RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-by-and-for-the-elites-biden-wilson-jefferson-democratist-popular-rule-threat-america-tocqueville-11664114737?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

President Biden’s Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia on “unity” is a poignant example of the confusion surrounding the concept of democracy. Mr. Biden declared that MAGA Republicans threaten “the very foundations of our republic.” The phrase a “threat to American democracy” is so commonplace these days that it hardly carries any meaning—except that it encapsulates the reigning ideology of our time, an ideology so pervasive that it almost goes unnoticed. It is like the air we breathe.

I call it democratism. It is an imaginative and idealistic understanding of popular rule that disdains ordinary people and looks to a cadre of so-called experts to operate the levers of power. Under this ideology, “democracy” and “the people” are rhetorical cover for the will of the elites. Think of social media’s censorship of misinformation in the name of “supporting democracy” and “upholding free expression.” How is it that censorship passes as upholding free expression?

“War is peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength” from Orwell’s “1984” comes to mind, but there is a long tradition in the West of this paradoxical interpretation of democracy. Enlightenment-era thinking, and arguably even Plato, puts forth the thought that an ahistorical ideal of justice ought to act as the primary guide to politics. Jean-Jacques Rousseau applied this idea in “The Social Contract.” The general will, Rousseau says, is what the popular will ought to be, even if it isn’t expressed by actual living people. The general will conveniently requires the translation of a wise legislator for its instantiation.

Many of the most vocal champions of democracy, from Thomas Jefferson to our own day, have been advocates of this Rousseauean inversion, using the word “democracy” as justification for what would otherwise be naked authoritarianism.

https://victorhanson.com/thoughts-on-the-cultural-revolution-in-our-midst-part-one/

We are in the middle of a grand effort to create an equality-of-result, race-based, radical Jacobin society. It is by design entirely antithetical to the Founders’ constitutional republic. And the revolutionary agenda is overseen by an exempt bicoastal oligarchy.

The enforced equality of result will, of course, be mandated by elites not subject to their own demands upon the citizenry: no charter schools for hoi polloi, prep schools for the Guardians; Teslas for the anointed, buses for the masses; walls never work, except to protect Martha’s Vineyard, Napa, and Malibu; high rises are green for you, fourth homes are necessary for them; take light rail and save the planet, fly private to ensure that others do not.

We see these disconnects most shamefully with the outrage from the Left about the bussing of illegal aliens (in small numbers no less) into their elite enclaves.

The Obamas and their Martha Vineyard socialites did not care whether 10,000 swarmed onto the sidewalks of a border Hispanic town, destroying social services, overwhelming their schools, and spiking crime. And they care even less when the Biden administration flew thousands under cover of night into red-state communities. But they do not want anyone loitering on the streets in their own downtowns.

Yet for the Leftist pundit, sending a poor immigrant into Martha’s Vineyard becomes the work of the “Holocaust.” What a sick parallel to compare the systematic murder of six million Jews to an illegal entrant getting a free jet ride to one of the safest, richest, and most picturesque beach towns in the world.

Yet none in the Vineyard, not one, will offer his now empty vacation mansion and expansive grounds to the dispossessed. Instead, for a few hours the blessed virtue signaled their concern—and then bussed out the “welcome” in less than a day.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/24/fair-trials-are-impossible-for-january-6-defendants/

Odds are jurors in Douglas Austin Jensen’s trial took longer to fill out the verdict forms than they took to decide his fate.

After only a few hours of deliberations on Friday, 12 residents of the nation’s capital found Jensen guilty on seven counts related to his involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. Jensen, an alleged QAnon follower, infamously confronted Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman inside the building that afternoon; he potentially faces decades in prison for convictions on impeding law enforcement officers and obstruction of an official proceeding, a dubious nonviolent felony punishable by up to 20 years in jail.

NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly, who covers all things January 6, noted in a tweet that “An ongoing issue with these Jan. 6 jury trials is that you barely have time to write the story on closing arguments before the jury returns their guilty verdicts.” Reilly then swooned over the Department of Justice’s “flawless” track record before D.C. juries.

CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane predicted the jury would finish its work in one afternoon since January 6 juries have deliberated “swiftly so far.”

Jensen’s conviction adds to the Department of Justice’s undefeated streak for January 6 jury trials. Once upon a time, that would raise at least a sliver of skepticism from journalists and legal “experts” as to whether the constitutional rights, namely the right to face a jury of your peers, are being protected in an unquestionably political prosecution of dissidents of the regime. Instead, these verdicts are praised by the ruling class as proof that the “rule of law” and “justice” still prevail in this country—all evidence to the contrary, of course.

It is clear, after six months of jury trials for Capitol protesters, i.e., Donald Trump supporters, that no one charged in this sprawling criminal investigation can get a fair trial. 

Judges on the D.C. District Court have denied every change of venue motion, absurdly insisting residents of a city that voted 93 percent for Joe Biden in 2020 can be fair and impartial. Further, judges claim nonstop news coverage in addition to the televised performances of the January 6 select committee do not further taint a demonstrably tainted jury pool.