RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/26/critical-race-theory-destroys-american-justice-2/

The George Floyd riots, conveniently shut off this past summer, were as much theater as reality. They were designed to associate Donald Trump with police abuses and disorder, while painting Democrats and their notions of “racial justice” as the path forward. 

Ordinary citizens standing up for themselves interfere with this guerilla theater indoctrination; after all, there are a lot more normal people who do not want their towns burned down than there are maniacs willing to do street violence. This is why individuals like Kyle Rittenhouse and citizen self-defense groups are dealt with so harshly by the government and the media. 

Government Did Not Protect Us Last Summer

Consider that there were dozens of fires and beatings and a significant number of killings in Minneapolis, Kenosha, Chicago, Portland, St. Louis, and Seattle in the summer of 2020. Hardly any Antifa and BLM rioters have been brought to justice. Federal authorities have made no significant effort to roll up these groups.

In the cities worst hit by the riots, there appears to be a semi-cooperative relationship between the rioters and prosecutors. In the Rittenhouse trial, prosecutors presented Gaige Grosskreutz as a blameless victim, even though he illegally carried a concealed gun and pointed it at Kyle Rittenhouse after chasing him down. Grosskreutz also escaped responsibility for a subsequent DUI. 

But if Rittenhouse’s presence was provocative and illegal, why was Grosskreutz’s pursuit and brandishing a gun not a more serious crime?

Worse, one of the surprising revelations during the trial was the late production of FBI aerial footage. The high-definition footage had inexplicably disappeared, and the FBI kept news of this all to itself until a media leak. But the infrared, night vision footage remains, supporting Rittenhouse’s narrative and also providing a means to identify the various left-wing criminals who ran amok. Presumably, similar videos were secretly taken during other riots in 2020. 

But, so far as we know, in spite of an impressive surveillance capability, as well as signals intelligence and other resources at its disposal, the FBI has made no significant effort to identify and suppress the leaders, organizers, funders, and foot soldiers of Antifa and BLM responsible for the 2020 riots. 

Instead, we are lately told there is an explosion of “white supremacy” in a country that elected Barack Obama fewer than ten years ago, and that Antifa is only an “ideology,” not a terrorist group. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/thanksgiving-day-another-front-leftist-war-america-bruce-thornton-0/

For going on a century, the international Left has been seeking to discredit and undermine the United States. One front in this war comprises attacks on American history, monuments, and the traditional holidays that recognize and celebrate this country’s exceptional institutions, especially political and economic freedom, and the unalienable rights of individuals.

Having failed serially and ruined every country it has governed, the Left has a deep hatred for the nation and principles that achieved what socialism could only promise. Defending our national traditions, then, is not about time off from work, shopping, overeating, and binging on football, but about our being grateful for our freedom, and the importance of the history of our nation’s beginning.

Given the Left’s long animus, there’s no surprise in a story about several American universities gathering at an event that asks whether Americans should “reconsider” and “reevaluate”  Thanksgiving. According to the event’s advertising,

Starting in 1970, many Americans, led by Indigenous protesters, believed that Thanksgiving should be rededicated as a National Day of Mourning to reflect the centuries-long displacement and persecution of Native Americans. The recent shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day reflects a changing national mood. . . .  “Should Americans reconsider Thanksgiving when wrestling with our country’s complicated past?”

Such thinking reflects leftist revisionist history of the Howard Zinn and 1619 Project ilk, which in fact doesn’t correct the alleged partial and partisan historical record of America’s birth and scrub away its self-justifying myths, but rather simply replaces that history with an even more egregiously mythic one that violates every historiographical canon, especially the requirement that we avoid presentism––judging the past by the ideologically tainted standards of today.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-waukesha-aoc-progressive-prosecutors-crime-wisconsin-bail-reform-11637796347?mod=djemalertNEWS

Here’s the common reaction to the Waukesha, Wis., murders: It’s nuts that the suspect, with his long criminal history, was free on $1,000 bail posted days before the automotive rampage.

Here’s New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a tweet the day after the Waukesha murders: “Today, we sent a letter . . . to NYC’s 5 District Attorneys requesting information on excessive bail in the NYC court system.” The letter was also signed by fellow New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney and Maryland’s Jamie Raskin.

That disconnect will haunt Democrats. Waukesha is one of those rare moments when the consequences of an extreme ideology are brutally exposed to a nation. It’s a big new midterm problem for Democrats, one that could prove as difficult to overcome as rising inflation, Covid surges and parental backlash against educational fads like critical race theory.

Crime is soaring nationally, after progressives spent years pushing to water down bail rules, forgo prosecutions, release prisoners and even defund the police. The governors, mayors and prosecutors who indulged these demands uniformly have Ds behind their names.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/tgif-thanksgiving-edition?token=

Welcome back to TGIF and happy Thanksgiving. It’ll be a short one this week so we can all get back to family life—cozy, mask-free, family life (and watching the Dow drop precipitously). Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it’s not so much about presents or decorations. It’s about family, food, and, yes, this absolute miracle of a country. Being together to celebrate is a blessing and a relief I won’t take for granted again.

Now to the news and what you might have missed this week on Common Sense:

→ $1,000 bail: When Darrell Brooks allegedly drove through that Christmas parade, he was out on $1,000 bond two days prior for allegedly running over the mother of his child. Milwaukee County District Attorney, John Chisholm, a progressive prosecutor, finally admitted that the bail was “inappropriately low.” Chisholm is part of a progressive prosecutor movement—in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and elsewhere—whose members came to power promising radical reforms and a gentler approach on crime. Rep. Rashida Tlaib actually wants to abolish federal prisons as she explained this week in a must-watch interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios.

→ “Caused by a SUV”: The Waukesha killings are quickly being memory-holed since the primary suspect, Darrell Brooks, doesn’t fit the proper narrative. Six people have died so far; one of them is an eight-year-old boy named Jackson Sparks. Many others are still in critical condition. The Washington Post is describing it as “the Waukesha tragedy caused by a SUV.” I wish I were kidding. In the meantime, it appears that Brooks was a fan of Hitler. 

→ Deepest apologies to the CCP: JP Morgan head Jamie Dimon made a joke about how he bets his company will outlast the Chinese Communist Party. He’s now apologized for it. Twice. But the apology could have been worse. 

→ Don’t look at this flash mob: Huge mobs of burglars are cruising around California breaking into stores en masse. After some 80 burglars smashed up shops one night in a spate of violence this week, San Francisco leadership announced a fix: it’ll now be harder for drivers to park near the stores. “We’re going to [be] making some changes to Union Square and how cars are able to access. There will be limited access in terms of when you come to this area,” London Breed said.

→ The Justice System working, pt. 1: Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all counts. Watching him talk during an interview afterward, I was struck by his calm demeanor, which was so at odds with the man the mainstream press tried to convince us he was. We were told he was a Trumper, but apparently he supported Andrew Yang. We were told he was a white supremacist, but he said he supports the BLM movement, just not violent rioting. Here’s Rittenhouse: “It’s just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of somebody. If they did this to me, imagine what they could have done to a person of color who doesn’t maybe have the resources I do or isn’t widely publicized, like my case.”

In the days since the verdict, he has appeared at length on Tucker Carlson and met with Donald Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene (she of the “Jewish space lasers”) has said she wants to give him a Congressional Gold Medal. Will he become a GOP mascot or cut his own cloth?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/24/losing-confidence-in-the-pillars-of-our-civilization/

Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America. 

Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation’s traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies—especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks. 

Not so much anymore. 

For the first time in memory, conservatives now connect the FBI hierarchy with bureaucratic bloat, political bias, and even illegality. 

In the last five years, the FBI was mostly in the news for the checkered careers of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok. Add in the criminality of convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. 

The colossal FBI-driven “Russian collusion” hoax was marked by leaking of confidential FBI memos, forged documents, improper surveillance, and serial disinformation. 

Prior heads of the CIA and FBI, as well as the director of national intelligence, have at times either not told the truth under oath or claimed amnesia—without legal repercussions. 

Mention the military to conservative Americans these days, and they unfortunately associate its leadership with the disastrous flight from Afghanistan. Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility—much less resigned—for the worst military fiasco of the last half-century. 

Instead, Joe Biden and the top generals traded charges that the other was responsible for the calamity. Or both insisted the abject flight was a logistical masterpiece.

Never in U.S. history have so many retired four-star admirals and generals disparaged their president with charges of being either a traitor, a liar, a fascist, or a virtual Nazi.