RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/liberalism-stupid-liel-leibovitz

What exactly is wrong with America, and how do we fix it?

That, with slight variations, is the question constantly nipping at our heels these days, asked by friends and colleagues, entertained at dinner parties, floated around on podcasts and in opinion pages. Analyses of what precisely is broken vary, as do prescriptions for a cure, but a strong consensus remains solid among our best and brightest—the problem is that liberalism has come under attack, and the solution is to restore it to its old glory.

In this telling, the history of the past 30 or so years in America goes something like this: Once upon a time, back in the halcyon days of the 1990s, America was great, because Americans all observed a shared creed called liberalism. This relaxed civil religion nurtured our individual liberties and kept us honest, hardworking, and good. It gave us civil rights and gay marriage, Tom Hanks and Sesame Street, bipartisanship and Teach for America. And it would have bloomed eternal if the barbarians hadn’t shown up one day to sack our glittering Rome.

Who, exactly, are those modern-day wreckers of civilization? Again, many of our intellectual betters are certain they have the answer: The barbarians are Marxists, extreme leftist agitators here to replace our sacred liberal order with a pagan religion of their own, complete with a set of rituals (taking a knee) and articles of faith (gender is fluid). Our mission, therefore, is to resist these savages at every turn, and do whatever we can to turn the clock back and reinstall liberalism as our exclusive and infallible operating system

It’s a compelling story, complete with deliciously malicious bad guys and wonderfully virtuous sheriffs counting the minutes to High Noon. It’s also, alas, entirely wrong. Liberalism, to keep with the Hollywood imagery, isn’t the damsel in distress, hogtied and left on the train tracks; it’s the mustache-twirling villain whom we must defeat if we are to survive.

Take a moment and read that last sentence again. If you were raised in America and attended any school here in the last, say, 50 years, this sentence—liberalism is the source of our woes—makes about as much sense as saying that Mr. Rogers is a sadistic serial killer, or that bald eagles ought to be shot on sight. It sounds not only sacrilegious but outright stupid, a proposition so far-fetched and so far removed from everything we understand to be at America’s core as to merit not a second more of consideration.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/med-schools-are-now-denying-biological?token

Today we bring you another installment of Katie Herzog’s ongoing series about the spread of woke ideology in the field of medicine. Her first story focused on the ideological purge at the top medical schools and teaching hospitals in the country. “Wokeness,” as one doctor put it, “feels like an existential threat.”

Katie’s latest reporting illustrates some of the most urgent elements of that threat. It focuses on how biological sex is being denied by professors fearful of being smeared by their students as transphobic. And it shows how the true victims of that denial are not sensitive medical students but patients, perhaps most importantly, transgender ones. 

Some of you may find Katie’s story shocking and disconcerting and perhaps even maddening. You might also ask yourself: How has it come to this? How has this radical ideology gone from the relatively obscure academic fringe to the mainstream in such a short time?

Those are among the questions that motivate this newsletter. We feel obligated to chronicle in detail and in primary accounts the takeover of our institutions by this ideology — and the consequences of it. 

So far, it has taken root in some of our leading medical schools. Some. Not all. But I’m left thinking: What state will American medicine — or any other American institution —  find itself in after being routed by this ideology?  

If you think reporting like Katie Herzog’s is important I hope you’ll support us by subscribing here.

— BW

During a recent endocrinology course at a top medical school in the University of California system, a professor stopped mid-lecture to apologize for something he’d said at the beginning of class.

“I don’t want you to think that I am in any way trying to imply anything, and if you can summon some generosity to forgive me, I would really appreciate it,” the physician says in a recording provided by a student in the class (whom I’ll call Lauren). “Again, I’m very sorry for that. It was certainly not my intention to offend anyone. The worst thing that I can do as a human being is be offensive.” 

His offense: using the term “pregnant women.” 

“I said ‘when a woman is pregnant,’ which implies that only women can get pregnant and I most sincerely apologize to all of you.”

It wasn’t the first time Lauren had heard an instructor apologize for using language that, to most Americans, would seem utterly inoffensive. Words like “male” and “female.”

Why would medical school professors apologize for referring to a patient’s biological sex? Because, Lauren explains, in the context of her medical school “acknowledging biological sex can be considered transphobic.”

When sex is acknowledged by her instructors, it’s sometimes portrayed as a social construct, not a biological reality, she says. In a lecture on transgender health, an instructor declared: “Biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender are all constructs. These are all constructs that we have created.” 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17602/disband-the-fbi

In the past few days alone, we have learned that the October 2020 Michigan governor kidnap plot was largely a creation of the FBI; a “senior FBI official” was on the take from media organizations; and another assistant director was in a “romantic relationship with a subordinate” and involved in “other misconduct.” The leadership failures documented by the Office of the Inspector General are now almost standard and part of a tiresome media drip-torture for the public to endure.

The FBI ran a coup against President Trump. It failed. The following got away: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith, Pientka, Brower, Baker, et al. Any real consequences for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States? No.

Questions are now being raised as to whether the FBI had a role in the Capitol Hill protests of January 6, 2021. When one examines the FBI’s involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax; Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses; standing by idly while in possession of Hunter Biden’s Ukraine and Burisma-laden laptops, while President Trump endured a second phony impeachment; and the frame-up of Trump’s National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn – it is not too difficult to imagine.

The FBI needs to go away. It should happen in an orderly and thoughtful process, over a period of months. Congress should authorize and create an investigative division in the U.S. Marshals Service and open applications for law enforcement officer seeking to be rigorously screened, vetted and then accessed into the new organization. Similar action was taken before in the very creation of the FBI. It is now time to clean house and restore the public’s trust in the “premier investigative agency” of federal law enforcement.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) continues its downward spiral into terminal corruption. Sadly, the scandals, criminality and ethical abuses of the organization are largely ignored by the American public and by the institutions of government charged with oversight and correction. Outrage after outrage is reported, hearings are held, Inspector General reports are issued — but the systemic corruption is never really tackled and dirty cops skate away virtually unscathed.

This situation is constitutionally unacceptable, corrosive to public trust in law enforcement, and a threat to the survival of the republic.

In the past few days alone, we have learned that the October 2020 Michigan governor kidnap plot was largely a creation of the FBI; a “senior FBI official” was on the take from media organizations; and another assistant director was in a “romantic relationship with a subordinate” and involved in “other misconduct.” The leadership failures documented by the Office of the Inspector General are now almost standard and part of a tiresome media drip-torture for the public to endure.

Meanwhile, the FBI had the audacity to issue a Stasi-like tweet urging “monitoring of ‘family members and peers’ for extremism.”

Remember: what we learn about the FBI in the press are only the stories that are SO outrageous that the FBI cannot keep a lid on them and is forced to make disclosures via a toothless Inspector General report — but never anything that results in a criminal indictment. Imagine what the ordinary day-to-day misconduct in FBI offices across the country could be. And these scandals don’t just amount to “bad press” – in several of these, federal courts scourge the FBI for lawbreaking. Additionally, Inspector General report after report details FBI abuses such as whistleblowers being retaliated against and ignoring “high-risk” employees who fail polygraph tests.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/26/five-years-later-the-spawn-of-crossfire-hurricane/

Five years ago this week, Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, boarded a train in Washington, D.C. bound for Philadelphia. The Democratic National Convention was in chaos after WikiLeaks released emails that showed party officials rigged the primary process in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders supporters were mutinous; Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then-head of the Democratic National Committee, resigned on July 25, 2016.

Simpson and his business partner hightailed it to the City of Brotherly Love to woo the media away from the escalating scandal. The well-connected pair met with top journalists and editors, including New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet, to spin a dark tale about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia including rumors of prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.

It worked like a charm.

“The WikiLeaks dump had forced every publication to devote multiple reporters to dig through the cache of emails,” Simpson wrote in his 2019 book, Crime in Progress. Simpson bragged of his success. “The Russia element was beginning to snap into focus.”

While Fusion spin masters were doing damage control in Philadelphia, their hired British source, Christopher Steele, was in Washington, D.C., meeting with a top Justice Department official. Steele was being paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign while working as an FBI source at the same time.

On July 30, 2016, Steele met with Bruce Ohr, the assistant deputy attorney general, to discuss his dirt-digging on Donald Trump. Also present at the breakfast: Nellie Ohr, Bruce’s wife, who also was working for Fusion GPS on the Trump hit job.

The next day, James Comey’s FBI opened a counterintelligence probe into Donald Trump’s campaign team. Steele’s unsubstantiated dossier on Team Trump’s ties to the Kremlin served as the pretext to infiltrate, spy on, and destabilize Trump’s presidential campaign.

That last week of July 2016 exposed the seamless and shameless web of paid political operatives, top news organizations, Democratic Party honchos, and the upper tier of the most powerful government agencies in the country. It culminated with the official launch of Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016, an investigation ostensibly about four campaign associates’ collusion with Russia but which, in reality, targeted Trump himself.

For the past five years, Donald Trump and the country have been subjected to various iterations of Crossfire Hurricane: Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, numerous U.S. Senate and House inquiries, the first and second impeachment trials, and countless media microaggressions sought to achieve what Comey’s FBI ultimately did not—the personal and political destruction of Donald Trump.

The Capitol breach probe, the title of the Justice Department’s “unprecedented” investigation into the events of January 6, is the latest version of Crossfire Hurricane. Tuesday’s maiden meeting of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on January 6 provides the stage where partisan actors will overdramatize what happened that day. Attention-seeking police officers will emote about the psychological trauma they suffer from the roughly four-hour disturbance, which, by the way, largely was stoked by police officers themselves. 

Trump, the public would be told over and over, incited it all.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/dc-elects-imprisoned-murderer-matthew-vadum/

Voters in the nation’s capital made history by electing a convicted murderer who is still behind bars for his crime to an Advisory Neighborhood Commission, or ANC, which counsels the local government on neighborhood issues such as garbage collection, police patrols, liquor licenses, zoning, and parking.

Joel Caston, 44, has been imprisoned for 26 years following a first-degree murder conviction in the August 14, 1994 killing of 18-year-old Rafiq Washington. Victim and shooter knew each other and there was some unspecified animus between them that cannot easily be divined from online court records. Caston, who was elected June 15, will reportedly be liberated from the D.C. Central Detention Facility this year or next.

Evidence at his 1996 trial demonstrated Washington “was shot and killed in front of the New China Carry Out … at the corner of 16th Street and Good Hope Road, S.E.” A witness saw Caston “run toward Washington, place a revolver inches from Washington’s body, almost touching Washington’s head, and fire ‘about five’ additional shots.’”

Despite his dark past, Caston was elected to the ANC for Ward 7, becoming the first incarcerated person to be elected to public office in the District of Columbia.

Caston has taken for-credit courses through Georgetown University, mentored young prisoners, practiced yoga, and edited a prisoner newspaper. On its website, the university slobbers all over Caston, calling him a “Prison Scholar” even though he’s not a penologist or a criminologist.

“I’m incredibly proud of Joel for his election,” said Georgetown Prisons and Justice Initiative Director Marc M. Howard, who has taught Caston. “Joel is brilliant, dedicated, compassionate and full of integrity.”

“He’s an inspiration to everyone who is lucky enough to know him,” Howard added. “And I’m counting down the days until he comes home, a free man, to share his talent and positivity with the world.”

Although he may not be a cop-killer groupie like Mumia Abu-Jamal-worshipping Marc Lamont Hill, the judgment of Howard, who fancies himself an original thinker, must be called into question because he apparently views the American criminal justice system through a Marxist prism.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/duplicitous-jan-6-insurrection-melodrama-bruce-thornton/

After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kicked two Republicans off the House investigation of the January 6 riot at the Capitol, the Democrats and their media flaks went into high gear to obfuscate Pelosi’s transparently partisan motive to ensure the investigation reaches the preordained conclusion: that Donald Trump incited an “insurrection” aimed at undoing the election results. In response to Pelosi’s obvious attempt to get the fix in, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California pulled all the Republicans from the commission (except for Rhino Liz Cheney).

As always, the Dems’ bare-knuckled “any means necessary” tactics are camouflaged with sophistries, logical fallacies, and begged questions presented as facts.

The progressive site Politico was the eager promulgator of such propaganda. The column is filled with hyperbole like “the deadliest attack on the Capitol in two centuries.” In fact, of course, the only fatalities were three protestors and a DC police officer who all died from natural causes, and Ashli Babbit, an Air Force veteran shot to death by a DC cop even though she posed no immediate physical harm to him or anybody else.

Equally duplicitous, or just plain ignorant, is the phrase “deadliest attack in two centuries.” Apparently, the three writers never heard of the violent attack on the House Chamber by Puerto Rican terrorists in 1954. As Congressmen were discussing the Mexican economy and immigration, the five assailants pulled out semi-automatic pistole and started firing down on them from the gallery. Five representatives were wounded in the attack, saved from death only by the attackers’ poor marksmanship. The terrorists were apprehended, tried, and convicted. One was released in 1978, and the others had their sentences commuted a year later by Jimmy Carter.

Or how about the 1998 attack, when a lunatic entered the Capitol and opened fire, killing two DC policemen? The killer made it to the offices of senior Republican representatives, as staffers crouched under their desks. He was shot by return fire from an officer he had mortally wounded, but the assailant survived. So much for “deadliest attack in two centuries,” or other hype like “deadly day,” used without mentioning that the only violent death was Ashli Babbit’s.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/biden_drifts_off_answering_a_question_during_cnns_town_hall_with_don_lemon_appears_to_listen_to_earpiece_to_get_out_of_incoherent_ramble.html

We’ve all seen this before, as has every leader of every country in the world.  A sitting president of the United States cannot put together a coherent answer to a simple question.  He pauses, appears puzzled, and then comes up with a string of words that appear to have entered his brain via an earpiece.  If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be comic.

Wednesday saw the president of the United States engage in a town hall–format discussion, on friendly territory, with Don Lemon moderating on CNN.  It must have been one of those “good days” that dementia-sufferers sometime enjoy — in Biden’s case, meaning no “lid” was called, removing the leader of the free world from public scrutiny.

(“Calling a lid” is an unprecedented admission that the POTUS is not in full command of his mental faculties and would have Democrats demanding that the 25th Amendment be invoked if a Republican were in office.  But Republicans are far too polite and far too scared of the media to make an issue of it with Biden.)

Even with the friendliest, least demanding moderator imaginable, Don Lemon, it was a challenge for President Joe Biden to get through the entire hour.  His handlers must have believed that with familiar questions and maybe a good earpiece helping him along, he could handle the challenge.

They were wrong

Asked an unchallenging question about 12-year-olds and vaccination, he drifted off in the middle of a sentence, and, as he so often does, looked down, got that Deliverance banjo player look on his face, and appeared to be listening to something in his earpiece, and then strung together a sequence of words that were not grammatically related to the rest of the sentence, but which, on their own, were coherent.  As if repeating what he just heard.