RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/01/03/falling-back-into-history-n1546610

We are falling back into history, by which I don’t mean the history of the West or of any particular nation but the history of the political world and human settlements from time immemorial, that is, for as long as we have records, monuments, artifacts, cave art, primitive tools and other memorabilia. (I use the term “history” to incorporate what we call “prehistory,” which is pre-literary but discoverable.) Whether we consider Thomas Hobbes’ description of the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” or the erection of a harshly authoritarian governing Leviathan to ensure self-preservation, the picture is one of endemic inequality, poverty, famine, perpetual conflict, and despotic control of a laboring and subject population. 

This is the default position of human life across the millennia, the rope bridge across the historical abyss that civilizations perilously negotiate. The complexities of civilization, however, do not assure general human flourishing. Only the slow and painful emergence of the democratic state has succeeded in lifting vast populations out of misery, destitution, stagnation, and unaccountable, coercive authority.

David Stasavage’s magisterial study The Decline and Rise of Democracy furnishes a comprehensive account of the concept, practice, and history of democracy from its early origins in 6th century Athens to the present day, relying on a minimalist definition of democracy as “based on the presence of competitive elections with a broad suffrage in which incumbent parties stand a chance of losing.” Modern democracy began in the Anglo-American sphere and spread to Europe and certain post-colonial nations in several installments. In an earlier volume, The Third Wave, political philosopher Samuel Huntington provided an assessment of the development of democracy in the modern age, which according to his calculation evolved in three waves dating from the 19th century, post WW II, and the Iberian Peninsula during the 1970s (the Portuguese Carnation Revolution), leading to the establishment of consensual governments. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/gift-mendacious-nikole-hannah-jones-conservative-mary-grabar/

If political leaders across the country are looking for more evidence that they are justified in banning The 1619 Project curriculum in schools they can refer to comments made by the Project’s own creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, on December 26, during the Sunday show line-up, on NBC’s Meet the Press.

In her comments to Chuck Todd, she revealed herself to be a dissembler regarding her role in promoting 1619 Project classroom lessons. Then in tweets that insisted that all critics henceforth engage only with her new book The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, a 600-page expansion, she admitted that the original project, upon which the lessons are based, is flawed.

Shortly after the program aired, at 10:21 a.m., Hannah-Jones tweeted, “It is revealing when critics of the 1619 Project, 2 yrs later, refuse to critique the book & instead keep rehashing arguments abt the magazine. That’s because we responded to good-faith critique, we revised in response, we included 1,000 endnotes, historians wrote half the essays.” Phil Magness, Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, who has been among the earliest and most frequent critics of the economic claims promoted by The 1619 Project, and who had reached out to Hannah-Jones, commented, “I witnessed this process directly as one of those critics over the last 2 years. And there’s not a word of truth to what she is claiming.” Hannah-Jones, who refuses to engage in debate, in typical fashion, attacked the economic historian’s credentials.

Sixteen minutes later, at 10:37 a.m. she went after Victoria Bynum, one of the historians who early on requested corrections to the Project. In December 2019, Bynum had signed Princeton historian Sean Wilentz’s letter to the editor, which was also signed by historians James McPherson, Gordon Wood, and James Oakes. At 6:28 a.m. Bynum had commented on Oakes’s recent article in Catalyst magazine responding to New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein’s November 12 defense of the Project—a promotional lead-up to the November 16 publication of the hardcover book, which is copyrighted by the Times. Bynum summarized it as a critique of the political agenda, specifically Black Nationalism, motivating the project. Hannah-Jones tweeted, with no reference to these points, “Is it common ‘very serious’ practice, 2.5 years later, to critique the unrevised work and to not engage the updated version? Asking for a friend.” Bynum politely replied that neither she nor Oakes was commenting on the new book. As revealed by her defensive response, Hannah-Jones was admitting that the original 1619 Project, the August 18, 2019, issue of the New York Times Magazine, was error-riddled. As Magness noted, “Nikole Hannah-Jones’s latest argument is to claim that the original 1619 Project—as published in the New York Times as part of a multimillion dollar advertising blitz—was just a rough draft, and the new book is the revised version by which it should be judged. Seriously.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/02/durhams-investigation-fearless-predictions-for-2022/

While the seemingly slow pace of Special Counsel John Durham’s “Russiagate” investigation is frustrating to many, it appears that conditions are ripe for a slew of indictments in 2022, holding to account both FBI personnel and a number of other actors connected to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, possibly including the Clinton campaign itself.

Although grand jury proceedings are kept confidential, COVID restrictions likely caused both its sessions to be postponed and its witnesses to be temporarily excused from appearing. These delays were inevitable and certainly not Durham’s fault.

One strikingly ironic result of the partisan Mueller investigation was that its one-sided focus ignored any attempt to ferret out anti-Trump crimes dealing with “Russian Collusion.” Had it done so, a subsequent investigation, such as Durham’s, might have been foreclosed. In any case, Mueller’s investigation delayed the start of Durham’s.

Durham is scrupulously ethical and does not leak to a thirsty public. That is a good thing, because the partisan Attorney General Merrick Garland would like nothing better than a “good cause” excuse to fire Durham for violating Department of Justice policies. Durham’s silence, though, has frustrated curious citizens.

But recent indictments do tell us something about the focus of Durham’s probe, when viewed alongside other publicly available information such as the Report of FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz on FBI FISA abuse.

For instance, Durham in the Igor Danchenko indictment does not mention, as does Horowitz in his report, that in his January 24-26, 2017, interview with the FBI, Danchenko said his Steele dossier claims were mainly gossip, rumor, and bar talk. After this interview, for the next year and a half, the FBI told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that it found Danchenko truthful and cooperative, a claim repeated to the Senate. But what the FBI did not tell FISC or the Senate was that Danchenko was truthful and cooperative about the Steele dossier’s being untruthful speculation and jest “over beers.” In short, the central thrust of the FISA application was without factual basis.

Accordingly, any FBI agent who knew of Danchenko’s interview and participated in either of the two subsequent FISA renewal applications or the Senate testimony has potential criminal culpability. The Danchenko interview thus places agents Stephen Somma, Joe Pientka, Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, and others in potential jeopardy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/trouble-in-paradise-the-crumbling-california-model/

California is broken, but it is not doomed.

S ome horrified conservatives dismiss California as the progressive dystopia, bound for bankruptcy and, let’s hope, growing irrelevance. Progressives, for their part, hail the Golden State as the avatar of a better future, the role model for a new, more environmentally friendly and socially just economic order. They often dismiss critiques as conservative misinformation.

Yet California is not doomed, at least in the near term, nor is it anything like a model of social democracy. As long as its tech oligarchs produce enormous profits and generate wealth, California remains fiscally flush for the near term, and the evolving economy, long on digitization and constant entertainment, works to the state’s historic strengths. Key industries such as space and biomedical research also offer promise.

The big problem with the California model is that it does not work for most Californians, who suffer from the highest poverty rate (cost of living adjusted) in the country. Despite being home to three of the nation’s four most expensive housing markets, California has among the lowest cost-adjusted median income of any state, as demographer Wendell Cox notes. Although not particularly hard hit by pandemic fatalities, California continues to recover more slowly than the rest of the states and now suffers the highest unemployment rate in the country — including nine of the 16 metros with the greatest joblessness. Even as the tech oligarchy has reaped record profits and expanded its wealth to unprecedented levels, California ranks as the second-worst place to find a job of all the states. Thank God for Hawaii!

A New Economic Model?

Flush from his recall triumph, Governor Gavin Newsom, along with the legislature, seems determined to double down on his attempt to shape California as the model for the progressive future. He claims that our state is “the envy of the world” and the model of social justice. “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” he boasts, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope.”

We can see, in aggregate numbers, some justification for crowing. A writer at Bloomberg claims that the state has “the best economy” in the world, pointing to the bloated stock prices of the major tech firms, soaring home values, and the enormous wealth creation accruing to a relative handful. Other writers insist that California will continue to dominate most of its key industries, owing to its innovation and capital resources.