RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/09/survivor-creep/

“It is not necessary to have suffered personally to claim the moral authority of suffering and sufferers. It is only necessary that you should belong to a group that, historically, has been wronged and suffered as a result. The glory of this, apart from the status victimhood is taken to confer, is that you can claim to have suffered enormously while leading a very privileged existence.”

The use of words tells us much about the temper of the times, and the use to which the word survivor is now frequently put tells us much about our modern scale of values.

At one time, survivors were those who escaped death from such events as shipwrecks, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and battles in war. To be counted, or count oneself, a survivor, it was necessary to have encountered death close-up. Now, however, it is necessary only to have had an unpleasant experience to be given, or to award oneself, the title of survivor, for example of sexual abuse.

What lies behind this semantic fungation? I suspect that there is a certain competitive envy of suffering at play. This is not to deny that survivors in the modern sense may really have suffered, but it is not enough merely to have suffered: one must have suffered mightily, if possible as much as anyone has ever suffered. This is because suffering by itself now confers moral authority like nothing else, certainly not knowledge or good behaviour.

Of course, there is no indisputable yardstick by which suffering, or for that matter pleasure, can be measured, which is why the felicific calculus is so fatuous an idea. On the other hand, to compare one’s suffering caused by, say, the late arrival of a train with that of a victim of Pol Pot would be not only absurd, but unseemly and even disgusting. This is not to say (as I know from experience) that the lateness of a train may not fill one’s mind with chagrin and rage, but even when they are at their height one knows, or ought to know, that what one is suffering is inconvenience rather than tragedy. This was once very forcibly brought home to me in a literal sense when once I was waiting for a delayed train in a state of considerable irritation, only later to learn that the train had crashed and the only person to be killed on it was the literary editor of a publication for which I sometimes reviewed books. I then felt ashamed of my exaggerated emotional state on the platform. Delay and death are not to be equated.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/17/joe-bidens-political-prisoners/

The latest “conspiracy theory” consuming the political Right, our media betters warn, is the idea that the Biden regime is creating a class of political prisoners stemming from the January 6 protest on Capitol Hill. Scoffing at accusations that January 6 protesters are treated differently from other protesters, columnists and talking heads insist it’s nothing more than right-wing media spin.

A rally scheduled this weekend for January 6 defendants has official Washington apoplectic. Dozens of Americans remain locked up in a D.C. jail and at facilities across the country as they await trials that won’t begin until at least mid-2022,.

“The idea that people are languishing unfairly in grim detention facilities, though, fits neatly with a broad narrative that the Biden administration is rounding up and jailing political opponents,” Philip Bump, national correspondent for the Washington Post, wrote on Thursday. “This weekend’s rally is called ‘Justice for J6,’ implying that those still held are being detained unjustly for punitive reasons.”

All of that, of course, is true. More than 600 Americans have been rounded up by Joe Biden’s Justice Department with new arrests coming every week. Federal prosecutors have requested pre-trial detention for at least 100 defendants; 60 Capitol protesters are now in jail and denied bail. For months, January 6 detainees have suffered under solitary confinement conditions, were allowed out of their cells only one hour per day, and have been denied access to lawyers, exercise, personal hygiene, and religious services.

But Bump, like the rest of the national news media, not only downplays the detention of dozens of January 6 protesters including those charged with no violent crime, he justifies the unequal treatment under the caveat that the accused participated in an alleged “insurrection” to overthrow the government.

At the same time, the American people are supposed to deny what they see with their own eyes and believe that the 630 or so Americans arrested and charged for mostly misdemeanor offenses related to January 6 are being treated the same way as Antifa or Black Lives Matter activists. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/bringing_somalia_to_minnesota.html

Unless voters in Minneapolis wish to find their city and homes receiving warnings like the State Department’s against Omar’s home country, they might want to reconsider whom they entrust with power.

Imagine an agitated person who forms a career railing against doctors after learning of a surgeon who committed gross malpractice. That non-medically trained agitator uses questionable means to eventually become a hospital administrator to implement her radical policies of slashing budgets for medical care and personnel. To appease her, everyone in her hospital must follow her rage and ideology rather than proven medical science.

Who would go to that hospital?

Yet, this principle is what Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) seeks to inflict upon the law-enforcement community. This principle is in play in the wake of the recent ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court. When voters head to the polls, they will decide whether to eliminate the Minneapolis charter requirement of police department, and replace it with a public safety department that “employs a public health approach.”

As Omar weighs in on this topic, she brings her considerable inexperience to the world of law enforcement. Once again weaponizing the power provided to her by Minneapolis voters and a sycophantic media, she accelerates as the bus careens off the cliff. 

Firmly protected by the shields of others, Omar seems to enjoy a perverse pleasure in tarnishing precinct shields across her district and beyond. Why the people in Minnesota’s fifth district elected this woman remains a mystery, but the majority of citizens in her district evidently approve of her rhetoric, behavior, and agenda. Yet, despite her problematic rise to power and anti-Semitic controversies, the media and a woke-obsessed culture allow Ilhan Omar free to spew hateful ideologies with little pushback or consequences.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-real-story-in-durhams-indictment-of-democratic-lawyer-michael-sussmann/

“Meantime, having orchestrated the creation of all this smoke, the Clinton campaign exploits it to tell the media and the American people, “See, Trump is a Kremlin mole!”I suddenly think the eventual Durham report could be very interesting reading.”

The special counsel’s final report on the Clinton campaign’s manufacturing of the Trump–Russia collusion narrative will be very interesting reading.

T here is a long game and a short game going on in special counsel John Durham’s indictment of Democratic Party lawyer Michael Sussmann on a false-statements count.

The short of it is this: A false statement was allegedly made by Sussmann to the FBI’s then-general counsel, James Baker, on September 19, 2016. In federal law, the false-statement crime has a five-year statute of limitations, meaning it had to be charged by this Sunday (September 19, 2021). Consequently, even if Durham would probably have preferred to wait until his full investigation was concluded before filing indictments, by delaying beyond Sunday, he would have lost what appears to be an eminently provable felony charge. If he was going to indict Sussmann on this conduct, it was now or never.

Now, more critically, the long game.

It is unusual for a one-count false-statement charge, which can be alleged in a paragraph, to be presented as a 27-page speaking indictment. But Durham wrote a highly detailed account of the facts and circumstances surrounding the false-statements charge. It is significant in that it tells us far more about his investigation.

Here is where the prosecutor appears to be going: The Trump–Russia collusion narrative was essentially a fabrication of the Clinton campaign that was peddled to the FBI (among other government agencies) and to the media by agents of the Clinton campaign — particularly, its lawyers at Perkins Coie — who concealed the fact that they were quite intentionally working on the campaign’s behalf, and that they did not actually believe there was much, if anything, to the collusion narrative. It was serviceable as political dirt but would not amount to anything real for criminal or national-security purposes.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/18/bidens-vaccine-mandate-violates-fundamental-freedoms/

On September 9, President Joe Biden announced that nearly 100 million Americans will be forced to get vaccinated, or else they could lose their livelihoods.

According to Biden, “the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”

He added, “all nursing home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid” and “those who work in hospitals, home healthcare facilities, or other medical facilities – a total of 17 million healthcare workers,” must all get vaccinated.

And, for good measure, Biden declared, “I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch federal employees to be vaccinated — all.  And I’ve signed another executive order that will require federal contractors to do the same.”

So, per the president, all the health care workers who literally put their lives on the line treating COVID-19 patients over the past 18 months, have no choice but to get vaccinated.

First, does the federal government have the authority to mandate vaccines? In a word, no.

The Constitution grants no such power to the national government. In fact, several officials in the Biden administration, including the president, have articulated that the federal government is not capable of forcing Americans to get vaccinated.

The states, per the 10th Amendment, do possess the power to implement vaccine mandates. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled that states can enforce compulsory vaccination laws based on the police powers granted to the states in the Constitution. However, in that ruling, as well as subsequent vaccine-oriented rulings, the Court has made it clear that this power belongs to the states, and the states alone.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalism-crises-political-philosophy-religion-storey-kass-bloom-cancel-culture-war-11631889543?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Liberalism is in trouble. I don’t mean the narrow “liberalism” of the post-1960s Democratic Party, although that’s in trouble, too. I mean liberalism in the wider, classical sense—a view of government and society embracing free markets, representative democracy, individual freedom, strict limits on state power, and religious neutrality.

Twenty-five years ago, that understanding of liberalism was almost unquestionable. Not anymore. On the left, markets generate inequality, democracy works only when it achieves the right outcomes, individual freedom is uninteresting unless it involves sexual innovation or abortion, the state is everything, and religion doesn’t deserve neutrality. On the right—or anyway the intellectual/populist right—markets destroy traditional moral conventions, democracy is mostly a sham, individual freedom encourages behavioral deviancies, state power is a force for good, and the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion was likely a bad idea.

Partisans will dispute these characterizations, but the liberal order in America (and Europe) is under attack—and not without reason. Political debates in Washington are bereft of good faith, the education system idealizes self-hatred and sexual confusion, and even corporate leaders—who until yesterday could be counted on to champion patriotism and hard work—eagerly recite the maxims of idiots.