RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/09/the-fall-of-the-house-of-mouse/

The legendary Walt Disney, watching from above, must be disgusted with what’s happened at the company he founded more than 100 years ago, October 16, 1923, to be exact. Under the leadership of Bob Iger for most of the past 20 years, the company has recently floundered, abandoning its roots in providing wholesome entertainment across its many platforms (theme parks, cruise lines, movies, broadcasting, streaming entertainment) and is now seen for what it has become, a woke institution dedicated to indoctrinating children. And parents have rebelled.

100 years ago, Walt Disney had a vision: to provide wholesome entertainment for families and “children of all ages.” He oversaw the creation of endearing classic movies, theme parks that allowed visitors to enter a whole new world, and his namesake brand of quality kid-safe content. It became world-famous for its uniquely “Disney” way of entertaining everyone. From his unabashedly patriotic content generated during World War II to the “Wonderful World of Disney” that brought families together in front of the TV beginning in the late 1950s, Walt’s world was shaped by his “America First” beliefs.

But all that has changed under the leadership of current CEO Bob Iger. Iger, who joined ABC (the American Broadcasting Company) in 1974, earning $175 a week, has steadily risen through the ranks at ABC through a series of positions at Capital Cities/ABC before it was acquired by Disney in 1995. His rise up toward the C-suite continued unabated until 2005 when the Walt Disney Board selected him to succeed the unpopular Michael Eisner as its CEO.

Since then he has presided over a period of rapid growth in its theme parks division as well as masterminding the acquisition of several intellectual property portfolios—Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel, to name a few—to bolster its standing in Hollywood and become a dominating force in the entertainment industry.

But as of late, since the late 2010s, the company has become a leading force in the woke movement, which has caused problems for the company. It has run into a buzz saw of criticism over its forced introduction of LGBTQIA+ themes and characters into its TV programming and films.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/09/america-and-europe-can-hang-together-or-hang-separately/

Consider these European and American binaries.

On December 20, 2024, a terrorist, Taleb Al-Abdul Mohsen, rammed his SUV into a Christmas crowd in Magdeburg, Germany. He killed 6 pedestrians and injured 299 others.

Eleven days later, on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans, Louisiana, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar smashed his pickup into a festive crowd. He murdered fifteen and hurt over 35.

Germany’s fertility rate is scarcely above 1.4—about average for a shrinking European Union. About 20 percent of the country is now foreign-born, a record high.

American fertility has precipitously dived to 1.6. The foreign-born now represent 15 percent of the American resident population, the highest in both actual numbers (50 million) and percentages in history.

The German military is a shell of its former self, with fewer than 200,000 soldiers and a shortage of almost all types of weapons.

The U.S. military, after being humiliated in Afghanistan, is currently down some 40,000-plus recruits. It faces shortages of anti-tank weapons, artillery shells, ships, and logistical support.

Germany may finally manage to spend 2% of its GDP on defense; the United States is heading downward below 3%—the lowest in over 80 years since the Great Depression.

Last year, the German economy shrank; this year, it will scarcely grow, in part because of shortages of affordable fossil fuels.

Germans pay four times what Americans on average do for electricity. Yet the Trump administration has promised an oil and natural gas renaissance, hoping to expand both production and exports with envisioned new pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21298/trump-crazy-ideas

Why is it that people are always calling for someone to think “outside the box,” then when someone does, say, “Aaaak! He thought outside the box!”

In that view, President-elect Donald J. Trump has already committed (at least) three heresies: Buy Greenland, stop China from controlling the Panama Canal and deepen America’s affiliation with Canada.

All three ideas are neither crazy nor even new.

President Harry S. Truman looked at acquiring Greenland in 1946. Thomas Jefferson, after the Louisiana Purchase, proposed buying Cuba – just think how the Cubans would be prospering now, politically and economically, if that deal had gone through. Those acquisitions didn’t take place but in 1917, the US did acquire Denmark’s Virgin Islands for $25 million. As historian Stephen Press writes,

“As secretary of state, John Quincy Adams arranged debt relief for Spain in exchange for Florida. Secretary of State William Seward acquired Alaska. What Mr. Trump proposes is consistent with this American tradition—and with our current borders. Sovereignty purchases are responsible for more than 40% of U.S. land…

“History suggests the benefits of being open-minded about this. Inhabitants of Alaska wouldn’t be better off under Russian sovereignty. Bringing Greenlanders into closer affiliation with the U.S., and sweetening the deal with economic subsidies, could conceivably prove beneficial to all parties”

As for the Panama Canal, President Jimmy Carter handed it to Panama for $1, but on the condition that it permanently remain a neutral zone – not one controlled at both ends by China. “We gave the Panama Canal to Panama,” Trump has pointed out. “We didn’t give it to China. They’ve abused that gift.”

The US built the Panama Canal in the first place to be able to avoid having commercial and military sea traffic avoid the long journey around South America’s southernmost sea route, the Strait of Magellan – where the Chinese Communist Party also located a base.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-maga-elon-musk-tech-industry

With Donald Trump set to take office later this month, it’s worth considering how his coalition has changed.

The source of the president-elect’s power—his voting base—is populist in nature. This was evident from the beginning. Trump rallied a new political cross-section and has, over the past decade, transformed the GOP into a multiracial, working-class party. He managed to draw tens of thousands of people to stadiums and arenas and to command a fervent social media following that propagates his message.

Trump’s populist appeal came with a downside: his voters and his vision lacked elite champions who could capably administer the White House and advance the MAGA agenda. There was Trump the president and Trump’s voters, but nothing in between. He lacked the necessary middle layer to control the bureaucracy and negotiate with outside power brokers.

Now Trump has a second chance, and his coalition has seen a major shift: a growing segment of the technology industry has committed itself to the MAGA agenda. The most notable representative of this development is the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk. Hundreds of other tech leaders have followed suit, donating to Trump and backing his 2024 presidential campaign.

Some of this is doubtless self-serving. Technologists fear taxes, regulation, antitrust, and other restrictions that would likely have been part of Kamala Harris’s agenda. But part of it is ideological. Many figures on the right, including Musk, have a genuine distaste, even disgust, for “woke” politics and would like to see an innovative, free, and growth-oriented American economy. Some tech leaders were early adopters in supporting Trump, while others have emerged more recently, after it became safe. But the overall message is clear: the tech industry gambled on Trump and, with his election victory, looks to benefit not only financially but ideologically.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/still-suicidal-and-surreal/

Since the Democrats’ shellacking at the polls on November 5, the party has been undergoing a fractious discussion about what went wrong. A whole roster of the usual suspects has been mooted, including neglect of the working class. But that accurate assessment still doesn’t get that the problem is leftism per se, not bad candidates, polling, tactics, or whatever, no more than New Coke failed for those reasons. It was just a bad product.

Take Vermont Socialist, er, Independent Bernie Sanders’s scolding of his party: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. . . .  And they’re right.”

We know what Sanders means: “changing” to a full socialist planned economy managed by the state, rather than the over-regulated hybrid we now have. But those features of our dirigiste economy have created conditions, dysfunctions, and moral hazards––the tax, spend, print, borrow, hyper-regulate, and redistribute money that during the Biden-Harris administration unleashed inflation and wage stagnation that drove voters, including traditional Democrat constituencies, to vote for Trump.

Nor is the problem that “real” socialism has “never been tried.” History is littered with attempts to create a successful socialist or communist economy, and every one we know of has failed––not because it wasn’t properly managed or had a bad “messaging strategy,” but because unlike free-market capitalism, it has been predicated on unreal assumptions about human nature and motivation, as well as ignoring the power of freedom and choice.