RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/eric-lander-ousting-shows-sensitivity-increasingly-trumps-expertise

The best way to understand a society, social anthropologists say, is to start by studying its most bizarre, irrational, and self-defeating practice. If you can figure that out, everything else in the culture begins to make more sense.

In that light, consider President Biden’s firing of his top science advisor, Eric Lander. Lander was engaged in launching a $7.5 billion research agency to apply novel genomic methods to the treatment and reversal of cancer. At a White House press conference on February 2, the president called the agency “a central effort of the Biden-Harris administration.” Its aim, he said, was “to cut the cancer death rate in half in the next 25 years” and with this and other steps “to end cancer as we know it.”

In Lander, the president had an unusually well-qualified executive. Though trained as a mathematician, not a biologist, Lander has built the Broad Institute in Cambridge into a leading research group that has pioneered advanced genomic techniques. He had the special knowledge and managerial competence required to execute Biden’s ambitious anti-cancer program. Yet on February 7, a mere five days after Biden called for halving cancer deaths, Lander was forced to resign over a second-order management issue: that he had treated some of his female staff harshly.

Given all that Lander might have accomplished toward defeating cancer, why would Biden fire him over something so trivial in comparison? The reason has to do with the increasingly vicious tribalization of American politics. When people start to think of themselves as embattled groups, any member of the opposing group is seen as a fair target for assassination. Lander, to the manifest detriment of cancer research, was a victim of tribal warfare prosecuted by radical feminists, a lobby that Biden lacked the courage to challenge.

https://spectatorworld.com/book-and-art/american-celebrity-culture-has-become-exhausting/

How was your Super Bowl party? I spent mine investing all my money in crypto and then blowing it on Peacock subscriptions.

For once it was the commercials that were the most memorable part of the game — not Matthew Stafford’s lightning arm, not even 50 Cent entering the halftime show upside-down like a bat. And that was because every ad was a broadside of celebrities. Not a fan of Bud Light Seltzer? Wait until it’s pitched to you by Guy Fieri and a race of Eloi-like doppelgangers (spoiler: you still won’t be a fan of Bud Light Seltzer). And how can I not order Uber Eats after watching Gwyneth Paltrow smell her own vagina candle while Trevor Noah eats deodorant?

I’m old enough to remember when movie stars starred in movies; now they’re hawking Doritos and cheap flights to Istanbul. Welcome to the most annoying feature of modern American life: everyone is a celebrity now. Well, not everyone. Maybe just half the country — 165 million out of 330 million sounds about right. Either way, the days when we quaintly referred to “celebrity culture” are past; it’s just “culture” now.

The United States has always had an appreciation for fame. George Washington was arguably our first real celebrity, the beloved hero of the Revolution, the man who could have been king if he’d wanted. Before him, Benjamin Franklin had achieved fame of a sort thanks to his epigrammatic Poor Richard’s Almanack, one of the most popular books in the American colonies. Afterward came Andrew Jackson, who rode into the White House on his reputation as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_false_claim_that_trump_was_in_wrongful_possession_of_confidential_documents.html

The National Archives, which is controlled by a hard leftist cadre, very excitedly announced that President Donald Trump took classified information with him when he left the White House. The problem—which the AP reluctantly concedes—is that, as President, he had the final say over what’s classified. That means that there’s no hypocrisy in his reaming Hillary Clinton for her conduct.

As a predicate, the National Archives management has turned that government office into a purely leftist entity determined to advance all leftist causes, including destroying Donald Trump. Recently, it was caught stating that the U.S. Constitution and all of America’s other founding documents contain “harmful content.” Why? Because they have “racist, sexist, misogynistic, and xenophobic opinions.”

Additionally, the National Archives management has concluded that the entire institution of the National Archives itself is structurally racist because it’s concerned with lauding the work of the White men who created our nation. You can read more about that insanity here.

Most recently, the leftist, impermissibly partisan National Archives management’s vendetta against Trump has management claiming that Trump was found to be illegally in possession of classified information:

Classified information was found in the 15 boxes of White House records that were stored at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the National Archives and Records Administration said Friday in a letter that confirmed the matter has been sent to the Justice Department.

The letter from the agency follows numerous reports around Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. The revelation could also interest federal investigators responsible for policing the handling of government secrets, though the Justice Department and FBI have not indicated they will pursue.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/schadenfreude_eileen_gu_learns_the_hard_way_about_what_comes_of_shilling_for_china.html

So things are not all bonbons and shark’s fin soup for Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old skiing sensation trotted forth as a propaganda gal at the 2022 Olympics by the red Chinese government, following her decision to ski for China instead of America.

Seems the Chinese themselves on their meager internet outlets are questioning why this San Francisco–born and bred golden girl is being shoved in front of them as a role model, given that she had so many more opportunities than they had as Chinese people still stuck in China.  And the whole thing is giving the Chicoms the perfect excuse for censoring their posts, if not rounding them up into jails.  Way to go, Eileen — hope you’re proud of yourself.

According to the Wall Street Journal, here’s how bad it is:

No sooner had Gu won her first medal, a surprise gold in the freestyle skiing big air event, than one viral online article posed a pointed question in its headline — “What does Eileen Gu’s success have to do with ordinary people?”  — that appeared to strike a chord with readers, and to have unnerved government censors.

The article, published on China’s ubiquitous WeChat messaging app by an education-focused blog widely followed by elite Chinese parents called Nuli Shehui — loosely translated as “Slave Society” — pointed out the lack of any concrete evidence to show that Gu had in fact renounced her U.S. citizenship, and attributed Gu’s success to her unique upbringing, which combined the freedom and well-rounded education offered by the U.S. with the rigors of China’s examination-oriented system.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/biden-misery-index-rise-americans-pessimistic-about-countrys-future

Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the current state and future of the country as the political phenomenon of misery takes hold, presenting problems for President Biden and Democrats ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

As the national mood becomes gloomier under the Biden administration, a useful indicator for measuring economic pain has resurfaced after years of dormancy: the so-called misery index.

Created by the late economist Arthur Okun, the misery index became widely known in the 1970s and early 1980s during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. It adds together two measures of economic pain — the unemployment rate and inflation for consumers — to give a sense of the economic distress felt by everyday Americans.

The index hit 11% in November and December and reached 11.5% last month — higher than any month in 2008 when the Great Recession began and just behind its highest levels in late 2009 and early 2010 when unemployment was around 10%. The current level is the highest in a decade, not including the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Economists don’t consider the misery index a sophisticated metric but say it’s a useful tool.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/18/the-real-cost-of-woke-politics/

To many, the poison that is identity politics can mainly be seen in the growing rifts and bitter divisions of the two main political parties. But as real as the Democrat/Republican split is, so-called Woke Politics has a far more insidious and far-reaching impact: It’s destroying Americans’ faith in the long-standing bedrock institutions of our republic.

It’s clear that Americans of different political affiliations no longer see eye to eye. Since at least the 19th century, the two major parties have never been farther apart in both governing philosophy and in policies.

For that, we can blame Critical Theory, the neo-Marxist philosophy that brought us “woke” politics based on racial and religious identity and that now governs the Democratic Party. It has led to widespread dissatisfaction, confusion, anger, and alienation among Americans.

But the damage, as we noted above, isn’t only to our now-hostile politics: It’s metastasized to other parts of American life and culture as well, as recent surveys plainly show.

Start with a recent survey of 2,022 Americans by RealClear Opinion Research. It compares Americans’ values and attitudes on a host of different topics.

And what it found was, in a word, troubling.