RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/bidens-press-conference-whispers-joseph-klein/

“Creepy Joe” started trending on Twitter last week after a bizarre June 24th press conference during which President Biden started answering reporters’ questions in a whisper. Think of Biden as the donkey whisperer to the left-wing progressive base of his party and to his adoring fans in the mainstream media.

Biden weirdly leaned forward during the press conference and whispered to reporters that he “wrote the bill on the environment” (not clear what bill he was talking about). And then, presumably referring to the enhanced unemployment benefits that are incentivizing unemployed people to stay at home rather than fill the millions of current job openings, Biden whispered: “Pay them more. This is an employee’s — employee’s bargaining chip now what’s happening.”

Biden thought he was being clever. But all he showed was that he is a puppet of unions and of far-left progressives who want to pay people not to work.

In New York, for example, the average weekly unemployment benefit including the $300 federal boost has been calculated at $653. The weekly pay for a 40-hour week, using a $15 per hour minimum wage, would be $600. It doesn’t take an economist to see why unemployed residents of New York City, where the general hourly minimum wage is $15, would prefer to stay home and collect higher unemployment benefits than the wages they would earn if they went to work.

Government unemployment benefits were designed as a temporary safety net, not to serve as an employee bargaining chip. Due to the economic devastation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government has temporarily supplemented the unemployment benefit payments that states are providing to workers whose employment was terminated through no fault of their own. But these individuals are supposed to be looking for new jobs at least equivalent to the ones they lost. They are not supposed to just lie around on their couches and wait for the benefits paid for by hard-working Americans to keep rolling in.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jun/26/crenshaw-releasing-crt-complaints-servicemembers/

Rep. Dan Crenshaw has begun publicly releasing whistleblower complaints from service members who object to recent military training initiatives which they say incorporate critical race theory instruction.

The Texas Republican and former Navy SEAL officer received the complaints through a whistleblower site he launched in late May in partnership with Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican and former Army infantry officer.

“Make no mistake about it, our military is still the strongest in the world,” Mr. Crenshaw said in a video posted on Instagram Friday. “But wokeism, identity politics, critical race theory, and blatant political activism have indeed seeped into this critical institution.”

Friday’s video is part of a series he calls “The Whistleblower Files,” through which he said he plans to release a portion of more than 400 complaints he received and determined to be credible over the following weeks.

The complaint released Friday details required training in which members of an Air Force squadron were separated physically by “points of privilege” such as race and sex in an exercise known as a “privilege walk.”

“So let’s point out the obvious: this is meant to shame people,” Mr. Crenshaw said in the video. “And shame people for something they have no control over. It also literally creates manufactured divisions in an environment that requires camaraderie, and puts down certain service members over others not on merit, but on skin color or gender.”

The complaints follow Pentagon efforts to stamp out extremism in the ranks after current and former troops were identified in the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. In February, the Pentagon directed military units to hold a one-day “stand-down” to address extremism within the ranks.

“We want to have a reasonable discussion over these issues so we can keep these problems from compounding,” Mr. Crenshaw said in the video, and said all of the complaints released will preserve the confidentiality of the service member.

Mr. Crenshaw said the complaints point to growing politicization within the ranks of a notoriously apolitical institution.

“We’ve seen what it’s done to our college campuses,” Mr. Crenshaw told The Washington Times. “We’ve seen what it’s done to corporations, where people are walking on eggshells constantly, always worried about some kind of complaint being levied against them, always worried about what’s the next insane anti-racism training they’re going to have to go through. And the military is taking that on.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-covid-commission-americans-can-trust-11624823367?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School.

The pandemic is on its way out, but how many Americans think the U.S. approach succeeded? More than 600,000 Americans died from Covid, and lockdowns have left extensive collateral damage. Trust in science has eroded, and the damage won’t be limited to epidemiology, virology and public health. Scientists in other fields will unfortunately also have to deal with the fallout, including oncologists, physicists, computer scientists, environmental engineers and even economists.

The first step to restoring the public’s trust in scientific experts is an honest and comprehensive evaluation of the nation’s pandemic response. Sens. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have introduced a bill that would establish a Covid commission to examine the origins of the virus, the early response to the epidemic, and equity issues in the disease’s impact. Private foundations are also in the process of planning such a commission.

For a commission to be credible, it needs to be broad in both scope and membership. Members can’t have conflicts of interest. If the public perceives the commission is a whitewash, distrust in the scientific community will erode further. A commission must consider four major areas of the U.S. pandemic strategy:

• Public-health measures, including the closing of schools, businesses, sports, religious services and cultural events; other forms of physical distancing; protection of nursing homes; masks; testing; contact tracing; case counts; cause-of-death audits; decreased medical care; Cares Act payments to hospitals, and much more.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-over-critical-race-theory-11624810791?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Critical race theory is the latest battleground in the culture war. Since the murder of George Floyd last year, critical race theory’s key concepts, including “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility,” have become ubiquitous in America’s elite institutions. Progressive politicians have sought to implement “antiracist” policies to reduce racial disparities, such as minorities-only income programs and racially segregated vaccine distribution.

The ideology has sparked an immense backlash. As Americans have sought to understand critical race theory, they have discovered that it has divided Americans into racial categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed” and promotes radical concepts such as “spirit murder” (what public schools supposedly do to black children) and “abolishing whiteness” (a purported precondition for social justice). In the classroom, critical race theory-inspired lessons have often devolved into race-based struggle sessions, with public schools forcing children to rank themselves according to a racial hierarchy, subjecting white teachers to “antiracist therapy,” and encouraging parents to become “white traitors.”

Alarmed state legislators have pushed back. In recent months, lawmakers in 24 states have introduced, and six have enacted, legislation banning public schools from promoting critical race theory’s core concepts, including race essentialism, collective guilt and racial superiority. Parent groups around the country have mobilized to oppose critical race theory in the classroom, arguing that it cultivates shame in white students and fatalism in minority students. According to a recent YouGov survey, of the 64% of Americans who have heard about critical race theory, 58% view it unfavorably, including 72% of political independents.

That’s a major liability for the political left. Sensing that they are losing control of the narrative on race, left-leaning media outlets have launched a furious counterattack. Liberal pundits at the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC and elsewhere have begun spinning a new mythology that presents critical race theory as a benign academic concept, casts its detractors as right-wing extremists driven by racial resentment, and portrays legislation against critical race theory as an attempt to ban teaching about the history of slavery and racism. All three charges are false.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/06/27/boston-pro-palestinian-thugs-spit-at-and-curse-pro-israel-activist-n1457621

On Thursday, a group of pro-Palestinian activists surrounded Dexter Van Zile of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) at a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) rally at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. The pro-jihad protesters tried to intimidate Van Zile physically, poking their fingers in his face, shouting at him, shoving him, spitting at him, and calling him a “bitch,” “Nazi,” and “f**king pig.” Then they no doubt went away believing themselves to be on the side of righteousness. It was a small incident that reveals many of the big problems facing America today, thanks to the American Left.

Just before Van Zile was surrounded and menaced, a speaker at the pro-Palestinian rally told the crowd: “Uh, Dexter Van Zile over here is in the crowd, he’s a rabid Zionist with this group called CAMERA.” After the crowd booed and hooted, the speaker went on to explain how “Zionist racist fascists… under the guise of journalism, write only to smear and muckrake on our righteous movement.” He called upon the crowd to start chanting “Zionists, go home,” which they dutifully did, turning toward Van Zile to do so. Van Zile was surrounded, abused, and reviled shortly thereafter, even as one of the pro-jihad activists repeatedly tried to convince his companions not to do so, saying over and over again: “They will use this against us. They will use this against us. They will use this against us.”

Well, yes. And here we are. Because in the first place, no one in the crowd was saying that Van Zile should be left alone for any reason other than that surrounding him, yelling at him, and spitting on him would make the demonstrators look bad. No one reminded them of the American tradition of free discourse and Voltaire’s old adage, now completely forgotten, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The American Left has now replaced that idea, which is at the foundation of any free society, with “If I disapprove of what you say, I will revile you, slander you, and physically menace until you are too afraid to stand up against me.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/06/from-plato-to-black-lives-matter-rafe-champion/

I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous—from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.    —Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

The equal opportunity movement of modern times is valuable, but the shift from equal opportunity to affirmative action is practically irresistible for people who are impatient to better the lot of their fellows. The shift may appear to be modest, but it has converted the equal opportunity and anti-racist movement into a vehicle of racism, intolerance, division and destruction.

I suggest that some aspects of Plato’s thought have poisoned the well of Western thought, and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement can be seen as one of the consequences. How do we get from the works of the greatest philosopher of all time, the Divine Philosopher, to a movement that has triggered a deadly rampage of looting and arson with almost overwhelming approval among progressive left-wing people around the world?

This essay appears in June’s Quadrant.
Subscribers read it weeks ago

Western philosophy has been described as footnotes to Plato, and among the footnotes is The Open Society and Its Enemies, with Karl Popper’s critique of Plato’s later works, especially Republic and Laws. Popper found at last four elements of totalitarian thought in Plato. First is “racialism”, or “race thinking” as Jacques Barzun called it. Second is the concept of collective justice that Plato proposed to replace individual justice. Third is revolutionary canvas-cleaning to sweep away everything old and start again. Fourth is fake news, which Plato dignified with the title of noble lies.

Noble lies

Starting with the last of the four, a noble lie can be defined as a myth or untruth knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. 

What is the empirical basis for BLM, the evidence that the deaths of blacks at the hands of the police are symptoms of racism?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/25/rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-for-release-of-january-6-surveillance-footage/

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sent a letter to top government officials seeking answers about the January 6 investigation and conditions in a D.C. jail specifically used to house Capitol defendants. Greene requests the release of at least 14,000 hours of surveillance footage captured by USCP security system on January 6 as well as the identity of the officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed female veteran Trump supporter. “It is abundantly clear that there is a two-track justice system in the United States,” Greene wrote. Her letter can be found below:  

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/26/derek-chauvin-scapegoat/

EXCERPT

Back in March, I wrote wondering whether Chauvin could get a fair trial in Hennepin County. I didn’t think so and laid out the reasons. Chauvin’s conviction a month later on all charges—unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter—strengthened my skepticism. Chauvin, a nearly 20-year police veteran who was cited for bravery multiple times (he also racked up at least 17 civilian complaints), may have used excessive force trying to subdue Floyd, who had serious cardiac problems, was high on fentanyl and other substances, and was probably in a state of excited delirium while he was resisting arrest. But was Chauvin guilty of second- or third-degree murder? 

As I said at the time, it didn’t matter. George Floyd’s death was the catalyst that lit a holocaust. All across America, cities were burning. Derek Chauvin was the victim offered up to the gods in expiation. The ritual he was subjected to was less a legal trial than a sort of pagan sacrifice. 

The expected penalty for the charges Chauvin was convicted of is 11-12 years. Peter Cahill, the judge in the case, said that “prosecutors had proven there were aggravating factors in the case that called for a tougher sentence.” What were those “aggravating factors”? You or I might think the explosive situation in Minneapolis and other “progressive” redoubts was part of the story. Judge Cahill cited Chauvin’s callousness and disregard for Floyd. Similarly, after sentencing Chauvin, Judge Cahill insisted that his harsh sentence was “not based on public opinion. I am not basing it on any attempt to send any messages. The job of a trial judge is to apply the law to specific facts.” Indeed it is. How did Judge Cahill do? 

One friend, a lawyer who is knowledgeable about the case, told me that while he thought the prosecution mounted a strong case, it was also a battle between David and Goliath and David lost. Chauvin and his one attorney were totally outgunned by the prosecution. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. 

Another friend touched on what seems to me to be an essential point. Yes, the sentence was grotesquely disproportionate, he said, but remember: Chauvin, although charged only in the Floyd death, is also being sentenced “for all the ones who got away”: Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police officers involved in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Officer Daniel Pantaleo who was implicated in the death of Eric Garner in New York, etc. In every case, the media attack on the police was ferocious. But also in every case juries or other authorities found that the deaths were justifiable homicides.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/time_to_finally_have_that_national_conversation_on_race.html

Not all that long ago, then–attorney general Eric Holder said white people were too cowardly to have a national discussion about race.  Many white dudes spoke up to indicate our willingness to participate in such a discussion, but Eric must have been joking, because he never made any serious effort to get it going.

Since then, we’ve seen any number of indications that black people want such a discussion.  The thing is that we know in advance how it will go: they will say we’re white racist moh-fohs, that it’s hopeless because white racism is stitched into the very fabric of space-time, no justice no peace, white priv, etc.

Now black basketball sports talker Jalen Rose says roundballer Kevin Love is a token white selection to the Olympic squad.  Nobody’s going to disagree with Jalen out loud for fear of being called racist (even if he’s right, which he is), but what about when a less qualified black person gets a job ahead of a better qualified white person, or when better qualified Asians are turned away from Harvard/Stanford/Yale in favor of unqualified or less qualified blacks?

It’s called affirmative action, and if it’s wrong applied to basketball, then it’s wrong everywhere else.  Can we now start talking about token blacks?

Perhaps something useful could come of this.  We could use this topic to start that long overdue national discussion about race.  But a few stipulations would have to apply: no epithets, no invented facts, no riots, no attempts to shame whites, no stomping out with hurt feelings.  We can revile the abomination of Jim Crow so long as we also revile his relative, the abominable Jon Crow, AKA political correctness.