RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woke-corporations-use-the-chinese-model-11619476547?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The opposition of market capitalism to state-oriented socialism and communism was the basic conflict in 20th-century political economy. But like many an economic and political theory, this durable model for delineating the possibilities—free markets vs. a “command economy”—cannot survive today’s Chinese state.

Capitalism and communism, opposed in ideology, turn out to be compatible in the real world. And perhaps the conceptual opposition is also collapsing in the West, as capitalism goes woke and sneaker commercials become indistinguishable from AOC campaign materials except by their production values.

“Leftism” as we know it crystallized in the 19th century largely under the aegis of Marxism, which described capitalism as an exploitative and murderous ideology that lionized greed. Leftists’ solution, as expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s “The Communist Manifesto,” was government control of the economy under the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

But the dictators turned out to be people rather than an abstract historical force, so it wasn’t a solution to human greed after all. Turning over all manufacturing and agriculture and trade to the party simply meant concentrating all the wealth and power in a few hands. It made the Soviet government, for example, a new oligarchy.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/27/anyone-remember-bidens-unity-pledge-he-sure-doesnt/

Those foolish enough to believe that President Joe Biden would usher in a new era of peace and harmony in America must be sorely disappointed by how his administration has performed so far. If anything, people are more polarized than ever, and by constantly appeasing the far left of his party, Biden is only making matters worse.

This week, the polling firm TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence launched a new “TIPP Unity Index” to track just how divided the nation is.

The finding is that a mere 33% say the country is united, while 61% think it’s divided. In other words, the only thing Americans agree on right now is that they don’t agree on much. At the extremes, 35% say the country is “very divided,” while only 15% believe it’s “very united.”

That translates into an initial TIPP Unity Index rating of 37.8, the report says. Anything below 50 signals disunity.

“The United States requires greater unity now more than ever,” writes Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica, “and our current leaders’ actions must transcend mere words and genuinely reflect the spirit.” (The TIPP poll has been the most accurate on presidential races for the past five elections.)

This new unity index will be a perfect way to measure whether Biden does anything to bring us together on his watch.

So far, he’s failed completely.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/25/the-new-antiracism-is-the-old-racism/

What will be the future of the mass hysteria spawned last summer? No one knows. 

But its destination, if unchecked, will be ethnic tensions and sectarian strife at best akin to those in Brazil and India—or at worst Lebanon, Syria, and Rwanda. 

Until just a few years ago, racial differences, according to polls, were more or less receding. Intermarriage between racial groups is at historic highs. 

But by 2014-2015, with the birth of Black Lives Matter, its courting by the Obama Administration, and the emergence of the electronic social media mob and cancel culture, such progress seems to have ended. We have ceased seeing race as increasingly incidental, rather than essential to who we are. 

The benchmarks of the Black Lives Matter and affiliated woke movements are overt racism, systemic untruth, and the hypocritical privilege of their elite architects.  

We are now well beyond the race-based set-asides of the last 50 years, predicated on the evolving concepts of proportional representation and disparate impact. These multitrillion-dollar endowed Great Society principles eventually mandated that admissions and hiring reflect the proportional ethnic and racial makeup of the population. 

All that is now ossified and considered not enough. In its place is a damnation of all things “white” with a new definition of diversity as simply all those, without any other affinities, who claim to be bound proudly together by being nonwhite.

Antiracist Racism

Indeed, it is startling how abruptly our frenzied elites have renounced assimilation (a word now banned by the Biden Administration in matters related to immigration). Integration is also passé‚ at least for those not rich.

Ironies abound. Recently, in the state of Washington, something called the African American Reach and Teach Health Ministry (AARTH) adjudicated vaccination appointments on the basis of race only. I suppose if a 75-year-old indigent white widow showed up, she would be turned away on the basis of her “unearned privilege”—or the organizers say could be put on a “standby list”?

Black intellectuals now use the stereotypical language of the old Jim Crow segregationists. Some vie in an apparent contest to see which woke trailblazer can be crowned the most overt racist antiracist. 

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/04/26/andrew_cuomo_made_225000_and_is_top-paid_governor_ever_774227.html

With a $225,000 salary, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the country’s highest paid governor.

That’s as he collects $4 million for writing a book during the Covid-19 pandemic about his graceful leadership during the pandemic — allegedly with the help of his staff, possibly violating labor laws against using public resources for personal gain.

And it’s as he is fighting sexual harassment allegations and scandal from misleading the public about how many people died from Covid in nursing homes.

But the $225,000 is not even his top pay.

In 2018, The New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial, & Executive Compensation gave the legislature and the governor pay raises.

At the time, state lawmakers made $79,500 and Cuomo made $179,000.

Cuomo’s salary was increased to $200,000 in 2019, $225,000 in 2020 and $250,000 in 2021. But in November 2020, he deferred his latest raise, keeping his salary at $225,000, still the highest in the nation.

When awarding the raises for lawmakers, the commission in 2018 stipulated that the raise would limit outside income to no more than 15 percent of their legislative salary.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-un-ambassador%E2%80%99s-misguided-shot-america-183555

More than once of late, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has declared that America’s “original sin” of slavery “weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”

The problem isn’t just that Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat who served as President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, is wrong about the nation’s founding.

Nor is the problem just that she stated her views not only before the United Nations General Assembly but also before the National Action Network of the Rev. Al Sharpton – who, over the years, has used inflammatory anti-Jewish rhetoric, promoted black teenager Tawana Brawley’s fabricated story that she was raped by white men, was sued successfully for defamation, and has not always paid his taxes.

The greater problem is that in promoting her views, Thomas-Greenfield seems oblivious to the broader challenges that America faces on the world stage at this precarious moment for freedom and democracy.

No, America is not perfect, and yes, America has struggled mightily with race from its earliest days. Slavery was central to the southern economy through two-thirds of the nineteenth century; a civil war that ended slavery was followed by the legalized bigotry of Jim Crow; the civil rights movement triggered a violent white backlash; and racism remains deeply embedded in the hearts of all-too-many Americans.