RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/13/yes-acquittal-is-vindication/

A little before 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump in the long-running “Impeach Donald Trump!” show brought to you by leaky Democrats and their public-relations consortium, the corporate leftist media and Big Tech. The vote was 57 to 43, largely along party lines, wholly along ideological lines. That is, the seven Republicans who broke ranks and joined the Democrats to convict President Trump are Republicans in name only. You will want to remember who they are: 

Richard Burr from North Carolina
Bill Cassidy from Louisiana 
Susan Collins from Maine 
Lisa Murkowski from Alaska 
Mitt Romney from Utah 
Ben Sasse from Nebraska 
Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania

Some of these “Elevated Conservatives”™—Burr and Toomey, for example—have announced that they will not be running again. Here’s a prediction: none will be elected again, but that is a good thing.

Well, I think it is a good thing. But then I think that an acquittal is a vindication. I know that there are some intermittently conservative organs that disagree. They believe, or at least they say, that Trump’s acquittal does not mean he was vindicated. The proposition that Donald Trump is in the wrong is an analytic truth for them. Like the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried,” they regard it as a necessary truth. It is something inarguable. 

It is worth noting, however, that these are the same organs that couldn’t stop berating Trump—the most pro-life, pro-Israel, pro-prosperity, pro-middle class, and pro-American president in decades (maybe ever)—while he was president. And they are also the same organs that, come tomorrow, will be wringing their hands over Joe Biden’s pro-abortion, pro-China, pro-totalitarian attacks on American freedom and prosperity. They prefer whining to wielding power, I suspect, and actually seem to believe that an incompetent mannequin-like Mitt Romney is somehow more preferable as president than someone like Donald Trump. 

And poor Peggy Noonan must be really unhappy. The other day, she wrote one of her signature hand-wringing columns for the Wall Street Journal informing her readers that she did not see “how Republican senators could hear and fairly judge the accumulated evidence and vote to acquit the former president.” Those who would vote to acquit, she intoned, “are voting for a lie.” She wanted the “stiffest possible” penalties, including “banning Mr. Trump from future office.”

That touches on one of the two main reasons that the Democratic machine wheeled out their impeachment wheeze yet again. They are terrified of the voters—all those embryonic “domestic terrorists” Joe Biden’s Stasi is tracking—who, ignoring the wisdom of their betters, might actually get together and vote someone else like Donald Trump—if not the Bad Orange Man himself—into office again. That mustn’t happen. 

Convicting Trump was never in the cards, even given the wobbly, thumos-starved

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/02/13/american-privilege-n1425455

It is a cliché that “travel broadens,” presumably broadens the mind. It is one of the foundational assumptions of anthropology that cross-cultural research broadens our perspectives. International ethnographic research, studying people “on the ground” in their home communities, certainly provides a basis for understanding and appreciation, as well as comparison between and among different societies and cultures.

As a college student I studied for a year at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and traveled around Scotland, England, and Wales. As a professor of anthropology, supported by my university and taxpayer dollars, I had the opportunity to live and carry out research in parts of the world very different from North America. For several months each I lived and taught in universities in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in Catania, Sicily, Italy, and in Sydney, Australia. For several months, I lived and carried out research on livestock breeders in Surat, Gujarat and Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. I lived for more than two years in the desert of Iranian Baluchistan, studying the nomadic tribe that was my kind host, and for over two years in Sardinia, Italy, studying pastoralism and local culture in highland villages, one of which graciously hosted me and my family.

In my travels, I became aware of certain American privileges. One was the security provided by being a citizen of a powerful country, a country that was respected and/or feared. I was benefitting from the many millions who had built America, and the many who had successfully fought to defend her from enemies.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/antifa-activists-smash-windows-chuck-snowballs-at-police-in-portland_3695420.html

Purported Antifa activists late Friday smashed windows and hurled snowballs at police officers after gathering downtown.

Some 30 to 50 people gathered at Director Park around 8 p.m. before marching to the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct, the bureau said in an incident summary. After arriving, the group began throwing objects and yelling at officers.

When police went outside to move their cars in an effort to prevent them from being damaged, “the officers were pelted with icy snowballs by participants,” the bureau said.

Video footage captured by reporters on the ground showed the crowd initially throw snowballs at police cruisers as they drove around before hitting officers on foot. The crowd chanted, “Quit your job!”

According to reports, the crowd consisted, at least in part, of members of the far-left, anarcho-communist Antifa network. The network is vehemently against the police, frequently calling for the abolishment of police departments and jails. The crowd was shown shouting at the officers as they retreated back inside the building.

https://quillette.com/2021/02/10/unspeakable-truths-about-racial-inequality-in-america/

“I am a black American intellectual living in an age of persistent racial inequality in my country. As a black man I feel compelled to represent the interests of “my people.” (But that reference is not unambiguous!) As an intellectual, I feel that I must seek out the truth and speak such truths as I am given to know.”

EXCERPTS

Leftist critics tout the racial wealth gap. They act as if pointing to the absence of wealth in the African American community is, ipso facto, an indictment of the system—even as black Caribbean and African immigrants are starting businesses, penetrating the professions, presenting themselves at Ivy League institutions in outsize numbers, and so forth. In doing so, they behave like other immigrant groups in our nation’s past. Yes, they are immigrants, not natives. And yes, immigration can be positively selective. I acknowledge that. Still, something is dreadfully wrong when adverse patterns of behavior readily visible in the native-born black American population go without being adequately discussed—to the point that anybody daring to mention them risks being cancelled as a racist. This bluff can’t be sustained indefinitely. Despite the outcome of the recent election, I believe we are already beginning to see the collapse of this house of cards.

A second unspeakable truth: “Structural racism” isn’t an explanation, it’s an empty category

The invocation of “structural racism” in political argument is both a bluff and a bludgeon. It is a bluff in the sense that it offers an “explanation” that is not an explanation at all and, in effect, dares the listener to come back. So, for example, if someone says, “There are too many blacks in prison in the US and that’s due to structural racism,” what you’re being dared to say is, “No. Blacks are so many among criminals, and that’s why there are so many in prison. It’s their fault, not the system’s fault.” And it is a bludgeon in the sense that use of the phrase is mainly a rhetorical move. Users don’t even pretend to offer evidence-based arguments beyond citing the fact of the racial disparity itself. The “structural racism” argument seldom goes into cause and effect. Rather, it asserts shadowy causes that are never fully specified, let alone demonstrated. We are all just supposed to know that it’s the fault of something called “structural racism,” abetted by an environment of “white privilege,” furthered by an ideology of “white supremacy” that purportedly characterizes our society. It explains everything. Confronted with any racial disparity, the cause is, “structural racism.”