RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/07/are-we-amerika-now/

A 1987 television miniseries that visualized the condition of the U.S. a decade after the country had surrendered to the Soviet Union was probably not far off the mark. Life in “Amerika” was nothing like life in America before the Soviet takeover. Though the USSR no longer exists, life in this country in 2022 feels like Amerika due to transformational changes brought by virulent inside influences, just as Nikita Khrushchev said would happen.

The U.S. is not a single-party state. There are pockets of resistance to the progressive agenda, most notably in Texas and Florida. But the effort to turn this nation toward a hard-left future has been accelerated by the lockdowns, mandates, and the do-as-we-say diktats of the Great Coronavirus Panic, and the Democrats’ control of the lawmaking and executive branches, as well as the administrative state.

Unlike the Americans in “Amerika,” we didn’t surrender to the Soviets. We have simply handed power to the left. The hard (and unrelenting) left controls most of the media, sets the tone for popular culture, and has hegemonized most of our institutions and many of our businesses.

Consequently, freedoms have been overrun, dissent forbidden, free speech shredded, and crime allowed to thrive. Our Second Amendment rights are in grave jeopardy. The price of energy is intentionally being increased. Failure to conform to leftist demands risks ostracization. The rule of law is being ignored. Our justice system has been corrupted by politics. Both policymakers and activists want to increase the middle and lower classes’ dependency on government. Wealth is not to be created but redistributed by elected officials and their functionaries in the bureaucracy. Inflation caused by Democratic policies has wrecked the value of the dollar. Abundance has been replaced by shortages, the worst of which are yet to come.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/06/justice-for-me-but-not-for-thee-why-sussmann-walked-but-navarro-was-shackled/

What do you do when your every institution has been weaponized against you? What do you do when there is a two-tier, no-justice system?

The split-screen of a smug and triumphant Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann walking free from D.C. federal court, and a harried and bewildered former Donald Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro being hauled before it, following his account of a harrowing arrest and detainment, ought to be ingrained indelibly in the American mind.

It sends an unmistakable message: We can get you anytime, anywhere, on any grounds we choose. You can’t touch even a single one of ours.

If by some strange occurrence one of ours is brought before a court, the judge and jury will be rigged against you. “I dare you to ask me to recuse with an acquaintance on the stand,” the judge will say. “What’s a lie to our FBI among friends,” the jury will say. Especially when the lie is a useful one.  

The institutions Democrats’ comrade colluded with will be absolved of blame by the putatively adversarial prosecutor representing you, the people. That prosecutor will be plodding, and hew to process crimes against bit players, while the statutes of limitations for the most serious crimes committed by the biggest fish lapse.

You won’t be able to discern whether he is building a masterful case to take us all down, or insulating the very institutions he has served for and with for years, and to which he ultimately answers. That’s the point.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/move-over-aclu-fire-is-the-new-champion?s=r

After years of planning, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, better known as FIRE, announced a major expansion Monday, moving “beyond college campuses to protect free speech — for all Americans.”

FIRE was the brainchild of University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors and Boston civil liberties lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate, who co-authored the 1999 book, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses. To the modern reader the book reads like a collection of eccentric cases of students and teachers caught up in speech code issues, most (but not all) being conservative.

To take just one of countless nut-bar examples, Kors and Silverglate told the story of a professor in San Bernardino reprimanded for violating sexual harassment policies because, among other things, “he assigns provocative essays such as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal,” as the court case later put it. This was apparently the “cannibalism” portion of the accusation that he delved into such subjects as “obscenity, cannibalism, and consensual sex with children.”

The book triggered such an overwhelming number of responses from other faculty members and students that the pair decided to set up an organization to defend people who found themselves in tricky speech controversies on campuses. They soon found they had plenty of work and, by 2022, enough of a mandate to expand beyond colleges and universities into America at large. According to FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff, as quoted in a Politico story, the group has already raised over $28 million toward a $75 million “litigation, opinion research and public education campaign aimed at boosting and solidifying support for free-speech values.”

As noted in another story I put out today, FIRE will be doing a lot of stepping into a role semi-vacated by the American Civil Liberties Union. I spoke with Nico Perrino of FIRE, producer and co-director of the excellent documentary about former ACLU chief Ira Glasser (see review here), to ask what the expansion would entail:

https://www.city-journal.org/transgender-activists-in-their-own-words
A consortium of publicly funded nonprofits wants to “decolonize gender” and normalize male genitalia as a form of authentic womanhood.

Transgender activism has been making inroads into America’s public institutions. The Biden administration has recently promoted neo-pronouns and gender reassignment surgery for minors, government agencies have celebrated the expansion of identity categories such as “pansexual” and “non-binary,” and public schools across the country have adopted curricula teaching students about transitioning from one gender to another. Trans activists often present their ideological program through a series of euphemisms and tautologies, such as “gender diversity,” “LGBTQ inclusion,” “love is love,” “protect trans kids,” and “comprehensive sexual education.” But these slogans obscure more than they reveal. The deeper nature of trans ideology is much more radical and the public should have a clear-eyed understanding of what trans activists believe, beyond the protective layer of obfuscatory language.

The best way to do this is to listen to activists in their own words. Last year, a consortium of trans organizations in Washington State hosted a presentation series, titled “Decolonizing Gender,” that offers an honest, unfiltered look into the world of trans activism and ideology. The event was hosted by the most prominent gender identity nonprofits in the region—TRACTION, Lavender Rights Project, Black Trans Task Force, Gender Justice League, and UTOPIA Washington—all of which run programs for minors and receive taxpayer support. (TRACTION, the primary organizer of the event, did not return a request for comment.)

The panelists represented a wide range of idiosyncratic identities, expressed in a mixture of New Age and intersectional language—the more obscure and oppressed, the greater the status within the community. The main presenter, trans activist Malcolm Shanks, said he was a descendant of black slaves and Taíno tribesmen and “used to identify as gender fluid,” but has been “identifying more recently as a little bit more gaseous or plasma-like.” Randy Ford, a fundraiser for the Lavender Rights Project and black male-to-female “trans femme,” said she uses “‘she,’ ‘her,’ [and] ‘goddess’ as pronouns.” Mahkyra Gaines, a program coordinator for the Gender Justice League, said she uses “no pronouns” and identifies as “non-binary” and “kind of like a black hole.” Ganesha Gold Buffalo, a male-to-female trans prostitute and activist at the Black Trans Task Force, said she identifies as “Choctaw, Cherokee, and black” and with the “sacred lands.”