RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/14/class-the-word-we-dare-not-speak/

How often during the last year of woke, have middle- and lower-class Americans listened to multimillionaires of all races and genders lecture them on their various pathologies and oppressions? 

Million-dollar-a year university presidents virtue signal on the cheap their own sort of “unearned white privilege.” 

Multimillionaire Meghan Markle and the Obamas, from their plush estates, indict Americans for their biases. 

Former Black Lives Matter founder and cultural Marxist Patrisse Khan-Cullors Brignac decries the oppressive victimization she and others have suffered—from one of her four newly acquired homes. 

Do we need another performance-art sermon on America’s innate unfairness from a Hollywood billionaire such as Beyoncé, Jay-Z, or Oprah Winfrey—or a multimillion-dollar-per year Delta Airlines or Coca-Cola CEO? 

During the 1980s cultural war, the Left’s mantra was “race, class, and gender.” Occasionally we still hear of that trifecta, but the class part has now increasingly dropped out. 

The neglect of class is ironic given that dozens of recent studies conclude class differences are widening as never before. 

Middle-class incomes among all races have stagnated and family net worth has declined. Far greater percentages of rising incomes go to the already rich. Student debt, mostly a phenomenon of the middle and lower classes, has hit $1.7 trillion dollars. 

States like California have bifurcated into Medieval-style societies. The state’s progressive coastal elite can boast of some of the highest incomes in the nation. But in the more conservative north and central interior nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line, explaining why one of every three American welfare recipients lives in California. 

California’s heating and cooling, gasoline, and housing—the stuff of life—are the highest in the continental United States. Most of these spiraling costs are attributable to polices embraced by an upper-class elite—in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and marquee universities—whose incomes shield them from the deleterious consequences of their utopian bromides. The poor and middle class have no such insulation. 

So why are we not talking about class? 

First, we are watching historic changes in political alignment. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/11/trump-winds-and-biden-whirlwinds/

Victimizers quickly becoming victims is a recurrent theme of Thucydides’ history. In his commentary on the so-called stasis at Corcyra, he offers his most explicit warning about the long-term dangers of destroying legal institutions, customs, and traditions that serve the common good for short-term gain. 

The historian notes that in the inevitable yin and yang of politics, the destroyers inevitably will seek, but do so in vain, refuge in what they have destroyed. Between 2017 and 2021 the Left has done exactly that. 

What was common to the media’s deification of the criminally minded Michael Avenatti, and the promotion of a series of abject hoaxes? Do we remember the Steele “dossier,” the supposed authority of Fusion-GPS, the Schiff “report,” and the entire Russian “collusion” yarn? 

Do we recall how the Left invented the Charlottesville construct out of a supposedly racist and unqualified endorsement by the president of the Klan and neo-Nazis? Who has forgotten the charge of “racism” for merely connecting the origins of COVID-19 to a Wuhan, level-4 security, gain-of-function-research, Chinese-military-affiliated virology lab rather than to a chopped-up wet bat or pangolin? 

Do we remember the names of our supposed best and brightest retired intelligence officials who lied shamelessly and on spec for the Biden campaign, claiming that Russian “disinformation” accounted for a supposedly fictitious Hunter Biden’s laptop? And are the fabrications by Joe Biden and the media—that men with guns staged an “armed insurrection” of January 6 and “killed” officer Brian Sicknick—the new standard of truth? 

What ties together the efforts of Robert Mueller’s 22-month, $40 million witch hunt, and the two impeachment proceedings—the last dispensing with witnesses, formal hearings, cross-examinations, a special prosecutor, and the Chief Justice presiding, all in mob-like efforts to try to convict in the Senate now private citizen Donald Trump? Must a Joe Biden, one day as president-emeritus and private citizen, fear that there will be no statutes of limitation to his vulnerability, when the vast trove of Hunter Biden’s laptop is finally accessed and turned over to a future hostile congress or federal prosecutor?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17544/dangerous-infrastructure-bill

This proposal… amounts to “abolishing the suburbs” by making them more like cities.

Apartment buildings…. could be built in the middle of any suburban neighborhood, and there is nothing you could do to stop it. A housing project could be built next door to your home. One-acre lots could be subdivided to cram in as many houses as possible.

They claim that cities are undesirable places to live because they are crowded, hot, and lack nature, so it is unfair that people have to live there. Ironically, their solution seems to be to make more of them….

Worse, local governments presumably know what is best for their communities. That is why communities have local governments rather than a federal government deciding everything for everyone. If residents desired different zoning, their officials would have already made those changes on their own…..That is probably why it is being hidden within a massive bill and not talked about.

The federal government has no power to force this change, but the president has floated withholding federal money that towns rely on for things like roads unless the towns comply…. What town can afford to lose all federal transportation dollars — funded with taxes that they pay?..,, Basically, it is not far from extortion.

Most cities, and most low-income people, vote for Democrats. For politicians, this means that if you can make the countryside into cities, in 10 years, everyone will be voting for only one party.

Many counties will find it hard to resist the temptation to take the cash. But in the long-term they are saddling themselves with a huge influx of poverty whose financial effects will outweigh any grants. Of course, they will also completely change the aesthetics and culture of the neighborhood — and irrevocably alter its political makeup.

Interview with Luke Rosiak, an investigative reporter with The Daily Wire. He warns of a little-noticed provision in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposal that could have major consequences for how people will be forced to live — and for a political power-grab in the country.

Gatestone Institute: President Joe Biden’s “infrastructure” proposal says that money granted to towns and counties will come with a condition: eliminating “prohibitions on multifamily housing” and zoning restrictions such as “minimum lot sizes.” This proposal, it has been said, amounts to “abolishing the suburbs” by making them more like cities.

Rosiak: Yes. Apartment buildings as well as duplexes — essentially carving up suburban homes into multiple apartment units — could be built in the middle of any suburban neighborhood, and there is nothing you could do to stop it. A housing project could be built next door to your home. One-acre lots could be subdivided to cram in as many houses as possible. If you bought into a neighborhood of one-acre lots and enjoy a bit of privacy, your neighbor could soon be able to sell his acre to a real estate developer who could put eight buildings on it.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/civil-military-divide-media-forever-wars.html

After two decades of war, the U.S. military is still the most trusted institution in the nation. But with the military’s involvement in Afghanistan drawing to its end and American troops still at risk in Iraq, the divide between the civilian and military worlds is wider than ever.

My father served in Iraq during the Gulf War, and I served in the same country during the war against ISIS 25 years later, an example of how military service is becoming more associated with familial ties, and ever more separate from the general population. An ever-smaller portion of the U.S. population, not to mention U.S. politicians, has any experience with military personnel. As the prospect of the end of our forever wars draws nearer, it’s time for the nation and its armed forces to reassess their relationships with each other. A stronger civil-military relationship may prevent our involvement in future unwinnable wars, and it may also help prevent needless deaths caused by an insular military culture during peacetime. In light of recent political events, strengthened ties can also prevent the horrifying prospect of our troops being used by political actors against our own citizens.

The only way to accomplish this shift in relations is through the American public being properly informed.

Most Americans support the military, yet don’t know what it actually does. This isn’t just a failure on their part; the Defense Department itself bears a large responsibility for its estrangement from the American public. While serving as a journalist in the Army, I often found that our own efforts at outreach were hindered by cultural norms and procedures that rewarded minimizing contact with the outside world. Media organizations were kept at arm’s length, and all news releases (including mine) were strenuously reviewed to ensure that they were on message. Concrete steps must be taken to engage in dialogue with citizens not just outside of military bases, but at college campuses, in areas that usually do not draw recruits, in places where the military may not be liked. Traditionally, when it comes to public affairs, military doctrine emphasizes persuasion, but the goal of this engagement with the public should be to provide information that allows citizens to civically engage with our government about the use of and policies relevant to armed service members.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/14/dr-faucis-emails-tell-the-story-of-panic-lies-and-a-possible-cover-up/

Fauci knew COVID-19 likely came from the Wuhan lab. He knew the virus ‘looked engineered.’ And he knew all this on February 1, 2020.

Recently released e-mails show that Dr. Anthony Fauci knew key facts about the origins of COVID-19 in January 2020. But at that critical time, when the country was first learning about the virus, Dr. Fauci chose not to share the facts with Americans. Instead, he acted to conceal them.

On January 31, 2020, at 10:32 p.m., Dr. Fauci received an email from British researcher, Dr. Kristian Andersen. Dr. Andersen has received millions of dollars in grants from the NIH. In the email, he warned Dr. Fauci:

[O]ne has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered . . . Eddie [Holmes], Bob [Garry], Mike [Ferguson] and myself all find the genome inconsistent with evolutionary theory.

Two hours later, at 12:29 a.m. on February 1, Dr. Fauci emailed his long-time deputy, Dr. Hugh Auchincloss. In the email, Dr. Fauci attached a paper written by Dr. Ralph Baric and Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi – the so-called “bat woman” from Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The paper highlighted taxpayer-funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses conducted by the WIV. Dr. Fauci told Dr. Auchincloss:

It is essential that we speak this [morning]. Keep your cell phone on . . . read this paper . . . you will have tasks today that must be done.

Urgency. Intensity.