You Are Living in the Golden Age of Stupidity The convergence of many seemingly unrelated elements has produced an explosion of brainlessness By Lance Morrow

https://www.wsj.com/articles/idiocy-stupidity-afghanistan-covid-vaccine-maga-trump-civility-privacy-common-sense-11630271666?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

‘Stupidity,” Jean Cocteau remarked, “is always amazing, no matter how used to it you become.”

We live in a golden age of stupidity. It is everywhere. President Biden’s conduct of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will be remembered as a defining stupidity of our time—one of many. The refusal of tens of millions of people to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus will be analyzed as a textbook case of stupidity en masse. Stupid is as stupid does, or, in the case of vaccination, as it doesn’t do. Stupidity and irresponsibility are evil twins.

The slow-motion zombies’ assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a fittingly stupid finale to the Trump years, which offered dueling stupidities: Buy one, get one free. The political parties became locked in a four-year drama of hysteria and mutually demeaning abuse. Every buffoonery of the president and his people was answered by an idiocy from the other side, which in its own style was just as sinister and just as clownish.

Cable news provided the Greek chorus. American government and politics became cartoons. The Democrats, all unknowing, played Wile E. Coyote to Mr. Trump’s Road Runner. Twice, the Democrats’ Acme Impeachment Committee rigged up the big bomb (heh heh), lit the fuse and held its ears. Both times, the Road Runner sped away. Beep beep!

“Trump is crazy!” “Trump is Hitler!” “Trump is a Russian agent!” “ Bob Mueller has the goods!” Beep beep!

Stupidity has been in the air for quite some time. And alas, Mr. Trump isn’t going away soon; neither are Jerrold Nadler, Adam Schiff or Mazie Hirono —each a paragon of the phenomenon.

Stupidity is one of life’s big mysteries, like evil, like love, an ineffable thing. You cannot exactly define it, but you know it when you see it, as Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography. It takes many forms. Stupidity is entitled to no moral standing whatever, and yet it sits in a place of honor at the tables of the mighty; it blows in their ears and whispers promises.

America’s Humiliation and its Consequences :Augusto Zimmermann & Gabriël Moens

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2021/08/americas-humiliation-and-its-consequences/

Many people will have seen the horrific images of the Taliban fighters’ advance in Afghanistan, an offensive accompanied by brutal repression, executions of those suspected of collaborating with the government or its American allies, and the denigration of women and girls. The whole country was overrun in just eleven days. When the Taliban arrived in Kabul, they found a city that was essentially undefended.

President Joe Biden sheepishly admitted the events occurred much more quicky than his administration anticipated.  However, rather than accepting responsibility for the carnage in, and collapse of, Afghanistan, he blamed Afghani political and military leaders for giving up and fleeing the country. In denying a role in the collapse, Biden’s response reveals the self-delusional ignorance and naïveté of his administration. It is also symptomatic of the malaise that is threatening the democratic heritage of the West. 

Undoubtedly, the Allies will now review and consider where the involvement went wrong. The spectacular collapse hides an inconvenient truth: the Americans and their allies could never have exported Western-style democratic government to Afghanistan and it was folly to even entertain the thought they might. It is like transplanting a precious tree from one part of a forest to rocky, inhospitable terrain. The tree will likely die, which this one did despite the lives and billions of dollars expended to keep it alive.

However, in an address to the media,  Biden disingenuously said that nation-building was never one of the aims of the American presence in Afghanistan. Instead, he insisted, the aim was to hunt Osama Bin Laden who had found sanctuary in Afghanistan and to degrade the Taliban. But the President’s denial of nation-building as a motive did not explain why it was necessary to stay for 20 years. During that time, the Taliban, rather than being degraded, were able (or allowed) to keep their arms., meaning that it functioned as a kind of shadow government controlling large swathes of Afghan territory.

Biden’s Travel Agency in Kabul by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17696/biden-kabul-travel-agency

The immediate question everyone faces is whether or not to recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government.

To start with, the current international doctrine is that no government produced through war and violence should be granted de jure recognition unless and until it has submitted to some form of referendum or elections supervised by the United Nations.

Whether or not to legitimize a terrorist group determined to impose a repressive regime on a long suffering nation is the key issue. It cannot be handled without the “Great Satan,” now inspiring stand-up comedians, leading the way.

Whatever Fukuyma and others may fantasize about a “world without America” is not for today.

Twenty years ago when the United States was sucked into the Afghan cesspool, pundits were divided about the ultimate aim of intervention. President George W Bush talked of GWOT (remember the acronym?) or Global War on Terror. His critics argued that, unless it led to nation-building in Afghanistan, the intervention would make no sense.

Two decades later, the intervention has not advanced GWOT, as Islamist terrorism has spread to two dozen countries in Asia and Africa, with sleeper cells in Latin America. As for nation-building, the US has instead ended up with a travel agency based in Kabul airport under an astonishingly incompetent management.

“Killing Our People Has Become Routine”: The Persecution of Christians, July 2021 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17677/persecution-of-christians-july

A Muslim teacher raped an 8-year-old Christian in a school bathroom, and the school and police are covering it up…. “The school management is protecting the rapist, and the police are colluding with them. Who should we look to for justice?…” — Morning Star News, July 11, 2021, Pakistan.

In July 24, another Christian girl—this time only 3-years-old—was raped at a school sponsored by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF). The man who raped Anna Chand is allegedly the female principal’s own husband, Muhammad Saleem…. Since filing charges, friends of Muhammad were reportedly threatening to accuse the Christian parents with blasphemy—which would likely lead to jail or worse—unless they dropped the charges. — Pakistan Christian Post, August 5, 2021, Pakistan.

“The number of defenseless Christians hacked to death by Nigeria’s Islamic Jihadists and their collaborators in the security forces in the past 200 days… has risen to no fewer than 3,462….” — Times Live, July 8, 2021, Nigeria.

Article 500 of Iran’s [new] penal code now states that “any deviant education or propaganda that contradicts or interferes with the sacred Sharia [Islamic law] will be severely punished.” … “The amendment was signed into law by then-President Hassan Rouhani on Feb. 18 and went into effect on March 5.” — Morning Star News, July 6, 2021, Iran.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of July, 2021:

The Abduction, Rape, and Forced Conversion of Christian Girls in Pakistan

A Muslim teacher raped an 8-year-old Christian in a school bathroom, and the school and police are covering it up. According to the July 11 report, Shahzad Masih’s young daughter was “shaking and screaming in pain when she returned home from school that day, June 22, her uniform spotted with blood.” “She did not utter a word all afternoon and just kept crying and screaming in pain,” her father explained.

A Lesson for Joe Biden With an assist from Fyodor Dostoyevsky and H. G. Wells. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/28/a-lesson-for-joe-biden/
On Thursday night, Joe Biden delivered himself of brief remarks about the slaughter perpetrated earlier that day by Islamic terrorists at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan. At least 170 people were murdered, including 14 U.S. servicemen. Many more were injured. The commentator Scott Johnson spoke for most candid observers, I believe, when he wrote at Power Line that the president’s remarks were “pathetic and stupid. He gives human form to our humiliation. He embodies it. Anyone can see that.”

That is correct. And I think Fox News reporter Peter Doocy raised a question that was on many people’s minds when, near the end of Biden’s press conference, he said this: “there had not been a U.S. service member killed in combat in Afghanistan since February of 2020. You set the deadline, you pulled troops out, you sent troops back in, and now 12 Marines are dead. You said the buck stops with you. Do you bear any responsibility for the way that things have unfolded in the last two weeks?”

Biden’s answer? “Yes, but . . .” It giveth and it taketh away. The strophe: “I bear responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened.” The antistrophe: “Donald Trump.” It was Trump who made a deal with the “tally-bahn,” you see, so, really, it’s not my fault, but his. 

Does anyone, even the most thoroughgoing NeverTrump enemy of the former president, think anything like this would have happened on Trump’s watch? 

There were so many horrible things about Biden’s cringe-making press conference, from the president’s body language—had he been supine, you sense that he would have curled up into the fetal position—to the gradually emerging realities that surrounded his talk. 

At the conclusion of his prepared remarks, it was time for questions. Biden then looked down at a piece of paper and said, aloud, “The first person I was instructed to call on . . . .” You would think his handlers would make some minimal effort to disguise their puppet’s subservience and incapacity. 

Did you know that when we stole away from Bagram Airfield at night we left behind hundreds of millions of dollars worth of grade-A military hardware, including 23 A-29 combat aircraft, three C-130 transport planes, 33 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 170 armored Humvees, thousands upon thousands of rockets and grenades, nearly a million rounds of .50 caliber ammunition, and tens of thousands of rifles? In a stroke, we made the Taliban the best-armed radical Islamic organization in the world. 

Did you know that the United States is soon to be home to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, many—if not most of them—Islamic fundamentalists? Did you know that, in its partnership with the Taliban (sounds odd doesn’t it?), the Biden Administration actually gave the Taliban the names of Americans and our Afghan allies. Yes, you read that right. “In a move no one can grasp,” Politico reported, “U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies, believing the Taliban would allow them to enter the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport. Lawmakers and military officials are outraged.” 

How about you? 

The Democratic Party’s Icons Crack and Crumble By Judson Berger

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-weekend-jolt/the-democratic-partys-icons-crack-and-crumble/

The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan was thought to be the worst-case scenario. As it turns out, the worst had yet to happen.

Horrific attacks on Thursday outside the crowded Kabul airport — already a chaotic scene amid the evacuation mission and, as such, a prime target for terrorists — killed at least 13 U.S. service members and dozens more Afghans. Countless decisions, from Trump’s Taliban deal (and a related prisoner release) to Biden’s Bagram bug-out and botched handling of the withdrawal itself, led to this moment of vulnerability. As NR’s editorial details, this entire bloody episode marks a devastating setback not just for Afghanistan but for America’s national security long-term. Yet underneath the chaos of the past several weeks, and concomitant with it, is another shift of considerable consequence — the realization that political figures long regarded as institutions, at least outwardly, have lost their grip.

At the top, there is President Joe Biden, and any deputies associated with the withdrawal who might have thought these posts were a springboard to higher office. When the BBC is skeptically fact-checking a Democratic president, when CNN is lamenting his “defensiveness, imprecision and apparent changes of position,” when the New York Times is reporting on the party rift over Biden’s leadership, when Politico exposes the unfathomable detail that the administration shared names of Afghan allies with the Taliban . . . Wilmington, we have a problem.

Rich Lowry writes:

The Afghanistan fiasco has created that most disorienting and discomfiting experience for a progressive administration — a serious bout of critical media coverage immune to White House spin and determined to tell the unvarnished story of an ongoing debacle.

Of course, it is not just normally friendly media outlets that have turned.

Leon Panetta, Obama’s defense secretary, is dismayed. New Hampshire’s Democratic senators are pressing Biden to ignore the withdrawal deadline. Senator Bob Menendez called the Afghanistan collapse “astounding,” pinned blame on “flawed negotiations” under Trump and “flawed execution” under Biden, and vowed to seek a “full accounting.” Democratic congressman Jim Langevin called this a “catastrophe.” The president’s approval rating has slipped below 50 percent by some readings, even spending time underwater for the first time in his presidency.

To use the in-vogue term of economists, this could be transitory, though the rising casualty count challenges any such expectations. John Fund makes a fundamental observation — that what we’re seeing now is pent-up frustration from the Beltway establishment, loosed by the vivid affirmation of long-held doubts about Biden’s ability:

Make no mistake, there is a genuine collapse of confidence in Biden. They may kiss and make up because Democratic control of Congress is at stake in 2022, but the wounds felt by the establishment from Biden’s incompetence will remain. . . .

Still Spinning ‘the Mission’ after All These Years By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/still-spinning-the-mission-after-all-these-years/
“President Biden will have his heedless withdrawal. But far from ending the war, he has galvanized our enemies. That’s how you extend a forever war.”

Biden has unwittingly prolonged our ‘forever war.’

F or our military, it was the bloodiest day in the last decade of war in Afghanistan. The 13 deaths suffered on Thursday — ten Marines, two soldiers, one Navy corpsman, all killed in a jihadist mass-murder attack that also claimed dozens of Afghan lives — marked the worst day of combat for our armed forces in the seven years since the Obama/Biden administration announced that combat was over.

Yes, as far as the United States was concerned, the Afghan war was said to be over years before President Trump and then President Biden scorned the remaining counterterrorism mission as a “forever war” that had to be “ended.” How galling that, with Biden supposedly “ending 20 years of war,” we now have more combat casualties than we had when the mission was supposed to be combat.

Of course, even then the government was not clear on what exactly the mission in Afghanistan was. It never has been.

In addressing the nation after Thursday’s atrocity, Biden tried to explain and defend one inexplicable, indefensible thing after another — the Bagram bug-out, the trusting of our Taliban enemies with the security of our people, the sharing of intelligence with the Taliban, the provision to the Taliban of lists identifying Americans and our Afghan collaborators. In his habitual way, Biden’s mien was somber, almost teary, as he claimed to take full responsibility for the derelictions that led inexorably to the calamity; then, of course, he proceeded to insist that there were no derelictions — or, if there were, to blame them on his predecessor, or on U.S. military commanders.

Biden’s blame-shifting to Trump is the same stale tale he has been peddling for weeks. The president, who has modeled himself as the anti-Trump, who has self-consciously reversed every Trump policy under the sun — including successful immigration and foreign policies whose benefits a savvier successor could have played to his advantage — would now have you believe the shameful 2020 pact with the Taliban is the one and only Trump policy he had no choice but to execute.

This is not just false in principle; it is a proven lie in practice. Biden did, in fact, change Trump’s policy, extending the pullout date by over four months. Even if unratified agreements with terrorist organizations that the U.S. doesn’t recognize as governments were enforceable, and even if the Taliban had not been in serial violation of the agreement, Biden’s own actions demonstrate that the U.S. withdrawal is Biden policy.

Kamala Harris’ cackling is Joe Biden’s job security

https://nypost.com/2021/08/28/kamala-harris-cackling-is-joe-bidens-job-security/

Vice President Kamala Harris’s team canceled press access to her remarks to US troops at Pearl Harbor on Thursday — surely because it feared yet another disaster for the veep at the site of a terrible attack on America, the same day as the horrors in Kabul.

Harris is just too prone to verbal fumbles that pour more fuel on the Biden administration’s fires.

Just the week before, Harris broke into a bizarre cackle when reporters asked about the early stages of the Afghan crisis. And that’s hardly her only nails-on-chalkboard moment.

For example, when NBC’s Lester Holt called her out for failing to go to the US-Mexico border when she’s supposed to be administration pointwoman on the border criss, Harris again weirdly laughed as she countered, “And I haven’t been to Europe!” as if that had a thing to do with it.

Earlier, during last year’s campaign, CBS’s Norah O’Donnell asked Harris if she brought a “socialist or progressive perspective” to the Democratic ticket and got her own burst of the Kamala cackle.

Then the candidate answered, “No, no!” followed by a nervous-laughter-filled ramble: “It is the perspective of — of a woman who grew up a black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India. Who also, you know, likes hip hop. Like, what do you wanna know?”

That followed her cringe-inducing interview with Charlamagne tha God during the Democratic primaries. The “Breakfast Club” host asked if the ex-prosecutor opposed legalizing pot; she replied, “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me? Hahahahahahah.”

Kamala Harris Backed Afghan Exit Despite Intel Warning Taliban Would Abuse Women Again By Paul Sperry

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/08/25/kamala_harris_backed_afghan_exit_despite_intel_warning_taliban_would_abuse_women_again_791529.html

Just 12 days before President Biden ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community warned the White House that allowing the Taliban to control the country would put Afghan women at grave risk, according to a little-noticed intelligence assessment.

Biden nonetheless pressed ahead with the plan – with the support of his vice president, Kamala Harris, who boasted that she was the last person in the room with the president when he made the decision and felt comfortable with the plan.

Despite her pledge during the presidential campaign to “protect” women in Afghanistan, Harris has been widely criticized for her “deafening silence” in the wake of the Taliban takeover. 

The April 2 intelligence warning casts doubt on assertions by Harris that she is a fierce advocate for women’s rights, including her pledge to “protect” women in Afghanistan during the presidential campaign.

The rights of Afghan women and girls are central to criticism of America’s precipitous withdrawal, which has thrown Afghanistan into chaos and put women once again at the mercy of the same brutal Taliban regime. Gains made in women’s rights have been highlighted as a major achievement during the two decades that American forces have been deployed in the country.

Harris gave her blessing to the pullout of 2,500 remaining troops despite a two-page memo from the National Intelligence Council (NIC) warning that their removal would make it easier for the Taliban to return to power and systematically abuse women.

“Progress [for Afghan women] … would be at risk after coalition withdrawal,” cautioned the declassified memo, which was drafted by the NIC and coordinated with the CIA, Pentagon and the State Department. “The Taliban … would roll back much of the past two decades’ progress if the group regained national power.”

The document cited a number of recent red flags signaling that the Taliban, despite paying lip service to women’s rights in peace talks, had not changed their misogynistic ways. “Taliban officials have issued statements opposing ‘alien-culture clothes worn by women’ and have accused women’s rights advocates of promoting immorality, indecency and non-Islamic culture.”

Added the memo: “Thus far, the Taliban’s effect on girls’ education in areas under its control has ranged from total shutdown to negotiated agreements on which subjects are taught.”

The New Plan Washington, D.C.’s top prep schools implement “antiracism” curricula in lockstep. John D. Sailer

https://www.city-journal.org/dc-prep-schools-embrace-diversity-equity-and-inclusion?wallit_nosession=1

In August 2020, the faculty and staff of Sidwell Friends, the Washington, D.C. area’s top private school, convened to hear a special talk hosted by the school’s director of Equity, Justice, and Community. The speaker was Ibram X. Kendi, no stranger to the podium at posh private schools. “We’re either educating our children to be racist, or we are educating them to be anti-racist,” Kendi said. According to the school’s press release, Kendi charged teachers with the task of creating “an anti-racist world, both in the School and in the world at large, because to not do so is to be complicit in maintaining racist policies.” A few weeks later, Kendi gave another talk for the students at Sidwell, who, like the teachers, had read his book in preparation. “Kendi emphasized that change can—must—happen on a personal level,” the press release says.

Private schools around the nation have adopted Kendi’s message, and Washington is no exception. The top five D.C.-area private high schools—Sidwell Friends, Georgetown Day, Holton-Arms, the National Cathedral School, and St. Albans—committed to this vision in the form of strategic plans. Similar plans may have generated backlash in New York, but so far, the D.C. schools have embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) without notable dissent. D.C.’s top schools now require every corner of their institutions—from chemistry classes and athletic departments to boards of trustees—to demonstrate fealty to “antiracism.”

Some of the pressure for change has come from the students. Last summer, on “BlackAt” social-media accounts that emerged at nearly every top private school in the country, anonymous students alleged incidents of racism and demanded action. Similar accounts sprang up at all five of the top D.C. schools, and their strategy proved successful. A June 2020 letter from Georgetown Day School’s head of school and DEI director thanked the students running the “BlackAt” account for raising awareness, called for feedback to help the school effectuate “institutional and ideological change,” and concluded with a quote from Kendi: “What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse.” Two months later, Georgetown Day’s administrators made good on their promise with a 14-point plan. Meantime, National Cathedral School explicitly cites the “blackatncs” account in its DEI plan overview. And in a letter in November, the head of school at Holton-Arms said she was grateful for the “Black@HAS” account.