RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/sociologys-descent-into-woke-satire/

Most casual observers, especially those with even slight conservative leanings, would agree that sociology is obviously left-wing. But this wasn’t always the case. When I began my sociology graduate work in the early nineties, it was the classical spirit of the discipline that drove me. There was then enough of the residue of what the discipline had been at its origins to enable idealistic souls like myself to imagine that sociology was still about uncovering the objective realities of social life, rather than simply producing a radical mythology that denounced all that existed and preached the necessity of total revolution.

Radical Marxist approaches were certainly there from the beginning. But many of these had at least the patina of intellectual seriousness and required substantive efforts to challenge and dismantle. However much one disagreed with Marx, for example, one could not reasonably call him a fool and a charlatan, at least if one had read him. He was wrong, but not obviously ignorant of basic things and oblivious to the requirements of argument and evidence.

Today’s sociology is so patently devoid of any intellectual rigor that most of it evokes only contemptuous laughter. The arguments advanced, the “evidence” mustered to support its partisan claims, are so weak that it is genuinely amazing to realize that the people making these cases have spent many years in educational institutions and yet have come away from all that with either no understanding of or an utter contempt for careful and rigorous argument.

Sociology Advertises Its Product

For example, the American Sociological Association (ASA) offers a series of video shorts titled “Sociological Insights.” These clips feature sociologists presenting their research in brief, visually engaging morsels. They are intended to provide an introduction to sociological reasoning and analysis. But the viewer who is not already converted to the Woke cult to which the ASA gives its allegiance can be forgiven for thinking, on watching a selection of the videos, that they were made by an enemy of sociology, as a wickedly humorous satire of the discipline.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-says-anti-israel-student-protesters-are-showing-exactly-what-the-human-emotion-should-be/

There have been many hints at the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris is more hostile to Israel than President Biden. As Democrats take a closer look at her as the most likely replacement should Biden drop out of the race, her views on Middle East policy will undergo closer scrutiny. Now, in an interview with Joan Walsh in the The Nation, Harris makes clear that she sympathizes with the anti-Israel protesters on college campuses — even though she doesn’t agree with everything they said.

Here is the part of the interview that gets to her views on Israel’s war against Hamas:

“Listen, I strongly believe that our ability to evaluate a situation is connected to understanding the details of that situation. Not speaking of myself versus the president, not at all. From the beginning, I asked questions. OK, the trucks are taking flour into Gaza. But here’s the thing, Joan: I like to cook. So I said to my team: You can’t make shit with flour if you don’t have clean water. So what’s going on with that? I ask questions like, What are people actually eating right now? I’m hearing stories about their eating animal feed, grass … so that’s how I think about it.

“Similarly, I was asking early on, what are women in Gaza doing about sanitary hygiene. Do they have pads? And these are the issues that made people feel uncomfortable, especially sanitary pads.”

The young people who have mobilized against the destruction of Gaza are unlikely to be mollified by these answers. What does she say to them?

“They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”

Harris is careful to provide herself an escape hatch — to say she doesn’t fully endorse everything the protesters say — but it’s clear that in her mind, she feels that she has to say something nice about the antisemitic protests because ultimately she is trying to win over the pro-Hamas contingent of the party

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trespass-without-fear

New York is suffering a “finders keepers, losers weepers”–style squatting epidemic, enabled by the state’s cumbersome civil process for abused landlords. As several recent stories make clear, the state’s housing courts are far too sympathetic to invaders masquerading as tenants. The situation had grown so dire that New York’s legislature passed a measure in April excluding from the definition of “tenant” those who intrude and then hunker down on property without permission.

The new law opens the possibility of a criminal-justice solution to the state’s squatting problem. But a pivotal question remains: Will New York’s 62 district attorneys, encumbered by a decade of pro-defendant policy reforms, successfully prosecute these non-tenants’ crimes? Recent experience suggests that they will struggle to do so, especially in trespass cases.

Queens district attorney Melinda Katz has been in the news for a high-profile prosecution against Brian Rodriguez, who featured in a video that went viral in April. Rodriguez, a 35-year-old burglary and narcotics ex-con, was allegedly occupying a Queens house that Adele Andaloro inherited from her parents. Before Andaloro could eject him, Rodriguez reportedly sublet her rooms. When she had the locks changed and tried to retake her property, he claimed squatter’s rights after 30 days—and had her arrested!

Katz’s office, to its credit, charged Rodriguez with five counts: burglary in the second degree, grand larceny in the fourth degree, criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree, criminal trespass in the second degree, and criminal mischief in the fourth degree. If convicted, Rodriguez faces up to 15 years in prison.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/animal-farm-democrats/

Leftists make up things as they go along, as yesterday’s heresies (e.g., Biden seems demented) become today’s orthodoxies (e.g. Biden really is demented)—depending on the current party directive about what is most advantageous.

So many of the Democrats current dilemmas are self-inflicted— a result of their often illegal and always unethical efforts to warp democracy that boomerang upon them and remind us that hubris really does earn nemesis.

Note that there would never have been any presidential immunity suit before the Supreme Court had the Biden administration just not orchestrated local, state, and federal prosecutors to neuter Trump, Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential opponent.

That current lawfare effort marked the third sequential attempt to sabotage a political opponent’s campaign—following Hillary’s 2016 Russian “collusion”/Steele “dossier” scam, and Joe’s 2020 Russian “disinformation”/ “51 intelligence authorities” ruse.

In other words, had Nathan Wade not synchronized with the White House counsel’s office, had Merrick Garland not had his third-ranking federal prosecutor take over the Manhattan prosecution from the incompetent Alvin Bragg, and had not Garland picked the biased and previously failed special counsel Jack Smith to hound and rush to judgement Trump, the question of presidential immunity from Biden’s orchestrated lawfare would have never come up before the court.

The leftwing panic over Biden’s cognitive decline in the debate is not because he is clearly unable to fulfill the duties of a president (is there any other job in America that Joe Biden could perform other than being in charge of the nuclear codes?), and thus might injure the country. The hysteria instead arises solely because he might lose the Democrats power, either by losing the election—or by winning it, then crashing, and passing the country off into the hands of a cackling Kamala Harris.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamalas-legacies/

One day before the deadline, California Gov. Gavin Newsom scrapped plans to place on the November 5 ballot a measure to compete with an already qualified proposition to reform Proposition 47. That measure, passed by voters on November 4, 2014, is a legacy item for Kamala Harris, who could be on the ballot for president this November 5.

As California’s attorney general in 2014, Harris named a proposition that changed thefts of property valued under $950 from felonies to misdemeanors. Harris called it the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” but failed to explain how legalizing crime made schools and neighborhoods safer. She has claimed she took no position on the act, but the ballot language has exposed that falsehood.

Proposition 47 launched a crime wave across the state, with 31,322 vehicle break-ins in San Francisco alone in 2017, a 24-percent increase from the previous year. The measure empowered criminals to break into vehicles in broad daylight with bystanders present. The arrest rate in San Francisco, where Harris previously served as district attorney, was less than two percent, and under Proposition 47 criminals could expect at the most a citation.

The consequences of the pro-crime measure were obvious to all but the willfully blind, but the attorney general kept on the quiet side. That emboldened the terrorists embedded in the Golden State.

On December 2, 2015 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Ngyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. The dead and wounded included blacks, Hispanics, Asians and immigrants, but Harris failed to call the mass murder a hate crime or even gun violence.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/09/they-lied-to-you/

Lying is certainly nothing new in politics. It is said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but politics is assuredly the dirtiest—filthier even than garbageman, mortician or, well, the world’s oldest profession itself.

Former President Bill Clinton (while we’re on the topic of sexual promiscuity) perjured himself, leading to his impeachment. Former President Barack Obama, in what PolitiFact called its 2013 “Lie of the Year,” promised that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” And on and on, it goes.

The corporate media, whose 21st-century raison d’être is propping up the Regime Party (Democrats) and punishing the Deplorable Party (Republicans), often joins the fray. The Russia-collusion delusion disinformation operation was laundered by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to seedy “intelligence” firm Fusion GPS and law firm Perkins Coie LLP. For years, the corporate media dutifully pushed the false narrative. Indeed, it is unclear to this day whether MSNBC has ever read the Mueller report.

But after last Thursday’s CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, in which President Joe Biden delivered a catastrophic performance for the ages, there is only one conclusion: The yearslong effort by Biden administration flunkies, Democratic Party poohbahs and pro-Regime media stenographers to forcefully deny Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline will go down as the single greatest lie in American history.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pennsylvania-state-capitol-evacuated-after-bomb-threat-in-the-name-of-palestine/

The Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg was evacuated Saturday after every member of the state’s legislature received an email threatening anti-Israel bombings in the complex.

“In the name of Palestine, I have hidden highly lethal lead azide devices in and around Pennsylvania State Capitol as well as the Pennsylvania Judicial Center,” the suspect, going by the alias of “glorytoourmartyrs,” wrote. “I plan on triggering one device every few hours until Joe Biden goes on national television and publicly denounces the illegitimate state of Israel. Keep in mind I am inside one of the 2 buildings armed w/ a knife, and plan on remaining here to my dying breath!”

According to a statement from the Pennsylvania Department of General Services, law enforcement immediately evacuated the state capitol and conducted a sweep of the complex. They did not detect any explosives or the presence of the individual who sent the email, which had as its subject line “My manifesto.”

“Following a comprehensive search, Capitol Police, federal, state, and local authorities determined there was no credible threat and the buildings were cleared to reopen,” the department announced.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/09/media-are-now-gaslighting-us-about-bidens-accomplishments/

Joe Biden is the worst president in American history and a man whose lifetime of accomplishments wouldn’t fill up a Post-it note.

esterday, we pointed out how the press and Democratic Party politicians and operatives have started calling President Joe Biden a “good man,” despite all evidence to the contrary. Now the media are trying to convince the public that Biden has been a great president who racked up big accomplishments, which is another insult to our intelligence.

“Objectively speaking, President Joe Biden has presided over some significant, even historic, accomplishments,” is how the Atlantic put it.

The Atlantic writer could name only three. Massive spending programs (all with borrowed money), mandating COVID vaccines (that were developed in record time thanks to Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed), and “the lowest unemployment rate in over 50 years” – a rate that has been steadily increasing all year.

This is the short list Biden sycophants usually trot out. But it’s the list of Biden’s failures that is truly impressive. Here’s just a sampling:

Inflation. Prices have climbed 20% in the three-and-a-half years Biden has been in office. That compares with 8% during Trump’s entire term, and just 15% during Barack Obama’s eight. The massive increase in prices under Biden was exactly what many economists predicted would happen when he and his fellow Democrats poured trillions of borrowed dollars onto a fast-growing economy.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/06/the-narcissism-of-jill-biden/

Surely one of the most ill-timed articles in all of journalistic history was published earlier this week. Vogue has produced a fawning piece about US first lady Dr Jill Biden (not a medical doctor), just days after her husband’s historic, doddering meltdown at the presidential debate against Donald Trump.

The opening paragraph of the Vogue article provides a spectacular description of the first family currently under fire, unwittingly showing them as completely out of touch with the mood of a very tense nation. The journalist writes breathlessly of the experience of being driven around in a presidential motorcade:

‘Rules don’t apply: on a cool spring day, driving down suburban Minneapolis side streets, we run red lights and whip round curves so fast I can barely take in the commonplace American view. Tract housing, big box stores, churches, office parks, semi-industrial no-man’s-land. Finally, we arrive at our destination, Nine Mile Brewing, in Bloomington, Minnesota. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go”, commands someone – a Secret Service agent, maybe – as the motorcade pulls into a loading dock. Politics, I will come to discover in the next few days, involves a lot of backstage spaces: service entrances, freight elevators, places where Very Important People can slip in and out of events unnoticed.’

At a time when Joe Biden’s estrangement from the nation he nominally leads has rarely been as hotly discussed, Vogue treats us to a Biden-eyed view of the ‘commonplace American’, living in his ‘no-man’s-land’. It then contrasts that with the life of ‘Very Important People’ like Dr Jill, who can ‘slip in and out of events unnoticed’, because the ‘rules don’t apply’ to them.

When the journalist first sets eyes on Jill, it’s a semi-religious experience:

‘An entourage of 30 or so are noisily hustling to follow a trim, blonde woman in a pristine white suit as she strides nonchalantly past clanging, gurgling brewing vats, aiming for a back office. This is my first glimpse of first lady Dr Jill Biden: exiting the sealed chamber of power into the middle of America, a vision of calm amid utter cacophony.’

This must be one of the best – and no doubt unwitting – descriptions of the upper echelons of American politics right now. It captures a ruling elite sealed off from the people, kept in pristine condition and chauffeured to and from pantomime appearances among ordinary American citizens – in this case, working at a brewers.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/08/bidengate-and-the-doom-loop/

The entire 2019-20 Biden candidacy and subsequent presidency were predicated on a rotten Faustian bargain. A hale Joe Biden would feign his aw-shucks, Joe from Scranton schtick. And an ossified working-class Joe’s camouflage would get the hard left elected—especially thanks to the changes in balloting laws that often saw only 30 percent of the electorate voting on Election Day in key states.

In exchange, the two narcissistic Bidens would bask in the power and attention of the presidency. From the start, Jill and the media would orchestrate deep cover for Joe’s escalating dementia as well as the true intentions of the now-in-power radical Democratic Party with its neo-socialist agenda. The former Obama acolytes would get their long-dreamed-of third presidential term. And this time they would enact a truly radical agenda while their string puppet mumbled to everyone that he was just old, familiar Joe working for the middle class.

The problem, inter alia, with the ruse was that it was based on a complete lie to the American people. Joe Biden was nowhere near cognitively competent. He could not campaign “normally” in 2020. And it would be impossible for his dementia to go undetected even in the ceremonial duties of the presidency for four, perhaps even eight, more years.

And there were plenty of other problems that transcended even Biden’s mental confusion.

First, the new Obama agenda—hyperinflation, open borders, woke crime theories, destroying deterrence abroad, green extremist mandates—was further to the left of the American people than in 2016.

And worse, it was nihilist and destructive. By the August 2021 Kabul withdrawal humiliation, Biden would never again win 50 percent approval from an increasingly exasperated public who felt they had been had by the mannequin Scranton Joe and his false 2020 calls for “unity” and “healing America.”

Second, Joe Biden, senator, vice president, quid-pro-quo sudden multimillionaire, was never a “nice guy.”

His (brief) 1984, 1988, and 2020 presidential runs were characterized by assorted gaffes, plagiarism, and racism (the first “clean” and “articulate” black presidential candidate, “junkie,” “you ain’t’ black,” and the corn-pop sagas).

He always displayed a short-fuse, mean streak (cf. his 1988 angry and falsified defense of his law school and stump speech plagiarism) and bullying (his 2020 slurs of “fat,” “lying dog-faced pony soldier,” etc.).