RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/fire-marine-corps-commandant-david-berger-daniel-greenfield/

11 Marines came home in boxes after the bombing at Kabul airport carried out by an Islamic terrorist freed from a prison near Bagram Air Base that had been abandoned by Biden. Other Marines were seriously wounded and hospitalized for months after the attack.

All across America there are recruiting billboards for the Marine Corps with the message, “For Marines There Are Only Battles Won”. But in the runup to the disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, the only things the Marine Corps really cared about were wokeness and race.

In April, Biden announced that he would be pulling all American forces out of Afghanistan. That same month the Taliban launched their offensive that would end with a takeover of the country.

When General David H. Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps, testified before the House Subcommittee on Defense at the end of April, he did not refer to Afghanistan. Even while a skeleton force of hundreds of Marines remained in Kabul, Berger made no mention of them.

Instead, Berger spoke about racism.

Bizarrely enough, Berger began his presentation, not with the threats to the United States that the Marine Corps existed to fight, but by declaring that, “our nation has engaged in a long overdue conversation on race and social justice sparked by several visible incidents of institutional racism”. By that, Berger meant that Black Lives Matter mobs had torched a number of cities and their leftist allies had purged everyone who disagreed from every institution.

Berger assured House Democrats that he was happy to lead the purge of dissenting Marines.

“We have and will continue to actively work to identify recruits and Marines who hold extremist views and we look forward to participating in the Secretary of Defense’s new Countering Extremism Working Group to develop additional methods of keeping extremists from within our ranks,” Berger vowed, declaring war on fellow Marines instead of on America’s enemies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/when_is_an_insurrection_not_an_insurrection.html

During the Kavanaugh hearings, hundreds of hysterical leftist activists stormed the Capitol and even managed to break into the Senate chamber. They were arrested and that was the end of it. On January 6, crowds of pro-Trump people, along with undoubted provocateurs and, almost certainly, FBI agents, entered the Capitol. Once in, they wandered around reverently and left—except for Ashli Babbitt, whom a Capitol Police Officer killed in cold blood. January 6 was called an “insurrection,” and Biden’s DOJ is using it as an excuse to hold political prisoners and terrorize into silence those who oppose Trump. And no, it’s not just a new, stricter standard, as Thursday’s “climate justice” riot showed.

Admittedly, the climate fanatics didn’t head for the Capitol. Instead, they besieged the Department of the Interior. Dozens of people managed to enter the building and, as you can see, a “riot”-ous time was had by all, including cops who used tasers to fend off the mob:

And that’s pretty much the beginning and the end of it.

When I check the New York Times’s home page in the wee hours of Friday, there’s no mention of the violent attack against a government agency, although there is a little headline (no link because the Times doesn’t deserve it) that the January 6 panel wants to press criminal charges against Steve Bannon. I don’t see anything about the climate protest on CNN’s home page either, although it has the usual hysteria about a “climate crisis.” I’m willing to bet the same will be true no matter which drive-by media outlet I check.

A healthy, free society cannot exist when there are two legal standards, one for the “in” crowd and one for the alleged “insurrection” crowd. Such blatant double standards mean that we are becoming a country without a rule of law. Instead, as is the case with any tinpot tyranny, the law exists solely to police people who oppose the ruling class.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/bill_ayers_a_familiar_face_in_the_birth_of_critical_race_theory.html

After Attorney General Merrick Garland sicced the FBI on unruly parents protesting Critical Race Theory (CRT) at school board meetings, it came to light that Garland had a dog in the fight.

That dog is son-in-law Xan Tanner, co-founder of Panorama Education, a leading distributor of CRT materials.  Among the materials Panorama has recommended for educators is an essay by terrorist emeritus and Obama pal Bill Ayers.

Titled “I Shall Create! Teaching Toward Freedom,” Ayers’s essay is the first in a 2019 collection by left-wing activist Lisa Delpit. If nothing else, Ayers has been consistent.  He has been pumping out frenetic anti-white cant long before it was cool, let alone mandatory.

Writes Ayers in this recent essay, “We must face reality and courageously confront history, tell the truth, and then destroy the entire edifice of white supremacy: metaphorically speaking it means burning down the plantation.”  The problem now is that Ayers is no longer an outlier.  The same FBI that hounded him and his fellow bombers is now hounding parents who protest his subversive nonsense.

What Ayers thinks would matter less were it not for his outsized influence on the educational philosophy of former president Barack Obama.  Were Obama merely a former president, his thinking would not matter much, either.  But Obama may be more than that.  Even Tucker Carlson has openly speculated that Obama is the guy running the show at the White House.  What seems clear is that Joe Biden is not.  

Equally clear is the mind meld between Ayers and Obama on educational issues.  In Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father, the thoughts on educational reform are channeled through the soulful voices of two older African-Americans.  One goes by the name “Asante Moran,” likely an homage to the Afrocentric educator Molefi Kete Asante, whom Ayers knew.  In Dreams, Moran lectures Obama and his pal “Johnnie” on the nature of public education:

“The first thing you have to realize,” he said, looking at Johnnie and me in turn, “is that the public school system is not about educating black children.  Never has been.  Inner-city schools are about social control.  Period.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/14/will-worker-resistance-to-bidens-vaccine-mandates-tank-the-economy/

President Joe Biden’s command that private businesses require their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is a shocking abuse of presidential power. Just as bad, by discouraging workers from staying on the job, it might tank the economy, which is already reeling from COVID-related shortages and soaring inflation.

On Sept. 9, Biden announced that businesses with 100 or more employees would have to require them to be vaccinated or take weekly COVID tests to prove they don’t have the Wuhan bug. This edict will affect as many as 100 million American workers.

One big problem: Cities, states and counties have in the past had authority to mandate things such as vaccines, not the federal government. Biden is literally creating a new authority for the presidency out of thin air, the kind of thing that authoritarian dictators do.

What’s more, Biden’s “order” is nothing of the sort. He announced it in early September, but has never released written rules for the government to enforce. So as of today, there is no “rule” or “order” to follow. Just a statement to the media.

The problem is, businesses, local and state government agencies, health providers, hospitals and others are forging ahead with their own plans to force workers to take one of the vaccines. And they’re using Biden’s phony “order” for cover.

The city of Boston, for instance, just suspended 812 workers for non-compliance. Boeing says it will require its workers to get vaccinated, or be suspended.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/576797-us-rejoins-un-human-rights-council-reversing-trump-exit

“The Human Rights Council is often lambasted for the election of members who hold the worst records for human rights violations and for a disproportionate focus on condemning Israel for alleged human rights abuses compared to other countries. ”

The U.S. on Thursday was elected to serve on the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning next year, rejoining the highly scrutinized international committee after leaving it in 2018 under then-President Trump.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the move, saying the council plays a “meaningful role” in protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, but suffers from “serious flaws,” including disproportionate focus on condemning Israel. 

“Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded, including that each person is endowed with human rights and that states are obliged to protect those rights,” Blinken said in a statement.

The secretary had announced in February that the U.S. would return to the council as an observer, part of President Biden’s push to reengage on the global stage in general and among international forums, in particular.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2018, part of a series of withdrawals from international bodies. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Niki Haley criticized the council as exercising a “chronic bias against Israel” and a “hypocritical” body that “makes a mockery of human rights.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/americas-current-malaise-biden/

The word malaise, a general feeling of uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify, is creeping into discussions. It’s a politically loaded word, following its use by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to describe the country he could not figure out to how lead.

Carter’s specific use of the term focused on the energy crisis, when OPEC monkeyed with America’s oil supply. But Carter saw that something much deeper was wrong. There wasn’t just an oil shortage to manage, but a recession of hope, a crisis of confidence that someone would have to lead America out of. He perceived that we were tired, worn down, unable to come together in common purpose and fix something.

It would be interesting to hear what Carter thinks about 2021, when things once again don’t work well. Flights don’t fly. Inflation has returned. Gas is expensive. Supply chain problems mean Americans for the first time since World War Two are rationing and getting used to hearing ‘we don’t have any and aren’t sure when we will’. Unemployment plagues us as COVID tore the wool off of many Americans’ eyes about how little meaningless jobs for sub-living wages contributed to their piggy banks or their sense of self-worth. Nurses who were last year’s heroes for working unvaccinated are fired today for being unvaccinated.

There appears no end to COVID. The promised conclusion, the vaccine, proved as rich a lie as two weeks to flatten the curve. Even fully vaccinated people are prisoners to restrictions and mandates that often make no sense, or at the very least vary so much from state to state as to challenge their usefulness. There is little faith that the economic devastation caused by mismanaged restrictions will ever be addressed; the poor will just get poorer. There is a declining sense that COVID is a problem that can be managed as it has been in much of the world (see Europe, especially Scandinavia). The conclusion is that no one is really in charge.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/13/the-new-gender-religion-tricks-liberals-into-betraying-children/

Since sexual reproduction first appeared on planet Earth some 1.2 billion years ago, sex has been determined—not assigned—based on compatibility for reproduction. That 1.2-billion year streak will soon end at a school-board meeting near you. If you attend, bow in silence: you’ll be entering the temple of a new religion—albeit a temple with fluorescent lights and folding chairs, where establishment shamans hand down the new laws of nature with absolutely no consultation with nature. The calendar on the wall will display the year zero.

The new gospel requires school staff to say “she” even when they mean “he.” It lets boys play on girls’ sports teams and compete against other girls. It lets boys into girls’ locker rooms to change for swim class. Gender may be “reassigned.” Biological sex dissolves. Everything that once reflected sex is now said to reflect gender. “Transitioning” is this religion’s central sacrament.

How do gender priests transform the bread and wine of contradiction into undeniable truths? How do they claim to know that your children should be bound by their shocking new laws? Is it biology? Liberal ideals? Divine revelation?

No. Gender priests claim to find their new religion in the mysteries of language itself. In other words, word games. We should no sooner listen to a gender priest inspired by word games than to a medicine man inspired by astrology.

A sick establishment uses word games to force society to accept contradictions. That isn’t the theory of some Christian zealot or Reaganite culture warrior. It’s the theory of Herbert Marcuse, the late founder of the New Left. His 1964 classic One Dimensional Man inaugurated a critical theory still used by Marxists today—and gender religion would be far too much, even for a liberal like him. 

The new gender religion is, in fact, a triumph of what Marcuse most despised—a bad kind of thinking he ironically called “positive thought.” Positive thought leads to a kind of word gaming called “positive language.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/13/is-america-becoming-rome-versus-byzantium/

In A.D. 286 the Roman emperor Diocletian split in half the huge Roman Empire administratively—and peacefully—under the control of two emperors. 

A Western empire included much of modern-day Western Europe and northwest Africa. The Eastern half controlled Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia, and northeastern Africa. 

By 330 the Emperor Constantine institutionalized that split by moving the empire’s capital from Rome to his new imperial city of Constantinople, founded on the site of the old Greek polis of Byzantium. 

The two administrative halves of the once huge empire continued to drift apart. Soon there arose two increasingly different, though still kindred versions of a once unified Romanity. 

The Western empire eventually collapsed into chaos by the latter 5th century A.D..

Yet the Roman eastern half survived for nearly a thousand years. It was soon known as the Byzantine Empire, until overwhelmed by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 A.D..  

Historians still disagree over why the East endured while the West crumbled. And they cite the various roles of differing geography, border challenges, tribal enemies, and internal challenges. 

We moderns certainly have developed unfair stereotypes of a supposedly decadent late imperial Rome of Hollywood sensationalism that deserved its end. And we likewise mistakenly typecast a rigid, ultra-orthodox bureaucratic “Byzantine” alternative that supposedly grew more reactionary to survive in a rough neighborhood. 

Yet in both cases, separate geography multiplied the growing differences between a Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian, and older civilization in the east, versus a more or less polyglot and often fractious Christianity in the Latin West. 

Byzantium held firm against ancient neighboring Persian, Middle Eastern, and Egyptian rivals. But the West disintegrated into a tribal amalgam of its own former peoples.  

Unlike the West, the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies, was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism—the preservation of a common, holistic Greek language, religion, culture, and history.   

By A.D. 600, at a time when the West had long ago fragmented into tribes and proto-European kingdoms, the jewel at Constantinople was the nerve center of the most impressive civilization in the world, stretching from the Eastern Asia Minor to southern Italy. 

There is now much talk of a new American red state/blue state split—and even wild threats of another Civil War. Certainly, millions of Americans yearly self-select, disengage from their political opposites, and make moves based on diverging ideology, culture, politics, religiosity or lack of it, and differing views of the American past. 

More conservative traditionalists head for the interior between the coasts, where there is usually smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists. 

https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/gobbling-chinas-exports-us-sinks-into-dependency/

China’s exports rose 28% in September from the year-earlier level, more than the analyst consensus had forecast. More important is that China’s exports to the United States have risen by 31% since January 2018, when President Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of US imports from China. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the US is buying $635 billion of Chinese goods, equal to a staggering 27% of US manufacturing Gross Domestic Product.

During the same period, China’s exports to South Korea rose by 50%, to Taiwan by 60%, and to Germany by 61%, but China imports almost as much from these three countries.

Demand for Chinese goods after the pandemic disruption has strained China’s production capacity, contributing to a power shortage that is now forcing cutbacks in key industries, including computer chips.