RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in

EXCERPT…READ IT ALL AT SITE….RSK

Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.

In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.

But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.

A similar dynamic prevailed during the sustained protests and riots that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. While conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), in his controversial New York Times op-ed, urged the mass deployment of the military to quell the protesters, and while Trump threatened to deploy them if governors failed to pacify the riots, Trump failed to order anything more than a few isolated, symbolic gestures such as having troops use tear gas to clear out protesters from Lafayette Park for his now-notorious walk to a church, provoking harsh criticism from the right, including Fox News, for failing to use more aggressive force to restore order.

Virtually every prediction expressed by those who pushed this doomsday narrative of Trump as a rising dictator — usually with great profit for themselves — never materialized. While Trump radically escalated bombing campaigns he inherited from Bush and Obama, he started no new wars. When his policies were declared by courts to be unconstitutional, he either revised them to comport with judicial requirements (as in the case of his “Muslim ban”) or withdrew them (as in the case of diverting Pentagon funds to build his wall). No journalists were jailed for criticizing or reporting negatively on Trump, let alone killed, as was endlessly predicted and sometimes even implied. Bashing Trump was far more likely to yield best-selling books, social media stardom and new contracts as cable news “analysts” than interment in gulags or state reprisals. There were no Proud Boy insurrections or right-wing militias waging civil war in U.S. cities. Boastful and bizarre tweets aside, Trump’s administration was far more a continuation of the U.S. political tradition than a radical departure from it.

The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-investigation-finds-obama-admin-knowingly-funded-al-qaeda-affiliate/

Non-profit humanitarian agency World Vision United States improperly transacted with the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA) in 2014 with approval from the Obama administration, sending government funds to an organization that had been sanctioned over its ties to terrorism, according to a new report.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) recently released a report detailing the findings of an investigation his staff began in February 2019 into the relationship between World Vision and ISRA.

The probe found that World Vision was not aware that ISRA had been sanctioned by the U.S. since 2004 after funneling roughly $5 million to Maktab al-Khidamat, the predecessor to Al-Qaeda controlled by Osama Bid Laden.

However, that ignorance was born from insufficient vetting practices, the report said.

“World Vision works to help people in need across the world, and that work is admirable,” Grassley said in a statement. “Though it may not have known that ISRA was on the sanctions list or that it was listed because of its affiliation with terrorism, it should have. Ignorance can’t suffice as an excuse. World Vision’s changes in vetting practices are a good first step, and I look forward to its continued progress.”

The investigation was sparked by a July 2018 National Review article in which Sam Westrop, the director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch, detailed MEF’s findings that the Obama administration had approved a “$200,000 grant of taxpayer money to ISRA.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/a-guide-to-wokespeak/

This is Victor Davis Hanson’s Last column for National Review…..rsk

W ith the rise of the Left inevitable over the next two years, the public should become acquainted with the Left’s strange language of Wokespeak. Failure to do so could result in job termination and career cancellation. It is certainly a fluid tongue. Words often change their meanings as the political context demands. And what was yesterday’s orthodoxy is today’s heterodoxy and tomorrow’s heresy. So here is some of the vocabulary of the woke lexicon.

“Anti-racism.” Espousing this generic compounded -ism is far preferable to accusing particular people of being “racists” — and then being expected to produce evidence of their concrete actions and words to prove such indictments.

Instead, one can pose as fighting for “anti-racism” and thereby imply that all those whom one opposes, disagrees with, or finds distasteful, de facto, must be for “racism.”

“Anti-racism” is a useful salvo for students, teachers, administrators, public employees, political appointees, and media personnel to use peremptorily: declare from the start that you are working for “anti-racism” and then anyone who disagrees with you therefore must be racist, or, antithetically, “pro-racism.”

Oddly, such Wokespeak “anti-” adjectives denote opposition to something that no one claims to be for. For each proclaimed “anti-racist,” “anti-imperialist,” or “anti-colonialist,” there is almost no one who wishes to be a “racist” or desires to be a “colonialist” or an “imperialist.” These villains mostly come to life only through the use of their “anti-” adjectives.

“Disparate Impact.” This word is becoming anachronistic — call it Wokespoke, if you will. In ancient labor-law usage, it often accompanied the now equally calcified term “disproportional representation.” But in 21st-century American Wokespeak, it is no longer necessarily unfair, illegal, or unethical that some racial, gender, or ethnic groups are “over”-represented in certain coveted admissions and hiring.

gallup

President Trump has ended former President Obama’s 12-year run as the most admired man in America, edging out his predecessor in the annual Gallup survey released Tuesday.

Eighteen percent of the survey’s respondents named Trump as their most admired man, compared to 15 percent who named Obama and 6 percent who named President-elect Joe Biden. Three percent named National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, while 2 percent chose Pope Francis.

Rounding out the top 10 were Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and the Dalai Lama, all of whom received 1 percent.

The sitting U.S. president has been named the pollster’s most-admired man in 60 out of 74 years, including all eight years of Obama’s presidency and every year of George W. Bush’s presidency except for 2008. Trump had finished second to Obama in 2017 and 2018.

The 2020 rankings are the 10th time Trump has ranked among the top 10. Before entering the political sphere, he made the list in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2011. Biden made only his second appearance in the top 10 after making the list in 2018.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=d0e0f34b6d

This has been the year of mass protests over the killings of unarmed black people by the police. Most of the protests were in explicit reaction to a small number of famous incidents. In March it was the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville; then in May, George Floyd in Minneapolis; and in June, Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. The protests, often accompanied by violence and looting, continued through the summer and into the fall. The ubiquitous slogan was: Black Lives Matter.

Here in New York, both the state legislature and City government have reacted to the Black Lives Matter protests with a series of measures that have included exempting many crimes from bail requirements, and a reduction of about $1 billion (16%) in the budget of the City Police Department. These are the principal steps that supposedly will demonstrate that yes, black lives do, in fact, matter.

In recent days and weeks the NYPD has released some data as to violent crime in the City as we near the end of 2020. How’s it going? The answer is, it’s an unmitigated disaster, particularly for black and Hispanic crime victims.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Ben Chapman has a piece with the headline “New York City’s Shooting Surge Hits Black and Hispanic Communities Hardest.” (probably behind pay wall). Chapman reports that, according to the latest data from the NYPD through December 20, the number of shooting incidents in New York City has more than doubled in just the last year, comparing 2020 to 2019:

Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 20, the city recorded 1,824 shooting victims, up nearly 104% from 896 during the same period a year earlier, according to NYPD data.  The number of shootings increased to 1,493 for the year so far, compared with 754 for the same time in 2019, the data showed.