RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/our_mounting_orwellian_nightmare.html

So we are to imagine that those who objected to Biden’s having stolen the election are responsible for the violence at the Capitol?  And that, going forward, any public official who questions Biden’s win should be removed from office, and that any corporate leader who objects should be fired?  All this when the truth is that Trump in all likelihood won the election.

It is the perfect example of Orwellian speech.  In his classic essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell spoke of the condition where “words and meaning have almost parted company.”  If that “almost” is a measure of Orwellian speech, then today’s Democrat leaders are beyond Orwellian.  Their words and meaning have parted company entirely.

As Orwell also stressed, the decline of language is both cause and effect of the decline of politics.  When politicians and media begin speaking nonsense, it is the symptom of an underlying corruption of political thinking.  The idea that the president should be removed from office for having defended the electoral process is truly bizarre, but it has been repeated throughout the liberal media and by most liberal politicians and even by some conservatives.

One might say progressives like Nancy Pelosi have become “unhinged,” but that would let them off the hook.  It would suggest that they don’t quite realize what they are doing.  But what they are doing is the result of crafty political calculation.  They want to tie President Trump with the Capitol violence to the point that he can never run again.  The same political deviousness lies behind suggestions that he should not be in control of the nation’s nuclear arsenal because of his supposed mental instability.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum that seeks to secure U.S. government-supported research and development (R&D) against interference and exploitation by foreign powers.

Trump’s action seeks to enhance protections for United States R&D efforts, given their open and collaborative nature, and in light of their importance to national security and in keeping the country economically competitive, the White House Press Secretary said in a statement.

The memorandum “ensures that Government-supported research can occur in an open environment and foster new discoveries for the benefit of our Nation while also protecting intellectual capital, discouraging research misappropriation, and ensuring the responsible management of United States taxpayer dollars.”

The presidential memo reinforces the Trump administration’s efforts to maintain American leadership in the field of science and technology.

“America must remain the world’s leader in S&T [science and technology] during this era of great power competition, and today’s signing builds on the long and successful history of actions taken by President Trump to protect American technology from adversaries,” the press secretary said.

“This whole-of-government approach to R&D security will protect America’s technology and innovation advantage. Whether in trade, military cooperation, or S&T research, President Trump refuses to let other countries take advantage of America,” the statement added.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-left-hijacked-civil-rights-11610748711?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The civil-rights movement, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. , helped deliver America from the historic sins of slavery and Jim Crow by forcing the nation to confront the full humanity of its black citizens. King’s words and actions glorified America by transfiguring its racial wound and revealing its redemptive promise. Yet today many black leaders have lost sight of King altogether and are aiding and abetting the crucifixion of their own people. Rather than hope, they see despair; rather than the Easter Sunday of true liberation, they offer the bleak Good Friday of never-ending misery.

The history of black American responses to slavery and Jim Crow generally followed three paths. They were hotly debated, but all emphasized human agency, sought liberation, and rejected despair.

First, there were the recolonization or “back to Africa” movements championed by the likes of Marcus Garvey. These movements sought an exit from America.

Second, there were the insurrectionists of the 19th century, who believed that black Americans should engage in armed rebellion or vocal opposition so that they might find a home in this country. Here lie Nat Turner and, later, W.E.B. Du Bois. They wanted to have their resistant voice heard in America.

Third, there were accommodationist movements of the sort undertaken by Booker T. Washington, who thought that loyalty to America was the best course.

Exit, voice, loyalty—however different these strategies were, each supposed that human agency mattered, that oppression wasn’t destiny. That is why, even amid great struggle, black Americans responded by building their own institutions and businesses. Great universities, medical schools, hotels, restaurants, movie companies and even a flight school sprung up. All of this was self-financed—and made possible by two-parent families, churches and other cultural institutions that provided shelter against the outside storm of racism.

https://spectator.org/capitol-riot-fuhgeddaboudism/

“People forever mired in an imaginary future when they redeem humanity through the power of their ideas naturally do not possess the time for the very real past in which the power of their ideas looted an immigrant’s American Dream, murdered a retired elderly African American policeman guarding a friend’s property, and torched businesses already burned by lockdowns — and then called it “social justice.” This happened. This happened recently. Should we all pretend it didn’t? And should people not bothered by any of that deliver gaslighting moral lectures about whataboutism to all the normal people horrified by all of it?”

“This was all orchestrated by this president who gave them their marching orders,” Al Sharpton told MSNBC viewers this week about the Unquiet Riot on Capitol Hill. Neither Freddy nor the seven customers who stayed in his “fashion mart” after closing were available for comment.

Inciting a riot does not serve as a prerequisite for gaining on-air employment at MSNBC. But it’s not a disqualifier.

Fuhgeddaboudism demands that we collectively erase context and develop amnesia for not only history but for what happened every night last summer.

Sharpton, who announced, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business,” before an armed man shot customers in Freddy’s Fashion Mart and torched it with people still inside in 1995, knows something about incitement (and mucking up facts, as the African American owners, not Freddy, aimed to move a black-owned record store).

“If the Jews want to get it on,” Sharpton said days before the Crown Heights Riots that led to Yankel Rosenbaum’s 1991 death, “tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” At the funeral of the black child hit by a car in a Jewish funeral procession that set off the riots, Sharpton further inflamed matters by referring to Jews as “diamond dealers” (a remark more temperate than the “Hitler Did Not Do the Job” banner displayed at the memorial service).

Any invocation of double standards regarding the Capitol Hill riot elicits calls of whataboutism, kind of a tu quoque for people who flunked Latin, from the New York Times and other redoubts of fuhgeddaboudism. This latter phenomenon seems the more relevant to the current situation. Fuhgeddaboudism, a kind of Jedi Mind Trick for people who did not watch Star Wars, demands that we collectively erase context and develop amnesia for not only history but for what happened every night last summer.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-receives-moroccos-highest-award-for-middle-

President Donald Trump on Friday received Morocco’s highest award for his work in advancing a normalization deal between Israel and Morocco, a senior administration official told Reuters.

In a private Oval Office ceremony, Princess Lalla Joumala Alaoui, who is Morocco’s ambassador to the United States, gave Trump the Order of Muhammad, an award given only to heads of state. It was a gift from Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz received other awards for their work on the Israel-Morocco deal, which was reached in December.

The United States in the last five months helped broker deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. The agreements are aimed at normalizing relations and opening economic ties.

The Kushner team had been working on reaching more agreements between Israel and the Arab world. But time has run out and no more are expected before Trump leaves office on Wednesday.

By Steve Holland

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/14/trump-impeachment-democrats-incitement-claim-under/

The Democratic impeachment claim that President Trump spurred the attack on the U.S. Capitol by whipping his supporters into a violent mob is coming under scrutiny as evidence mounts that the siege was not spontaneous but planned well in advance.

The release of initial court documents show that at least two suspects arrived on or before Jan. 6 armed with explosives, tactical gear and caches of weapons. Facebook has come under fire for failing to remove “Stop the Steal” pages allegedly used by organizers weeks and even months ahead of the rally.

Also emerging are media reports that investigators believe the assault was coordinated and “not just a protest that spiraled out of control,” as CNN reported Thursday, and that the FBI knew beforehand of plans for a “war” at the Capitol, as per The Washington Post.

Donald Trump Jr. connected the dots Thursday after flagging an interview with Just the News editor John Solomon, who said the FBI, the New York Police Department and the U.S. Capitol Police had intelligence about the possibility of an organized siege.

“If these federal law enforcement agencies had prior knowledge that this was a planned attack then POTUS didn’t incite anything,” the president’s son tweeted. “If he didn’t incite anything then Nancy Pelosi and the Dems used impeachment on yet another sham political witch-hunt.”

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/15/the-trump-era-held-up-a-mirror-to-our-shattering-culture/

Where the anxieties of the working class and Baby Boomers were channeled into Trump, the anxieties of the left were channeled into a furious, culture-wide censorship campaign.

“The madness of Trump, as bad as it was, it really needed to happen. We really needed a reflection of our world’s greatest problem, which is not climate change, but sociopathy and narcissism. Especially in America. It’s going to kill the world. It’s not capitalism, it’s narcissism.” So said songstress Lana Del Rey, reflecting on the Trump administration this week.

She’s right to dig deeper than climate change and capitalism, but wrong to finger an incurable element of the human condition for America’s ills. The broader point, however, is important. Del Rey is arguing that Trump’s political ascent exposed or, perhaps, accelerated a cultural clash. She seems to be convinced this exposition will ultimately be constructive.

I’m not so sure. The problem is not that we’re all as narcissistic as Trump. The problem is that we’re all as anxious. Characterizing Trump as anxious may seem odd—and I’m certainly not invoking the psychological concept—but his central promise to “Make America Great Again” was predicated on a reasonable anxiety that the version of America he knew and loved was slipping away. That resonated immensely, and for some eminently fair reasons.

Where the anxieties of the working class and Baby Boomers were channeled into Trump, the anxieties of the left were channeled into a furious, culture-wide censorship campaign. Each vessel has profound issues made worse by their inevitable confrontation, which accelerated this painful culture clash in which we’re now engulfed. So why are we anxious?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/15/joe_biden_impeachments_biggest_loser_145045.html

EXCERPTS:

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, there they go again.  Frantic to extinguish any chance Donald Trump will ever again run for office, Democrats have pushed through an express-train impeachment, concluding the president incited “violence against the government of the United States.”  

The hasty undertaking, unencumbered by deliberations, investigations, or witnesses’ sworn testimony, cheapens the sober intent of the impeachment process. It smacks of partisan vindictiveness. When New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries describes the president himself as a “living, breathing, impeachable offense,” he gives the game away.

But rushing to impeach a president who has only seven days remaining in his term is itself an affront to our democracy. Impeachment is meant to be a last resort means of expelling a president, not a political weapon. There has not been a serious probe of what happened that terrible day, how the rioting was organized and by whom. Timelines and social media accounts show that the breaching of the Capitol took place even as Trump was still speaking to the large crowd of followers, and that the organizers may have plotted out the event in advance, mainly on Twitter and Facebook.

Democrats have no patience for a sober assessment of what went wrong; they want to humiliate a president who provoked and embarrassed them for four years, and who has accomplished much despite their incessant resistance.

Instead, Democrats have wounded not only President Trump, but their own president-elect.