RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

News sources seem unable to deal with more than one crisis at a time. Three months ago, and for the previous twenty-one months, airwaves were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it is Ukraine. What has been happening in Ukraine is awful, but is it, as commentators on both Fox News and MSNBC have reported, the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II? Is it worse than China’s Cultural Revolution, which caused an estimated 20 million deaths? Is it worse than the Cambodian killing fields when the Communist-led Khmer Rouge slew as many as 3.0 million people? Does it compare to Islamic terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa where 3 million Christians have been displaced and 43,000 killed in Nigeria alone? Where is perspective? Evil is part of human nature. It was because of the existence of evil that the Founders put constraints on governmental power. Evil leaders – from Hitler, Hirohito and Stalin to Mao Zedong, from Kim Jong-un to Ali Khamenei, from Xi Jinping to Vladimir Putin – rule by forced conformity, with none of the restraints on their leadership necessary for people to live freely and securely. Dissent is not allowed. Opposition to prescribed doctrines threatens totalitarian leaders.

Lest one tags me as an anarchist, let me add that I do believe in conformity when it comes to adherence to civility – tolerance, decency and respect for others, regardless of opinions, gender or race. And I believe in the universal values, embedded in traditional concepts of virtue. It is not the superficial differences reflected in gender and race, but differences in the opinions we carry, that threaten progressives’ desire for conformity. The freedom to express those opinions in a civil manner is critical to a democracy. In his 2007 book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo wrote, “Research shows that the decisions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful; and creative when there is a minority dissent than when it is absent.” It is the premise behind the success of democracies versus the failure of authoritarian rule.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/compromised_biden_cannot_lead_america_or_the_world.html

Last week the Russian government held a press conference where it aired accusations of breathtaking corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his family.

Unfortunately, this event was no fake news Russian propaganda. The incriminating evidence presented at the event came straight from the hard drive that belonged to Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

As you may know, in 2019 Hunter Biden carelessly abandoned his laptop at a computer repair shop in Delaware. This was an act of astounding recklessness, since the emails, text messages, files, photos, and videos contained on that computer provided extensive record of greed, corruption, bribery and graft, not only on his part but also on the part of his father and other members of their family.

When the New York Post tried to report on the hard drive in October 2020, the America mainstream media and law enforcement authorities refused to acknowledge it or take appropriate action. Rather than commencing an investigation, the establishment falsely claimed that the hard drive was a product of “Russian disinformation.” They did this even though they knew it was real.  The staff of the New York Post conducted an extensive, multi-level authentication process to ensure that the hard drive was genuine, and they made the details of this process available to anyone who cared to check.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/amid-a-crime-wave-the-new-york-state-attorney-general-gets-tough-on-reporters/?itm_

Letitia James has used her office to thwart investigative reporters while sticking up for a group with intimate ties to Hamas.

New Yorkers are currently suffering through an epidemic of violent crime that is diminishing the quality of life of the nation’s most-burdened taxpayers. And what is state attorney general Letitia James doing about it? Pushing back against the so-called bail-reform laws that every day turn violent offenders back out on the street? Devising new ways to protect tourists and residents? Conducting a forensic investigation into all that missing Covid-19 relief cash that was stolen?

No, she’s coming to the defense of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in its efforts to stop its own members from talking to reporters about the potentially illegal activities of the group’s leaders. On April 1 (this couldn’t have been an April Fool’s Day joke, can it?), the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York sent a cease-and-desist notification to Steven Emerson, founder and director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), ordering the end to “any ongoing or contemplated unlawful espionage operations against Muslims and Muslim organizations within the State of New York.”

The press release announcing the letter begins: “On the eve of Ramadan, New York Attorney General Letitia James today warned a known anti-Muslim hate group to stop spying on Muslim communities.” The second paragraph begins: “As we enter the holy month of Ramadan, it’s more important than ever that we show our support for our Muslim communities and stand up to Islamophobia and hate of any and every kind.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/31/identity-or-persona/

“Nothing can change the fact that females have two X chromosomes and males have an X and a Y, and certain physical realties flow from that difference.”

Much has been made of the statement, “I am not a biologist,” by aspiring Supreme Court justice Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when asked “What is a woman?” This has obscured the far more important point that she did not feel empowered to provide an answer. That is because the terms “woman” and “man” seem now to occupy a semantic nether land between identity (biological sex) and persona (gender).

The irony here is both rich and irritating. Progressive culture has been quick to jump all over “cultural appropriation,” often in relatively trivial matters such as dress, casual language, or even Halloween costumes. Yet allowing gender to displace sex is arguably the ultimate form of appropriation. Unlike culture, ethnicity, and even race, biological sex is all but absolute and easily determined (very rare cases of genetic anomalies notwithstanding).

By contrast, persona is at least partially elective, regardless of whether it is driven by a deep-seated psychological imperative, comfort, or simple preference. Claims such as “gender fluidity” eliminate any doubt about the presence of choice in gender. Even race and ethnicity are to some extent persona rather than identity. As many millions have learned by sending their DNA to sequencing services such as “23 and Me,” our genetic identity is often a stew of different racial, historical, and geographic elements. We then characterize ourselves based upon a perceived dominant genetic strain, our appearance, our affinities, or even family legends. That leaves considerable leeway for choice. Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren demonstrated this vividly by claiming a Native American persona despite a laughably tiny and murky genetic component. She adopted a persona (perhaps for mercenary reasons) with little connection to her genetic identity.