RUTHFULLY YOURS

In a tense exchange earlier this month between Dustin Hoffman and John Oliver, the HBO talk-show host said something remarkable. Responding to Oliver’s set of questions about claims of harassment against the actor, Hoffman pointed out that Oliver seemed not to be keeping “an open mind” but instead appeared to believe whatever he read in the press. To which Oliver replied about one claimant in particular, “I believe what she wrote, yes. Because there’s no point in her lying.” It was a fascinating exchange which unwittingly illustrated a problem that is roiling through every aspect of our societies, with no signs of abatement.

Any reasonable person not engaged in mob justice should be able to imagine a number of reasons that someone might falsely make an accusation against someone else. These range from the accidental (false or mistaken identification) to the deliberate (avarice, revenge). It is no more the case that everybody who makes an allegation against somebody else must be telling the truth than it is that they must be lying. A small but important case from the United Kingdom seems capable of shedding some caution on the furor occurring everywhere.

It relates to the former Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, a much-admired clergyman who died in 1958. Two years ago — in 2015 — an allegation of child abuse by the bishop was made public. The accuser (who remains anonymous) alleged that Bell repeatedly abused her more than six decades ago. No other similar charges have been made.

What was remarkable was not just the allegation, but the way in which it was reported. In Britain, the story was splashed across many of the national and local newspapers and prominently relayed on the BBC. It was given fuel by the Sussex Police, who (ever-keen on pursuing people who died decades ago) issued a statement stating the charges and editorializing that “the information obtained from our enquiries would have justified, had he still been alive, Bishop Bell’s arrest and interview under caution, on suspicion of sexual offences.”

Even more surprising was that the institution to which Bishop Bell had dedicated his life — the Church of England — also appeared to accept that the bishop had been guilty of the terrible crime of which he had been anonymously, posthumously accused. Despite a number of Bell’s living associates protesting that the claims could not be true, and a number of inconsistencies in the accuser’s own account, the Church said that it had “found no reason to doubt” the claims and made a financial offer to the accuser. No defense of the accused was heard. None of the evidence contradicting her testimony appears to have been sought out. While the accuser remained anonymous, the reputation of the man she had accused looked like it would be posthumously destroyed for all time.

Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats swing together. Eighteen years ago, Senate Dems stood lockstep in support of keeping Bill Clinton in office. Yesterday they stood lockstep in support of forcing Al Franken from office – even though Franken’s sins (unwanted tongues and touching) are of a considerably lower order than Clinton’s (assault and rape). A shift is underway in the Democrat Party, even if – as Caitlin Flanagan notes in The Atlantic – it’s not quite there yet:

Let’s not fool ourselves. “I believe Juanita” doesn’t just mean that you’re generally in favor of believing women when they report sex crimes. It means you believe that for eight years our country was in the hands of a violent rapist.

It was – which was why some of us said we believed Juanita at the time.

Democrats are heavily invested in identity politics. Unfortunately, almost by definition, most of the available identities are minorities (blacks, gays) and some of them are barely statistically detectable (trans). The obvious exception is women. In 2016, a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump. In that sense, Hillary not only failed to shatter the soi-disant glass ceiling, but, remarkably, managed to lower it. That’s what sticking with the Clintons did for the Dems.

So they’ve belatedly realized that their over-investment in the violent rapist and his enabler proved near-fatal last year. To win in 2020, the party has to get back some of those white females. Hence the decision to go full-scale war-on-women. Which means Franken and John Conyers are expendable. The Democrats are preparing to weaponize sex as they’ve weaponized race since the civil-rights era.

With hindsight, they were on their way to doing this a quarter-century back, before they got detoured into licensing Bill Clinton’s pathologies. Here’s what I wrote almost twenty years ago in the Speccie – April 1998 – when Gloria Steinem was arguing in The New York Times that dropping your pants and inviting a woman to “kiss it” was “not harassment” but an example of “the commonsense guideline to sexual behavior that came out of the women’s movement” – and only uptight GOP squares felt otherwise. Tell it to Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, John Conyers and all the other Clinton karaoke acts of the last month.

Had I been born with the gullible gene found so often on the Left, life would be gloriously simple. I would believe, for example, that climate can be regulated by decree and punishing productive people promotes growth. Alas, a blissful immunity to history’s lessons is not my happy lot.

Saw a mad chap on Fox News who heads a group of people who want no national borders and one world government elected by, well, everyone. There will be fewer have-nots apparently. Without catching breath, he blamed the California bushfires on climate change.

There are, and have always been, I guess, eccentric people around with eccentric (unconventional and sightly strange) views. They usually do no harm and are best put up with. But what happens when large mobs take possession of eccentric views or, more correctly, when eccentric views take possession of large mobs. Nothing good is the answer. Effectively the inmates take over the asylum.

This is where we are now. Hordes of people in every land believe that we can control the climate. Hordes, particularly among those under thirty-five, believe that we can share the fruits of production much more equally. There is a large overlap.

I find it unnerving to be sane amid so many inmates. How do I know that I am sane? It’s simple really. I don’t have fanciful ideas about what mankind can control. It used to be called having one’s feet on the ground. So back to the asylum and, first, to economic equality

We know what happens when governments try to impose economic equality. People die in large numbers. Yet old ‘gurus’ devoid of sense — Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, for instance — are heroes among many young people for proposing at best immiseration and at worst gulags. Of course, it is dressed up as fairer shares but we know where it leads.

December 8, 2016 A federal judge on Wednesday halted Michigan’s recount of its 4.8 million presidential ballots, effectively ending a longshot attempt to challenge President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, who had ordered the state to start the recount to meet a federal deadline, said he had no reason to go against a state court ruling that Green Party candidate Jill Stein had no standing to demand the recount because she had no chance of winning and therefore was not an “aggrieved” candidate. Stein requested recounts in Michigan, where Trump won by just 10,000 votes, as well as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. All three states would have had to flip to Democrat Hillary Clinton to change the election result.

Dec 24, 2016 – The United States on Friday allowed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction to be adopted, defying … vote, which represented perhaps the final bitter chapter in the years of antagonism between President Barack Obama’s administration and Netanyahu’s government.

The humanitarian hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Relativism is defined as the belief that there is no absolute truth, only truths that a particular individual or culture happen to believe. People who believe in relativism accept that different people can have different views about what is moral and immoral. So far so good – society can tolerate multiple opinions on the relative merits of a thing or an idea. Here is the problem – civilized society requires consensus on the existence of that thing or idea – it requires agreement on what is real.

Objective reality is the foundation for the laws and rules that regulate public behavior in society.

In a previous article I introduced the problem of multiple realities inherent in Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory with the example of a man walking down the street.

Let’s review. A man is walking down the street. There are four people nearby. The first person says there is a man walking down the street. The second person says there is a person walking down the street. The third person says I’m not sure who is walking down the street. The fourth person says there is a woman walking down the street.

The objective reality is that there is a man walking down the street regardless of what the observers perceptions are. Objective reality is rooted in facts and exists independent of the perceptions of those facts. Subjective reality tolerates conflicting multiple realities because it is rooted in perceptions and informed by opinions. So, in subjective reality the fourth person’s observation that it is a woman walking down the street is accepted. The consequence, of course, is that societal acceptance of multiple realities ultimately creates chaos because there is no agreement on what is real.

On December 7, 1941 360 Japanese warplanes struck the naval base in Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack.Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded. The next day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation and declared war.

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph — so help us God.I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”

It ended on September 2, 1945, when Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Japanese Government, formally ending World War II.

The victory and ceremonial surrender ended Shinto imperialism, a faith driven belief in the divine origin of Japanese superiority to all other nations.

And that was the last time that America fought a war to win with a decisive surrender.

FIRST: When the Arabs, namely, Jordan, illegally occupied and controlled East Jerusalem, the city was a dump. Shrines, churches, cemeteries, homes, parks and schools were vandalized and trashed. The kinglet of Jordan, Abdullah, told President Trump that moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem would” pre-empt a comprehensive solution that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. He also emphasized that Jerusalem is the key to achieving peace and stability in the region. How ironic. The kinglet and his family are protected night and day by Israeli intel, and despised by the Palarabs who remember “Black September” the uprising in 1970 when his smarter and pluckier father killed and deported several thousand PLO upstarts. He would be the second to fall if there were a Palarab sovereignty in the “West Bank.”

SECOND: Israel has scrupulously restored the ancient city with respect and protection of the churches, synagogues,parks, monuments, cemeteries and shrines of all faiths with guarantees of the safety of worshipers from all over the earth.

THIRD: Every single so called “peace process” obtained Israeli concessions in exchange for promises that were flouted before the ink was dry on the agreements. The Oslo accords were followed by the most savage and prolonged series of terrorism that claimed the lives of innocents…. babies in their cribs, teens on hikes, diners in cafes and pizzerias, shoppers in markets, revelers at a Passover dinner….the list is endless and these attacks took place within the cities in Israel that are not the falsely disputed “West Bank.” The Palarab schools, press, and sermons continue to preach unrelenting anti-Semitism, and reward barbarism financially and with monuments and streets hailing them.

So now we have a President who, unlike his pantywaist predecessors, is fulfilling a promise and all the hand-wringers and concession processors are in a snit. How predictable. rsk

There is no question that some men – not all, but some – feel that money, fame and power give them the right to have whatever they want, including women. Libidos, fed by arrogance, displace decency and respect. Many of these men are vocal in their defense of feminist rights, but disrespectful toward women as individuals. But there are some women – not many, but a few – to whom money, fame and power serve as aphrodisiacs. “Power,” Henry Kissinger once observed, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” And so it is, to a few.

While serial harassers of women, like bullies everywhere, should be dealt with severely, we live in a country where due process is law and accused are considered innocent until proven guilty. There is risk when the media are more interested in ratings and political advocacy than truth. Accusations without proof are the stuff from which revolutions are wrought. Angelo Codevilla, a professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and a man who spent eight years on the Senate staff observed the play between politicians and staff: access to power was on one side and the offer of sex on the other. “Innocence, he wrote, was the one quality entirely absent on all sides.” That may be true, but the sides are not equally paired; leverage lies with those who wield power.

Nevertheless, we must not let disclosures of dalliances turn into witch hunts, McCarthyism, or, God forbid, Puritanism. Interestingly, the majority of those charged have been men of the Left who have visibly and vocally supported feminism and women’s rights, all the while treating female subordinates as sex objects. While many of us conservatives have derived a sense of schadenfreude watching deviant hypocrites like Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor and Charlie Rose being hoisted on petards of their own making, there should also be an acknowledgement of “there but for the grace of God go I…” In some cases, accusations go back decades, providing little opportunity for rebuttal. It is one person’s word against another’s. Stones are cast, with little attention paid to those doing the tossing.

Sessions won’t take sides on GOP demands for Clinton probe. Trump allies have been clamoring for a new investigation of a 2010 deal that transferred some U.S. uranium production capacity to a company with Kremlin links.
Sessions said appointing a separate special counsel to investigate Clinton would require “a factual basis”.
In a heated exchange with Jim Jordan, a Republican congressman from Ohio who asked what it would take to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations against Clinton, Sessions said: “We will use the proper standards, and that’s the only thing I can tell you.
“You can have your idea, but sometimes we have to study what the facts are, and to evaluate whether it meets the standards it requires.”
A fiery Jordan continued to allege misconduct by Clinton. Citing additional reports that her campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the Fusion GPS dossier into Trump’s ties to Russia, Jordan maintained it “looks like” there was enough evidence to warrant naming a second special counsel.
Sessions tersely responded: “I would say ‘looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel.”
Sessions later sought to clarify his comments, stating: “I did not mean to suggest I was taking a side one way or the other on that subject.”

In a burst of bogus feminism and commercial ambition, Mattel Inc., the global doll-maker, has announced that in 2018 it will market a Barbie doll wearing a hijab. Barbie dolls rarely impinge on political and social issues but this one is so unsettling that it evokes a wide range of responses.

We have to understand that Mattel likes to believe Barbie dolls positively influence the feelings of girls and help to point them toward the possibilities of adult life. That’s a self-justifying idea that runs through the company’s bloodstream. It suggests that Mattel serves a social purpose while selling its products.

After all, Barbies aren’t just princesses and wonder women. You can buy Barbies wearing practical clothing for offices, “chic summer suits” and camel-hair coats. This is Mattel’s bow to feminists who believe little girls should be discouraged from dwelling on fantasies of the future: they should learn, as soon as possible, the truth about what they are likely to become.

For girls with higher aspirations, you can get Barbies clothed in a cocktail dress, a classic black dress, or an Oscar de la Renta ball gown. One Barbie has a Hudson’s Bay jacket and another displays an Andy Warhol painting on the front of her dress.

Attached to the news about the hijab Barbie is a line from Mattel about “Continuing to inspire girls to be anything.” Girls are to become whatever their desires and talents can make them. Elsewhere, such as in admiring quotations from Glamour magazine in the Mattel publicity, the same idea appears.