RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/04/dismantle-the-d-c-company-town/

Gertrude Stein famously warned that it was important to know how far to go when going too far. 

It pains me to admit that Democrats seem to have a far better sense of all that than do Republicans. Perhaps it’s because Democrats have a visceral appreciation of William Hazlitt’s observation that “those who lack delicacy hold us in their power.” The Democrats, that is to say, long ago became expert at the game of holding their opponents to standards that they themselves violate not just with impunity but with ostentatious glee. 

The news last week that Michael Sussmann was found not guilty by a D.C. jury of his ideological peers was another thumb in the eye of the American so-called system of justice. Scary-looking super-cop John Durham had indicted Sussmann for the same thing that brought down Trump’s flash-in-the-pan National Security Advisor Mike Flynn—lying to the FBI—but no one who has been paying attention thought the two men would be treated the same way. Flynn was close to Donald Trump, therefore he must be considered a sacrificial beast, someone to be made an example of, a pariah. And so he was. 

Sussmann, by contrast, was a covert employee of the Hillary Clinton campaign. He helped get the Russian Collusion Delusion going and lied to the FBI in the process. But he was on the side of the regime party, so, as Jonathan Turley observed as the Sussmann case unfolded, he was afforded every consideration while Flynn found himself ruined. In this tale of two trials, we got a textbook illustration of how you can deploy a two-tier system of justice in which, as George Orwell put it in Animal Farm: All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. 

Sure, it’s a contradiction. It doesn’t, intellectually, make sense. It also violates every canon of justice, which depends upon a publicly acknowledged ideal of impartiality. But in the larger, more cynical realm of the Thrasymachean dispensation of American regime politics circa 2022, it is just what the doctor ordered. Washington, D.C., is a company town. The company is the regime, the deep state, populated by swamp creatures battening at the public trough and fueled by the rancid clichés of identity politics. I think Roger Simon was right when he observed that Sussmann’s exoneration marked “the end of American justice as we know it.” (Actually, it was just another plaque on the tombstone; “American justice” has been an oxymoron for years.) 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/06/04/maher_toxic_positivity_and_the_lack_of_shame_

On the Friday broadcast of his program ‘Real Time,’ during a discussion of homelessness and addiction, Maher highlighted several government-sponsored PSAs in cities like New York and San Francisco that encourage safe drug use as an example of societal decline. See photos of the adverts below.

“I think part of the problem with us not having a solution to this is there are people out there that heard you say ‘first-world country’ and went ‘How dare you?’ because part of the problem with losing civilization is when you fail to make judgments about how some things are better than others,” Maher said. “We have seen this over and over again. Nothing is better than anything else. Keeping women in burqas is just a different way to go. And it’s just not a different way to go. And having shit in the park, human feces, when you’re trying to have a little baseball game with your kids or something is just worse.”

Maher read a poster that encouraged people to feel “empowered” for “safely” using drugs: ‘Don’t be ashamed you are using.’

“Okay, that’s the first thing it says. Yes, this is part of the problem of losing civilization. Shame is part of life. We do this to everything. Toxic positivity. ‘Everything is positive.’ Everything is not positive. You should be ashamed that you are using, that might help you to stop,” the HBO host said.
“Remember defining deviancy downward, that phrase from Patrick Moynihan?” Maher asked his panel.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/if-only-we-could-turn-hillary-loose-on-the-fbi/

If historical accountability now outweighs all concerns about due process, how could you do better than a Hillary Clinton trial?

‘Whither John Durham?” That is now the pressing question for every Russiagate watcher. Admittedly, the crowd of Russiagate watchers has grown smaller since Tuesday, when a Democrat-heavy jury in Washington, D.C., acquitted Michael Sussmann, the heavyweight Democratic lawyer, of Special Counsel Durham’s charge that Sussmann had lied to the FBI.

The answer, if we are to learn the central lesson of the Sussmann case, is simple: Indict Hillary Clinton.

But . . . for what?

I’ll resist the urge to say, “There’s always something,” which would be more a commentary on the career of the former secretary of state (and cattle-futures trader, travel-office-staff director, grand-jury amnesiac, “bimbo eruptions” scourge, pardons coordinator, voice of calm, suspender of disbelief, Russian “reset” visionary, Benghazi bungler, Muslim-movie maven, charity entrepreneur, and homebrew-server savant) than a real answer.

The truth is I have no idea whether Hillary has done anything indictable this time. Orchestrating the Trump–Russia collusion farce is icky politics and maybe even civil libel. But whether it violated the criminal law in some way is a tougher question.

I do know this, though: If you really want to get to the bottom of what is scandalous about Russiagate, there could be no surer way to do it than to indict that most ruthless of cutthroat, cold-blooded politicians and sit back and enjoy the show as she sets her phalanx of gladiator–lawyers on the FBI, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies, and the Obama White House.