RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/when-and-how-did-we-get-here-gradually-then-suddenly-part-four/

The final catalyst that led to our collective implosion was the election year 2020 and the accelerating Trump Derangement Syndrome. As the cities burned, unbelievable madness followed in efforts to ensure the incumbent president would not be reelected.

Suddenly, congressional officials, mayors, and governors all refused to keep the peace by requesting federal troops to stop the summer riots. The more the cities went up in flames, the more the blue states blamed Trump. It was almost as if they would fault Trump for the ongoing violence and blame him even more if he sent in the military to quell it.

Had they forgotten the Rodney King LA riots of 1992, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Colin Powell, called up President George H. W. Bush to encourage him to deploy the 5,000 Marines then ready to go into South Central and Watts to quell the violence? And so, Bush did just that and stopped the mass looting and rioting.

No matter. The nation was now a Luche Libre of open anti-Trump craziness. Mark Zuckerberg poured in a historic $419 million to absorb the work of the registrars in key election precincts. Social media suppressed news unfavorable to Biden.

Street riots and protests were modulated to aid the Biden campaign. Liberal Time essayist Molly Ball described the “conspiracy”:

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

https://twitter.com/vdhanson/status/1770445530646421937?t=-_2GpG8wfUWSVFbOLEmVNQ

From Russian Collusion to “Bloodbath”—A Decade of Toxic Hysteria Ever since late June 2015—following Donald Trump’s announcement that he was running for president, and his voicing of controversial agendas (on tariffs, China, illegal immigration, foreign policy, NATO, etc.)—leftwing toxic hysteria has been the norm.

In the last ten years, we’ve witnessed the Russian collusion hoax, calls from military officers and analysts for extra-legal interventions and coups, the Alfa ping hoax, the drink bleach hoax, the “suckers” D-Day hoax, the celebrities’ contest about the best way to decapitate, stab, blow up, shoot, or incinerate Trump, the 2016 leftwing postelection effort to turn state electors into “faithless” apostates to elect Hillary, the nutty Mark Milley call to his Chinese counterpart, the Antifa/BLM riotous months of 2020 and effort to storm the White House grounds, the two first-term impeachments, the laptop “Russian disinformation” hoax, the pee accusation, the “51 intelligence authorities” ruse, the FBI hiring of Twitter censors to suppress unwanted news, the Senate trial of a private citizen, the January 6 “insurrection” where “five police officers were killed” lie, the farcical two Republican members of the Jan 6 committee, the attempt to remove Trump from state ballots, the insane E. Jean Carroll suit, the Letitia James “find me the man, and I’ll find you the crime” writ, the monstrous $355 million fine growing daily to $450, the Alvin Bragg bootstrapping of an inert federal suit, the Fani Willis/Nathan Wade circus, the Jack Smith antithesis to Robert Hur’s twin investigation, the effort to bankrupt the Republican nominee, and of course the constant calls to pack the court (when the Left lost the majority), to end the filibuster (when Democrats control the Senate), to add two new states and four new senators (provided they are DC and Puerto Rico) and to end the Electoral College (once the Left lost the surety of the reliable blue wall).

What is the effect of all this decade-long civil strife on the 2024 voter?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-smug-safe-comedy-of-jimmy-kimmel/

I’m no fan of late night comedy or even comedians for that matter, although years ago I did find something in George Carlin’s act to admire.

Carlin, though born into an Irish Catholic family, mocked religious belief as a stand-up comedian and claimed that he didn’t believe in God.

Despite this personal failing, Carlin, who died in 2008 — way before woke comedians became afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome — was never predictable as a comedian.

He never had much to say about Donald Trump, either, aside from his 1998 comment that he thought the man was a “rat” (he compared him to hotel mogul Leona Helmsley), yet at the same time Carlin insisted that Trump made “his life more interesting.”

Hilarious and unpredictable comedians are now a rare breed, thanks mainly to the spread of wokeness in comedy.

In comedy clubs throughout the country, you can no longer make jokes about gay people, trans people, feminists, the Asian predilection for gambling and casinos, mentally retarded or developmentally disabled people, blacks or handicapped people without that coming across as hate speech — although a talented comedian should be able to find something funny in all the aforementioned groups (and their behaviors) without that coming across as an incitement to organize a lynch mob.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-right-take-audio-michael-shellenberger-on-living-dangerously/

In this short audio clip from a recent episode of the Freedom Center’s podcast The Right Take, host Mark Tapson asks independent journalist Michael Shellenberger about the personal danger of breaking stories that expose Big Tech censorship, CIA malfeasance, and transgender medical malpractice.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-civilizational-masochism-of-the-west/

Last week, Joe Biden issued a schoolmarmish warning to Israel, which he has been browbeating for months to placate his party’s anti-Israel left and Muslim American voters in Michigan, a critical swing state. Speaking to the press, he threatened, “There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan – if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.”

This solicitude for Muslims’ sensitivity about their faith bespeaks the West’s long bad habit of caring more about Islam––the faith that conquered and occupied, and to this day still occupies, much of the Christian Roman and Byzantine empires––than they do about their own civilization’s foundational religion, whose adherents today are being persecuted and massacred in Islamic lands.

This cultural tic does not demonstrate, as many “citizen of the world” globalists believe, a superior morality based on both an uncritical tolerance for the exotic “other,” and a haughty disdain for alleged parochial American nationalism and jingoist patriotism. Rather, it signals to the world a civilizational failure of nerve so widespread and intense that it has become a form of geopolitical masochism, manifested in conspicuous displays of cringing apologetics and shameful guilt for the West’s alleged historical sins.

For example, Biden’s foreign policy crew, products of this ruling class sensibility, seem to think that Muslims view Ramadan the way Christians do Easter, and so will be deeply offended by Israel besmirching this sacred time by continuing to fight. Actually, as Bassam Tawil writes, “‘In the holy month of Ramadan,’ according to fatwa 1566/10013/L=1431, ‘the reward of virtues is increased.’” And martyrdom while waging jihad against infidels is a theological virtue par excellence.