Joe Biden and the Uses of Nihilism America is battling an epidemic far worse than the Omicron plague.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/30/joe-biden-and-the-uses-of-nihilism/

Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed. 

Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglas, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.

Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and are worth $100 million.

Of course, that is what the elites celebrate, as people struggle to buy food, gas, and cars. The police are under attack and being killed on the street. The public is bewildered about criminals not being punished, workers paid to stay home, and biological men commandeering women’s sports. 

Abnormal is normal; normal is despised and discarded.

Friends and associates of all races and ethnicities are increasingly suspicious of each other. They are fleeing to the ancient refuge of tribal solidarity. Red states are hated, although they function , and are sought out; blue states are praised, even as they fail and residents flee . Our “leaders” are doing their best to confirm the age-old invective of our enemies that e pluribus unum simply cannot work.

Americans keep being pounded with “Vaccination! Vaccination! Vaccination!”—but never with commensurate advice on therapies, affordable drugs, and pragmatic protocols to survive COVID-19, as it often breaks through to the already thrice vaccinated. 

Americans could tolerate the misinformation and the contradictions emanating from the CDC, the NIH, and NIAID. But only if the deceptions were issued with some humility and qualifiers, reminding us of our shared ignorance about the mysterious virus. Instead, pompous and insufferably sanctimonious bureaucrats sent out flurries of false knowledge, as if they were religious edicts, with implied medieval punishments for the apostates. Apologies never follow.

Biden’s Illegal Immigration Pandemic No vaccine or TSA photo ID required for illegal immigrants. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/bidens-illegal-immigration-pandemic-joseph-klein/

President Biden has repeatedly said that there is a COVID-19 pandemic of the unvaccinated. If Biden truly believes what he is saying, then why is his administration allowing so many illegal immigrants to enter and stay in the United States without at least checking for proof of vaccination, as required by U.S. immigration law? The answer is that Biden will say and do anything to placate his leftwing progressive base. He is turning the United States into a sanctuary country for many illegal immigrants.

The Biden administration is not only allowing unvaccinated illegal immigrants to remain in the country. These open border social justice warriors have also exempted many illegal immigrants from the Transportation Security Agency’s (TSA) government photo ID rules for commercial airline travel. American citizens and legal residents have to show TSA a government-issued photo ID such as a valid passport to board a commercial aircraft, but illegal immigrants get to skip this anti-terrorist security precaution.

It has been just recently reported that illegal immigrants can even use a ‘Warrant for Arrest of Alien’ or a ‘Warrant of Removal/Deportation’ as their form of identification. The only airplanes that illegal immigrants with these IDs should be able to board are the planes taking them back to their home countries.

France’s Macron Tries to Reclassify Muslim Terrorism as Mental Illness Denying Islamic terrorism is the real delusion. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/frances-macron-tries-reclassify-muslim-terrorism-daniel-greenfield/

There’s hardly a Muslim terrorist attack committed by a single perpetrator in Europe or America in the last five years that the authorities and the media haven’t tried to spin as mental illness.

Both Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, the Syrian Muslim mass killer who shot up a Boulder supermarket, and Faisal Akram, who took a Texas temple hostage to secure the release of ‘Lady Al Qaeda’, had their attacks blamed on mental illness.

But France continues to lead the world in whitewashing Muslim terrorism as mental illness.

When Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish kindergarten director, was murdered by her Muslim neighbor while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, the authorities gave her antisemitic killer a pass because his pot smoking had supposedly brought on a “psychotic” episode.

The Halimi murder had strong echoes of the previous killing of a Jewish DJ by a Muslim killer where the expert shrink had insisted that “it is not an anti-Semitic act but an act of delirium”

Biden’s ‘Anger’ Over High Insulin Prices Is Fake. Here’s Why

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/01/30/bidens-anger-over-high-insulin-prices-is-fake-heres-why-n1554354

On Friday, Joe Biden started yelling in anger during a speech in Pennsylvania while talking about the high price of insulin.

“Imagine being the parent making the minimum wage or twice the minimum wage and having a child with type one diabetes, knowing that if you can’t and have no insurance, knowing if you cannot get that money for the insulin, the child may die,” Biden said. “In addition to your child, it strips you of your dignity, dammit.”

But guess what? Biden isn’t furious. His rage is phony, clearly scripted, probably suggested by one of his handlers who thought that, if he appears more animated and invigorated, it will quell concerns that he cannot handle the presidency — which polls show is indeed a concern for most Americans.

Make no mistake about it: Joe Biden isn’t angry about the high cost of insulin. Why not? Because he is responsible for it.

On his first day in office, Biden froze a Trump drug policy that had been finalized in December 2020, and which would have significantly lowered prescription drug prices, including those of insulin and epinephrine. The freeze was part of a blanket policy of the new Biden administration to reverse and scrutinize anything that Trump had done.

Abbott beating O’Rourke with Hispanics By Silvio Canto, Jr.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/abbott_beating_orourke_with_hispanics.html

Around here, the talk is about Jerry Jones changing Cowboys’ coaches again and the Rangers blowing millions to upgrade the 2022 team. Once in a while, people do talk about the elections and Governor Abbott got more good news today. This is from The UT-Tyler poll and The Dallas Morning News:

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is running 11 percentage points ahead of Democrat Beto O’Rourke in this year’s race for Texas governor, according to a Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll released Sunday.

Buoyed by 2-to-1 support among whites and a growing number of voters who identify as Republican, Abbott leads O’Rourke in a hypothetical matchup, 47%-36%. He even holds a narrow lead over O’Rourke among Hispanics, 40%-39%.

The poll also said that the “generic ballot” for Congress favors the GOP 54%-44% and poor President Biden is viewed unfavorably by 57% of Texans.

Maybe we understand now why President Biden won’t be campaigning for a lot of Democrats down here. Beto already said no to having Mr. Biden helping him.

Feminist Hypocrisy on Display as Feminists Ignore Transgender Athletes By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/feminist_hypocrisy_on_display_as_feminists_ignore_transgender_athletes.html

The National Organization of Women is one of the leading “women’s rights” organizations with a stated goal, “Dedicated to its multi-issue and multi-strategy approach to women’s rights and is the largest organization of feminist grassroots activists in the United States.” What are those rights?

Their home page has a flashing banner of “reproductive rights” front and center, which can be assumed to mean abortion on demand, anytime from conception to birth and perhaps even beyond birth, a decision made solely by the mother, without any restriction by law, government, morality, or the aspirations of the soon to be destroyed little girl who might someday want to join the National Organization for Women.

NOW also supports racial justice, which includes men, the evil oppressors railed against by the more militant feminist organizations. Interestingly the public cases of supposed racial injustice mostly involve men, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others, some of whom ironically have a history of assaulting women. George Floyd, for example served, “Five years in prison in 2009 for aggravated assault stemming from a robbery in 2007 where he entered a woman’s home, pressed a gun into her stomach and searched the home for drugs and money.”

Yet he is a hero to the NOW gang who is defending and lionizing George Floyd, despite being an organization of women and Floyd a victimizer of women. While this seems ironic that NOW would support a brutish man who assaulted a woman, the transgender movement provides another look at hypocrisy on an even much larger scale when it comes to transgender athletes, specifically biologic males competing as females.

Times Square Rite Aid Closes after $200K in Shoplifting Losses By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/times-square-rite-aid-closes-after-200k-in-shoplifting-losses/

EXCERPTS

Now the neighborhood isn’t feeling so safe anymore due to the city’s new hands-off policy for criminals. In the ground floor of the building on Eighth stands a large, formerly busy Rite Aid where I used to get sandwiches and Snapples on the way to the theater or a movie. Now the place has been driven out of business, effective February 8, thanks to a wave of shoplifting (reportedly costing the store $200,000 in two months) that the city is uninterested in fighting off. Bail-reform laws, combined with the disastrous policies being enacted by Manhattan’s new D.A. Alvin Bragg, are making the city a playground for criminals again. In the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, the Rite Aid store was looted to the tune of $60,000, then boarded up for days. It takes up a huge space, and if it should stay boarded up for long, a 24-hour establishment that helped keep the neighborhood safe will be replaced by a long, scary, vacant dead zone that will surely attract derelicts.

All over the city, chain drugstores have taken to placing items that cost more than a few dollars behind locked plexiglass. Shopping for, say, a jumbo bottle of Tide is like going to a jewelry store. You need to summon a clerk if you want assistance. Then when you get to the counter, you remember that single-use plastic shopping bags are banned. Probably not since the Dinkins era has this city been so dispiriting, so enervating, so generally wretched and off-putting and surly.

Empty storefronts are scarring prime real-estate locations all over Manhattan as businesses grapple with the new realities of the 2020s. Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul continues to repel tourists and office workers by keeping in place a statewide indoor masking mandate. This city has been through a lot, and though new Mayor Eric Adams has taken it upon himself to be its biggest booster, it’s hard to see things returning to normal anytime soon.

Brown University’s Woke Professors Battle Diversity (of Viewpoint) By Jack Wolfsohn

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/brown-universitys-woke-professors-battle-diversity-of-viewpoint/

One of the best places on campus for genuine intellectual discourse is being targeted by those who prefer left-wing conformity.

A mid the leftist-infused classrooms of Brown University lies a small, unassuming white building that houses the Political Theory Project (PTP). As an interdisciplinary research center committed to free inquiry and the free exchange of ideas, the PTP has been a haven for conservative and libertarian students for the past 19 years. But it’s not merely a “safe space” for the Right; it has, rather, fostered genuine intellectual inquiry for anyone interested in it.

Now, however, the PTP is under a sadly familiar sort of attack from many of Brown’s left-leaning professors. These professors feel threatened by the PTP because the courses offered by the center, such as “Bleeding Heart Libertarianism,” “Capitalism: For and Against,” and “20th Century Political Economy” tend to offer a centrist or libertarian angle on issues that challenge the progressive orthodoxy on campus. Their criticisms of a bastion of free thought at Brown are misguided and should be rejected.

The Political Theory Project makes clear in its mission statement its commitment to viewpoint diversity and freedom of speech and expression. Thus, the PTP has sought to bring to campus through its Janus Forum Lecture Series ideologically diverse speakers to debate issues such as the extent of the threat of climate change, whether the U.S. should support Israel, and whether “rape culture” exists on campus. For years, the PTP has held free-flowing conversations at which participants sparred openly on contentious issues and debated controversial opinions. But rather than welcoming such exchanges, some students and professors have accumulated negative feelings toward the project that now spill over into open denunciation.

Let the Genocide Games Begin! By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/01/30/let-the-genocide-games-begin-n1554381

This Thursday, thousands of athletes from more than 100 nations will arrive in Beijing to participate in the Winter Olympiad, a made-for-TV spectacular.

In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the International Olympic Committee to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 games, the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history. NBC then agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension in 2014, to air the games through 2032.

Over the fortnight during which the games are played, the spectacle will be watched by more than a billion-and-a-half people at one time or another, including an unknown number of Uyghur Muslims. The significance of carrying on with the games at this point in the history of the Uyghurs is that China is seeking to destroy their culture, their way of life, and their religion in the name of conforming to the Communist ideology.

In December, an independent tribunal found the People’s Republic of China guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of committing crimes of torture, crimes against humanity, and genocide against the Uyghur people.

The U.S. State Department has also condemned the PRC, accusing them of “arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; arbitrary detention by the government, including the mass detention of more than one million Uyghurs and other members of predominantly Muslim minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps and an additional two million subjected to daytime-only ‘re-education’ training; … arbitrary interference with privacy; pervasive and intrusive technical surveillance and monitoring; serious restrictions on free expression, the press, and the internet, including physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members, and censorship and site blocking; … severe restrictions and suppression of religious freedom; substantial restrictions on freedom of movement; … forced sterilization and coerced abortions; forced labor and trafficking in persons.”

The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan Reveals the Religion of Liberals: Censorship Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-pressure-campaign-on-spotify

All factions, at certain points, succumb to the impulse to censor. But for the Democratic Party’s liberal adherents, silencing their adversaries has become their primary project.

American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard (by “liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by the dominant wing of the Democratic Party).

For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of “hate speech” to mean “views that make us uncomfortable,” and then demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not protect “hate speech.” Their political culture has long inculcated them to believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship.

Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful.