RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/11/can-the-great-awokening-succeed/

Wokeism is creating a future group of politically incorrect Trotskyites on a proverbial rendezvous with a Mexican ice pick, given that by birth they will never be woke enough for the new Stalinism.

We all know that we are living in revolutionary times. The origins, ascendence, values, laws, and future of the United States are all under assault by self-described, though accurately described, revolutionaries.

It is a Jacobin, Bolshevik, or Maoist moment. All aspects of life, well beyond politics, are now to be ideologically conditioned. Everything from kindergarten messaging, cartoons, workplace reeducation, and television commercials to college admissions, baseball games, and the airlines are to be “fundamentally transformed” along racial lines.

Long gone is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a colorblind society. Gone, at least at the state level, is confidence in the melting pot of assimilation, integration, and intermarriage (although mixed marriages and multiracial children are at an all-time high).

Gone are even the affirmative-action doctrines of proportional representation and disparate impact. (Yet the two mandates were always arbitrarily applied, in the sense that the U.S. Postal Service and the professional football and basketball leagues never paid much attention to racial quotas based on demographic percentages, which apparently only applied to white and Asian “overrepresentation” elsewhere).

Wokeism, however, is essentially tribal. It seeks to identify particular nonwhite constituencies, unite them not by identical class, not by similar skin color, not by collective similar history, not by shared experience, not by mutual cultural affinities, not by longstanding historical alliances, but simply by two premises:

1) Those of the woke collective are either claimants to being “nonwhite,” and thus victims of racism, or they are architects and supporters of the wokeist agenda, and: 2) they can thereby all either directly leverage reparatory concessions in hiring, admissions, careers, compensation, and general influence or ensure the revolutionary guillotine exempts themselves.

A cynic might add that much of this new racialism is a product of globalteering, and seeks to cater to huge foreign markets—China especially—by both “looking more like the world,” and delighting America’s critics, while appeasing far less moral audiences and consumers abroad than a perceived shrinking market at home.

Still for the woke revolution to succeed, a number of experiments will have to go its way.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/gavin-newsoms-cousin-and-his-wife-stopped-sign-katie-hopkins/

I hear people talk about the recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom almost casually, as if talking about the weather or the price of gas.

Scars from the recent election, “stolen” in the eyes of 80 million or so great Americans, are still fresh and understandably many expect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her band of half-wits to find a way around the recall itself, subverting democracy once again.

Others have one eye on the horizon, looking over the shoulder of the recall itself to the possible replacements that have a chance to beat Newsom, like that guy at a party who talks at you whilst scanning the room to see whom he can prey on next.

And conflicts are forming around the potential candidates, even before some of them declare their run. The former Mayor of San Diego, Kevin Faulconer, has the backing of the Sacramento GOP chair but has already drawn the ire of Donald Trump’s eldest son after he declined to state whether he wanted a Trump endorsement ahead of his election. The word RINO follows him like a bad smell.

Kaitlyn Jenner also says she will run. For her it is an opportunity for publicity and to feel politically relevant. I would call it willy-waving but with Kaitlyn… well, let’s just call it self-promotion.

My email inbox is crammed with messages asking me to get Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell to run, as if my sheer forcefulness will make him announce. I am certain he will, but he appears to be waiting for the recall to be official before he does so, which is proper. I hear rumblings that his sexuality might hurt his Christian Conservative vote. But surely with Trump’s backing and patriotic pastors by his side, these prejudices could be put aside for the greater good of California.

Overall, the voters will be presented with a choice:

Do they want to recall Gavin Newsom?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/the-blm-and-biden-scandals-you-werent-supposed-to-see/

Censoring content about these controversies only fuels the public’s increasing distrust of the media and Big Tech.

E ric Hoffer, the late “longshoreman philosopher,” said that “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

Most of the defenders of censorship by Big Tech have claimed that most of the removed postings have violated “the science” surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. This ignored the fact that many of the offending posts have been by highly credentialed scientists and medical specialists from some of the most prestigious institutions in the world, including Stanford, Yale, Harvard, and Oxford.

But what explains Twitter’s censorship of Jason Whitlock, an African-American sports commentator formerly of ESPN?

Whitlock’s crime is that he posted a link to a real estate blog showing that Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a Black Lives Matter co-founder, was buying a $1.4 million home in a secluded Los Angeles neighborhood where only 1.4 percent of residents are black.

Whitlock had some fun zinging the self-described “trained Marxist” ideologue for her hypocrisy: “She had a lot of options on where to live. She chose one of the whitest places in California. She’ll have her pick of white cops and white people to complain about. That’s a choice, bro.”

Twitter promptly censored the tweet — posting a notice that it was “no longer available.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/11/antifa-sets-fire-to-portland-ice-hq-with-people-inside-n1439102

On Saturday night, about 100 leftist protesters dressed in antifa’s signature black bloc set fire to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Portland, Ore., with people inside the building.

At around 9 p.m. West Coast time, Grace Morgan reported that roughly 100 people had showed up at the ICE building to protest. Activists tagged the building with graffiti reading “F**K ICE” and “This is indigenous land.” They also set a fire, fired a flare above the roof and threw eggs at the door.

Agitators chanted, “Every city, every town, burn the precinct to the ground” on repeat as they lit the building on fire. Independent Media PDX captured footage of the arson.

Andy Ngo, editor at large at The Post Millennial, noted that an antifa agitator gave the Black Lives Matter fist salute while the crowd cheered at the ICE building catching fire. “Officers were trapped inside when antifa set the building on fire,” he claimed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-filibuster-made-the-civil-rights-act-possible-11618174288?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

The debate over the future of the Senate’s legislative filibuster has focused on the simple use of majority power to crush the opposition. While the future of America’s bicameral legislature and the balance of power created by the Founders is riding on this debate, many have lost sight of the true nature and value of the Senate, an institution that takes time and requires compromise to find long-term answers to major issues. Critics have linked the filibuster to Jim Crow segregation, but the tactic actually played a crucial role in passing civil-rights legislation and ensuring it was accepted by the South.

Rule 22, which establishes a procedure called “cloture” to end a filibuster, was created to provide a way to close debate with support of a supermajority in the Senate and move to pass legislation. The rule protected the minority’s rights while allowing a compromise to be achieved that would ultimately result in legislation being passed.

For the first 47 years after Rule 22’s enactment in 1917, there were only five successful attempts to cut off debate in the U.S. Senate. A few senators felt so strongly about their right to extended debate that they vowed never to vote for cloture, even for legislation they supported.

There were several successful filibusters of civil-rights legislation between 1917 and 1964. But after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to make the Civil Rights Act his chief legislative priority. He worked with Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen to maneuver the bill through the challenges of senators who planned to filibuster.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/due-process-adult-sexual-morality

The Florida Congressman has not been charged with any crimes. But the reaction to this case raises important questions of political, legal and cultural judgments.

That Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is a pedophile, a sex trafficker, and an abuser of women who forces them to prostitute themselves and use drugs with him is a widespread assumption in many media and political circles. That is true despite the rather significant fact that not only has he never been charged with (let alone convicted of) such crimes, but also no evidence has been publicly presented that any of it is true. He has also vehemently denied all of it. All or some of these accusations very well may be true and, one day — perhaps imminently — there will be ample publicly available evidence demonstrating this.

But that day has not yet arrived. As of now, we know very little beyond what The New York Times initially reported about all of this on March 30: that “people close to the investigation” told the paper that “a Justice Department investigation into Representative Matt Gaetz and an indicted Florida politician is focusing on their involvement with multiple women who were recruited online for sex and received cash payments.” The article also said the DOJ “inquiry is also examining whether Mr. Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl and whether she received anything of material value.” Both the NYT and, later, The Daily Beast, indicated the existence of financial transactions involving payments by Gaetz to his associate Joel Greenberg, currently charged with multiple felonies. The New York Times article made clear: “No charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz, and the extent of his criminal exposure is unclear.” That is still true.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/299995

America has become a strange, unrecognizable and intolerant place. In record time.

America. The country that says it is racist to expect black Americans to identify themselves when they go to vote, but don’t find it racist to insult black Americans by suggesting they are not capable of obtaining identification cards or documents.

America. The country that says it is racist if you don’t give black folk water when they line up to vote.

And a Democrat Party that can’t see the racism in suggesting that black folk are incapable of thinking of bringing water with them when they do go to vote.

America. The country where if you dislike a black person you are a racist, but if a black person dislikes you, it’s their 1st Amendment right.

If you lie to Congress, it’s a felony. But when Congress lies to you it’s just politics.

The government spends millions to rehabilitate criminals but they do almost nothing for the victims.

In public schools, teaching transgender transition is OK, but your kids can’t call you father or mother.

If a man pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.

People who say there is no such thing as gender, are demanding a female president.

People who have never been to college must pay the debts of those that have.

If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.

You don’t burn books in America yet, but you remove them from the bookshelves and your libraries.

You are unwilling to close your border with Mexico, but maintain troops protecting South Korea from North Korea.

If you protest offensive and oppressive Democrat policies you are a domestic terrorist, but if you burn the American flag and destroy federal property and attack police you are within your 1st Amendment rights.

You allow porn on your TV, but have a Christmas nativity scene in your garden.

People who have never owned slaves have to pay reparations to people who have never been slaves.

You can kill an unborn child, but it’s wrong to execute a mass murderer.

They let hardened criminals out of jail and protect them in sanctuary cities, but arrest you for protecting your property from a rioting mob with a firearm.

They take money from those who work hard and give it to people who don’t want to work.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/04/in-harvard-speech-breyer-speaks-out-against-court-packing/

Emphasizing that the Supreme Court’s authority hinges on the public’s trust in the court, Justice Stephen Breyer used a speech on Tuesday at Harvard Law School to argue against efforts to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court. The 82-year-old Breyer contended that public trust in the court rests in the public’s perception that “the court is guided by legal principle, not politics” and would therefore be eroded if the court’s structure were changed in response to concerns about the influence of politics on the Supreme Court.

The text of Breyer’s prepared remarks, which he delivered as a nearly two-hour speech, included references to the Roman philosopher Cicero, Shakepeare’s Henry IV, The Plague by Albert Camus and Alexis de Toqueville, the French aristocrat who chronicled American life in the early 19th century. (Breyer, who has been known to give speeches in French, did not indicate whether he read the latter two sources in English or in their original French.) The focus of Breyer’s speech, sometimes referred to as “court packing,” has been a popular topic among some Democrats, particularly since the September 2020 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved quickly to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett after having refused to hold a hearing on Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, in March 2016. As a candidate, President Joe Biden declined to support an expansion of the court, instead promising to establish a commission to examine possible reforms to the Supreme Court more broadly.