RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion

My last report was from the county of Dorset in Britain.  Alas, the time my wife and I had in London came to an end in July.  Still, I will be following like a hawk all the minute manouverings around Brexit as Boris Johnson tries to stop Remainer Tory MPs from hijacking the referendum result and keep the UK in the European Union. Proroguing Parliament, as he has just done, would seem to indicate the new PM is to be taken at his word. If you want to see a perfect example of the elected MPs of a party becoming massively divorced from the core voters who put them in Parliament, you won’t get a better example than the foes who have been, if not foiled, at least muted.

It is estimated that some 70 to 75 per cent of Tory MPs voted ‘Remain’ while some 75 percent of Tory voters opted for ‘Leave’.  With Theresa May, also a Remainer, these Manchurian MPs had their perfect instrument.  Her basic negotiating tactic was to offer the EU nearly everything it wanted right at the start, and do so while promising over a hundred times that Britain would leave at the end of March, and that it would not be subject to the EU’s top court etc etc.  She broke virtually every single promise she made and I do not see how you can put a charitable spin on that — perfidy more than incompetence, in my view.  Only when the Tories slumped to eight per cent in the recent EU elections (which Britain should not have been participating in had Theresa May kept her word) did the party’s MPs realise they were writing the world’s slowest suicide note.  That, and Nigel Farage starting his new Brexit Party, which went from nothing to topping the polls in just seven weeks, forced these Conservative MPs to act.

Only when faced with extinction and the total decimation of their party did the Tories choose ‘Leave’ supporter Boris Johnson as leader and the new Prime Minister.  An analogy is Winston Churchill.  The Tories hated the man in the late 1930s.  They tried to deselect him.  Nothing other than the fact Hitler was rampaging through Europe would ever have seen this party – stacked full of wall-to-wall appeasers –  put him in Number 10.  Boris is no Winston.  But he’s almost as hated by the Remainer faction of his party.  And thus far, fingers crossed, he’s doing exactly what we Leavers need him to be doing.  Notice that some Tory MPs are seemingly prepared to put Jeremy Corbyn in as caretaker PM rather than leave the EU with No Deal.  They all need to be deselected, in my view, for their treachery against the party (look at what it promised at the last election) and against the referendum result.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/29/the-political-class-is-exhausted/

There is a small slice of the American populace who, by their own admission, are exhausted.

No, I do not refer to new moms caring for cranky infants or emergency room nurses working the night shift or tactical officers patrolling the ’hood or farmers plowing their soybean crops.

Our bone-weary countrymen populate opinion magazines, newsrooms, editorial boards, and cable networks up and down the Acela corridor. Their fingertips, nearly stripped of all flesh from excessive tweeting, have lost agility. Heads droop over coffee-stained laptops; they can’t even muster enough energy to brush off the morning’s donut crumbs from the keyboard.

Cognitive fatigue has set in: “How do you spell Haberman again,” they mumble to themselves as they struggle to search the pages of the New York Times. Slippered feet shuffle aimlessly under the desk of their home office. Makeup artists in the MSNBC green room desperately try to conceal dark circles sagging under the eyes of barely-functioning hosts and guests.

Now, one can understand the fatigue associated with a prolonged hangover after a two-year bender on Trump-Russian collusion that came up empty. One can certainly sympathize with talking heads and columnists who want to crawl under the covers after being wrong about nearly everything since 2016. And, really, having to interview Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for the umpteenth time would take its toll on any mere mortal.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/28/false-crucibles/

Every generation in modern American and, indeed, Western history has had its crucibles. We’ve had the Great War, the Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, and various economic crises and foreign policy challenges. There always have been existential threats to our society requiring maximum exertion.

Through that hardening effort and the concurrent sacrifice, such effort requires, many generations have risen to the occasion. They have gone through their own bloodletting, their own walk through fire, to ensure their survival and the success of our nation and people. In this way, the inner steel of generations of young Americans was tempered.

But not so much for this one.

Pop Culture Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Through a combination of great material affluence and relative economic and military superiority, the young of today did not have to face the life-and-death struggles endured by their recent ancestors.

Given that, there is  a profound narcissistic boredom and we are living with the resulting intellectual lethargy. They have searched for and found the false crucibles of cultural nihilism, political animism, and masochistic socialism.

A sizable number of this generation does not want to grow up, does not wish to mature. It is natural that they would embrace the childish cultural and political norms more usually associated with angst-filled college sophomores.

They engage in a deep conformity to these ersatz deities, startlingly afraid to dig deeper and past the leftist indoctrination of the recent past, lest they arrive at a philosophical or political location that would make them unpopular among their peers and with their institutional leftist superiors. Few have the courage to be an outlier in relation to a popular culture that demands fealty as the price for being considered au courant.

Though these predominantly twentysomethings have come to consider themselves rebels against a supposed white male oligarchy, they parrot the same tired dried out nihilistic clichés and irrational platitudes made intellectually stylish by white males themselves only a couple generations prior. They are offering nothing but warmed-over 1960s schtick.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/why-socialism-and-why-now/

“Socialist! is no longer a McCarthyite slur.

Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas. A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.

Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S. Senate — Vermont’s trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness. But in 2016, Sanders’ improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.

After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.

Sanders, like the members of the Squad, has limited political power. But the celebrity and social media influence of these new and retread socialists has been on the upswing — especially in the current 21st-century climate of radical transformations in economic and political life.

Note the shock over Clinton’s 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak and ineffectual. And there are still other undercurrents that explain why currently socialism polls so well among young Americans.

College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans. Many of these debtors despair of ever paying back the huge sums.

Brexit: Boris Turns to the Queen

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/brexit-boris-turns-to-the-queen/90811/

Queen Elizabeth II’s approval of the suspension of Parliament next month is an important step in protecting Britain’s decision to leave Europe. It is crucial to a plan of Prime Minister Johnson that is being set down by furious opponents as, in the words of one, “profoundly undemocratic.” What a hypocritical jibe. For Mr. Johnson seeks to redeem a Brexit referendum that is one of the great acts of direct democracy in modern history.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/dsei/2019/08/27/can-an-israeli-missile-give-us-army-aviation-an-advantage-in-future-warfare/

Can an Israeli missile give US Army aviation an advantage in future warfare? Jen Judson

In the mountainous desert of Arizona, an AH-64E helicopter hiding behind 1,600 feet of craggy mountain fires a missile at a target representing a Russian Pantsir medium-range, surface-to-air missile system on the opposite slope.

The Aug. 26 scenario, attended by Defense News, was part of a U.S. Army experiment to achieve greater standoff against enemy threats using the Rafael-manufactured Spike Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) anti-tank, guided missile.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/comparison-trump-record-former-presidents-current-critics/

Let’s compare Trump’s policies and behavior to that of prior presidents — and to his 2020 opponents’.

I n traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate.

In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.

Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.

Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! — and Lord knows what next.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/president-can-legally-regulate-foreign-commerce-says-congress/

Foreign policy via Twitter is obviously unwise, but Congress has given the president wide latitude to regulate foreign commerce.

Lots of high dudgeon after the president’s manic tweeting on Friday.

As to some of it, rightfully so. It was contemptible for the president to equate the dictator of Communist China to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, a patriotic American who apparently disagrees with Donald Trump on policy — and who is more attuned than the president to the need to avoid the appearance that Fed policy is susceptible to political tantrums.

Still, the righteous blasts by Trump critics in defense of Chairman Jerome Powell turned out to be so much throat-clearing. Soon followed indignant howls over what was framed as the president’s constitutional illiteracy in purporting to “order” American companies “to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing . . . your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Trump also said he was “ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE . . . all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!).”

Preliminarily, let’s stipulate that there is uncertainty, to say the least, about exactly what the president may “order” anyone to do via Twitter, even the people who work for him.

After being dazed by the tweets in the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, I’ve come to regard them as political performance art. I imagine most of us have. I tune most of it out. Other times, I chuckle . . . or gasp . . . or envision Trump rubbing his hands together in anticipation of making his critics’ heads explode. Mostly, I wonder if the president is too self-absorbed to grasp how wearying all this is — how he could easily lose a winnable reelection because he is exhausting, or because the tweets help his critics argue that he is unstable, or at least too feral for the office.

Foreign policy via Twitter is obviously unwise, but Congress has given the president wide latitude to regulate foreign commerce.

Lots of high dudgeon after the president’s manic tweeting on Friday.

As to some of it, rightfully so. It was contemptible for the president to equate the dictator of Communist China to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, a patriotic American who apparently disagrees with Donald Trump on policy — and who is more attuned than the president to the need to avoid the appearance that Fed policy is susceptible to political tantrums.

Still, the righteous blasts by Trump critics in defense of Chairman Jerome Powell turned out to be so much throat-clearing. Soon followed indignant howls over what was framed as the president’s constitutional illiteracy in purporting to “order” American companies “to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing . . . your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Trump also said he was “ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE . . . all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!).”

Preliminarily, let’s stipulate that there is uncertainty, to say the least, about exactly what the president may “order” anyone to do via Twitter, even the people who work for him.

After being dazed by the tweets in the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, I’ve come to regard them as political performance art. I imagine most of us have. I tune most of it out. Other times, I chuckle . . . or gasp . . . or envision Trump rubbing his hands together in anticipation of making his critics’ heads explode. Mostly, I wonder if the president is too self-absorbed to grasp how wearying all this is — how he could easily lose a winnable reelection because he is exhausting, or because the tweets help his critics argue that he is unstable, or at least too feral for the office.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/22/cultural-marxist-attack-western-society/

Have you ever heard of Antonio Gramsci? How about Herbert Marcuse? Or the Frankfurt School?

These names are probably meaningless to all but a small minority of scholars academics and political theorists throughout the world. Yet, Americans — and indeed all those who treasure the religion, culture and history of Western Civilization — should become acquainted with these names if they are to understand the forces that are currently tearing society apart. 

Marxism appeared on the scene in Europe in the mid-19th century. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels posited a thesis that capitalist society was doomed to  demise as the “proletariat” — the working class — rose up to overthrow their oppressors, the “bourgeoisie” — the middle class of property owners. Marx and Engels saw world history through the prism of a perpetual class struggle between these two implacable enemies. Marx predicted that socialist revolutions would spring up throughout the West as the proletariat overthrew the bourgeoisie and established dictatorships in the name of the “people.” 

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Marx, his prediction fell short.  The socialist revolutions largely failed to materialize in Europe or America. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 arrived in Russia — vanguard of the East — and had as much to do with the tragic casualties and deprivations of World War I as anything to do with the wealth of the propertied classes. Subsequent communist revolutions that attempted to replicate what Lenin achieved in Russia — be they in  postwar Hungary under Bela Kun or Germany under Rosa Luxemburg were either  short-lived or failed altogether. 

amgreatness.com/2019/08/25/the-mythical-trump-hydra/

Many are the hissing heads of the polycephalic Donald Trump—at least according to the progressive Left and the NeverTrump Right, who see the president of the United States as some sort of mythical nightmare. Here are a few of his supposedly monstrous manifestations.
Trump, the Profiteer 

Candidate Trump never really wanted to be president. His entire amateurish and buffoonish candidacy was designed only to enhance his brand. Once he was unexpectedly elected, Trump was more shocked than anyone, and quickly sought to maximize his profits from the Oval Office. Thus, followed the constant progressive evocation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution to prevent chronic Trump profiteering.

In reality, the Trump empire reportedly has declined by nearly $1 billion in net value, aside from the tens of millions of his own money that Trump spent on the 2016 campaign. Trump’s business interests are the most thoroughly investigated of any recent president in memory. Obama and the Clintons made millions from their presidencies; Trump may well end up losing billions.

Trump, the Liberal 

NeverTrumpers insisted that the politically polymorphous Trump was lying about his hard conservative agendas during the 2016 primaries. In truth, they warned, Trump was a Manhattan liberal wolf in right-wing fleece clothing. 

If ever elected, Trump would adopt progressive abortion policies, become another radical environmentalist in the fashion of a squishy Arnold Schwarzenegger, select liberal justices like his moderate federal justice sister, ignore evangelicals, and in general defer to the liberal foreign policy establishment. In sum, Trump would keep none of his conservative promises and govern to the left of the McCain wing of the Republican Party 

https://spectator.org/recession-headlines-in-search-of-a-story/

Recent breathless headlines of impending recession exposed the “experts” more than the economy. In attempting to see over the economic horizon, they appeared more to be seeking to see past this administration. The economy remains sound, even as attempts to discredit become less so.

On August 19, the Washington Post’s first sentence summed up their one-dimensional angle on the National Association for Business Economics’ August survey: “Most economists believe the United States will tip into recession by 2021, a new survey shows, despite White House insistence the economy is sound.” So it went, with most establishment news outlets bent on finding the gray cloud around today’s current sterling economy.

Negative news sells. Perhaps it has always been thus, though it certainly seems most prevalent when it is adverse to this administration.

Interestingly, the latest NABE survey showed something else — an improvement over the previous survey — if the time had been taken to read it. As the survey stated in its section on the economy: “Compared with results in the February 2019 survey, respondents, on balance, expect the next U.S. recession to occur later.” In other words: The survey shows an improved outlook regarding recession.

Respondents predicting a recession this year dropped from ten percent to two percent. Those anticipating one next year also dropped, from 42 percent to 38 percent. Presuming these more optimistic respondents must put their predictions somewhere, they moved them to 2021, causing this later estimation to rise from 25 percent to 34 percent. Finally, those predicting the next recession would be even later moved up from 11 percent to 14 percent.