement came shortly before President Biden’s inauguration, its far-reaching implications haven’t sunk in. The Trump administration would have done better to issue this finding before the election, but officially invoking the “genocide” label met significant resistance within the government, as it has in past presidencies. Mr. Pompeo deserves credit for pushing it through.

The new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, also deserves credit for not making genocide a political issue: He immediately concurred in his predecessor’s determination. It is now America’s official, bipartisan position that China is engaged in “ongoing” genocide—the gravest of all international crimes.

Joe Biden was ahead of the curve, accusing China of genocide in August. At the time a Biden spokesman added, “If the Trump administration does indeed choose to call this out for what it is, as Joe Biden already did, the pressing question is what will Donald Trump do to take action.” That question now passes to Mr. Biden.

The State Department has made a finding of genocide only six times, two of them in the past quarter-century: regarding Islamic State atrocities against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq (2016) and Sudan’s campaign in Darfur (2011). But ISIS and Sudan weren’t exactly major U.S. trading partners.

Kangaroo court now in session By Larry Brandes

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/kangaroo_court_now_in_session.html

President Donald Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021.  The Democrats hated the man, his family and all of his Bible-reading followers. The leftists in this country wanted you know just how much they hated him, so they impeached him for a second time, just to hate him some more.  Ironically, the impeachment is unconstitutional because 1) the president had already left office and cannot be removed, and 2) Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert’s refuses to preside over the impeachment because, well, it’s unconstitutional. Ya think?

In a brilliant stroke of genius the Democrats have now unwittingly brought back a man who had just exited the stage with 75 million angry followers, again to center stage.

This is the same group of 75 million people who firmly believe that the 2020 election was rigged and Biden* (who’s going to go down as the president with an asterisk) is a usurper. Emperor Joe just said that this second farcical trial of Trump, “has to happen,” but whether he understands what he is saying is anyone’s guess. He might be confused with getting ice cream or taking a nap for all we know. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was not confused, and said, “I don’t think there’s a need for a whole lot of witnesses.”  That makes total sense. You don’t need no stinkin’ witnesses for what’s in reality a kangaroo court!

Democrats are pulling the old sleight of hand trick: Hey, dummies come watch our total Schiff show.  We have clowns galore and RINO elephants who just want to poop on Trump once more. Over in the center ring a bunch of preening, moronic, nincompoops will burn Trump at the stake and totally ignore slow Joe Biden.

The mystery of conservatives hating Trump By Robert Arvay

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/the_mystery_of_conservatives_hating_trump.html

Five to six years ago, I was corresponding online, on a regular, frequent basis, with several strong conservatives.  We all advocated for policies like smaller central government; lower taxes; First, Second and Tenth Amendment freedoms; restrictions on abortion; strict control of our borders, including merit-based immigration; and many other standard conservative positions.

That was then.

Along came the 2016 presidential campaign, and the finalists were Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump.  As expected, most conservatives, as described above, were enthusiastically supportive of Trump.  Unexpectedly, however, there was a significant proportion of conservatives, or those who claimed to be, who were not only opposed to Trump, but vehement “NeverTrumps.”  “Anybody but Trump” was their mantra.  And they meant it.  Anybody. 

Why this is so is a mystery not yet fully explained.

In recent encounters (online) with some of them, I was amazed at their glee, caustically expressed, that Donald Trump had left the White House.  According to them, Trump was the devil.  He did nothing right.  He made everything worse.  He locked children in cages, then went golfing.  He was Islamophobic and xenophobic.  He was destroying the environment.  He was recklessly risking nuclear war with North Korea and Iran.  He was colluding with the Russians.  He sold much of our scarce uranium to the Russians (oh, wait — that was Hillary, but even so, Trump was bad).

There is so much more and so little room here.

And it all had to be true, because all the leftist “news” outlets were saying so.  They wouldn’t lie.  They were unbiased, science-oriented, purveyors of fact, weren’t they?