RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/07/the-new-mccarthyism/

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That seems to be Kevin McCarthy’s favorite mantra. Friday night, on the 15th vote for speaker of the House, he finally got his moist little palm around Nancy Pelosi’s still-warm gavel. Welcome to the new Republican-ish speaker of the House!

The contest was brutal, occasionally absurd, and the occasion of hilarity and consternation among the punditocracy on both the Right and the Left. The Left clucked their tongues about the “chaos” on view on the other side of the aisle. Some among the GOP agreed and wondered why “their side” could not govern as effectively as the Democrats. Would Nancy Pelosi have put up with this level of dissension among the Democratic rank and file? Others said, no, no, the 20 freedom caucus members (and others) holding up the inevitable were just giving the world a reality show, live-action look at how “democracy” (if not quite Our Democracy™) works and should work.

I am of two minds about that. My own take is that McCarthy is an unreliable ally for those on the Right. He was only too happy to shovel billions of your and your children’s money to Ukraine while doing little to secure our southern border. McCarthy is from California, so, naturally, he likes to spend money. He even got behind such improvident and mendacious schemes as raiding Medicare to pay for the U.S. Postal Service. He was happy to fund the January 6 kangaroo court, grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, and support mandates for the useless—indeed, dangerous—COVID vaccine for the military. In plain terms, his voting record is only intermittently conservative.

Kevin McCarthy, in short, is a swamp creature masquerading as a swamp critic. The Swamp loves its own, and so it was no surprise that McCarthy eventually prevailed, just barely. He did so at considerable cost to the power of the speaker’s office but also considerable benefit to people who care about accountability.

https://www.americanthinker.com/

Watching the political Establishment freak out over twenty Republican members of Congress voting their own consciences in the election for House speaker has been hilarious.  Karl Rove, Dan Crenshaw, Sean Hannity, and just about anyone else whose sinecure and preeminence depend upon religious devotion to Washington’s status quo sounded like little Greta Thunberg whining, “How dare they!”  Oh, my goodness, some congressional representatives took it upon themselves to vote as they believe their district constituents would desire and not as the Uniparty nobles who insist on ruling the nation from their petty thrones demand.  Whatever shall we do if this lowly democratic spirit sweeps the land?

This is what’s wrong with the People’s House, where it is still occasionally possible to elect an iconoclast unbeholden to the Leviathan’s palace guard despite mail-in ballot fraud and outside money operations distorting local races: sometimes a freethinking heretic shows up in the nation’s capital with the beastly notion that a vote is more than ornamental pageantry garnishing a foregone conclusion.  Weren’t these Republican holdouts properly instructed that Kevin McCarthy is the Uniparty’s man?  An empty vessel of mediocre intellect and flaccid beliefs, Kevin is surely the only Republican who can lead the House!  We must bring McCarthyism back to Washington, or D.C. will become home to the right-wing nuts!

What a spectacle this whole affair has been.  Pretend President Biden and Senate Republicans agree: forcing the world to watch American legislators partake in repeated democratic votes without devolving into bloodshed (despite the anger management issues of Mike Rogers) is so embarrassing.  It is much more elegant when ballots can be printed, signatures forged, and elections certified according to the wishes of the ruling elites.  The appearance of democracy in the absence of it is ideal.  The practice of actual democracy would bring the whole government’s house of cards crashing down!

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/08/a-rendezvous-with-rwanda/

“Despite being Black, he [Rep. Byron Donalds] supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.”—Representative Cori Bush (D-Mo.)

“Larry Elder [former candidate for governor of California] is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned.”—Erika Smith, Los Angeles Times columnist

America is an increasingly multiracial society. Despite its early history of slavery and racial segregation, and ongoing bias and tensions, the United States remains one of the few contemporary multiracial constitutional systems that have actually worked. Yet recently few have appreciated that achievement.

Usually multiracial nations and empires—Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires—require some level of coercion incompatible with a democratic constitution to force calm. Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Kenya  may be currently multiracial democracies in theory, but in fact they are often sectarian and tribal cauldrons.

In most such places, pride, solidarity—and even safety—are only found through common religious, ethnic, and racial bonds that become all-encompassing. The individual’s primary allegiance to each particular warring group inevitably becomes incompatible with every other’s overriding loyalties.

The United States is insidiously nearing that abyss. It has all but renounced its old commitment to the melting-pot, and a “content-of-our-character” ideal of assimilation and integration within a common culture. But as we obsess on race and accordingly separate, do we really know the final consequences of what the diversity/equity/inclusion tribalism actually entails?

The first rule of tribalism is that the racial or ethnic collective superimposes solidarity over the individual, who then becomes a mere cog in racial-political wheel. Conservatives such as Larry Elder or Byron Donalds become especially despised as examples of successful individuals who reject tribal labels and loyalties. Are LeBron James, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) all to be black comrades first and quite different individuals second—if at all? In the same manner, do Adam Schiff, Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, and Mark Milley all share identical and overriding loyalty to “whiteness,” to the degree that we forget about their individual personalities?