RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2024/04/the-getting-of-donald-trump/

Forgive the foggy memory, for I can’t quite place the sign that announced in carefully painted white-on-black block letters just a single word, ‘BELIEVE’. Tennessee or Kentucky maybe, because the road it was beside wound through narrow valleys and hillsides waiting winter-naked for the first green sheen of the northern spring. And there it was, on the other side of a low fence fronting a roughly cleared plot, this handmade testament to … what exactly? This was in the South, albeit only just below the Mason-Dixon line, where churches large and small are regular as milestones along the way and almost as common.  Around the next turn, no doubt, there would be another little billboard instructing the passerby where belief is best invested, with Jesus or the Bible seeming most likely. But there was nothing, no second sign to deliver the expected one-two punchline. Just ‘Believe’, and that was that.

Until an oncoming 18-wheeler switched the focus to evasive driving and self-preservation, it was a riddle to occupy for a mile or two the thoughts of a solitary motorist. What species of rustic obsessive would go to such trouble and for what purpose? Today, though, with some seven months to run before the 2024 election and a criminal trial like no other getting under way, belief for the sake of believing seems almost to make sense. To abandon the comfort of delusion would mean chewing over some deeply unpalatable truths, not least about the full machinery of the law being deployed in the selective and unprecedented prosecution of one man, a former president and current White House contender.

But believe what you want to believe. Everyone is doing it, and why not? Your ‘truth’ is as valid as that of the next they, zim or zey. If the facts disagree, if the evidence contradicts, well there’s the handy expedient of not really being required to care too much. You have your belief and that’s enough. An eager willingness to believe the unbelievable, it’s all that’s needed anywhere and everywhere. The more what is obvious and unhidden goes unremarked and unquestioned, the better for a troubled nation’s peace of mind, at least in the short term.

At the New York Times such belief demands what is unfolding in a southern Manhattan courtroom be painted as a triumph for American fair play, as laid out in a recent editorial built upon a believer’s ‘truth’ that, as usual, simply isn’t true:  “Donald Trump, who relentlessly undermined the justice system while in office,”  the editorial begins. No examples of Trump’s alleged perfidy, no names or cases are cited, and certainly there is no mention of the many harassing and vexatious lawsuits brought against Trump, for that might ruffle what the Times prefers to perceive and present as a moral crusade in which its editorial voice speaks for all the noble traditions of courtroom probity and decorum. Trump, the leader column assures the core readers its authors know are equally eager to believe, “is enjoying the same protections and guarantees of fairness and due process before the law that he sought to deny to others during his term.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/04/why-is-judge-juan-merchan-refusing-to-honor-trumps-due-process-rights/

The principal duty of judges in the United States is to protect Americans from government overreach. Judge Merchan is doing the opposite.

I observed in a post this week that, compared to some of Donald Trump’s other recent complaints about Judge Juan Merchan, there is more substance to his grousing about the judge’s denial of his request that the trial be adjourned for a day so that he may be in attendance at the United States Supreme Court next Thursday, April 25. That’s the day the justices will hear argument on the question of whether the former president has immunity from prosecution in the 2020 election-interference indictment brought in Washington, D.C., by Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.

There are competing legal and practical considerations here.

Practically speaking, if I’m a Trump appellate lawyer, I would prefer that he not come to the Supreme Court argument. I don’t think the justices would appreciate the spectacle. I am thinking in particular of the three justices Trump appointed (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), who would inevitably be on the receiving end of looney left-wing bloviating that Trump was in attendance for the purpose of pressuring them — bloviating helped along, naturally, by Trump lawyer/flack Alina Habba’s clueless remark in January, in connection with Colorado’s effort to remove Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause, that Kavanaugh would “step up” for Trump because the former president “fought for” his nomination and “went through hell to get [him] into place” on the Court.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/21/biden-weaponizes-the-federal-government-for-his-own-reelection-campaign/

President Joe Biden has taken every part of the federal government and transformed it into his personal reelection machine, creating a hyper-partisan election apparatus out of supposedly neutral federal agencies. And American taxpayers pay for all of it.

Just since the beginning of April, several explosive revelations have surfaced that show the extent to which Joe Biden has weaponized the federal government in election matters. This should come as no surprise, as the administration continues to unfairly weaponize the federal courts against January 6 defendants, and state and federal courts maliciously prosecute Donald Trump, his rival in the presidential election.

The plan is as brazen as it is comprehensive, proving the Biden administration doesn’t want a fair election in 2024.

Using Charities to Encourage Illegal Alien Voting

A non-governmental agency (NGO) that receives taxpayer money—and also lobbies the federal government—encourages illegal immigrants to vote for Biden once they get established in the United States. The Daily Signal, citing MuckRaker.com, reported fliers found all over a staging center for migrants in northeastern Mexico, on the US border:

An advocacy group based in Northeastern Mexico that lobbies U.S. lawmakers has distributed and posted flyers encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

Translated from Spanish, the Oversight Project notes, the flyers posted by the organization Resource Center Matamoros say: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.”

The Resource Center Matamoros (RCM) works with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which the Oversight Project says “helps illegal aliens enter the United States.” Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas (D) formerly served on the HIAS board of directors. HIAS has received “numerous” grants from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/21/socialisms-survival-the-endurance-of-an-ideological-paradox/

I have written about the death and rebirth of socialism periodically over the years.  But as André Gide said in another context, “Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer”: everything has already been said, but since no one was listening, it is necessary to say it again.

Really, the socialist impulse is a hardy perennial.  How could something so frequently and thoroughly discredited persist in the hearts of men?  Some think it has something to do with the gullibility of the human animal, some (but I repeat myself) with the persistence of the utopian dream.  I suspect there are many explanations, of which the raw desire for power plays an unedifying but also underrated role.  I also favor the explanatory power of original sin, which has profound psychological as well as theological application to many of the more farcical aspects of human experience and what is more farcical than socialism?

At any rate, the career of socialism is a powerful argument for the phenomenon of life after death. Remember: the death of socialism in the United States (except on college campuses) had been solemnly pronounced over and over during the 1980s and 1990s. But for the past several years, we have seen multiple sightings of the beast.

Back in 2018, for example, the actor Jim Carrey told Bill Maher: “We have to say yes to socialism—to the word and everything. We have to stop apologizing.”

I’m pretty sure that no one told this poor fellow that, were socialism to be instituted in the United States, one of the first things that would happen is that people like Mr. Carrey would be instantly pauperized.

Did I say “poor” fellow?

As of 2023, Mr. Carrey had an estimated net worth of $180 million. But what are the two fundamental pillars of socialism?

One: The abolition of private property.

Two: The equalization of wealth.