RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/07/the-party-of-death-to-america/

There was, if hazy memories recall correctly, a time when the Democratic Party was merely an alternative to the Republican Party and not a threat to the country. Those days are gone. Today’s Democrats are in the business of wracking, ruining and razing.

The Biden administration, says former Hawaiian Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, is “​​destroying the foundational, fundamental elements of our country and what it means to be an American.”

Speaking recently to Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report, Gabbard noted that “we have seen now consistently throughout his entire administration over these last three and a half years, consistently pushing policies that undermine our freedom, that make our country less safe and less secure, and that is very quickly unraveling and” wrecking the backbone of the country.

Though Gabbard left the party not even two years ago, what we’re seeing is not new. The political left, says author David Horowitz, has long been filled with radical activists who “cannot be negotiated with.”

“There is no living alongside it. Either Americans defeat the Neo-Nazi Left or the Neo-Nazi Left defeats America,” says Horowitz.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/06/the-end-of-old-left-wing-mythologies/

The current radical and often violent protests on mostly blue-state, supposedly elite campuses have exposed in toxic fashion what the left has become. And yet, in a paradoxical fashion, the campus insanity has offered the nation some moral clarity.

What’s surprising is not that the demonstrators are violent and nihilist, but that they are, on the one hand, so openly and crudely anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-American, and yet on the other hand, so passive-aggressive, narcissistic, and weepy.

Nevertheless, the antics of the campus cry-bullies have exploded myths that were for so long foisted on the American people by politicos and the media.

#1. Anti-Israel/Anti-Semitic: We have been lectured ad nauseam that hating Israel has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The last month has blown up that old shibboleth for good. The left makes no distinction in their eliminationist chants between Israel and Jews. “Go back to Poland” is a homonym for “From the River to the Sea.” Both are shorthand for eliminating Jews—aside from the explicit threats to kill Jews and occasional praise for Hitler and the Final Solution.

When pro-Hamas thugs chase Jews into libraries, block their entrances on campus, and scream “beat the Jew” as they hit piñatas, they do not first ask Jews whether they support Israel—because they could care less. For the Islamist Middle Easterner on a student visa or green card and his useful American student, it is enough that their targets are Jewish—period.

Remember, the protests started on October 7, not on October 27, when the IDF went into Gaza. At that point, campus and street protests merely changed from euphoric triumphalism on the news that Hamas had slaughtered, decapitated, mutilated, raped, or kidnapped hundreds of Jews (“exhilarated,” a Cornell professor gushed of the carnage), to furor and violence. So after three weeks of celebrating dead Jews, the street protests grew furious only when the IDF finally began fighting back and destroying Hamas, even as its terrorists cowardly hid beneath mosques, hospitals, and schools to ensure enough collateral damage to incite pro-Hamas Western throngs.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/05/bill-maher-rips-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-my-tax-dollars-are-supporting-this-jew-hating/

This weekend, Bill Maher tore into the Biden administration over Joe’s student loan debt ‘forgiveness’ plan, citing the antisemitic displays we have seen on campus for months as a reason to object. Bill also noted the fact that colleges keep raising tuition based on the fact that they know the government will keep supporting the loans.

Former Trump adviser Kelleyanne Conway was on the panel and she pointed out that this is nothing more than a political move to shore up votes.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/06/you-heard-it-here-first-biden-has-dumped-bidenomics/

On March 27, Axios ran a story with the headline: “Biden, Democrats (mostly) ditch ‘Bidenomics.’”

Axios reported that President Joe “Biden gradually had been ditching the term. Last June and July, he referred to ‘Bidenomics’ about 50 times. In December and January, he used it just six times.”

USA Today ran basically the same story on the same day — headlined: “President Biden scraps ‘Bidenomics’ after slogan falls flat” — crediting Axios.

Biden said ‘Bidenomics’ 15 times in his June 28 speech in Chicago that debuted his new slogan to the nation. He mentioned ‘Bidenomics’ another 77 times in speeches through October, including as many as six or seven times in single speeches.

Yet Biden touted ‘Bidenomics’ only four more times in both November and December, and he has said it only three times total this year.

The Daily Mail followed up with a story citing Axios and ran its own chart. Then, just this Thursday, a USA Today columnist hit Biden over the head for abandoning the term, citing the paper’s previous coverage.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/america_s_jenga_tower_of_power.html

A majority of Americans believe that mail-in ballot fraud tainted the 2020 election, but most state and federal officials continue to pretend the results were aboveboard.  A majority of Americans wish to put an end to mass illegal immigration, but the Department of Homeland (in)Security continues to do nothing to protect our borders from foreign invasion.  A majority of Americans are worried about rising inflation, but the federal government continues to print and spend money and issue costly regulations.  A majority of Americans oppose widespread government surveillance programs that intrude upon their privacy, but elected officials continue to give the Intelligence Blob full access to Americans’ most sensitive records and communications, in total disregard for the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches.  A majority of Americans distrust mainstream news sources, but prominent news organizations continue to push ideological propaganda at the expense of truthful and objective reporting.  

These are just a few of the many ways in which America’s most powerful institutions fail to faithfully represent or protect the American people.  As the disconnect between the governing and the governed continues to grow, the dishonest state of our Union will become undeniable: an insular cabal of financial, corporate, political, and bureaucratic “elites” hold 99% of the American people hostage.  When Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell speak about protecting “democracy,” what they want to preserve is an outrageously unbalanced system in which a few control everything and most control nothing.  That’s a little like a Jenga tower of blocks, in which all the weight at the top sits perilously upon a couple of crooked supports.  Eventually, such an uneven structure will collapse.

Most of us already feel America’s Jenga tower wobbling.  The federal government feels it, too.  That’s why it spends so much time censoring Americans’ speech, spying on their conversations, and abusing the criminal “justice” system to batter perceived political enemies.  As with all budding totalitarian regimes that have risen in the past, the U.S. government has abandoned persuasive argument for intimidation and coercion.  It is an ugly factory that produces nothing but nagging regulations.  It is a second-rate club that protects D.C.’s privileged VIPs and shoves the rest of America behind a cheap velvet rope.  It is an ear-splitting bullhorn that endlessly screeches, “Do exactly what we say!”  And the more it nags and shoves and screeches, the more America’s Jenga tower wobbles.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/04/marx-still-reigns-supreme-but-why/

This week, with the global celebration of May Day and with the ongoing protests on the nation’s college campuses, it is worth remembering that the man who largely inspired both was a hateful, intellectually shallow misanthrope, remembered by history and admired by jesters and dupes largely because of his odiousness.

The First of May is celebrated by socialists around the world, not specifically because of Karl Marx but to honor the anarchists hanged for the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886. Nevertheless, this “International Labor Day” has very much become a Marxist tradition, formerly commemorated with parades and ceremonies by the Soviet Bloc nations and still very much acclaimed by those who still revere Marx and his communist ideology.

Marx is likewise celebrated these days in the pro-Hamas camps on America’s college campuses. The ideology of struggle expressed by the protesters is very much in the Marxist tradition. Reams of Marxist literature have been collected at various abandoned/disbanded protest sites around the country, most notably on the UCLA campus. And, of course, Marxist organizations and agitators have been front and center throughout the demonstrations. As the inimitable Mike Gonzales has repeatedly stated, noting that Marxism is always at the forefront of these types of protests: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.”

The question is why. Why is Karl Marx, of all people, so adored and admired by the world’s angry and disillusioned youth? He was but one of hundreds of thousands of 19th-century communists and but one of hundreds of leftist intellectuals and theorists of his era. Why him?

https://stephenrittenberg.substack.com/

Part I

Civilization vs. Barbarism

Scholars have illuminated the historical, political, economic, sociological and religious sources of antisemitism. Almost none were prepared for its raw eruption on October 7, 2023 in our post Holocaust world. It was generally believed that education, historical knowledge provided by Holocaust museums, and the miracle of Israel’s post WWII founding would foreclose forever (“never again”) murderous and organized Jew hatred. Milder forms of antisemitism were thought to be legally manageable by laws against hate crimes. However, human nature doesn’t change and something deep in the psyche motivates murderous Jew hatred. Our hypothesis is a simple one: the quest for pleasure, the ‘pleasure principle’ is mankind’s prime motivator. Sado-masochistic acts provide intense pleasure, especially in the form of rape combined with murder. The urge to destroy, to annihilate while discharging sexual drives is what motivates Jihadists. Hitler’s einsatzgruppen killers reappeared as Hamas’s slaughterers—this time, exhibitionistically recording snuff pornography for millions. Jews are ideal scapegoat targets of sadistic pleasure for all the reasons cited by scholars. Ultimately Moses’s 10 commandments brought unwelcome restrictions on pleasure and Jews are forever hated for doing so. Civilization brought it discontent. Hamas and Islamo Nazism are attacking Western civilization at its roots.

The clinical setting of psychoanalysis provides a powerful psychosexual lens for observing human nature- up close and personal. I have employed that closeup lens for 60+ years to help suffering patients, driven by a need to understand themselves, Every one of them has revealed the conflict novelists like Conrad and Solzhenitsyn describe between the forces of light and darkness, life and death.

“Outside the civil garden of every day of love/there crouches a wild passion to destroy and be destroyed..”—W.H. Auden.

For example: a charming, intelligent woman in her forties came for treatment. She felt chronically guilty for not contributing financially to her otherwise happy marriage. As a child her younger sister was a behavior problem who consumed her parents’ attention. My patient became the “good girl” who caused no problems and therefore got little parental interest. She worked hard to keep the family intact, did well at school and was regarded as a ‘perfect’ child. Yet at night, in the privacy of her room she made a list of people she hated and would brutally murder, her “kill list.” She reveled in ways of torturing these ‘enemies’, including her sister and her parents. Now as an adult, she lived a seemingly healthy normal life— but was riddled with guilt and unexpressed longings to pursue the life of an artist—a wish she experienced in early childhood that was mocked by her parents. As analysis unfolded and her aggressive drives could be acknowledged they found their outlook as she pursued her childhood ambition to be an artist and began to receive recognition for her work. Animating her work was the desire to triumph over her sister and prove her parents wrong for dismissing her artistic talents as a mere ‘hobby.’ She was able to feel and tolerate the desires to violently destroy those she loved, to realize what Solzhenitsyn realized.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Many problems we face make the front pages, and deservedly so: seven and a half million illegals through our southern border over the past three years; A Messianic belief that man alone is responsible for climate change; pro-Palestine and anti-Semites protesting on college campuses for misogynistic Hamas; rising crime; an aggressive China and revisionist Russia; a domestic education system that focuses on identity politics rather than fundamentals of learning; a belief that equal outcomes should replace equality of opportunities; and that energy inflation can be cured by controlling prices and limiting supplies. With that, debt and deficits are relegated to the back pages.

Yet too much debt moves the hands of the doomsday clock closer to midnight. However, when entered into judiciously, debt can be a good thing. Mortgages, auto loans, and the purchase of appliances on time have allowed consumers to live lifestyles unavailable to their forebearers. Student loans, when not overwhelming, lead to improved earnings. We should, however, live within our means. As for the state – a nation must be able to keep secure its people and its principles. As well, it must be able to fund infrastructure projects and other necessary expenses. Because the state has the ability to print its currency, living with a balanced budget, while preferable, is not necessary.

However, when too much leverage is employed – examples being NYSE margin requirements of 10% in the 1920s and reduced/no-down-payments on housing in the 2000s – debt leads to a collapse in pricing and a loss in values. When incomes fail to keep pace with debt accumulation, risks of bankruptcies rise, as happened in 2023 when bankruptcies reached a 13-year high. And when a nation’s spending causes it to raise taxes to a level that inhibits, or limits, economic growth, everyone suffers.

Over the past several years, we have become addicted to low interest rates, which encourage borrowing and discourage savings. After years of near-zero Fed Fund rates, following the 2008 credit crisis and despite 23 subsequent quarters of positive GDP growth, the Fed only began to raise rates in the 4th quarter of 2015. With the advent of Covid in the first quarter of 2020, the Fed again lowered the rate to near zero, which is where it remained for two years, until the second quarter of 2022, despite strong GDP growth in 2021. When inflation became a problem the Fed raised its benchmark rate. Now, despite inflation still running ahead of the Fed’s target, many are urging the Federal Reserve to lower rates before year end. And perhaps they will. Politically it is tempting, especially in an election year. However, consequences of years of exceptionally low interest rates include government bloat, an increase in debt, a rise in asset prices, and inflation – an unsustainable burden on our children and grandchildren, a burden they will have to bear.

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-tyranny-of-the-uniparty/

Editor’s Note: The first step in winning a war is to recognize the fact that you are in one. This means, first and foremost, to come to know your enemy and his goals. In a recent essay for this site, Glenn Ellmers and Ted Richards of the Claremont Institute make a compelling case that the present enemy—the “woke” or group quota regime—is a totalitarian threat, and that its aims are nothing short of revolutionary. While our own troubles may seem far removed from the hard totalitarianism of the twentieth century, Ellmers and Richards argue that the six traditionally accepted elements of totalitarianism are already present in woke America. What’s more, they identify three factors that are unique to the tyranny of the present day.

In the following essay, Josh Hammer defends and expands on one of the Ellmers’ and Richards’ most challenging assertions: that ours is, in effect, a single-party regime. As the late Claremont scholar Angelo Codevilla first argued more than a decade ago, the institutional Republican Party has become a sham opposition, complicit in—often even willingly advancing—the agenda of the woke regime. This is the second in a series of nine contributions by leading experts on the nine defining elements of what Ellmers and Richards dub “Totalitarianism, American Style.”

Glenn Ellmers and Ted Richards have convincingly demonstrated the tyrannical nature of the woke-addled regime now presiding over American life. Their identified trifecta of factors that together evince a distinct 21st-century totalitarianism—a global elite, the modern administrative state, and a concomitant rejection of objective truth and the most rudimentary of Western principles—is both compelling and, unfortunately, highly apropos to our current morass.

The rise of an insidious American ruling class, far removed from the interests and desires of most Americans and hardly still accountable to them, is not a recent development. The late, great Angelo Codevilla documented its emergence 14 years ago now, in his definitive essay on the subject. I have also written about the modern American ruling class no shortage of times—both within and beyond the ambit of the Claremont Institute, where Codevilla was a senior fellow and where Tom Klingenstein serves as chairman. That American society has a deeply embedded ruling class is now well accepted by most of Red America, and it is not uncommon to hear Republican candidates and elected officials denounce its prevalence and malevolence.