RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/22/not-consensus-but-truth/

We use the word “steal,” as we use many words, in several distinct but related senses. Here is an illustration of the core meaning. Joe goes into a candy store, looks around furtively (from the Latin fūr, “thief”) and then, when he sees that the shopkeeper is distracted, pockets some M&M’s and walks out. Joe just stole the M&M’s. 

That act of theft is simple. There are plenty of more complex and nuanced ones, but the element of assuming as one’s own something that rightfully belongs to another is key. 

Our elaborate and often convoluted financial system is replete with examples. So is our political life. 

Perhaps the most popular meme floating about in polite society today is the contention that any hint of the 2020 presidential election being tainted is a “Big Lie.” It is so popular, in fact, that some journalists and politicians appear to present themselves to the Office of Acceptable Propaganda each day before setting off on their rounds. They collect their allotted quota of different ways of ridiculing and dismissing those imprudent enough to suggest that, as a matter of fact, there were lots of problems with the 2020 elections. 

It is important that these approved scribes and politicians engage in this ritual because there are many different ways in which this rhetorical epithet needs to be expressed if it is to achieve its goal: to silence debate by intimidating people. 

To this end, a number of different rhetorical registers must be sounded. Some are blunt and angry, as for example this tweet from a writer for The Bulwark, a marginal NeverTrump site supported by leftist billionaires: “Chris Sununu, Doug Ducey, Brian Kemp, and Glenn Youngkin . . . every single one of them is campaigning either for or with an election-denying lunatic.”

The obloquy is directed not simply against certain ideas, but also against the people who express, or might express, them. Thus we find Michael Steele, an anti-Trump Republican and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, castigating supporters of the former president as “lice, fleas, and blood sucking ticks.” The formula does have the advantage of clarity: I mean, partly because of its unsavory historical echoes, you know where you stand with Steele. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/the_road_to_mediocrity.html

Woke progressivism seeks to strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

We are told that the MAGA cult, Trump voters, and Republicans in general are a threat to democracy, who, if not neutralized, will lead the nation into fascism.  In theory, a politically divided nation such as ours could evolve into fascism or socialism, should a political faction gain autocratic control.  In reality, however, we are confronted with the threat of evolving into a much more unique political structure – a Mediocracy.

A Mediocracy is a social structure in which mediocrity prevails.  Those who would change America pursue mediocrity under the banner of our moral obligation to elevate the status of the underachievers, marginalized, and minorities in our society.  The basic ploy is to lump such individuals into groups and to define them as victims of oppression.  They suffer solely from the oppressive social structure of patriarchal white supremacy, which must be dismantled.  

To entertain other reasons for the obstacles they might face is hateful, immoral, and racist.  White underachievers are dispensed with as irredeemable deplorables and deserve no further attention.  Our society, based in racism and xenophobia, is deemed illegitimate.  The fact that it has grown to become the most honored and respected on earth does not redeem it.  We must throw out the baby with the bath water and restructure society.

This message is delivered to the masses via mediocracy, the utilization of the media to control, mislead, and manipulate public thought through ambiguous and deceptive language, analogous to Orwellian newspeak.  Those not adhering to the mediocracy are debased as deniers, haters, or purveyors of disinformation, and need to be silenced.  

(Cancel culture is a natural extension of political correctness; from “you shouldn’t say that” to “you can’t say that”.)

To elevate the status of those defined as oppressed, we must embark upon a program of diversity, equity, and inclusivity.  “Diversity is our strength!”  Is it?  The strength of our society lies in its ability to achieve its constitutional purpose, requiring it to align its forces with sufficient magnitude and direction so as to achieve its goals.  In physics, this thrust is referred to as a primary vector.  Diverse forces flying off in all directions only serve to weaken the vector forces.  

https://victorhanson.com/the-unmentionable-unspeakable-and-unutterable-part-two/

Crime Everywhere

Now we come to the current crime wave.

We see weekly YouTube videos of the knock-out game, of Saturday night Al Capone-gangland massacring, of vulnerable joggers raped and killed, of a mother and her daughter carjacked, of a woman at a rail crossing murdered, of a petite woman pushed to death under a subway car, of an innocent young man simply executed on the streets, of an ax-wielding-nut terrorizing the helpless, of subway monsters assaulting with impunity all whom they please. Walking up to a stranger, slugging him in the temple, inflicting brain damage, all that is now a sort of blood sport.

Drug stores and food minimarkets in big cities are either of two sorts: one, they have been looted and ransacked; or, two, in fear of that fate, they have put almost all their goods behind protective wire or glass, cut back their nocturnal and morning hours, multiplied their security cameras, and hired guards.

There is also a growing, but again muted sense that inner-city, black-on-black gangland killing is now moving to the suburbs. Such violence is beginning more to target random strangers, often solitary drivers, pedestrians, and joggers.

And the reaction?

Zilch, except for a periodic rant from Joy Reid, Al Sharpton, the Obamas, or the Biden racialists about “racism,” as if a projectionist, unsubstantiated, Mark Milley/Lloyd Austin-like charge of “white rage” will preempt any American from saying out loud what millions of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and whites know to be true: that about four percent of the population (black males from ages 12-30) are committing over 50 percent of the violent assaults, rapes, and murders—that are reported.

Second, the additional truth that we dare not speak is that this two-year-long, post-George Floyd rampage is entirely predicated on three simple subtexts:

One, the black leadership—an Al Sharpton, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Louis Farrakhan, the Obamas, Oprah, LeBron James—who are so eager to talk of collectives, such as “whites” and “white people” as 230 million indistinguishable citizens who act as mindless racial automatons (as if George Soros, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Tucker Carlson by reason of their similar hue, can be predictably stereotyped) will never address this asymmetry. And if others do, they will seek to mute anyone by charges of racism! Do they have a duty to?

https://victorhanson.com/biden-democrats-use-midterm-mass-distraction-strategy-to-hide-counterculture-revolution-from-angry-voters/

The contours of the upcoming November midterms seem clear. President Joe Biden scarcely polls above 40% approval. His disastrous energy, economic, crime, immigration, and foreign policies proved even more unpopular.

In reaction, frightened Democratic candidates on script are resorting to strategies of diversion. They avoid mention of their prior lockstep support for Biden agendas that induced current high gas prices, spiraling inflation, deflated 401(k) retirement plans, out-of-control violent crime, 3 million illegal aliens pouring across the southern border, and the disaster in Afghanistan and its aftermath.

Most Democrats are quietly relieved that a 79-year-old, cognitively challenged Biden does not appear with them on the campaign trail, preferring he continue his frequent down time at his Delaware retreat.

Democrats also increasingly rely on a series of ginned up Trump-MAGA psychodramas. That way they hope to make the midterms a referendum on a supposedly demonic Donald Trump—with help from the media, the January 6th House Committee hearings, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and now periodic Biden rants about “semi-fascist” Trump supporters.

These efforts of mass distraction will not work.

Aside from Democrats’ inability to mask their prior support for the disastrous Biden record, most presidents lose dozens of congressional seats in their first midterm election. And when a president’s approval rating stays stuck at about 40 percent, down-ticket party candidates do poorly.

But even more importantly, in the last month of the election, there is a growing consensus that our very civilization itself is imploding and America’s current trajectory is unsustainable.

https://victorhanson.com/what-now-exactly-are-impeachable-offenses-part-one/

We know that Donald Trump was once impeached for calling up his Ukrainian counterpart and complaining that the Ukrainian government had been too involved with the corrupt Biden family. Trump then warned that if Ukraine did not clean up its quid-pro-quo act, he would delay approved military aid.

And while Trump eventually sent offensive weapons to Ukraine that the Obama-Biden administration had vetoed, he was still impeached. Apparently, his sin was that he had anticipated Biden as a future 2020 Democratic rival candidate for president, and thus was intermingling politics and foreign policy to his own benefit and the nation’s detriment.

As such, it did not matter that his phone call did not affect U.S. policy because Ukraine got its weapons, and better ones than those approved by the prior administration.

Nor did it apparently matter that Trump was correct, as we know from the later Hunter Biden laptop revelations, that the entire Biden family syndicate was corrupt. Indeed, Joe Biden himself—known to the family as the “Big Guy” and “Mr. Ten-percent” and “pedo”—cannot explain his sudden wealth, lavish pre-presidential lifestyle, or various estates without some source of extra (non-taxed?) income.

Nor does it matter apparently that Trump’s call was listened to by partisan Ukrainian American Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who relayed it—although initially denied doing so—to the technically still “anonymous” whistleblower. The latter filed a complaint with the congressional intelligence committees, based on hearsay (from Vindman no doubt), and then coordinated with Adam Schiff to set the stage for impeachment proceedings. That fact was denied by the prevaricating Schiff, who also lied about several elements of the impeachment proceedings.

So, what then is the new bar for impeachment for warping U.S. policy for perceived political advantage?

Why was not Barack Obama impeached for his hot-mic revelations in Seoul, South Korea in early election year 2012?

After all, Obama was caught:

a) trying to alter U.S. policy to the nation’s disadvantage (by cancelling preapproved missile defense systems with Poland and the Czech Republic) in exchange for advancing his own political interests in getting reelected (asking Vladimir for “space” so that Obama would not be embarrassed by Russian adventurism during his “last” election).

b) And unlike Trump, who did send aid to Ukraine, Obama did not go forward with missile defense. And, unlike Trump’s call that did not affect events on the ground, Putin did, as promised, not invade Ukraine until 2014 after Obama was reelected.