RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/11/examining-the-controversy-surrounding-tucker-carlsons-interview-with-putin/

I wonder if there is a central clearing office that issues regular updates about what nasty dictators one is allowed to engage with and which ones, for this week anyway, one must avoid.

It was okay for Gavin Newsom to remove the feces and the homeless from the streets of San Francisco in order to fête Xi Jinping. Likewise, it was just fine for CNN and the BBC to interview the leader of Hamas. And of course CNN’s Erin Burnett was on the case with Volodymyr Zelensky in her 2023 interview with the former comedian and crossdressing performance artist (though the soundtrack to this version of Burnett’s love fest is—special).

It was okay to interview or publish Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban.  It was even okay, once upon a time, for journalists—well, some journalists—to interview Vladimir Putin.

But just let Tucker Carlson travel to Moscow to interview the Russian dictator, and pow!, the media and its minders go nuts.  I watched the entire 2-hour-long interview and the 2-part, 10-minute post-mortem Tucker conducted in an ante-room of the Kremlin and then back at his hotel. I thought both were fascinating.

That does not, by the way—do I really have to say this?—mean that I am “soft on Putin.”  Having published books highly critical of him at Encounter Books—including a scathing anatomy of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko by plutonium—I am under no illusions about Putin’s brutality.

That said, I believe Donald Trump was right when he said, “It would be a good thing, not a bad thing,” if the United States were to get along with Russia. I have explained why I think so several times, for example, here.

Ever since Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, hysteria has ruled.  I’ve written about that too, for example, here.

A leitmotif in Putin’s remarks to Tucker in that marathon interview was, as he saw it, the serial betrayal of Russia by the West. There was a moment, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when it seemed as though Russia would be welcomed into the family of the West.  You’ll find the word “thaw” featured prominently in lots of stories from the period. And later: Remember Hillary Clinton presenting Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with her famous “reset button” in 2009? But that was then.  In 2014, Russia reabsorbed Crimea (which in truth never left the Russian sphere of influence), and then, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the reset was definitively reset.

Data point: NATO was formed after World War II to counter Soviet aggression towards the West. Many commentators, including Irving Kristol, wondered why, with the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO continued to exist.  I think that is a good question. But it has continued to exist and, in fact, has greatly expanded. NATO originally had 12 members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1990, Western leaders gave assurances to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand further east. But today, NATO has 31 member states, including several that border Russia. The prospect of Ukraine’s joining NATO is intolerable and is one thing that sparked the current conflagration in Ukraine. Look at a map, and you will understand why.

The world seems to be divided in two. There are some who believe that Putin is a dangerous, Hitler-like dictator bent on reassembling the Soviet Union, if not, indeed, conquering all of Europe. In the course of his interview with Tucker, Putin several times insisted that he had no revanchist goals and, in response to a direct question from Tucker, said that he was open to a negotiated peace in Ukraine.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/02/respect_for_authorities_died_suddenly.html

Populations do not obey lunatics and liars for long.

Well, I guess we know where the Federal Aviation Administration got the idea to fill cockpits with pilots suffering from psychological disorders and mental deficiencies.  The FAA has been watching Dementia Joe Biden fly the United States directly into the ground for three years and decided to do for civil aviation what the White House has done for peace and prosperity.  Nothing better reflects a “crash and burn” leadership style than elevating unqualified people into positions where they can do the most harm.  It’s worked for the West Wing, the Pentagon, and the Treasury Department!  Why not for the agency responsible for air traffic control and passenger safety?  What could possibly go wrong?  

Oh, sure, perhaps flyers will die more frequently in fiery collisions or when unbolted aircraft doors shoot off into the clouds, but at least they will leave this mortal coil knowing that the people who build and pilot consumer aircraft represent such an amazing infusion of “diversity” that even the dumbest and most temperamentally unstable among us have been “included” in the life-and-death trust exercise of not falling out of the sky.  That’s what real “equity” requires — redistributing the earned responsibilities of those who have demonstrated merit and commitment to those who have demonstrated mediocrity and unreliability.  It’s why the globalists’ forced DEI standard (diversity, equity, and inclusion — barf!) across the public and private sectors should be more accurately returned to DIE — because wherever the deadly acronym dilutes excellence, living safely becomes less likely.

Come to think of it, Joe Biden is DIE’s perfect mascot.  Angry, confused, and incompetent Old Joe is the Chief Dolt and Grand Pooh-bah of an ass-backward system where the least capable in society thrive.

Given the U.S. government’s love affair with censorship and propaganda, I sometimes imagine future historians piecing through the shards of Western civilization in order to understand the reasons for its collapse.  According to the prevailing “narrative,” everything right now is tremendously great!  We are told that the economy is strong, that crime is under control, that our borders are secure, that paying twenty bucks for a fast-food hamburger is cheap, and that endless war produces endless peace.  According to the news media, Americans have never had it so good!  How then, third-millennium anthropologists might wonder, did everything go kaput so quickly?

Well, hopefully, someone in the future will stumble across a time capsule with Joe Biden’s linguistically challenged press conference from the other day, in which he angrily denounced the Potemkin special counsel’s legal conclusion that, while Decrepit Joe committed federal crimes damaging to America’s national security, he is nevertheless too senile to prosecute.

https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/fribiden-classified-memos-report-re-ignites-debates-about-dual-justice

Special Counsel Robert Hur’s final report on Joe Biden’s willful retention and dissemination of highly classified information is rocking Washington, re-igniting concerns of a dual system of justice while putting the full weight of the government behind the notion that America is currently being served by a president with “diminished faculties.”

Hur’s 388-page report released Thursday may have spared Biden the spectacle of a criminal prosecution similar to that his Justice Department imposed on Donald Trump, but it delivered a devastating blow to the 46th president’s re-election hopes by going out of its way to explain criminal charges weren’t levied in part because jurors might see Biden as a dottering, forgetful old man incapable of criminal intent.

“Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in explaining his rational for declining prosecution. “…It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him – by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties – of a serious  felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Later, Hur added for good measure he believed Biden suffered from “diminished faculties in advancing age.”

The political fallout was instant and severe.

Biden’s lone remaining Democrat challenger for the 2024 presidential nomination, Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, said Hur’s report exposed a “sad” reality that “the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander-in-Chief beyond his term.”