RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/24/harris-walz-and-a-peculiar-definition-of-freedom/

To hear the mainstream media tell the story, the just-finished Democratic National Convention was not just about “reintroducing” Kamala Harris to the American people, but about reintroducing the Democratic Party as well. While Americans might have been convinced by nefarious MAGAs and other nogoodniks that the Democrats want to control their lives and tell them what to think, what to drive, what to eat, and how to behave in countless other facets of their lives, the truth is that the Democrats are the party of “freedom.” They—and they alone—stand between the nation and the totalitarianism of the Right.

NBC News, for example, noted in response to Minnesota governor (and vice presidential nominee) Tim Walz’s convention speech that he “capped off the third day of his party’s convention, touting his vision of ‘freedom’ and excoriating the GOP.” The Washington Post, for its part, suggested that the entire theme of the convention was to modify “Democrats’ message from ‘democracy’ to ‘freedom.’” Harris, the paper wrote, “has shifted the focus, speaking far less about democracy and far more about freedom.” The independent journalist Matt Taibbi, himself, at least nominally a man of the left, lamented the Democrats’ “sinister rebrand of ‘Freedom’” and argued that “freedom” was “was right up there with ‘joy’ and ‘unity’ as key themes” of the convention, which he concluded “was not funny.”

The Democrats’ effort to reintroduce themselves as the true and rightful protectors of “freedom” is inarguably as complicated as it is cynical. And as Taibbi suggests a great deal of the logic underlying the Democrats’ pretense is derived from the differences between “negative rights” and “positive rights,” which have been at least a peripheral theme in American politics since Barack Obama’s rise to power more than a decade and a half ago.

Nevertheless, to understand what is going on here and why the Democrats think they can make the case that they are the party of freedom, it is important to recognize that none of this is technically a “rebrand.” None of this is, in any way, new. Indeed, it is foundational to the ideology of the left. For nearly three centuries now, that which we know today as leftism has portrayed itself in precisely the sense that the Democrats portrayed themselves this week: the true and exclusive guarantors of freedom.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/24/strategic-vagueness-is-the-democrats-new-switcheroo/

Obviously, the Democrats’ first “switcheroo” occurred when their party’s powerbrokers unceremoniously removed President Joe Biden as their presidential nominee with all the finesse of a posh D.C. restaurant owner prying a ravenous rat off their back-alley dumpster; and replaced him with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Now, the Democrat elite confronted an equally daunting task: transforming their anointed candidate into presidential timber in the eyes of the general public. Given the effort the Democrat establishment put into prepping the first “switcheroo,” making V.P. Harris palatable to Democrat voters was a foregone conclusion. Indeed, every percentage point the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, raced ahead of Mr. Biden in the rematch was another nail in the latter’s political grave.

It was the old political adage writ large: offer someone death (Mr. Biden) and they will accept torture (Ms. Harris). Propelled by the threat of Trump redux, Democrat voters not only refused to complain about being disregarded by their party’s power brokers for the third time in three presidential elections, they welcomed President Biden’s jettisoning and embraced the V.P. Harris selection.

In so doing, the Democrat establishment had succeeded in turning their party’s presidential primaries into non-binding referendums: a process whereby Democrat voters provide an advisory role that their ruling power brokers may or may not take into consideration when they determine who will be “our democracy’s” nominee and their running mate. Of course, the Democrat establishment’s ultimate aim of turning general election voters into a rubber stamp of their party’s handpicked candidate was yet to be a fait accompli. Thus, the crux: how to transform, by any means fair or foul, V.P. Harris from a less-than-winning radical hack into the glorious savior of our nation that only an American ingrate and/or insurrectionist would oppose?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/tweedle_kam_and_tweedle_tim.html

There is little to differentiate the kooks setting things on fire outside the Democrats’ convention from the kooks setting rhetorical fires inside

The more I see of Tim Walz, the more I realize he’s just a fatter, whiter version of Kamala.  They both laugh at inappropriate times.  They both say weird things.  They both yearn for a communist America.  They’re both on the wrong side of the IQ bell curve.  If we lived in a society that encouraged talented people to run for political office, Tweedle-Kam and Tweedle-Tim would not be known.  Because our political system excels at promoting mediocre minds attached to lost souls, the Democrat Party gives us a babbling baboon and a cackling hyena for veep and president.

I thought Tweedle-Kam had a monopoly on obnoxious laughing, but I was wrong.  Every time a camera pans over to Tweedle-Tim, his head is thrown back in a chortling fit.  Every subject seems so funny.  Food and fuel costs are a nightmare, Tim.  Ha-ha-ha!  Foreign nationals are killing Americans on neighborhood streets.  Tee-hee-hee!  You misrepresented your military rank and service record.  Hey now, that’s not funny!  You’re right, coward.  None of it is funny at all.

It’s increasingly clear that the Tweedle-twins laugh because they have nothing significant to say.  Or, rather, anything significant they might say, they can’t admit until after the election.  As Nancy Pelosi would tell us, you have to vote the Tweedle-twins into office before you can find out how they plan to screw over America.  Nobody wants to vote for open borders and mass amnesty for foreigners.  Nobody wants to vote for more spending and inflation.  Nobody wants to vote for social credit scores and expanded government regulation.  Because the Tweedle-twins can’t say what they want, they must laugh during all the awkward silence.  It’s just weird.

But Democrats are the party of weird.  For them, moms and dads are boring.  Families are bad.  White people are evil.  And individual liberty is repulsive.  They are the party of she-hes, xirs, poly-whatevers, and subjective truths.  They don’t have time to think about sound money or global peace because they’re too busy fighting linguistic battles against hetero-cis-normativity, unconscious bias, systemic racism, and the dreaded patriarchy.

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The Democratic convention in Chicago has been a huge success, I suppose. The party has rallied around Kamala Harris and “Coach Walz,” rebranded her as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, and connected the campaign with Barack Obama’s inspiring 2008 race for the White House.

On top of that, the anti-American, antisemitic flag-burners who promised to turn this city upside down haven’t materialized en masse. The hoped-for 1968 redux is more like a sad, echoing whimper. 

In other words: The vibes have been spectacular!

And yet.

It’s unclear what these people are peddling.

Certainly not Harris’s proposal to cap the cost of groceries. The only speaker at the convention who has bothered to talk that up has been Bernie Sanders. Everyone else drones on about Harris being a dog lover and a fighter and, most importantly, Momala.

While (rightly) pummeling the GOP–Donald Trump cult of personality, Democrats have mythologized Harris and turned her into an alternate-Harris who would have been unrecognizable to Harris herself just a few weeks ago: tough, caring, super-smart, results-oriented. Hillary Clinton 2.0.

But no one has ventured to say what this alternate-Harris would do in office. Or, more broadly, what her party wants to accomplish over the next four years. There is no program. 

To be fair, the Republican agenda is a mosh pit of confusions—a free-market, tariff-laden, stick-it-to-the-establishment, fuck-China, go-America mélange of half-baked, sort-of proposals.

But the idea behind that confusion is straightforward. It is America first. Americans first. And every bill, initiative, executive decision can be, should be, viewed through that lens. Whether that amounts to a coherent theory of government remains to be seen. (The Republicans seem to be trying to figure out in real time the how behind the what.) But there is a focal point.

No one says what the Democrats’ North Star is. They have wielded enormous power for most of the past two decades, and they insist they won’t “turn back,” but no one says where we’re going. Or what they want beyond the blandest of platitudes about “freedom” and “choice” and “identity.”