RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/blue-morning-inherited-future-demographics

In The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002), John Judis and Ruy Texeira argued that college-educated professionals and nonwhites, along with a minimum number of working-class whites, could form the basis for Democratic hegemony in national politics. As Judis and Texeira point out in their new book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone? (2023), Democratic strategists and journalists adopted a distorted, dumbed-down version of their thesis in which the Democratic Party could do without working-class non-Hispanic white voters at all. Conversely, the modest decline of Hispanic and Black voter support for the Democrats in the last few elections has led some to suggest that a racial realignment is underway that might enable Republicans to emerge as the party of the “multiracial working class.”

A more plausible explanation, however, is that Joe Biden has always been an unpopular candidate made more unpopular by inflation and botched immigration and foreign policies—and that he is likely to win anyway. Most demographic trends still favor the Democrats and hurt the Republicans. Democratic constituencies continue to grow as shares of the American electorate, while core Republican electoral blocs are steadily declining.

Consider the interaction between voting and religious belief. According to 2024 polling data, Republicans win supermajorities among only two religious groups—white evangelical Protestants (85%) and Mormons (75%)—while eking out bare majorities with white nonevangelical Protestants (58%) and Catholics (52%). All of these Republican-leaning religious communities are dwindling. As a share of the American population, white evangelical Protestants have shrunk by roughly a third from 33% in 1999 to only 21% in 2021. In only 15 years, from 2007 to 2023, Mormons also declined by about a third as a share of the U.S. adult population, collapsing from 1.8% to 1.2%. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are no longer the majority even in Utah. Since 2007, the Republican-leaning white Catholic share has dropped by 8 percentage points.

If demographic trends favor Democratic hegemony, why not maximize immigration? Why not expand the welfare state to enable illegitimacy? Why not pass out affirmative action bribes to newly invented official nonwhite ‘races’ like MENA?

https://tomklingenstein.com/fauci-was-just-a-symptom/

Editor’s Note: Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci has emerged as a living symbol of federal abuses: lockdowns, mask mandates, and myriad other arbitrary restrictions that unduly burdened the lives of ordinary citizens. Yet there is nothing exceptional about the former NIAID head; he is merely one of countless bureaucrats in Washington who feel entitled to rule their countrymen by the mandate of expertise. Jeffrey H. Anderson reviews RFK Jr.’s recent book on America’s most controversial doctor and concludes that Fauci is not just a bad scientist, but an embodiment of the grave threat posed by a new regime to our Constitution and our way of life.

The mainstream press corps prefers to deal with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by pretending that he doesn’t exist. This is true both for his presidential campaign—which is thought to pose too much of a threat to President Biden to risk acknowledging it—and for his popular book, The Real Anthony Fauci.

Relegated to Skyhorse Publishing, which Wall Street Journal film critic Kyle Smith describes as “something of a refuge for the cancelled,” Kennedy’s book nevertheless cracked the top 15 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list for 15 consecutive weeks—topping out at #7. Yet apparently it did not merit space in the Times for a review. Wikipedia quickly dismisses The Real Anthony Fauci as a “controversial” book by a “conspiracy theorist” who unjustifiably “attacks” Fauci and “offers disinformation.” 

In truth, however, Kennedy’s book is a valuable and generally well-researched indictment of the public health establishment, and more broadly of anti-republican rule by “experts.” While the book’s claims should not be taken as gospel in the way that the credulous press corps hangs on Fauci’s every muddled word, Kennedy shows impressive willingness to stand strong against the current, and his informative and rather countercultural book is very much worth a read. He makes a compelling case that—from AIDS to Covid—Fauci and friends have been pursuing their own agenda at the expense of the American people.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/21/cheap-fakes-bidens-defenders-are-getting-desperate/

Do you think Joe Biden might be a bit… doddery? Are you worried about the leader of the free world appearing to fade out during public events, mix up the names of politicians and accidentally say explosive things – only for them to be contradicted by his carers (sorry, staffers). Then I regret to inform you that you’ve been fooled – you poor, low-info soul – by right-wing ‘cheap fakes’.

This is the new coinage the White House is using to dismiss allegedly selectively edited videos of Joe Biden, 81, already the oldest US president in history, apparently showing his age at a series of public events. Over recent weeks, a string of clips have gone viral of Biden appearing to ‘freeze’. There was Biden at a Juneteenth celebration, looking like a cardboard cut-out of himself as people bopped beside him. There was Biden at the G7 summit in Italy, wandering in the wrong direction during a world-leader photo-op. Then there was Biden onstage at a Hollywood fundraiser, being gently led off stage by Barack Obama.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre slammed the clips earlier this week as partisan disinformation. ‘They are cheap fakes’, she said, ‘and they are done in bad faith’. Her claim, and that of the ‘fact-checkers’, is that conservative tweeters and journalists made these incidents look much worse than they actually were by editing or cropping out key context. ‘The right-wing critics of the president have a credibility problem because… the fact-checkers have repeatedly caught them pushing misinformation, disinformation’, Jean-Pierre said. She even used the phrase ‘deepfakes’ at one point, thus falsely suggesting the clips might have been outright digital fabrications. (With more than a little irony, Jean-Pierre later had to clarify her misleading comments.) The left-leaning media have also leapt to Biden’s defence, with CBS News running a stern segment on the ‘cheap fakes’ and liberal sites amplifying the White House’s rebuttals.

On social media, liberal and conservative accounts have naturally been poring over these videos like they are mini Zapruder films, arguing the toss and accusing one another of misrepresenting Biden’s behaviour. That this is what political debate has been reduced to is frankly a bit depressing. For what it’s worth, the viral G7 clip definitely did misleadingly crop out a parachutist, who Biden was walking towards to give him a thumbs up, thus making it look like he was just aimlessly wandering off. But at the risk of being labelled a Trumpist wingnut, I dare say Biden doesn’t look exactly sprightly in any of these videos, whatever way they are spliced. Sure, maybe he was just taking in the applause onstage in Hollywood, as his defenders have suggested, but he was then led off stage by his old boss. Okay, he may not have fancied dancing on Juneteenth, which is his aides’ explanation for that bit of ‘freezing’, but he did go on to slur his words during his speech.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20723/california-legalized-drugs-cartels

Six years after California legalized marijuana, the bodies keep piling up. Earlier this year, six men were murdered in the Mojave Desert. Four of the men had been burned after being shot with rifles. In 2020, seven people were killed at an illegal pot operation in Riverside County.

Violence like this was supposed to disappear after legalization. Legalization advocates argued that making the drug trade legal would end the grip of the cartels. Instead, the legal market has failed, and the cartels are taking over sizable parts of California and the rest of the country.

California’s legal drug revenues have fallen consistently, as have those in other legal drug states including Colorado, whose model helped sell the idea that drug money would fix everything.

Despite falling revenues, Colorado legislators brag about $282 million in drug revenue. That number may sound high, but it’s a drop in the bucket considering the money that the state and cities like Denver are spending on homelessness, drug overdoses and law enforcement.

While the legal drug business is also collapsing in California, the state is spending a fortune fighting marijuana even as it tries to tax it. Gov. Gavin Newsom paradoxically promised to close the budget deficit with $100 million in drug revenue, meant to be used to fund law enforcement and fight substance abuse. The state seized over $300 million in illegal pot this year and uses satellite imagery and heavily-armed raids to fight untaxed marijuana.

But despite all those efforts, illegal marijuana has won and legal marijuana has lost.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/bragg-drops-trespassing-charges-against-nearly-all-columbia-protesters

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped charges on Thursday against most of the Columbia University protesters who were arrested for trespassing in Hamilton Hall in April.

Nearly 50 people were charged with criminal trespassing after they staged a multi-day protest on the Manhattan campus of the Ivy League school. But 31 of those cases were dismissed on Thursday due to a lack of evidence, according to NBC News. Prosecutors said another 14 of the 46 cases will be dismissed if the defendants do not have any other arrests in the next six months.

The court said the person who will remain charged is James Carlson, who has two other separate cases opened against him. One of those charges is flag burning, and he is not associated with Columbia University.

Hundreds of protesters initially engaged in the protests, which was centered on the U.S. response to the war in Israel. But the 46 who were charged had illegally occupied Hamilton Hall towards the end of the protest, despite warnings that they were trespassing. Of the 46 charged, at least 14 were undergraduate students at Columbia, nine were graduate students, and two were employees. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/21/bidens-fiscal-crisis-is-far-worse-than-we-thought/

Nothing should shock us anymore, but the latest Congressional Budget Office report did. Released this week, the report shows that the nation is in vastly worse financial shape than anyone thought just a few months ago. And the report makes clear who is to blame.

The CBO’s latest “Budget and Economic Outlook” projects that the federal deficit this year will top $1.9 trillion. That’s $408 billion higher – a 27% increase – than what the CBO thought it would be just four months ago.

This will make the 2024 deficit the biggest ever recorded in American history – not counting the two years of panic-induced COVID-19 spending sprees – and will mark the third consecutive increase in deficits under Biden. (See the chart below.)

It’s also highly unusual for the CBO to make such a huge correction to its forecast.

The nonpartisan office routinely produces a budget and economic forecast at the start of the year, and then an update mid-year. Normally, these don’t vary much. In Trump’s first three years, for example, the average variance between the first forecast and the final deficit was just $73 billion.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/20/how-californias-paradise-become-our-purgatory/

California has become a test case of the suicide of the West. Never before has such a state, so rich in natural resources and endowed with such a bountiful human inheritance, self-destructed so rapidly.

How and why did California so utterly consume its unmatched natural and ancestral inheritance and end up as a warning to Western civilization of what might be in store for anyone who followed its nihilism?

The symptoms of the state’s suicide are indisputable.

Governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a recent $98 billion budget surplus—gifted from multibillion-dollar federal COVID-19 subsidies, the highest income and gas taxes in the nation, and among the country’s steepest sales and property taxes.

Yet in a year, he turned it into a growing $45 billion budget deficit.

At a time of an over-regulated, overtaxed, and sputtering economy, Newsom spent lavishly on new entitlements, illegal immigrants, and untried and inefficient green projects.

Newsom was endowed with two of the wettest years in recent California history. Yet he and radical environmentalists squandered the water bounty—as snowmelts and runoff long designated for agricultural irrigation were drained from aqueducts and reservoirs to flow out to sea.

Newsom transferred millions of dollars designated by a voter referendum to build dams and aqueducts for water storage and instead blew up four historic dams on the Klamath River. For decades, these now-destroyed scenic lakes provided clean, green hydroelectric power, irrigation storage, flood control, and recreation.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/what-does-the-student-intifada-want

With few exceptions, college and university presidents were slow and ineffective in responding to the protests and encampments on their campuses this spring. Their passivity calls to mind the character Gottlieb Biedermann in Max Frisch’s play The Fire Raisers, who, hearing about a series of local arsons, refuses to believe that the men who manipulated their way into occupying his attic could be the perpetrators. Deceived by feelings of guilt, Biedermann is unwilling to throw the men out or believe that they are dangerous—even when they tell him exactly what they are doing. Remaining in denial to the end, he hands them the very matches they use to incinerate his home.

Too often, when faced with the fervent demands and outlandish behavior of student demonstrators, university officials allowed them to violate institutional policies, disrupt academic life, and harass Jews. When presidents finally acted, many negotiated with the protesters and capitulated to their demands. Even those who rightly called the police often failed to impose serious consequences on the disrupters. In the end, few protesters face meaningful sanctions for their extended violations of campus policies and, in many cases, the law.

Yet, the protesters and their allies complained about “authoritarian” crackdowns, betrayals of democratic values, and free-speech violations as their camps got cleared away. Their complaints can be attributed partly to ignorance; a student speaker at Harvard University’s commencement, for example, proclaimed to a cheering crowd that the university had violated students’ “right to civil disobedience,” a right she genuinely seemed to believe that they had. One poll showed that more than half of those who said they supported chanting “From the river to the sea” were unable to name the river and the sea to which the chant referred. When a young woman at New York University was asked what she wanted the university to do, she turned the question to her friend: “Why are we protesting?”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/19/conformity-is-the-enemy-of-free-speech/

The Gaza solidarity encampments that spread across US universities earlier this year showed that free speech is under threat from all sides. Intolerant ‘pro-Palestine’ students wanted to exclude Zionists, Jewish students and anyone not fully committed to their cause from campus. They were happy to disrupt university life and to prevent classes and lectures from taking place. At the same time, some on the pro-Israel side called for these protests to be forcibly shut down, for demonstrators to be arrested and for Israelophobic speech to be censored or punished. Those who are consistent in their support for free speech are becoming rarer by the day.

Greg Lukianoff – president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) – returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show last week to discuss the need for a radical revival of free speech. What follows is an edited extract from the conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Where does the left-right divide currently fall on the question of free speech?

Greg Lukianoff: One of the reasons I’m worried about the future of freedom of speech, in the United States and beyond, is that there used to be a contingent of the left that unapologetically defended free expression. These people were always in tension with those totalitarians who believed that, if society was governed by enlightened people like them, censorship would be justified. For the most part, I grew up at a time when freedom of speech was actually considered a left-wing value. But with totalitarian thinking winning on the left and the rise of the populist right, there’s no natural constituency for free speech today other than the centre.