The Very Devil of a Thing to Comprehend Mark Powell

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/reflections/2021/04/the-very-devil-of-a-thing-to-comprehend/

If you haven’t heard of Cardi B, the rapper responsible for a sexually graphic hit that earned her a meeting with a fawning Joe Biden immediately before the recent US election, there is little chance another rising star will elicit a nod of recognition. This one goes by name of Lil Nas X and he has taken things to a whole new level. In this case, a level of Hell, and I mean that literally. A self-described children’s performer, Lil Nas X — real name Montero Lamar Hill— has recently released a music video of himself sliding down a stripper’s pole to perform sexual acts upon the Devil, seated upon his satanic throne (above). For this he has been praised by academics.

The question is, how have we come to this point as a culture, and in particular a Western nation? A time when—just as in ancient Israel—someone like the Biblical prophet Isaiah could lament those in his day who call evil good and good evil, who traded darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter (Isaiah 5:20). The answer is somewhat complex.

In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote a book called, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud. Rieff’s thesis was that the West had rejected God and in His place sought to create a society where the individual was liberated to indulge in the freedom of one’s own sensuality as an integral part of the pursuit of personal happiness. However, with the ‘therapeutic’ replacing the transcendent moral order traditionally provided by religion, this has only led to the triumph of what I refer to as “therapeutic totalitarianism”.

Just over 50 years after Rieff’s work was published, we’re starting to perceive ever more clearly the bitter fruit of such a Prometheanism endeavour, i.e. the idea than the individual human has unlimited and godlike  potential to re-create the world to accord with one’s own passions and desires. For an excellent analysis and contemporary application of Reiff’s work, see Carl. R. Trueman’s, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Another, even more prescient contribution in this regard is Rod Dreher’s, Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Sentinel, 2020). Dreher explores how “the menace of totalitarianism” is still a very real threat to Western society. As he explains:

The term totalitarianism was first used by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who defined totalitarianism concisely: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That is to say, totalitarianism is a state in which nothing can be permitted to exist that contradicts a society’s ruling ideology.

MORE HEADLINES APRIL 11, 2021

Chris Wallace: Kamala Harris may not want her ‘fingerprints’ on border crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbksThGF0s0

 

Texas rancher says neighbors find bodies of migrants on property https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_uay8FTK-4

 

Obama’s celebrity guests left ‘dirty messages’ for Donald Trump – ’You will fail’ https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1421521/donald-trump-news-barack-obama-dave-chappelle-white-house-party-ont

 

Bill Gates backs project to ‘dim the sun’, Tucker Carlson reacts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wwIBUCBrF8

WATCH BANNED VIDEO: Gov DeSantis Roundtable on COVID Lockdowns Censored On YouTube https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/04/watch-banned-video-gov-desantis-roundtable-on-covid-lockdowns-censored-on-youtube/

COTTON TOUTS COVID ‘LAB LEAK’ THEORY, ACCUSES MAINSTREAM MEDIA OF BEING “APOLOGISTS” FOR CHINA HTTPS://DFCTODAY.COM/COTTON-TOUTS-COVID-LAB-LEAK-THEORY-ACCUSES-MAINSTREAM-MEDIA-OF-BEING-APOLOGISTS-FOR-CHINA/

BIDEN SURGE: 172,000 Illegal Migrants Invaded US in March. Highest Number in 20 Years

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/04/biden-surge-172000-illegal-mig

The Biden surge is real and spectacular despite the vocal insistence of the Democrat media and lefties like AOC that it’s a racist GOP myth.

The CPB press releases, under the Biden administration, are trying to spin the facts, but the facts are still there. I’m just snipping away all the spin about “food insecurity” and the “pandemic”, none of which explains why there was a massive surge under Biden.

In March 2021, CBP encountered more than 172,000 persons attempting entry along the Southwest border. This total represented a 71 percent increase over February 2021…. This fiscal year CBP has already had over 569,800 encounters.  This represents an increase of 24 percent from the total encounters we had during all of Fiscal Year 2020

CBP has recently seen a return to encounters of large groups, especially in the Rio Grande Valley region. These groups of 100 or more individuals had dropped dramatically

As RNC Research director Zach Parkinson noted, that’s the highest single month total since 2001.

This is a major crisis. And the cause of this invasion is sitting in the White House. As long as Democrats continue to pander to illegal aliens, the surge will continue.

A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus. Kieran Bhattacharya’s First Amendment lawsuit can proceed, a court said. Robby Soave

https://reason.com/2021/04/07/microaggressions-uva-student-kieran-bhattacharya-threat/

Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand.

Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya’s question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus. He is now suing UVA for violating his First Amendment rights, and a judge recently ruled that his suit should proceed.

Here was what the student said.

“Thank you for your presentation,” said Bhattacharya, according to an audio recording of the event. “I had a few questions, just to clarify your definition of microaggressions. Is it a requirement, to be a victim of microaggression, that you are a member of a marginalized group?”

Adams replied that it wasn’t a requirement.

Bhattacharya suggested that this was contradictory, since a slide in her presentation had defined microaggressions as negative interactions with members of marginalized groups. Adams and Bhattacharya then clashed for a few minutes about how to define the term. It was a polite disagreement. Adams generally maintained that microaggression theory was a broad and important topic and that the slights caused real harm. Bhattacharya expressed a scientific skepticism that a microaggression could be distinguished from an unintentionally rude statement. His doubts were wellfounded given that microaggression theory is not a particularly rigorous concept.

But Nora Kern*, an assistant professor who helped to organize the event, thought Bhattacharya’s questions were a bit too pointed. Immediately following the panel, she filed a “professionalism concern card”—a kind of record of a student’s violations of university policy.

Biden Admin Considering Cash Payments to Central America to Control Migration By Samuel Allegri

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-admin-considering-cash-payments-to-central-america-to-control-migration_3770249.html

The Biden administration is considering sending cash to Central American countries to alleviate economic problems that motivate their citizens to leave for the United States.

Alongside the conditional cash transfer program, they are also considering sending CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccines to those countries, the White House’s southern border coordinator Roberta Jacobson told Reuters.

She didn’t specify which entity would be potentially obtaining the cash, but the program in consideration is aimed at people from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, which make up for the vast majority of illegal immigration presently occurring at the border.

“We’re looking at all of the productive options to address both the economic reasons people may be migrating, as well as the protection and security reasons,” said the White House official.

CBP released an Operational Update on Thursday which stated that more than 172,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended in March along the Southwest border.

Jacobson didn’t explain to Reuters how exactly the program would function but said that they won’t be handing out checks to people.

“The one thing I can promise you is the U.S. government isn’t going to be handing out money or checks to people,” Jacobson, who announced she will be leaving the White House at the end of the month, said.

On Friday, top Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) disapproved of the idea of cash transfers.

How a Political Prisoner of 17 Years Resisted Communist Cuba’s Persecution By Mimi Nguyen Ly and Joshua Philipp

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-a-political-prisoner-of-17-years-resisted-communist-cubas-persecution_3765484.html

After 17 years of political persecution and imprisonment at the hands of the Cuban communist regime, and having ultimately found refuge in the United States, Jorge Luis Antonis reflected on what he learned and what helped him resist oppression during a very difficult period in his life.

It was March 15, 1990. Luis was 25 years old. He and a number of others were enthusiastic about reforms and events at the time in Eastern Europe that signaled the fall of communism, such as the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the impending total collapse of the Soviet Union.

That day, Luis recalled being in a public venue where a broadcast was underway showing a speech Cuban dictator Raul Castro was delivering about the upcoming Fourth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party.

“I took the opportunity to openly declare myself as political opposition,” Luis told The Epoch Times’ “Crossroads” program, in Spanish.

Since Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, citizens were systematically denied fundamental freedoms such as speech, association and assembly, movement, due process, and privacy. By 1990, nothing had changed—civil and political rights were still a figment of the imagination.

“Back then, it was a real defiance of the regime because there was basically no opposition activists, there were no human rights groups, or independent journalists,” Luis explained. “And there, I started shouting slogans in favor of change, in favor of democracy, in favor of respect for human rights. I was beaten brutally and I was sentenced to prison, charged with ‘verbal enemy propaganda.’”

Can We Win in the ‘Gray Zone’? by Richard Kemp

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17235/gray-zone-conflict

The gray zone is the space between peace and war involving coercive actions that fall outside normal geopolitical competition between states but do not reach the level of armed conflict…. They usually seek to avoid a significant military response, though are often designed to intimidate and deter a target state by threatening further escalation.

[B]ut do liberal democracies in the 21st Century have the political will to do the dirty work that is necessary to win?

Western nations have multiple pre-emptive and reactive options to respond to gray zone actions directed against them or their allies, most effectively involving multilateral coordination. The objective should be to frustrate or deter, avoiding escalation that might lead to all-out conflict. Broadly, options fall into four categories: diplomatic, informational, economic and military.

Democracies’ fear of escalation is a significant deterrent against the use of violent military options in the gray zone, and that is exactly the fear that authoritarian states like Iran wish to instil…..[F]ear of escalation is not the greatest obstacle to the use of a military option — transparency is.

Deterrence is not down to the military option alone. Where possible, diplomatic, informational and economic actions are preferable in providing the necessary punishments. But gray zone opponents who are willing to use military action must also be confronted with a credible military jeopardy to them, and not just a paper capability which will quickly be seen for what it is.

How confident can we be that liberal democracies mean business in the gray zone? When British troops were being killed and maimed in large numbers in Iraq by Iranian proxies… more than a decade ago, the UK government would not even consider any form of gray zone military action, even non-lethal, against Iran, despite a clear capability to do so. Instead they relied on diplomatic démarches — and the killings continued. The consequences of such weakness are still being played out in Iran’s widespread gray zone aggression. If back then — in the face of the slaughter of dozens of their own troops — political leaders’ fear of escalation and political fallout caused such paralysis, how likely is it that they will seriously contemplate violent gray zone operations today….

In March, US President Joe Biden issued his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson presented the Integrated Review of Security, Defense, Development and Foreign Policy to parliament. Both leaders expressed concern over the increasing challenges in the gray zone and promised measures to respond more effectively.

Iran: Between Illusion and Reality by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17269/iran-between-illusion-and-reality

As for voter turnout, we now know that the regime has set the stage for an “historic event”. Revolutionary Guard chief Gen. Hussein Salami says the “Supreme Guide” has ordered “an epoch-making turnout” that his force will help assemble.

[I]t is clear that the “Supreme Guide” will not tolerate the slightest deviation from the course he has set: a revolution that he claims is moving from strength to strength. “Today we are stronger and America is weaker,” he said recently. One of his ideological gurus, Dr. Hassan Abbasi, aka “Dr. Kissinger of Islam”, goes further: “America is the sunset power,” he says. “We are the sunrise power!”

[The coming election] could end the illusion that the Khomeinist regime might change course and seize opportunity offered to it to re-join the global mainstream…. The four-decade pursuit of “behavior change in Tehran” would have to be reviewed.

Khamenei speaks of a “conspiracy” to force Iran to become a “normal nation” like everyone else and vows to never allow that to happen.

The Khomeinist system isn’t a Middle Eastern version of the people-based Scandinavian Social Democracy…. It is a despotism of the medieval kind with a pseudo-modern varnish borrowed from misunderstood Marxism.

The replacement of illusion with reality, no matter how bitter, may be good news after all.

The old script is out of the files and dusted, the décor shined and up, and the puppet-master testing the strings and flexing his fingers. But something is still missing: new puppets to make the show attractive to those who have seen the same old puppets once too often.

Got it? We are talking of the presidential election in the Islamic Republic in Iran, scheduled for next June but so far attracting little attention. In previous versions of the show, interest in it started up to two years before polling day as rival factions within the regime mobilized to reach for the prize or at least make an impression. On at least two occasions the rigmarole produced one pleasantly surprising result and one unexpectedly horrible one. On a third occasion, it triggered a nationwide prising that pushed the Khomeinist regime to the edge of collapse.

Those of us who had long conceded that this simulacrum of an election was an insult to human intelligence, nonetheless maintained an interest in it for at least two reasons.

Cancel Culture and Identity Politics are the Road to a One-Party State By Daniel Greenfield

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/cancel_culture_and_identity_politics_are_the_road_to_a_oneparty_state.html

America is at war. This time the enemy isn’t on some distant battlefield or hiding in a barren cave thousands of miles away. Instead, the enemy is not only here, but it’s ruling over us.

That’s the powerful message of David Horowitz’s latest book, The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America. This isn’t just a warning, it’s the reality around us.

“Americans are more divided today than at any time since the Civil War,” Horowitz writes. “In the course of the anti-Trump wars, we have become two nations with little shared ground on the core issues that previously defined us.” And it’s the Left that brought us to this state, not just in the last five years, but going all the way back to the fundamental strategy of its divisive politics.

In The Enemy Within, Horowitz exposes the Communist roots of identity politics that have been used to turn Americans against each other and reduce them to hostile warring tribes, rather than citizens of a common nation invested in its welfare, success, and prosperity.

Identity politics is the delegitimization of America and Americans. It’s a hate campaign that justifies any extremity, and any attack on the country and her people. “It is this regressive attack on America’s fundamental principles by the Left that is the source of the irreconcilable conflicts and ugly passions that are currently tearing the nation’s fabric apart,” Horowitz writes.

Class warfare, racial warfare, gender warfare, and the countless other forms of identity politics injected into schools, workplaces, government offices, and every area of life are aimed at forcing Americans to identify radically and tribally, rather than nationally. Divide and conquer.

David Horowitz, a veteran of the radical politics of the Left, has the knowledge, the experience, and the training to expose not just what the movement he was once a part of is doing, but the ideological origins of its tactics, and how they feed it into its dreadful vision for America.

America is delegitimized through revisionist history smears, like the 1619 Project, that rewrite the powerful force for equality and freedom that is the true history of the United States into the big lie of systemic racism, while Americans are accused of various forms of oppressive privilege so that, just by existing, they oppress everyone who does not fit into the same artificial category.

In The Enemy Within, Horowitz tackles the radical and racist roots of these ideas, from Karl Marx to Derrick Bell, a supporter of Farrakhan, and how they exploded into violence and tyranny in the streets of our cities and the halls of power as Black Lives Matter mobs used lies to unleash racist violence and Democrat officials used racist myths to build a one-party state.

But it’s not just BLM.

Do Vaccine Resisters Risk Being Waco’d? Without any qualms, American authorities have boarded up small businesses and bankrupted—even arrested—their “scofflaw” owners for the crime of working. What’s next? By Ilana Mercer

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/10/do-vaccine-resisters-risk-being-wacod/

Because of the natural mutation the clever little RNA strand undergoes, it is clear to anyone with a critical mind that the COVID-19 vaccines will go the way of the flu vaccines: An annual affair if one chooses to make it so.

Choice, alas, is quickly becoming a quaint concept in COVID-compliant America.

Vaccine Passports 

The possibility of a vaccine passport, a “certification of vaccination that reduces public-health restrictions for their carriers,” has been floated. Without finesse, it amounts to, “Your papers, bitte!”

While Fox’s Tucker Carlson did term the idea an Orwellian one—it took civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, the odd-man-out among the authoritarian Left, to place the concept of a vaccine passport in proper perspective.

The popular TV host (and perhaps the only good thing on Fox News) had asked Greenwald if he felt a vaccine passport “would work to convince more Americans to get vaccinated.”

But judging a policy by its positive outcomes for the collective, rather than by whether it violates individual rights is utilitarianism. It is the rule among politicians and pundits. 

“It doesn’t work”: How often have you heard those words used to describe grave violations of your rights? As if using coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy”—is ever a good reason for coercing vaccination! As if employing coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy” is ever an appropriate use of state or corporate power!

The Benthamite utilitarian calculus is thus rightly associated with a collectivist, central planner’s impetus.

America’s founders, conversely, held a Blackstonian view of the law as a bulwark against government abuses. Their take has since been supplanted by the notion of the law as an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the “greater good.”

To his great credit, later in the program, Carlson did advance a rights-based argument against the vaccine-passport outrage: the individual right to privacy.

It fell, however, to Greenwald to take note of the three different ways in which the passports constitute a draconian invasion: 

Number one, coercing citizens to put a substance into their body that they don’t want in their body, a pretty grave invasion of bodily autonomy, one of the most fundamental rights we have. Secondly, gathering a new database that can track people in terms of their health, that can easily be expanded as government programs often do into a whole variety of other uses, and then thirdly, . . . restricting people’s movement. Freedom of movement is one of the most fundamental rights we have. It’s actually guaranteed in the Constitution.