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October 2022

The Left’s Motto: I Feel, Therefore I am Right Kevin Donnelly

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/10/the-lefts-motto-i-feel-therefore-i-am-right/

While justified as a request for greater civility and the avoidance of unjustified discrimination over the last 40 years,l political correctness has morphed into an Orwellian nightmare of distorted language and mind control. Orwell observed in his essay, Politics and the English Language, ‘If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought’ and there is no doubt we are now living in a world where reason and rationality no longer prevail and where words, phrases and concepts have been weaponised by the cultural Left in the campaign to impose its ideological agenda.

Best illustrated by the slogan “War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”, the strategy is to force citizens to accept two or more conflicting concepts, thus, ensuring compliance by determining how people conceptualise and think. Orwell writes doublethink involves the ability “…to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic”.

Such is the bizarre and irrational world of woke. Babies are no longer born girls or boys, rather they are “assigned” a gender at birth, with some parents waiting months before they decide where their newborn infant sits on the LGBTIQ+ spectrum. In maternity hospitals breast feeding is described as ‘chest feeding’, mothers renamed ‘birthing parents’ and fathers as ‘non-gestational persons’. Woke language is also used as a weapon to vilify and attack those who refuse to conform or who dare to question what has become the new orthodoxy.

Men arguing that not all males are sexual predators and cautioning that women should be aware of the dangers involved in walking alone through a dark and deserted park at 3am, are condemned as misogynist and sexist. Any who suggest not all cultures are equal and new arrivals should make some attempt to assimilate are attacked as racist and xenophobic. To argue it is wrong that schools and universities always portray Western civilisation as classist, sexist, homophobic, racist and guilty of oppressing ‘the other’ is to be guilty of white supremacism.

Brain Freeze: Biden Says Economy ‘Strong as Hell’ During Ice Cream Stop By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/10/16/brain-freeze-biden-says-economy-strong-as-hell-during-ice-cream-stop-n1637517

During a campaign stop at a Baskin-Robbins in Portland, Ore., on Saturday, Joe Biden declared the economy to be “strong as hell” under his administration.

“Our economy is strong as hell,” Biden claimed while going to town on his ice cream, before adding, “the internals of it.”

What internals is he talking about? Historic inflation? Record gas prices? The weakening dollar? Economic contraction?

“I’m not concerned about the strength of the dollar. I’m concerned about the rest of the world. Does that make sense?” he said, before blaming other countries for America’s economic woes.

“The problem is the lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries, not so much ours,” he insisted. “And that’s having, it’s worldwide inflation, and it’s consequential.”

Well, it’s appropriate he was in a Baskin-Robbins because that’s 31 flavors of stupid right there.

Poll: 64 Percent of Americans Blame ‘Woke Politicians’ for Crime Spike By Nate Hochman

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/poll-64-percent-of-americans-blame-woke-politicians-for-crime-spike/?utm_source=r

A new Harvard-Harris poll, published earlier this week, has a number of interesting findings about the mood of the American electorate, but one stands out as particularly striking:

The fact that a majority of Democrats aren’t just ceding that “wokeness” is a problem in the abstract, but that it’s directly responsible for one of the defining issues of the 2022 election — crime and public safety — is bad news for the Left. It’s also yet another indication that the contemporary culture war can and should be a winner for Republicans, if they’re willing to run aggressively on them; these aren’t boutique right-wing base issues. They have implications that are felt across the political spectrum.

A decade later, Obama admits he made a mistake failing to support 2009 Iranian uprisings Obama said it is “hard to predict” whether current protests will force regime change, but U.S. needs to stand with the demonstrators.By John Solomon

https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/decade-later-obama-admits-he-made-mistake-failing-support-2009-iranian-uprisings

Former President Barack Obama is belatedly acknowledging he erred by failing to embrace the Iranian uprising in 2009 known as the “Green Movement” as a new round of protests and strikes rage in Tehran more than 13 years later.

“In retrospect, I think that was a mistake,” Obama, said Friday, referring to his administrations tepid response to the 2009 movement. “Every time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out.

“We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it,” the 44th president told the Pod Save America podcast operated by some of his former advisers.

A new uprising has been underway in Iran for 30 days, ignited by the beating death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Islamic morality police.

Obama said it is “hard to predict” whether the current protests will achieve regime change, but that the West needs to stand with the demonstrators in the face of a brutal crackdown.

He hailed “the incredible courage that is taking place in Iran and those women and girls who are on the streets knowing that they’re putting themselves in harm’s way to speak truth to power.”

Obama added it was important “to affirm what they do and I hope that it brings about more space for the kind of civic conversation that over time can take the country down a better path.”

Tulsi Gabbard: A voice of reason by Joe Concha

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3689785-tulsi-gabbard-a-voice-of-reason/

“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party. It’s now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”

That was former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) earlier this week announcing why she left the Democratic Party. Except one could reasonably argue that the Democratic Party left Gabbard.

One thing’s certain: These aren’t your daddy’s donkeys anymore. President Kennedy won the approval of the nation based largely on a platform of lowering taxes and strengthening the U.S. military. Jimmy Carter was pro-life and god-fearing. And Bill Clinton was conservative on illegal immigration, crime and spending.

Clinton said things one would never hear almost any Democrat say today when it comes to decreasing the size of government, ending the welfare state and not spending what we don’t have. Not coincidentally, Clinton left office with the highest approval rating of any Democratic president of the television era.

But then the party went so far left that its most popular lawmakers on social media embrace socialism. President Biden and most other Democrats seem to believe that spending trillions of dollars is the best way to lower inflation. So much for not spending what we don’t have.

Some in the party also believe cashless bail laws that allow violent criminals onto the street somehow lower crime, or the opposite of the approach taken by the 1994 crime bill Biden once championed.

The Unmentionable, Unspeakable, and Unutterable. Part One Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/the-unmentionable-unspeakable-and-unutterable-part-one/

What best characterizes an Orwellian or Soviet society?

The silent, collective acceptance of the truth that never can be spoken, and the lies of the apparat that everyone else knows are not true.

Think of some of the astounding truths that we simply ignore.

Hillary Clinton

We have spoken about Clinton before, but the degree of her transgressions seems to increase with every recent disclosure. In 2015–16 Hillary Clinton for the first time in U.S. history hired a thuggish hit team of oppo researchers to manufacture dirt on her opponent Donald Trump.

Then she trumped that crime by hiding her payments behind three paywalls. Then her team enlisted a corrupt FBI to hire her own two hirelings, Christopher Steele and Igor Danchenko, as informants to spread their lies, smears, and dirt throughout the apparat, deep state, and fusion media.

In other words, Hillary Clinton was the first presidential candidate in history, who, hand-in-glove with the FBI, almost won the presidency by systematically violating a myriad of laws (hiring two foreign nationals to work in a presidential campaign, destroying subpoenaed records and devices, racketeering, and conspiracy to deceive the government, etc.) in her efforts to destroy Donald Trump.

Then without a hint of shame, Hillary Clinton immediately became the nation’s most prominent election denier by declaring Trump illegitimate. She insisted that he was not the true winner of the 2016 election, as her minions did their best to warp electors to reject their constitutional duties to vote according to state tallies.

Then licking her wounds in defeat, she bragged that she was joining the “Resistance.” And she would go on to advise Biden in 2020 not to accept a popular vote loss.

Think of it: Hillary Clinton sought to destroy the integrity of the entire 2016 election.

Why ‘Bros’ Bombed The exact right amount of people saw the gay romcom. Isaac Grafstein

https://www.commonsense.news/p/why-bros-bombed?utm_source=email

The algorithm knows I’m a man and gay, so I’m often served news about Britney, bodybuilding videos, and, more recently, nonstop ads for the Universal movie Bros, written by Billy Eichner. 

The film’s poster features two men groping each other’s jeans-ed butts. At this year’s VMAs, Eichner took the stage to urge audiences to see his movie, gushing that the film “is making history as the first gay romcom ever made by a major studio and the first where every role is played by an openly LGBTQ actor.” Headlines called Bros “hilarious,” “history-making” and “groundbreaking.”

So when I settled into the theater last Sunday evening with a friend (and a bag of heavily buttered popcorn) as the trailer for the Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, played, I was ready to be wowed.  

The film follows Eichner’s character, Bobby, a mouthy podcaster opening up an LGBTQ museum (cringe) and his relationship with Aaron, a chiseled lawyer with a penchant for group sex portrayed by Luke Macfarlane. (I won’t complain.) The two meet-cute in a nightclub and then must navigate the complex world of gay relationships, commitment issues and insecurities.

There are moments when Bros is funny—a self-deprecating lampoon of gay life. But mostly it’s a preachy, self-indulgent dumpster fire. At one point, Bobby harangues Aaron’s mother about the need to teach her second-grade students about queer history. The two long hours are replete with partisan finger-wagging, lamentations about erasure, and performative apologies from Bobby for being a “cis white guy.” Half of this alleged comedy is devoted to Bobby’s cranky monologues. 

Prosecutors: U.S. election firm gave Chinese workers ‘superadministration’ access to election data Supervisor described policy as “huge security issue.”

https://justthenews.com/government/security/prosecutors-us-election-firm-gave-chinese-workers-superadministration-access

A U.S. election technology company currently embroiled in scandal gave Chinese subcontractors high-level security access to American election data, according to a warrant filed by prosecutors this week in Los Angeles. 

Authorities earlier this month arrested Eugene Yu, the CEO of the election software company Konnech, on charges of grand theft and embezzlement related to his work with that firm. Controversy has also swirled over Konnech’s alleged storage of poll worker data in servers located in the People’s Republic of China.

Konnech says on its website that it offers its PollChief “election logistic software” to nearly three dozen clients across the United States. The warrant for Yu’s arrest, meanwhile, made startling allegations related to the handling of sensitive data for those clients. 

The charging document, filed in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles on Thursday, claims that a project manager in August “wrote that any employee for Chinese contractors working on PollChief software had ‘superadministration’ privileges for all PollChief clients.”

The project manager reportedly described the decision as a “huge security issue;” He later stressed to workers at the company the “need to ensure the security privacy and confidentiality [of] our client data.” 

The warrant also alleges Konnech employees “sent personal identifying information of Los Angeles County election workers to third-party software developers who assisted with creating and fixing” the company’s PollChief software.

Konnech did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News on Saturday. Yu’s arrest warrant recommended that he be given no bail while being detained.

Yu could reportedly face up to a decade in prison if convicted on the charges. 

TUFTS UNIVERSITY CRITICIZED AFTER LAUNCHING DIVERSITY EVENT SEPARATING WHITE AND BIPOC COLLEAGUES Stacy Jackson

https://www.blackenterprise.com/tufts-university-criticized-after-launching-diversity-event-separating-white-attendees-from-bipoc-colleagues/

Tufts University is in a tough spot.

The Massachusetts university is being heavily criticized for the structure of its upcoming “Dialogue Series” that is reportedly set to commence on Oct. 17. Launched by the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, the event is supposedly aimed toward understanding a “cross-cultural dialogue.” Eyebrows were raised when the public learned that the sessions would be split based on the race of attendees.

The sessions are set to separate Black and ethnic minority staff from white colleagues and discussions are reportedly specifically structured for each group, according to Daily Mail. In one part of the series, labeled Radical Healing, Tufts faculty and staff who racially identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) are encouraged to join.

Although white colleagues are not banned from attending, the free sessions are reportedly designed for BIPOC who’ve experienced being the “only or one of a few in predominately white spaces on campus.”

According to the university, Radical Healing attendees who meet the said criteria will assemble to discuss how marginalized and oppressed groups should live “free of discrimination, racism, and oppression.”

The other part of the series, called Unpacking Whiteness, is designed for Tufts colleagues who identify as white. They are invited to practice “anti-racism” and participate in discussions specifically for white people “holding spaces of privilege.”

According to Fox News, a description for the series states, “Anti-racism is an active and ongoing process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes in a way that redistributes power, policy, and structures to be more equitable while drawing attention to the lived experiences of Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color.”

Since launching, the university has received harsh criticisms toward the upcoming dialogue series.

Daily Mail provides that one response exclaimed that the university was setting their students back by years, while another called the separated sessions discrimination.

A response from a person who claimed to be a Tufts alumni said, “As a once proud alumnus of Tufts, I am speechless that they are promoting SEGREGATION and RACE SHAMING.”

“I am cancelling my annual donation and urging fellow alumni to DEFUND Tufts University until they restore racial compassion and respect.”

The Dishonest and Dishonorable Disagreements of Former Friends It is astonishing to be accused of anti-Americanism by longtime denigrators of America, and even more astonishing to be accused of divisiveness by people who casually throw around the term “Nazi.”  By Michael Anton

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/15/the-dishonest-and-dishonorable-disagreements-of-former-friends/

Most of us, at some point or another, fall out with friends. It’s a painful and, perhaps, inevitable part of life. It’s especially disquieting when former friends turn on you suddenly and publicly, devoid of any goodwill, charity, or benefit of the doubt that one might think were warranted by years of amity. All this, however disagreeable, is at least “normal” in the sense that it has been going on forever—though it massively intensified in the Trump Derangement Era. 

About four years ago, I was finishing a small book, the centerpiece of which was an article I had already published. The new material consisted of a shortish defense/explanation of the classical idea of “natural right”—that is, the doctrine or assertion that good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust, legitimate and illegitimate, etc.—exist by nature and are not mere products of human will or preference. This idea undergirds not merely the regime of the American founders and the very idea of “human rights,” but also the entire notion that anything political can be good or bad, right or wrong. For example, when Never Trumpers speak of the alleged danger from Donald Trump to “Our Democracy™” and declare this to be bad, they are—wittingly or not—endorsing natural right. 

You’d think this would be, if not uncontroversial, at least well within the bounds of civic discourse. Nonetheless, I predicted to some friends that at least one of our former friends would denounce natural right simply because I had defended it. 

I didn’t need to wait long for that prediction to come true. Shortly after the book’s publication, it was scathingly reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld, a man I had known for something like 20 years. We were never the best of friends, but we had been friendly, meeting occasionally for meals or otherwise seeing each other at events in Manhattan’s small but close-knit community of conservative intellectuals and fellow travelers. 

Needless to say, Gabe and I no longer speak. Trump, naturally, is the reason. Still, given that long history, one might have assumed some charitable consideration in a review by a former friend. A good review was not necessarily expected; reviewers of course ought to say what they think. But it was odd, to say least, to see a review so jaundiced as to reject out of hand a core foundation of Western Civilization out of anti-Trump spite. 

I let that review go at the time, and wouldn’t even mention it now, were it not for similar attacks from the same quarter. I am half-persuaded to let those go, too, but another friend pointed out that a continuous stream of libels not responded to eventually constitutes a kind of public record. 

I’m also motivated to respond because, irrelevant or distasteful as one may think these people are, they are actually quite powerful. They, and many others like them, form authoritative opinion in our time. In an age, and a regime, in which propaganda and censorship are foundational sources of rule, the power to police opinion is quasi-governmental. They are information warfare specialists, backed by big money, and their role is to constrain what you get to hear in part by smearing and slandering dissidents. One may not pay them much heed, but others who also have power over what the public gets to hear do, hence their vitriol matters. 

Viciousness and Vitriol Demanding a Handshake?