RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/the_new_epidemic_of_selfsilencing_plagues_america.html

A new study by the Populace organization revealed the obvious: that Americans are “self-silencing” — people saying what they think others want to hear rather than what they truly feel.

People often reshape their privately held views to conform to what they think their group believes, despite that assessment frequently being inaccurate. This causes the illusion of consensus.

The following are two of the most significant revelations from the study:

Four times as many Democrats say Corporate CEOs should take a public stand on social issues (44%) than actually care (11%).
On Education, one in three Democrats think parents should have more influence over public school curriculum, however, only one in four dares to say it publicly.

In the current climate, it is the left that is championing the idea of groupthink which they claim is the only ‘appropriate’ way of thinking.

Under the guise of being woke, the left is ‘canceling’ dissenters and rendering them outcasts, often by inventing claims of bigotry. Wokeism that claims to emanate from empathy is merely a euphemism for totalitarianism.

It is hence essential to revisit the principle of free expression which is the core tenet of Democracy.

This includes the right to opine without repercussions i.e. the right to offend, insult, satirize, and ridicule.  The result is obscene, hateful, abhorrent, and shocking ideas may be expressed.

But personal taste can never ever be the criteria for the expression of ideas.

The reason being what is hateful to one may be compelling to another. What is bigoted to one may be a fresh perspective to another. What is obscene to one may be artful to another. What is lewd to one may be hilarious to another. What is blunt and blatant to one may be hard-hitting to another. What is repulsive to one can be riveting to another.  

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/21/the-worst-and-the-stupidest/

Elites have always been ambiguous about the muscular classes who replace their tires, paint their homes, and cook their food. And the masses who tend to them likewise have been ambivalent about those who hire them: appreciative of the work and pay, but also either a bit envious of those with seemingly unlimited resources or turned off by perceived superciliousness arising from their status and affluence. 

Yet the divide has grown far wider in the 21st century. Globalization fueled the separation in a number of ways. 

One, outsourcing and offshoring eroded the rust-belt interior, while enriching the two coasts. The former lost good-paying jobs, while the latter found new markets in investment, tech, insurance, law, media, academia, entertainment, sports, and the arts making them billions rather than mere millions. 

So, the problem was one of both geography and class. Half the country looked to Asia and Europe for profits and indeed cultural “diversity,” while the other half stuck with tradition, values, and custom—as they became poorer. 

The elite found in the truly poor—neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base—an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes, and romance of the far distant underclass.

Second, race became increasingly divorced from class—a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals. For the white bicoastal elite, it became a mark of their progressive fides to champion woke racialism that empowered the non-white of their own affluent class, while projecting their own discomfort with and fears of the nonwhite poor onto the middle class as supposed “racists,” despite the latter’s more frequently living among, marrying within, and associating with the “other.” 

The net result was more privilege for the elite and wealthy nonwhites, more neglect of the inner-city needy, and more disdain for the supposedly illiberal clingers, dregs, deplorables, chumps, and irredeemables. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/dems-weaponize-irs-silence-critics-frontpagemagcom/

The public should be frightened that Democrats are passing new legislation to weaponize the already abusive Internal Revenue Service.

For nearly a century, the IRS has been used by presidents and members of Congress to harass and incriminate political foes. In addition to collecting revenue to fund the government, the IRS is a hit squad that destroys reputations and criminalizes dissenters.

A lot of pain can be inflicted under the guise of tax “auditing.” The bill passed by Congress last week, erroneously labeled the Inflation Reduction Act, will mean more audits and investigations. The bill roughly doubles funding for the IRS enforcement division, adding an estimated 49,600 agents and auditors.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is starving the Defense Department, requesting too little funding to even keep up with inflation, despite Russian and Chinese aggression. Yet his bill will make the IRS three-quarters the size of the U.S. Marine Corps. Who’s Biden making war on?

It’s true the IRS needs funding to improve services to taxpayers, including getting phone calls answered and returns processed, and moving from antiquated paper files to modern technology. The bill allocates a minuscule amount to those priorities and puts the lion’s share — over $45 billion — into “enforcement,” including hiring and arming agents.

As much as 90% of the funds raised through beefed up audits will come from people making less than $200,000 a year, according to the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Audits can bring a tsunami of government document demands and repeated visits from IRS agents over months or even years. Most people don’t have accountants and lawyers to insulate them from the pain.

While the bill increases IRS muscle, it fails to impose serious criminal penalties for leaking confidential taxpayer information and political targeting. History shows how dangerous that will be.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who opposed his New Deal and adversaries like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/22/bidens-in-big-trouble-with-his-own-base-for-2024-tipp-poll/

Sitting presidents usually get the benefit of the doubt from their own party. But looking ahead, President Joe Biden might have problems whipping up Democratic enthusiasm for a second term. The opposite is true for former President Donald Trump, the latest TIPP Poll shows.

For the August TIPP Poll, we asked members of both parties a similar question: “If the (Democratic/Republican) presidential primary were held today, who would you vote for?” The national poll of 1,182 registered voters was conducted online from Aug. 2-4, with a margin of error of +/-2.9 percentage points.

For Biden, the poll is clearly bad news. Of the 576 Democrats in our sample, just 30% answered that, as of today, they would vote for “Joe Biden, 46th President of the United States.” They were given 20 other possibilities for voting, plus “other” and “not sure.”

The good news for Biden is that no one looms very large as a potential challenger. Michelle Obama, former first lady, received 10% of the poll votes, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Vice President Kamala Harris tied for third with 8% apiece.

Trailing a bit further behind were California Gov. Gavin Newsom (6%), former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton (5%), Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (all three at 4%). They, in turn, were followed by New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez both received 3%.