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How Much Longer Will July 4 Be A Holiday?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/07/06/how-much-longer-will-july-4-be-a-holiday/

Though it became a federal holiday only in 1941, Americans have been celebrating Independence Day since the colonies broke away from the British crown. Today, a core of extremists wants to erase our history and at the same time fix it in the public’s mind that this country is illegitimate due to a racist past and present, its colonial foundation, and capitalist system of exploitation. This leaves us to wonder how many more glorious Fourths we have left.

As we noted on Monday, most of us consider ourselves to be either “extremely” (44%) or “very” (23%) proud to be Americans. A mere 6% of the country said it was not proud to be an American.

Good news, no? But just below the surface, the numbers from our I&I/TIPP poll are alarming.

Only 36% of those from 18 to 24, the future of this country, said they were proud to be Americans. Sixty-four percent of Democrats, who hold majorities in the White House and U.S. House, share power in the Senate, and truly dominate the media, and the entertainment industry and culture, say they’re proud to be Americans. This isn’t disturbing, but it doesn’t inspire confidence, since 85% of Republicans hold the same view. That’s a significant divide.

There’s also a sizable gap between the 18-24 group and older Americans. Six in 10 (59%) of those from 25 to 44 say they’re proud of their American heritage, while 75% in the 45-64 group feel the same. Nearly nine in 10 (86%) over 65 are proud to be Americans. 

The lack of respect for our earned liberty among young adults is particularly concerning in light of what is clearly a concerted effort to delegitimize America and cast it as a systemically racist, oppressive, violent, and imperialist regime. Consider what we’ve seen and heard just in recent days:

The day before the Fourth, the New York Times, overflowing with politicized stories and opinion pieces it knows its readers are hungry for, published an article headlined “A Fourth of July Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite.”
National Geographic decided Saturday was a good day to plant the idea in our collective consciousness that fireworks are racist.

Divisive critical race theory spits on the Civil Rights Movement Race hustlers and media charlatans foment division by dismissing progress and rewriting history By Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL-District 190

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/5/divisive-critical-race-theory-spits-on-the-civil-r/

The essence of critical race theory would teach my three bi-racial children that I, their Black father, am oppressed by America’s history of White supremacy and that their mother, my wife, is my oppressor. 

But, what does that mean for my children? Does half of them qualify as oppressed, and the other half count as the oppressor? Unfortunately, the jury is still out on answering these obscure questions. 

Critical race theory is divisive at its core. This movement to indoctrinate our children is the definition of reverse racism and spits in the face of the Civil Rights Movement led by American heroes such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Those proposing this wicked curriculum would like to live in an America where every American is judged based on the color of their skin and not the content of their character, which, if I remember my history correctly, is the complete opposite of the teachings of Dr. King and decades of civil rights progress and commitment to creating a more perfect union. Today, radical leftists are upending this longstanding American virtue to push this un-American and divisive agenda. 

If the issue were that American schools aren’t teaching the complete and accurate history to our school children, then I’d agree wholeheartedly, but that is not what CRT peddlers are saying. The Marxist race hustlers and charlatans at the New York Times and in the Democrat Party aren’t in the business of pushing for equity; they are in the business of division. The truth is neither side should advocate for the cherry-picking of American history — neither for nor against our country. Instead, we need a balanced scale that accurately depicts our past, the good, bad, and ugly, that also rightly points out the tremendous progress of our nation. 

Wokeness in Art and Music By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/7_4_2021_23_7.html

Daily the Marxists/Leftists/Communists among us infiltrate every aspect of our society.  Consequently,  “the individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows” yet the Left continues to work towards an alleged utopia even though “this ‘ideal society’ would be the graveyard of human greatness.” 

Biden and Harris speak as if  “confused ideas and muddy ponds appear deep” when, in fact, they are empty rhetoric. As Nicolas Gomez Davila pointed out “stupidity is the mother of revolutionary atrocities; savageness is only the godmother” and  “the greatest modern error is not to proclaim that God died, but to believe that the devil has died.”

The true sadness is that “violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization.  Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it.”  Hence, literature, history, statues, children’s books, humor, film, art and music are now under attack by those whose only aim is the total evisceration of America and her exceptional values.

Consequently, in the lunacy of wokeness,  how long will it be before Winslow Homer’s images of blacks during the Civil War and Reconstruction years come under attack?  After all, Winslow Homer was a white man who dared to paint black figures during this tumultuous time period.

According to the exhibition text titled Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years by Peter H. Wood and Karen C.C. Dalton, “[W]hen Winslow Homer displayed ‘The Bright Side in New York City’ in April 1865 — only days after Lee’s surrender and Lincoln’s death — black persons were still not allowed to enter the galleries of the National Academy of Design.”  Clearly this was racism in full bloom and it would be a “full century before art depicting black people would appear on the walls of museums.”

Wi Spa: Ground Zero in the Gender Wars By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/wi_spa_ground_zero_in_the_gender_wars.html

The Wi Spa is an upscale Korean-style health club that proudly publicizes its recognition in 2010 as the “Best Family Fun Spa in Los Angeles.”  Just a mile from Koreatown, the facility offers hot and cold baths, “progressive” sauna rooms, massages, body scrubs, and facials in an expansive space that includes a fitness center, restaurant, and kids’ zone. No clothing is permitted — not even bathing suits — and the multilevel building has separate floors for men and women.

Last week, there was an uproar at the spa when, in all his manly glory, a biological male self-identifying as a female paraded naked in front of girls and women in the designated women’s area. Several female patrons were alarmed and offended.

A video viewed by millions on social media shows a vociferous customer confronting the front desk staff and clarifying the issue in no uncertain terms: “I just want to be clear with you,” she is heard saying. “It’s okay for a man to go into the women’s section, show his p***s around other women, young little girls, underage. Your spa, Wi Spa, condoned that.  Is that what you’re saying?” A staff member is heard responding that, despite customers’ objections, the man would be allowed to remain on the women’s floor based on his “sexual orientation.” (What was probably meant was “gender identification.”) Several customers demanded refunds and left the spa in horror and disgust. An Instagram post featuring the video encouraged people to call and complain and suggested a boycott of the Wi Spa.

In saner times — before the two preponderant biological sexes, male and female, were replaced by 72 genders — this egregious incident would have been prosecuted as indecent exposure. Not anymore. When I called the spa to make an appointment for myself and “my eight-year-old daughter,” a staffer categorically told me that even if an individual physically presents as a male with intact genitalia but states he is a woman, the spa would be required to admit him to the women’s facilities despite the presence of little girls there.

Wi Spa staff defended their decision, citing California Civil Code 51(b), which states that “All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical conditions, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status are entitled to full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.” The statute does not specifically mention “gender identity,” but court cases have led to judgments that the delineated categories are “illustrative, not restrictive” and that other classifications would be protected.

British Jews Repudiated the Labor Party. Will American Jews Do the Same with the Anti-Semitism in the Democrat Party? By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/will_american_jews_follow_their_british_cousins_in_repudiating_jewhatred.html

There was an editorial last week in The Free Beacon positing that due to anti-Semitism within its ranks, the Democrat party will mimic the electoral defeat of England’s Labor Party, which is similarly plagued by anti-Semitism.  The Ilhan Omar–Ocasio-Cortez–Tlaib trio, as well as many members of various Democrat congressional caucuses, are open enemies of Israel’s existence and redolent with anti-Semitic pejoratives.  The Beacon’s theory is that just as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party was shunned by Jews and many in the public, thereby losing the last election to the Tories, so will Democrats lose to Republicans in 2022.  Nancy Pelosi in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate, though themselves not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, continue to allow this anti-Semitism in their party, and Pelosi goes farther by publicly and proudly embracing the Squad and especially Omar.

The Beacon should have given its supposition a bit more scrutiny, for there is a big difference between the repudiation of the Labor Party in England and the situation here with the Democrat party.  In Britain, virtually every Jew, Jewish organization, and Jewish politician spoke against the anti-Semitism and severe anti-Israelism happening within the Labor Party.  Their disgust was across the board, and many Jewish Laborites spoke of leaving the Labor Party…and did.  The entire Jewish community was alarmed by what was happening and growing within Labor’s ranks and leadership, spotlighted it as the anti-Semitic party, and worked hard for Labor’s defeat.

In contrast, here in America, we do not hear or see the majority of Jews repudiating the Democrat party.  Not at all!  The Democrats have lost basically none of their previous 70% Jewish support.  If one removes the Orthodox support for Republicans, the Jewish Democrat support is as high as 80%.  Nor has any of the Jewish politicians threatened to leave the Democrat party.  In fact, a dozen or so Jewish congressmen have joined and led others to further tighten Joe Biden’s grip over Israel, and many Jewish Democrat politicians continue to defend Ilhan Omar and whitewash everything she says, calling her critics Islamophobes.  And while some Jewish organizations have criticized Omar herself, none of the major establishment organizations has made any condemnation of the Democrat party per se, as was done against Labor by England’s Jewish organizations.  Dismayingly, non-Orthodox American Jews continue to stand solidly behind the Democrat party today, just as they did last Nov. 3 and many years previous.

The great federal-debt Ponzi scheme David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2021/07/the-great-federal-debt-ponzi-scheme/

It’s like the pump part of a pump-and-dump scheme in the stock market – without the benefit of an exit strategy.

The discrepancy between raging inflation and soggy Treasury bond yields remains a cognitive dissonance in financial markets.

There’s a simple explanation (and “Inflation is transitory” is NOT a full credit answer): The Federal Reserve and the commercial banks that depend on the Fed are virtually the only buyers of US government debt.

As long as the Fed is willing (and the market allows it) to buy arbitrarily large amounts of government debt, the price of US government debt is whatever the Fed says it is. It’s like the pump part of a pump-and-dump scheme in the stock market, except without the benefit of an exit strategy.

This Ponzi game can continue until inflation rises to the point where investors flee the Treasury market, yields soar and the economy falls back into recession. If the Fed and Treasury are willing to stake the credit of the United States of America on this game, it can last for a while. No matter how big a player you are, though, no one will take your marker at the craps table forever.

Without exaggeration, the US federal debt market is the most manipulated market of importance in the world at this writing.

The US banking system is a captive auxiliary of the central bank. The Fed has flooded the banks with reserves and pays them 0.05% (5 basis points) to hold these reserves at the Federal Reserve’s repurchase facility.

An Ugly War Among Leftist YouTubers Shows Two Common, Toxic Pathologies Plaguing U.S. Politics Baselessly accusing people of being Russian agents and weaponizing accusations of sexual misconduct are reputation-destroying cancers at the heart of liberal discourse. Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/an-ugly-war-among-leftist-youtubers?token=ey

An incredibly vicious and protracted war is being waged, seemingly with no end in sight, among numerous prominent liberal and left-wing commentators who work primarily on YouTube. The conflict erupted on May 26 when Cenk Uygur — the founder and long-time host of The Young Turks, the largest liberal-left YouTube platform — baselessly and falsely accused independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians,” while his co-host, Ana Kasparian, spouted innuendo that Maté was “working for” unnamed dictators.

Maté is one of the very few left-wing journalists who reported skeptically on Russiagate and who questioned the U.S. Government’s narrative about the civil war in Syria, including by traveling to war-torn parts of that country to do so. He won the 2019 Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award for his work debunking Russiagate. Yet with a one-minute rant from their insulated studio, Uygur baselessly branded Maté as someone who is “paid by the Russians” while Kasparian asserted that he “seemed” to be working for Assad and other dictators — a potentially reputation-destroying smear for a journalist and one that can be quite dangerous for a reporter who, like Maté, works on the ground in war zones.

The conflict engendered by those grotesque fabrications escalated significantly when Kasparian sent a private Twitter message to one of Maté’s defenders, Jimmy Dore, in which she threatened to accuse Dore of #MeToo-type sexual harassment from when they worked together seven years earlier. Kasparian made clear that her intent to publicly vilify Dore as a sexual harasser would serve as punishment for his criticisms of The Young Turks. Dore then revealed Kasparian’s threat on his program, and days later, Kasparian made good on her threat by accusing Dore of sexual harassment back in 2014.

Twitter Direct Message from The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian to Jimmy Dore, Apr. 14, 2016 and June 11, 2021.

While I used my social media platforms to denounce the false accusations voiced by Uygur and Kasparian against Maté, none of this would merit an article or stand-alone commentary if not for the fact that the two weapons they chose — false accusations that someone is a paid Russian agent and exploited sexual harassment accusations — have become extremely commonplace in Democratic Party politics, liberal circles and U.S. politics more broadly. It is long past time — way past time — that these tactics be rejected and scorned by everyone regardless of ideology or personality preferences.

Words Matter—Or Not: The Biden Vocabulary of the Times Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/wordpress/words-matter-or-not-the-biden-vocabulary-of-the-times/

Armed insurrection—a motley mob riot with no leaders, no firearms, no plans, and resulting in five fatalities, four from natural causes and one shot while unarmed by an unnamed police officer.

Assault—anything but 120 days of rioting, looting and arson, $2 billion in damage, 25 killed, and 14,000 arrested.

Bipartisan—you are if you hate Trump.

Cages—overcrowded border detention “facilities” created by the Obama administration and useful to the Biden team’s open-borders agenda. Otherwise known as “cages” between January 20, 2017-January 20, 2021.

Challenge—engineered utter chaos on the border.

Circling back—just circling and circling…

Collusion—the projection of the crime of the guilty onto those innocent of it.

Diversity—coerced uniformity of thought and expression.

Equity—the plan where everybody ends up the same except those who oversee it.

Gender—what people with degrees call sex.

Herd immunity—once a canon of epidemiology, then taboo, now an inconvenient truth.

Inclusion—mandatory state alienation of a majority of the population.

Infrastructure—borrowing trillions for anything but roads and bridges.

Latinix—unknown, maybe a gladiatorial character in some long forgotten Roman graphic novel.

Noncitizen—now used as if all legal US residents crossed the Southern border illegally.

Root causes—an abstraction used to evade the concrete evidence in front of you.

Scott Atlas—the Nemesis following Dr. Fauci’s hubris.

Unity—uniting half the country against the other half.

Woke—body snatched.

Deception Wearing the Mask of Truth By Geoffrey P. Hunt

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/_deception_wearing_the_mask_of_truth.html

For Joe Biden/Kamala Harris devotees, the 2020 ubiquitous election lawn signs in my neighborhood read “Truth Hope Decency.”  While most of these moralizing bromides did not survive the winter, some are still implanted, reminders of how cheap political speech was soon enough self-repudiated.

Exhorting “Decency” was the refrain decrying President Donald Trump’s occasional crude and coarse cloudbursts, usually unfiltered via Twitter. Yet the substance of decency has eluded Joe Biden and his Democrat handlers, ushering instead a new era of grotesque depravities, where at the top Biden/Harris have endorsed, supported, and invited the unrestrained abject horror of drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and human trafficking via a deliberately porous open southern border, resettling unaccompanied children all across America.

Illegal alien sex and child trafficking continue with impunity under Biden’s open borders policy while a surge in overdose deaths from methamphetamine and oxycontin laced with fentanyl — all managed by Mexican cartels given sanctuary by Joe Biden — merits a VP Kamala Harris response that “climate change is the root provocation for the border challenges, and Mexico should plant more trees.”

Decency? No, neither stupidity nor incompetence; instead, an abomination and disinformation by design.

And why is the Biden/Harris regime, obsessed by race and cultural Marxism, aligned with BLM, and the fraudulent 1619 project — where modern-day slavery and indentured servitude, from the Mexican cartels to South Sudan to Communist Chinese subjugation of the Uyghurs, elicits nary a peep?

Boston: Muslim Who Stabbed Rabbi Is ‘Violent’ and ‘Very Much Anti-Semitic’ The cops are still baffled as to his motive, of course. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/boston-muslim-who-stabbed-rabbi-violent-and-very-robert-spencer/

Khaled Awad stabbed Rabbi Shlomo Noginski eight times on Thursday afternoon. Predictably, International Business Times reported on Saturday that “police have yet to establish the motive for the stabbing, and the investigation into the incident continues.” Yeah, this one is a real head-scratcher. Khaled Awad doesn’t seem to be a “white supremacist,” but what else could he possibly be? Help us, Merrick Garland, help us!

Garland has so far remained mum, but Awad’s old roommates and friends at the University of Southern Florida have been more forthright. CBS reported Friday that one of Awad’s old school chums, Eric Valiente, said that while they were in college together, Awad “started becoming violent.” And not only that: “He was very much anti-Semitic. He would say like all types of Jewish jokes. I thought he was joking at first and then I started to see seriousness in his comments. He disgusted me at that point. I wanted nothing to do with the guy. At this point, I was a little scared of him. I was scared of what he was capable of because I realize he was a very dark person.”

Awad got so violent, in fact, that his roommate, Aidan Anderson, moved out and got a restraining order against him. Before that, “we were friends, to be honest with you,” Anderson recalled. “I’m Jewish. And he knew that since I moved in.”

Might that have been why Awad began to get violent? After all, around the time of the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, Palestinian Muslims and their supporters committed acts of violence against Jews and supporters of Israel all over the United States. In New York City, a Muslim mob screaming “Allahu akbar” attacked a Jewish man in midtown Manhattan. Also in Manhattan, Palestinians threatened violence and screamed anti-Semitic slurs at Jews. One threw a mini-firebomb. Pro-jihad protesters stormed a restaurant and spat on Jewish patrons; one of the thugs threw a bottle. A Muslim, Waseem Awawdeh, was arrested for viciously beating a Jew in Times Square.

In Los Angeles, Palestinian protesters asked people dining at the Sushi Fumi restaurant if they were Jewish, and proceeded to attack them with knives. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, two cars festooned with Palestinian flags chased a Jewish man down a street as he was leaving his synagogue.