RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/freakout-nation/

America is in the midst of a nervous breakdown.

Between the psychological damage caused by government-imposed lockdowns, the stress of an economy flirting with recession, and our increasingly acrimonious domestic politics—amplified by the social media panopticon—there is ample cause to question the state of the American psyche. In the past, our political and cultural leaders would call for toughness and stoicism in the face of adversity. Today, however, our ruling class dismisses and condemns these virtues as “toxic masculinity,” extolling, instead, displays of victimization and vulnerability.

Modern America is becoming increasingly defined by a burgeoning victimhood culture. Even athletes, once models of perseverance and resolve, are now celebrated for bowing out and choking under pressure. The champion in this event is Naomi Osaka, whose every unraveling is lauded by reporters as a bold act bringing attention to the issue of mental health in sports. A healthy society would have scorned Osaka into re-conformity with the expectations associated with her ostensible status as a world-class athlete and, in doing so, would have benefited both her and society itself.

The importance of stable cultural expectations and norms and their correlation to individual mental well-being is attested by Philip Rieff in his 1966 classic of sociology, The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Rieff distinguishes between the kinds of social “commitment therapies” that had been the norm in all traditional cultures and the individualized “analytical therapy” that is dominant today. Rieff sees cultures, at least traditional cultures, as systems for helping the individual cope with nature and society. Such cultures commanded us to suppress certain behaviors that might otherwise have been natural and instinctive, and they did so for the sake of integrating us as fully as possible into a social world:

All such systems of therapeutic control, limiting as they do the area of spontaneity, are anti-instinctual; what we mean, ordinarily, by cultures, are just these systems. We call these systems “therapeutic” because these controls are intended to preserve a certain established level of adequacy in the social functioning of the individual, as well as forestall the danger of his psychological collapse.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bidens-who-takeover-matthew-vadum/

The Biden administration’s bid to surrender American control over public health emergencies in the United States to the World Health Organization fell short at the UN’s 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva last month, but there is no reason to believe Biden won’t try again.

This drive is part of our illegitimate placeholder president’s effort to undo all the good things that former President Donald Trump accomplished. Trump slashed U.S. funding of WHO and served notice the country would pull out of the Communist Chinese-influenced agency, but Joe Biden aims to super-charge WHO’s authority in world affairs by amending an international pandemic treaty known as the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005.

Of course, WHO is a bureaucratic monstrosity, a purveyor of leftist horror propaganda that, like its parent, the United Nations, should not exist.

WHO demanded the catastrophic lockdowns, getting creative and using them to push the pseudoscience of manmade global warming. “Countries must set ambitious national climate commitments if they are to sustain a healthy and green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” WHO said in October 2021, claiming that “air pollution, primarily the result of burning fossil fuels, which also drives climate change, causes 13 deaths per minute worldwide.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/kavanaugh-assassination-plot-leftist-inside-job-daniel-greenfield/

After police arrested a California leftist on a mission to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh, the Biden administration finally condemned the campaign to intimidate the Supreme Court.

“As the president has consistently made clear, public officials, including judges, must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety or that of their families,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre falsely claimed.

After leftist activists had posted a map of the homes of Supreme Court justices to harass them, Jen Psaki had retorted. “I don’t have an official U.S. government position on where people protest.”

There is in fact such a position and it’s illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 1507 which states that anyone with “the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness” “pickets or parades in or near a building….  or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

Biden just decided not to enforce these laws in order to allow his leftist allies to intimidate the justices.

Not one of the leftists who have spent years harassing Supreme Court justices with protests outside the court and even their homes has been sent off to prison. Nor will they. Pounding on the doors of the Supreme Court, marching around the homes of justices, and trying to prevent them from coming to court have become basic parts of the activist playbook.

Even after the Kavanaugh assassination plot, leftists are continuing to protest outside his home.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/protesters-descend-on-amy-coney-barretts-home-one-day-after-kavanaugh-assassination-plot/

Protesters gathered on Thursday evening outside Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett’s home, where she lives with her husband and seven children, according to reports.

The protests, as reported by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, come one day after a California man allegedly attempted to assassinate Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Early Wednesday morning, police detained 26-year-old Nicholas John Roske after he exited a taxi in front of Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland wearing black clothes, according to a criminal complaint. The man told authorities he called 911 because he was having suicidal thoughts. He told a dispatcher he had come “from California to kill a specific” Supreme Court justice, the affidavit said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/the-lefts-political-violence-problem/

Progressives have a long history of applauding violence when it’s aimed at their ideological opponents.

You’ll be happy to know that the New York Times did get around to covering Wednesday’s attempted murder of a United States Supreme Court justice. All you need to do is pick up the paper.

Well, no, no, it’s not front-page material — except for a teeny, tiny blurb under the vacuous heading “Arrest Near Home of Justice,” right under such feature page-one stories as “Vanishing Word in the Abortion Debate: Women” and “Back to the Office” Does ‘Never’ Work for You?”

Can’t really blame them though, right? I mean, today’s huge story — the only story really — is “INSIDE AN ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY.” Remember Thursday is Insurrection™ Day! Or, I should say, Insurrection™ Night — as in this evening’s prime-time Dem-dominated January 6 committee TV extravaganza, produced, at the behest of Nancy Pelosi’s House, by a bigwig former ABC executive.

Maybe the assassination story got a mention on page 2? Nope, sorry about that, not page 2 . . .  or 3 . . . or 10 . . . or even 15. No, you’ll need to dig all the way down to page A-20 to find the Gray Lady’s grudging coverage of how “Man With Pistol, Crowbar And Zip Ties Is Arrested Near Kavanaugh’s Home.”

Do you think the Left might just have a political-violence problem?

Well, imagine what the coverage would be if, say, we switched out the word Kavanaugh and substituted Sotomayor. Think we’re still talking page A20? Of course not. It would be the only story — a story permitted to eclipse even Insurrection™.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/10/the-democrats-insurrection-against-the-supreme-court/

It’s bad enough that someone in America could become so unhinged by nonstop far-left media propaganda that he’d try to kill a Supreme Court justice. But far worse is the blasé reaction by the Democratic Party and its extreme-left pro-abortion allies to the attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Following his arrest in the early hours Wednesday, Nicholas John Roske told federal law enforcement officials that he intended to kill Kavanaugh. He was, he said, angry that the Supreme Court might soon overturn the Roe v. Wade abortion decision — which, by the way, would only mean that states, not the federal government, would determine abortion laws.

Roske meant business. He was toting a bag that, as the arrest record noted, contained a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray, duct tape, and other items, which he hoped to use to kill Kavanaugh.

Just another deranged lunatic? A one-off by a lone nut? Hardly. It seems the Democrats’ increasingly violent rhetoric in recent years continues to bear its poison fruit.

A mere day before Roske was nabbed, pro-abortion activists firebombed a pro-life CompassCare pregnancy center outside Buffalo, in what the Washington Free Beacon described as “the latest in a series of attacks on pro-life offices and churches since the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/09/5-questions-that-must-answered-before-the-j6-committee-begins-its-theatrical-production/

Don’t expect answers from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 Committee weaponized to operate as a political witch hunt.

he House Committee on Jan. 6 will launch its dramatic summer hearings tonight in a prime time show trial produced by a former ABC News executive as desperate Democrats aim to shift the narrative ahead of the midterms.

The nine members of the Select Committee appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will introduce the panel’s findings and question a pair of witnesses while presenting graphic footage of the riot to a nationwide audience. Every cable network, except Fox News, will broadcast the proceedings in an arrangement sought by the partisan probe to elevate the evening’s drama shining light on a three-hour riot that happened more than 18 months ago.

Absent from the panel asking questions, however, will be any Republicans appointed by GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy after Pelosi took the self-proclaimed “unprecedented” step of barring Reps. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, from the probe. Instead, Pelosi hand-picked the most vocal pair of NeverTrump House members to serve in their place, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who serves as vice chair and was disowned by her own party.

http://Liz Peek: Made-for-TV Jan. 6 hearings won’t rescue Democrats

Democrats think voters will be so gob-smacked by the revelations of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack that they will forget about soaring gasoline and food prices, rising crime, a 15,000-person caravan of people about to cross our southern border, the baby formula shortage and power brownouts, which are likely to hit our country this summer.

Yup, they’re convinced that Americans being force-fed (every major network will broadcast the House hearings live during prime time) scenes of yahoos waving flags and storming our Capitol will rebuild President Biden’s dismal approval ratings and put his fellow Democrats on the road to victory just in time for the midterms.

Fat chance.

Americans agree: The January 6 riots were a terrible event, and that those who broke the law should be punished.

More and more also agree: It is time to move on.

A recent NBC poll shows a dwindling number of Americans blaming Trump for the attack on the Capitol; 45 percent now say he is “solely” or “mainly” responsible, down from 52 percent the month Joe Biden took office. Moreover, 55 percent say he is “only somewhat” or “not really” to blame for the riots, up from 47 percent in January 2021.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/08/why-i-refuse-to-testify-before-the-illegitimate-january-6-committee/

U.S. Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican, represents Arizona’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House. He is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and serves on the Judiciary and Science, Space and Technology committees.

Some people have asked me why I refuse to testify before the illegitimate January 6 committee. They say, “Ooooh, you must have something to hide or else you would testify.” I say that type of thinking is not only naïve in this age of political warfare, but it is also dangerously un-American. 

Every institution of this nation has been weaponized by the Left for the purpose of arrogating power to themselves and destroying their political enemies. They want to ruin everyone they believe is standing in their way of turning America into the leftist paradise of which they dream. 

Have we forgotten how the Federal Bureau of Investigation was used to spy on President Trump during his campaign for president in 2016? Testimony at the Michael Sussman trial confirmed that Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent, instigated the Russia collusion hoax. 

The media went along with it. The media supported it. And, the media used the fake Russia story to try and derail Trump’s candidacy and then his presidency. 

After Trump was elected, Clinton constantly referred to him as illegitimate and the pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Even after the Mueller Report debunked that mad theory, some members of the January 6 committee still believe and propagate the hoax. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/08/the-subordinate-citizen/

I recently led a group of about 100 citizens to tour Israel for nearly two weeks. Before returning to the United States, all participants had to indicate their vaccination status and take a COVID-19 test for reentry. 

Anxieties swept the group as Israeli testers swabbed them. 

Anyone testing positive would have to delay his return. That quarantine would entail spending thousands of dollars in finding scarce hotel accommodations, additional living expenses, and rebooked airline tickets—depending upon the length of the mandatory sequestration. 

Contrast the tens of thousands of foreign nationals now mustering to cross illegally into the United States again this summer. They follow the already 2 million who have entered the country unlawfully since Joe Biden became president. 

Does any foreign national worry about being tested for COVID-19, much less fear being turned away if he tests positive or for lack of proof of vaccination? 

Or do we scrutinize far more carefully U.S. citizens entering legally their own country than we do noncitizens crossing our borders unlawfully? 

For that matter, the government is still determined to fire thousands of federal workers and U.S. military personnel who refused the new mRNA vaccinations. Most citizens who were not vaccinated feared that the inoculations were either possibly dangerous to their health or ineffective in preventing COVID-19 infections or would not necessarily lead to herd immunity. 

Are 2 million nonvaccinated foreigners arriving unaudited from impoverished countries less of a threat during the pandemic than fully audited American citizens employed by the federal government? Why would we fire unvaccinated Americans but welcome equally unvaccinated noncitizens?

The Biden Administration blasted the Trump southern border wall and canceled all further funding. 

Yet it just appropriated $40 billion to Ukraine to ensure that it does not lose its border war against Russian aggression. 

That is a tiny percentage of the federal budget. But the aid is full of symbolic irony, nonetheless. The multibillion-dollar appropriation would have more than covered the completion of the entire wall along our own southern border. 

An outside observer might conclude that the U.S. government intends to uphold the universal idea of national sovereignty, internationally recognized borders, and the security of citizens inside their own country—as long as they are not American citizens. 

There are currently over 550 “sanctuary” jurisdictions established by state and local governments. They aim to prevent federal immigration authorities from deporting illegal aliens, including tens of thousands detained by law enforcement for committing additional crimes.