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May 2023

Turkey’s Elections: Nationalist Identity Politics Wins Out Over Misery by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19672/turkey-elections-nationalist-identity-politics

There will be a second round for the presidential vote on May 28, but an opposition victory seems unlikely.

Turkey is a country where average schooling is 6.5 years. In other words, the average person is a 7th grade drop-out. Ninety-five percent of Turkish citizens have never travelled abroad.

Many Turks are captivated by identity politics: Ideology over everything else. Erdoğan’s Islamism and nationalism still matter to tens of millions of starving Turks. This is their make-believe world: that Erdoğan will one day rebuild the glorious days of our Ottoman ancestors.

Under pressure from the Erdoğan government, which apparently feared opposition propaganda on social media, Twitter announced on May 12, two days before the elections, “In response to legal process and to ensure that Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.”

“This [a likely Erdoğan victory] is not only bad news for Turkey but also for other democracies around the world … I don’t know how Turkey will cope with a total economic collapse.” — Daron Acemoglu, a Turkish-American economist who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993. – Cumhuriyet, May 16, 2023.

A Turkish collapse is likely — but the Turks will probably blame it on the Crusaders while worshipping the man who caused it.

Harvard Poll: Nearly 70 Percent of Americans Want a Secure Border By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/22/harvard-poll-nearly-70-percent-of-americans-want-a-secure-border/

According to a recent Harvard/Harris poll, nearly 70 percent of all Americans want to see tougher border policies implemented to stop the ongoing mass migration crisis.

Breitbart reports that 68 percent of all respondents want to see the border locked down, including 73 percent of independents in swing states. Those polled gave their answers once they were told the following information:

“Over 2.75 million came into the United States illegally over a twelve-month period ending September 2022, and more than 1.2 million have crossed since then. Given these numbers, should the administration continue its current policies or issue new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people coming across the border?”

Independents overwhelmingly oppose the open border, with 57 percent stating that Biden’s pro-immigration stance is facilitating the mass smuggling of lethal drugs into the country; 53 percent of overall respondents feel the same way. Overall, 27 percent of respondents listed immigration as their top issue, making it the second-highest-ranked issue for respondents, only behind 34 percent who ranked inflation as their top priority.

But when broken down by party affiliation, the poll still found that as many as 48 percent of Democrats still support the current open-borders policies of the Biden Administration, which have directly contributed to the flood of illegal aliens that has been storming the southern border since Biden first took power over two years ago.

Why Is Everyone Protecting Ray Epps? More than a year into January 6 jury trials, Epps, one of the most prolific Capitol protesters, has not taken the stand. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/22/why-is-everyone-protecting-ray-epps/

Over the past month, speculation has swirled around why Fox News honchos ousted the nation’s most popular cable news host just hours before he was set to begin his nightly monologue. Tucker Carlson reportedly was stunned by the news, which was announced in a terse statement released by the network on April 24: “FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”

Subsequent reports suggested any number of reasons why Carlson was yanked off the air, including the company’s settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, a separate lawsuit filed by a one-time producer for “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” political differences with the sons of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, and his questioning of the war in Ukraine.

But the timing of his removal—less than 24 hours after “60 Minutes” aired a puff piece on Ray Epps, the infamous January 6 instigator frequently covered by Carlson’s show—fueled rumors that Fox News wanted to silence Carlson before he could respond to several accusations made in the interview. 

Carlson is “obsessed with me,” Epps told reporter Bill Whitaker, who repeatedly used the term “conspiracy theory” to describe claims Epps’ acted as a federal agent during the Capitol protest. “He’s going to any means possible to destroy me.”

The Path to National Suicide By Robert Weissberg

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/the_path_to_national_suicide.html

Without unrestricted immigration, nations like the United States cannot survive unless women have about 2.1 children each (the .1 reflects women who do not have children).  The bad news is that the U.S. is falling short in reproducing itself. Occasional exceptions such as the Baby Boom aside, U.S. fertility rates have dropped over the last two centuries and show no sign of rising to the 2.1 replacement level. We are currently at 1.6.

The baby shortfall has huge consequences beyond potentially filling the nation with immigrants. An aging population brings higher healthcare costs, budgets devoured by pensions, shrinking tax bases, labor shortages, empty schools and universities, and a stagnant economy.

Moreover, Africa aside, depopulation is worldwide and, apparently unfixable. Countries as diverse as Japan and Russia have tried the “obvious” solutions such as free childcare and subsidies, but to no avail.  Scandinavian countries offer lavish child-friendly policies but likewise fail to move the needle. Between 2006 and 2021, South Korea spent $200 billion for maternity leave, paid childcare, and similar pro-natal measures, but the fertility rate dropped from 1.1 to .81.  

This should be a major political issue regardless of one’s ideology. The Left surely needs a healthy economy to finance its welfare state while businesses depend on factory and service workers. Nobody wants a shrinking workforce whose principal responsibility is to fund a growing geriatric population. 

For Obama, the Cover-Up Was Worse than the Crime By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/for_obama_the_coverup_emwasem_worse_than_the_crime.html

Jack Cashill’s newest book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, is available for pre-order in all formats.

Two enduring aphorisms emerged from the Watergate affair, both directed at then-president Richard Nixon. The one at the outset of the investigation was delivered in the form of a question: “What did he know and when did he know it?” The second came at the end in the form of a warning to future presidents: “The cover-up is worse than the crime.”

Thanks to the Durham report, we know the date that then-president Barack Obama learned about what John Durham calls the “Clinton Intelligence plan.” If CIA Director John Brennan’s notes are to be believed, that date was August 3, 2016.

This was the day Brennan briefed Obama and other key players about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

To be fair, Barack Obama likely had no more role in the orchestration of the Clinton Intelligence plan than Richard Nixon did in the 1972 bugging of the DNC headquarters at the Watergate. Obama did, however, play the critical role in the cover-up of the Clinton Intelligence plan. It could not have happened without him.

This past Sunday, former congressman Devin Nunes raised the cover-up issue on Maria Bartiromo’s show. Said Nunes, “We now know from Durham that Obama knew and his team knew that in August 2016 this was a dirty trick from the Clinton campaign.”

Sen. Tim Scott officially throws his hat in the ring – and does an impressive interview FOX News By Peter Barry Chowka

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/sen_tim_scott_officially_throws_his_hat_in_the_ring__and_does_an_impressive_interview_fox_news.html

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott officially declared his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in Charleston, S.C. yesterday. (See Andrea Widburg’s first-person account of the event here.)  Later that evening, he appeared live for an interview with former S.C. Rep. Trey Gowdy, who is hosting the 8 PM ET hour on the FOX News channel this week.

Scott has served as the junior U.S. Senator representing South Carolina since 2013.  He is what used to be called a Dark Horse in the race (no pun intended). He is a youthful looking 57, and represented his state in local and state politics before being appointed to the U.S. Senate in 2013 by Gov. Nikki Haley, who is herself a candidate for next year’s Republican presidential nomination. Scott has won re-election three times to the U.S. Senate.

Scott’s interesting and impressive background and career are reasonably and fairly objectively documented at his Wikipedia bio. The lengthy page and the references it cites are a compelling read. My impression of Scott over the years, confirmed by the chronology and highlights of his career, is that he is a man of deep conviction who is extremely articulate in expressing his conservative viewpoint.

And so it was when he appeared on the FOX News channel Monday evening (video here). Needless to say, he received a cordial reception from his former Republican colleague in the Congress, Trey Gowdy, who was guest hosting the hour on FOX for the first of five nights from New York City.  On Sunday nights for the past year, Gowdy has hosted Sunday Night in America from Charleston, S.C., on FOX at 7 PM ET, sometimes repeated later in the evening.

The significance of Shavou’ot(May 26, 2023) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3MOJa5G

Shavou’ot (Pentecost) guide for the perplexed, 2023

Shavou’ot is one of the three liberty-oriented Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem:  Passover, Shavou’ot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles), which constitute game-changing milestones in the formation of Jewish history, documenting the 4,000-year-old Jewish roots in the Land of Israel, and the unique linkage between the Land of Israel, Judaism and the Jewish people.

Shavou’ot is a historical, national, agricultural and spiritual extension of Passover. Passover highlights the physical liberty from slavery in Egypt; Shavou’ot highlights spiritual liberty, embracing the values of the Torah, the Ten Commandments and six chapters of The Ethics of our Fathers (Pirkey Avot). The eve of Shavou’ot is dedicated to an all-night study of Jewish values.

Shavou’ot is also called the Holiday of the Harvest (ביכורים), since it concludes the harvesting season, which starts during Passover.

Shavou’ot (שבועות) means “weeks” in Hebrew and its spelling is identical to the Hebrew word “vows.”
Shavou’ot commemorates the 40 years of the Exodus, which entailed tough challenges on the road to the Land of Israel, forging the state-of-mind of the Jewish people and the Jewish State.

This is Shakespeare. This is Woke Shakespeare. Any questions? by Daniel Greenfield VIDEO

https://www.frontpagemag.com/this-is-shakespeare-this-is-woke-shakespeare/

To paraphrase an 80s anti-drug ad, “this is Shakespeare, this is woke Shakespeare.” Any questions?

(If you enjoyed this episode of woke Shakespeare, be sure to tune in to your local PBS station for more.)

The obvious question is “why bother”, but the obvious answer is that wokes (unlike old school lefties who could be creative) are cultural parasites, incapable of creating anything new, and thrive only on tainting the old.

It’s why the entertainment industry churns out bastardized versions of its intellectual properties, yet makes nothing new that endures.

Wokes are incapable of grasping the content of anything, only the surface context. And thus they obsessively remake things in line with their deconstructionist sensibilities. Shakespeare to them is no different than Star Wars, Dickens, 1776 or Marvel comics, it’s all the same, replace the cast with a completely inappropriate identity politics assemblage and revamp its message so that it deconstructs whatever it ever was.

Wokes think that they’re ushering in a revolution when all they’re doing is demonstrating their incomprehension of the original material. But that is why they’re wokes. Wokes can be offended by anything, but they don’t understand anything. Philosophically, they’re all surface impressions, reading their tired Marxist tropes into any classical work and then plugging in a “diverse” cast to hammer home the revolutionary message.

But there are no more revolutions. The only woke cultural revolution still going on is narcissism. Wokes don’t want to change the world, they want to revel only in their outrage and false sense of superiority by destroying anything that predated them, anything they don’t understand, and turn it into a virus broadcasting their virtue.

Our American Suicide America’s founding principles are now vilified as “threats to democracy.” by Scott Hogenson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-american-suicide/

America is in a fighting mood. Hardly a day goes by without video of a fight among airline passengers or fans at some sporting event surfacing on the Internet. Mobs block subway tracks to disrupt service. Still larger mobs gather at statehouses from Montana to Florida, angry and violent enough to suspend the legislative process. Retailers lock products behind plexiglass fearing hoards of looters.

Those causing such mayhem often avoid arrest, prosecutors routinely fail to prosecute offenders, and the results are anarchic. “The lawless in spirit are encouraged to become lawless in practice,” noticed one 28-year old state house representative. “Having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment, they thus become absolutely unrestrained.”

Disorderly scenes today are so common, we’ve become desensitized to them. “Such are the effects of mob law; and such as the scenes becoming more and more frequent,” observed this junior legislator. “The stories of which have even now grown too familiar to attract anything more than an idle remark.”

The idle remarks on Twitter and elsewhere only exacerbate this climate as mobs grow in number and size, and the danger extends to the nation itself. “By the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed,” warned the young lawmaker.

These comments were delivered by Abraham Lincoln, who predicted in his January 27, 1838 speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

Discredited But Massively Wealthy SPLC Working with Corrupt FBI The Biden regime is determined to silence dissidents. by Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/discredited-but-massively-wealthy-splc-working-with-corrupt-fbi/

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is one of the Left’s premier, well-heeled, and most dishonest and ruthless attack dogs. It relentlessly smears legitimate conservative individuals and groups by labeling them as purveyors of “hate” and lumping them in with the likes of the KKK and neo-Nazis. Its name-calling and defamation would be just more of the same rubbish that comes daily from the Left were it not for the fact that the social media giants and numerous other major corporations still take the massively discredited SPLC seriously and use its smear pieces as a guide to shun and deplatform various dissenters from the Leftist agenda. So the SPLC sounds like the perfect organization for the Biden regime to work with, right? Oh, absolutely. Now this sinister and hateful group is partnering with the equally corrupt and politicized FBI.

The Daily Signal reported Sunday that the FBI “appears, at least briefly, to have joined the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attempt to demonize Roman Catholics who follow the church’s teachings on marriage and who celebrate the Latin Mass.” One of those Catholics, Michael J. Matt, editor of a newspaper called The Remnant and producer of Remnant TV, noted that his organization, which is not remotely connected with violence or terrorism, was listed on a “leaked FBI memo,”  along with other Catholic groups that he pointed out were “defunct.”

Matt declared that this was an example the “FBI phoning it in,” as its list of “radical-traditional Catholic hate groups” came from a 2007 list compiled by the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich and Rhonda Brownstein. Matt asked incredulously: “They took Heidi Beirich and Rhonda Brownstein’s word for it, from 2007?!” He added: “There has been an explosion of traditional Catholic groups since Pope Benedict XVI brought back the Latin Mass. None of the new groups who are in positions of real influence are targeted in the memo.” That’s good, but the fact that the FBI is working with the SPLC and targeting law-abiding citizens because it disapproves of their religious beliefs is disquieting enough.