RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/06/15/welcome_to_wokespeak_its_logic-defying_rhetoric_is_making_heads_spin_780731.html

In the midst of the nation’s racial upheaval last year, media outlets including the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Washington Post rushed to start capitalizing the word “Black” in reference to African Americans, some announcing the move as a long-overdue gesture of respect. While RealClear has not changed its style, the change elsewhere prompted newsroom soul-searching on whether to write “white” or “White” in reference to people of European descent.

Capitalizing the term made sense as a simple matter of consistency. But the argument for lower-casing “white” staked its own moral claims. One was that capitalizing it would legitimize white supremacy. Another was that “white” in lower case is an apolitical description of a skin color; it doesn’t merit capitalization because whites don’t represent a shared culture.

News organizations adopted inconsistent policies on the question – the AP, Times and others voted for “w”; the Washington Post and National Association of Black Journalists chose “W.” But the notion that there is no white culture drew jeers of derision from some quarters. It was virtually impossible to pretend not to see that white culture is routinely cited to refer to white supremacy and white privilege as a shorthand for the cultural biases, prejudices and values that prop up systemic racism.

Both ideas – that white culture is omnipresent and nonexistent – can’t be true. Or can they?

The white culture conundrum is one of many such paradoxes in today’s topsy-turvy woke culture, where colorblindness once represented the ideal of being unprejudiced, but now marks the epitome of racism.

These apparent contradictions can cause confusion, frustration and moral whiplash in a swiftly changing society where many people fear that one wayward move can result in a public flogging or a pink slip. Yet as the public seeks guidance, the fractured market of ideas seems unable to provide clarity on which rules apply in which situation.

“These contradictions and conundrums have hit like an avalanche,” said Jason Hill, a native of Jamaica and author of the 2018 book, “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/16/does-biden-know-he-just-labeled-antifa-and-blm-as-domestic-terrorists/

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden released his plan to tackle domestic terrorism, which he calls a “serious and growing threat.” His clear intent is to target right-wing groups, but his definition of domestic terrorists perfectly describes Antifa and the Black Lives Matter radicals.

The “fact sheet” accompanying Biden’s “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” lists only two types of domestic terrorists: violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race, and anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists.

But it also describes domestic terrorism as:

‘Activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.’

Now, who do you think fits into these categories? Which groups have acted in ways that are “dangerous to human life,” want to “intimidate or coerce” as a means to “influence the policy of a government,” and use “mass destruction” to get their ways?

Would it be QAnon and other right-wing groups, about whom the best team Biden can seem to come up with is that “they may be on the verge of carrying out more violence in real life on Democrats and others that they perceive, however falsely, to be threats”?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/threats-rise-u-s-defense-falls-11623798082?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden is telling the world in Europe this week that “America is back” as the leader of global democracies. Sounds good. But China, Iran and Vladimir Putin would be more impressed if Mr. Biden wasn’t cutting America’s defense even as he rightly stresses the challenge from the world’s authoritarians.

Unremarked in the White House spending deluge is that its trillions for “infrastructure” include little new for defense. Mr. Biden’s $715 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal 2022 is a 1.6% increase over last year. Adjusted for inflation, this is a cut. The bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission and other experts say the Pentagon needs steady 3% to 5% real increases annually to address threats from “near peers” such as China and Russia.

President Trump increased defense spending modestly, but that fillip has passed and spending is still at its modern norm of about 3% of GDP. America is rapidly piling up debt past 100% of GDP while shrinking its defenses.

***

The brightest budget spots are places where the Administration declined to make matters worse: The Administration didn’t slash the Army; active-duty end strength holds at about 485,000. But the service requested about $3.5 billion less than last year’s enacted budget, in part due to a drawdown in Afghanistan.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/15/ilhan_omar_and_contempt_f

“We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban,” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted last week to her 1.2 million followers. They responded with warm support. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was cooler. Although the speaker lives in San Francisco’s progressive echo chamber, she heads a national party and understands that most voters do not think our country is similar to the Taliban or Hamas. They have noticed a few small differences. Nor do they see a moral equivalence between Israel, which tries to avoid civilian casualties, and terrorist organizations, which use human shields and bomb pizza parlors. They wonder if a representative who thinks America is so evil should sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as Omar does.

Pelosi pressed Rep. Omar for a “clarification” and received a half-hearted one. That was good enough for the speaker, who stressed that she was not rebuking Omar, whom she called a “valued member of our caucus.”

Pelosi walked gingerly because she has only a tiny House majority and relies on several hard-left members and dozens of very progressive ones. She doesn’t want to lose them, but she doesn’t want to endanger her more centrist members, either. Omar’s tweet put her between the dog and the hydrant. Jewish members issued an outraged statement denouncing the tweet, while Omar’s left-wing colleagues, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, criticized Pelosi’s tepid request for clarification.

Another member of the Squad, Rashida Tlaib, chose to portray Pelosi’s request as an attack on all Muslims — on all women of color in Congress: “Freedom of speech doesn’t exist for Muslim women in Congress. The benefit of the doubt doesn’t exist for Muslim women in Congress. House Democratic leadership should be ashamed of its relentless, exclusive tone policing of Congresswomen of color.” Tlaib’s claim that she and Omar are being silenced was sent to 1.4 million Twitter followers.  Apparently, Tlaib has been fully inoculated against irony. Pelosi responded by saying that she had never meant anything as a rebuke. Not in the slightest.

The problem here goes well beyond Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who was welcomed to American and now sits in Congress, seething with contempt for her adopted country, its tolerant values, and those of its allies. The Democrats are stuck with a whole Squad of like-minded representatives and thousands, perhaps millions, of young supporters eager to promote these socialist attacks on America. That’s not just a problem for the Democrats. That’s a problem for the country.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/15/chilling-bidens-domestic-terror-agenda-confirms-conservatives-worst-fears-n1454729

The Biden administration is using the awesome might of the U.S. government to demonize conservative critics as abettors of extremist ideology, if not enemies of the state.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden released a blueprint for his New War on Terror. In the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” the Biden White House pledges that the administration will combat domestic terrorism “while vigilantly safeguarding peaceful expression of a wide range of views and freedom of political association.” Yet the administration’s biases give conservatives good reason to doubt this pledge.

The White House claims that the “two most lethal elements” of domestic terrorism are “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists who advocate for the superiority of the white race” and “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists, such as militia violent extremists.”

The document lays out four elements of a strategy to fight domestic terrorism: sharing domestic terrorism analyses at all levels of government and occasionally with the private sector; preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and confronting “long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.”

Each element should raise alarms for conservatives and Republicans, given the Biden administration’s hyperbolic rhetoric on racism and the Capitol riot. Biden has condemned commonsense election reform as “Jim Crow on steroids” and said the Capitol riot was worse than the Lincoln assassination, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and multiple violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol.