RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/20/the-toxic-racialist-obsessions-of-joe-biden/

Joe Biden ran on “unity,” which is critical in a multiracial America. He vowed to heal the divisions supposedly sown by Donald Trump. Instead, he is proving to be the most polarizing president in modern memory. Often his racialist rhetoric and condescension have proven demeaning to both blacks and whites. In a volatile multiracial democracy that demands tolerance and restraint, a highly unpopular Biden, for cheap political advantage, continually proves incendiary and reckless. 

Last week Joe Biden snarked after watching a White House screening of Till:

Lynched for simply being black, nothing more. With white crowds, white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards. Hard to believe, but that’s what was done. And some people still want to do that. 

 Exactly who are these “some people”? Who fits Biden’s innuendos of contemporary “some people” who, he alleges in 2023, still wish, as “white crowds, white families” of the past, to mail celebratory postcards after they lynch black people? The Ultra-MAGA villains of his recent Phantom of the Opera speech? Have his current targets ever echoed anything like Biden’s own racist past warning that busing would force people to “grow up in a racial jungle”?

What current data might support Biden’s absurd charges? Is Biden referring to federal interracial crime and hate crime statistics charting violent white propensities against blacks? None exist. In fact, they continually reveal that so-called whites are underrepresented as perpetrators in both categories, while overrepresented as victims in interracial crimes—dramatically so in the case of black-on-white violent crime.

In our sensationalist YouTube world, are we suffering an epidemic of Internet-fed, white-on-black incendiary crimes that might have prompted the president’s demagogic accusations? Not at all. Most of the most recent publicized interracial violence—a woman in a gym fighting off a would-be rapist, a bicyclist doctor stabbed to death in an intersection as his attacker spewed racial hatred, a 26-year-old mother lethally shot in the back in front of her children in front of her children in a parking lot over a minor argument, a young boy violently choked on a bus, a small girl on a bus beaten repeatedly by two teenage boys—have involved black perpetrators and apparent white victims. So, what contemporary evidence or widely publicized anecdotes prompt Biden’s recent charges of “white rage”-fueled violence?

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt’s rebellious daughter, is supposed to have quipped: “If you haven’t anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.” Regardless of the quote’s validity, most of us were taught that “speech is silver, but silence is golden” and that “love conquers hate.” However, Vanessa Van Edwards, the behavioral scientist and author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, says her research suggests that Alice may have been on to something. People form stronger bonds when they talk about someone they hate rather than someone with whom they have positive feelings.

Hatred, often coupled with tribalism, has been prominent throughout history and has led to millions being killed. Hatred of Native Americans, as well as desire for more land, was a motivating factor in opening North America to European settlers. Hatred for blacks in southern U.S. states led to an estimated 4,400 of them being lynched between Reconstruction and World War II.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/20/why-the-right-not-to-be-offended-is-offensive/

This is the last of our series about the worship of false idols and how these secular religions are eroding the fabric of our society. (The previous columns appeared  here, here, and here.) Climate obsession, the concept of ensuring equal outcomes as opposed to equal opportunity, and the unmooring of gender from biology have profound implications, but these generally do not have as pervasive effects as the imaginary “right not to be offended” and its progeny, self-censorship.

Claiming to be offended has become a weapon to exert control over others that is neither justified nor deserved. It is, itself, offensive, to say nothing of annoying.

For instance, a recent study conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found, among other perceptions of a stifling environment, that more than two-thirds of students feared for their future if they said the wrong thing. This is hardly an isolated example of fear about hurting somebody’s feelings. Looking back, many of us laughed at “participation trophies” in everything from athletic competitions to spelling bees, because they made a mockery of genuine achievement. The concept was rooted in the belief that those who did not possess exceptional skills should be sheltered from disappointment – despite the near certainty that they were well aware of their skill level and limitations.   

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/21/bidens-ukraine-trip-an-inspiration-for-more-of-his-lies/

President Joe Biden made a “surprise” visit to Ukraine Monday. It doesn’t take a cynic to wonder how many tales from the trip he’ll come up with to pad his already bursting catalog of self-aggrandizing lies, which the media has mostly ignored for decades.

We can imagine Biden in the coming months telling audiences that “we were shot down twice” as the Air Force Special Air Mission jet approached the Rzeszow airport in Poland near the Ukraine border, and then while visiting the front, the Ukrainian forces “let me shoot some of their artillery,” which was particularly rewarding because “I know I killed bunch of Russkies and took out Corn Pop, too.”

“It reminded me,” he’ll say, “of when I was storming the beach at Normandy in ’44.”

All too much? Not even Biden would go that far in concocting some outlandish fables to make himself look better than the dolt he is? Of course he would. That’s what he does. Remember when:

Biden lied about how “his plane was fired upon” while he was flying in the Balkans, and below “bombed-out homes with snipers inside could be seen”?
During a speech he told the audience he knew “where Al Qaida lives” because it was “the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains,” but failed to mention the flight had to land due to snow and there were no terrorists around?
He told mine workers that “I am a hard coal miner,” and another time said his ancestors were coal miners, when of course he wasn’t and they weren’t? 

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/20/did-bidens-trove-of-classified-docs-jeopardize-u-s-national-security-ii-tipp-poll/

Recent revelations that President Joe Biden kept classified government documents at his two namesake think tanks, his Delaware home and even his garage have largely been treated with a yawn by big media. But average Americans are paying attention and worry that Biden’s careless stewardship of classified documents endangers U.S. national security, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

In our national online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,358 adults, taken from Feb. 1-3, we asked Americans two questions, the first being: “How closely are you following the story about classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as Vice President found at his former office and home?”

As it turns out, Americans are paying pretty close attention to the story. Among those responding to the I&I/TIPP Poll, which has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points, 60% said they were “closely” following the developments.

Among those following closely, 26% said they were following “very closely,” versus 34% who said “somewhat closely.”

Meanwhile, just 36% of Americans said they were not following the news closely, with 22% saying they were following it “not very closely” and only 13% saying “not at all closely.”

So it’s definitely a topic in the public eye.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19430/joyce-kilmer

Amidst the unrelenting stories of carnage, corruption and incompetence comes a reminder there is good news if you look long enough to find it.

And it should come as no surprise that this reminder comes from Brooklyn.

Generations ago, the New York City Department of Parks took a triangular piece of park property along Kings Highway in Midwood and renamed it “Sgt. Joyce Kilmer Square.” It lies along a historic Indian trail that became a major thoroughfare for European settlers traveling between rural communities called Flatbush, Gravesend, and New Utrecht.

In time, New York City would acquire the parcel as the arrival of the automobile required the realignment of many Brooklyn streets, resulting in this modest triangle. It was dedicated as parkland in 1934, and named “Sergeant Joyce Kilmer Square” in 1935.

Today it is lined with benches shaded by large oak trees, with a flagpole along East 12th Street. It is a respite for local neighbors seeking a moment’s relief from the challenges of the day.

It is a modest tribute to a giant of an American – and he likely would have had it no other way.

Kilmer was born in New Jersey before the start of the 20th Century and educated at Rutgers University and Columbia University, from where he earned his degree. Kilmer married and had four children. After teaching Latin for a year at Morristown High School in New Jersey, Kilmer began his career in 1909 as a dictionary editor with Funk & Wagnall’s Company. In 1912, he served as the Literary Editor of The Churchman, an Anglican newspaper, also contributing freelance articles and poems to several other publications. On the eve of World War I, he joined the staff of the New York Times and subsequently converted to Catholicism.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/16/judge-tim-kellys-court-of-contempt/

Following an armed FBI raid with SWAT vehicles that terrorized his neighborhood and pregnant wife, Zachary Rehl was arrested in March 2021 for his involvement in the events of January 6. A Philadelphia judge ordered Rehl, a member of the Proud Boys, to be released from custody pending trial.

But Joe Biden’s Justice Department immediately asked a D.C. federal judge to keep Rehl in jail indefinitely even though he was not accused of committing a violent crime. Claiming Rehl “abetted” the destruction of government property—“a federal crime of terrorism,” prosecutors wrote—the government argued that no condition of release could keep the community safe from Rehl, a former Marine with no criminal history.

Enter D.C. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly.

“The Court finds that the nature and circumstances of the offenses weigh in favor of detention,” Kelly wrote in his July 2021 order. “[Although] there is no evidence Rehl carried or used a weapon that day, or laid his hands on anyone in a violent manner, he said and did things that are highly troubling.”

After spending two years in jail not convicted of any crime, Rehl is currently on trial in Kelly’s courtroom along with four other Proud Boys charged with seditious conspiracy—an indictment filed a year after their initial charges. Kelly has kept all five defendants behind bars awaiting trial, repeatedly denying all subsequent motions for release while at the same time granting one delay after another.

Kelly, naturally, is invested in justifying his cruel decision to incarcerate innocent men (yes, the country’s jurisprudence still assumes the presumption of innocence) for two years. Which only partially explains why he is running roughshod over the rights of the defendants.

Appointed to the bench by President Trump in 2017, Kelly spent 10 years working for the Justice Department including the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which prosecutes every January 6 case. He won an award from the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the very same office investigating every January 6 case. This is the sort of professional incestuousness Trump supporters from flyover country confront in the nation’s capital.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/constant_government_lies_spark_resistance_movements.html

In the digital public square of social media, I have seen a noticeable uptick in biting memes and political cartoons calling out the U.S. government for its constant lies.  In one example, a cyber-billboard screams, “I don’t know if I’m being distracted by vaccine deaths so I don’t notice inflation, or if inflation is the distraction to Ukraine money laundering, or if Ukraine is a distraction for rampant pedophilia, or if pedos are distracting me from election fraud.” 

 Clearly, that was produced before the great balloon scare gripped the nation.  Ah, but no sooner had China Joe proven once again how unsecured our open borders are by allowing a Chinese surveillance balloon to float above the continent’s nuclear silos than I ran into a cartoon divided into four squares in which the same man was being hypnotized — first by a dangling coronavirus in 2020, then an mRNA “vaccine” shot in 2021, then a Ukraine flag in 2022, and finally an extraterrestrial spaceship in 2023.  Well done, meme masters and internet freethinkers!  Actually, corrupt Senator Harry Reid had started to play the UFO card a decade ago, so perhaps this cycle is just starting up once again.  Uff da.

If you want to know what’s really going on within a society, you don’t run to the national newspapers or interview people with titles.  You get out and talk to the people nobody else would dare seek.  In the Internet Age, you look at what’s being said by ordinary people on unremarkable chatrooms whose opinions are routinely overlooked.  What I see today is a bubbling movement of frustration and anger that is as acidic as anything I’ve come across.  Americans are furiously mad — but noticeably not in despair.  People are not throwing their hands up in desperation; they’re venting their rage at a corrupt system of government that has gotten out of control.  They’re not hiding in the shadows, whispering in hushed tones; they’re screaming at the top of their lungs, just daring the Big Tech censors to blot out their (un)free speech.  They’re not allowing the State’s “politically correct” priests and purveyors of officially sanctioned disinformation to shame them into silence; they’re laughing in the spin doctors’ faces and calling out the government’s mass propaganda for what it is.  That’s refreshing!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/war-is-about-more-than-big-battalions/

Napoleon famously said that “morale is to the physical as three is to one.” More troops and bigger guns don’t necessarily guarantee victory, as Napoleon himself demonstrated. The post-revolutionary French army took on the wealthy great powers of Europe and with the exception of England, inflicted on them defeat after defeat, dominating most of continental Europe from 1804-14. History is full of other conflicts and battles in which the motivations for fighting trumped the greater numbers of the foe. Indeed, the West only exists because twice, in 490 and 480 B.C., the free Greeks defeated the massive, servile armies of the autocratic Persian Empire, preserving the ideals of political freedom and equality.

What people are willing to fight, kill, and die for, then, is three times more significant than the materiel with which they wage war. This means that our culture’s fashionable self-loathing––its “oikophobia,” as the late philosopher Roger Scruton called the hatred of one’s country, its institutions, its history, and much of its people evident in our universities, media, entertainment, and even military establishment––is so dangerous that not only does it erode morale, it signals to our foes that for all our economic and military power, significant numbers of citizens will not risk their lives to defend their country from those who wish to supplant it.

Given this long history showing that the foundational beliefs people fight for is itself a force-multiplier, it’s puzzling to read this paragraph from Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Robert Kagan’s long essay in the Wall Street Journal. After summarizing the 20th Century history of aggressors underestimating the power of the U.S., Kagan writes:

“Are Americans as a people up to a major confrontation with another great power, whether in immediate conflict or a protracted Cold War-like struggle? It would be dangerous for a potential adversary to assume they are not. Whatever condition the American political system may be in, it is not appreciably worse than it was during the 1930s. That, too, was a deeply polarized America, including on the question of whether to intervene in the world’s conflicts. But once the U.S. found itself at war, dissent all but disappeared. If ever there could be a cure for American political polarization, a conflict with China would be it.”