RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/five-reasons-be-cheerful-katie-hopkins/

With so many people feeling stressed out and at odds with the world, I feel it is my duty as Energizer to try and install some much-needed good humor and optimism into our team.

I appreciate there is an awful lot of darkness out there and more bad news than for CNN on election night, but there are many more reasons to be cheerful. Here are just five:

[1] You are on the same team as Louie Gohmert.

When my young son asks me which superhero I would like to be, I always answer Louie Gohmert. Texas is blessed to have him.

The one-man fighting machine introduced a resolution on the floor of the House to ban the Democrat Party.

Everybody knows that slavery has been pushed and protected by the Democratic Party, they are the ones that pushed Jim Crow laws….So if we are going to hold the Democrats to the same standards they want to hold everybody else to and get rid of any vestiges of slavery, it means getting rid of the Democratic party.

All Congressman Gohmert needs is a red cape and some tight blue pants with his briefs worn on the outside and we can legitimately call him Super-Louie.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/milwaukee-shooting-victim-trump-supporter

A Milwaukee homicide victim has been identified as a well-liked fixture of the city’s Black community who supported Black Lives Matter and President Trump.

Bernell Trammell, 60, was shot and killed Thursday afternoon in front of a storefront with signs in the window supporting Trump’s reelection. according to reports. He ran a small business from the storefront.

A makeshift memorial grew in size at the spot where he was killed, according to Fox 6 Milwaukee.

“The guy was just full of love,” Dick Nelson said, according to the station.

His last known conversation was with a blogger on the morning of the shooting.

Bernell Trammell, 60, was gunned down in from of his Milwaukee storefront Thursday afternoon. (Facebook)

The chat with Adebisi Agoro took place as Trammell held a sign that said “Wisconsin Vote Donald Trump 2020,” the station reported.

“He’s just a community figure,” Agoro told the station. “I respected him just because he had a position…He’s got his opinion on why he feels that way; and I’m not going to knock him.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/27/its_time_to_crush_the_new_rebellion_against_constitution_143803.html

Jonathan Karl of ABC News asked an interesting question of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany at last Tuesday’s press briefing:

“Where in the Constitution does the president derive the authority to send federal law enforcement officers to the streets of American cities against the will of the elected officials in those cities?”

McEnany, as it turned out, was prepared. Section 1315 of Title 40 of the U.S. Code, she explained, “gives DHS the ability to deputize officers in any department or agency like ICE, Custom and Border Patrol and Secret Service … for the duties in connection with the protection of property owned or occupied by the federal government.”

She added, “When a federal courthouse is being lit on fire, commercial fireworks being shot at it [and] being shot at the officers, I think that falls pretty well within the limits of 40 U.S. Code 1315.”

Since violent thugs have targeted the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., it was an appropriate response, but it didn’t directly answer Karl’s question, which asked about constitutional authority for the use of federal force. It is a question worth asking, in part because there are many urban areas in the United States currently under similar attack but where no federal property is involved.

https://www.startribune.com/racial-justice-the-new-religion/571899352/?refresh=true

Since the death of George Floyd, a movement that condemns America as “systemically racist” has convulsed our public consciousness. Sixty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — and despite decades of affirmative action, massive social welfare spending and a two-term Black president — we are told that “white supremacy” deforms America today, as it has throughout history.

The movement to eradicate “white privilege” manifests in demands to defund police and in the toppling of statues — not only of Confederate generals, but of figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, even George Washington.

Educational, business, media, nonprofit and entertainment institutions have taken up the “systemic racism” mantra with breathtaking speed, issuing statements declaring their virtue and right thinking.

Yet something is profoundly amiss in the frenzied movement that has America in its grip. This movement elevates passion over reason and dogma over data. It contemptuously rejects, and attempts to silence, calls for objective analysis as self-evidently racist.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16266/law-and-justice

For me, the real enemies of America are the extremists on both sides: the hard left that would bring America down, the hard right white supremacists and neo‑Nazis…. People from the hard left do not even want to hear from people on the center left.

I think the last thing The New York Times wants is for people to come to their own conclusion, because The New York Times bars dissenting points of view and fired editors who authorize them to be published on its pages…. The Times has taken the “op” out of “op-ed.”

The combination of elected prosecutors and elected judges has made our legal system far too political. Too many decisions are made by people, crowds, and pressure groups. When you combine four aspects of our system — prosecutors are elected, judges are elected, juries are ordinary, lay people, and the judges who control the juries are often subject to re‑election — the risks of our justice system being turned over to the masses, to the mobs, to the crowds, to the chanters, becomes all too real, and our system of checks and balances becomes weaker.

Remember that when America was founded at the end of the 18th century, the greatest fear was of the mob. We were watching what was happening a little later on in France with the revolution, and with the killing of so many innocent people in the name of the revolution.

In China, some years ago, I was invited to go to a trial, a man who was accused of stealing some items. After the evidence came in — you had evidence from the prosecution, the defendant testified — and then the judge ordered the doors opened. Hundreds of people poured in from the streets. The judge said, “Now we’ll hear from the masses.” The masses started yelling, “Convict! Convict! Convict!” Of course, the judge convicted, because the masses were the ones in a communist country who had control over the justice system. I never want to see that happen in the United States of America

It is very hard to be a dissenter today. If you are a dissenter today, you risk being canceled. If you are an editor who is willing to publish dissenting material, you risk being fired. If you are a dissenter today in a crowd, you risk being beaten up.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16267/illusory-superiority

Illusory Superiority is a quality that now afflicts many in public policy who think they know most things better than the mayor, the governor, or the president.

This is an army of professional “seldom right – but never in doubt” individuals who seem to be singularly unphased by their ability to get so much so wrong.

If the goal of the newspaper is brainwashing and indoctrination, like Russia’s Pravda, its executives, of course, are perfectly right to harness thought; but that is a business decision about profits and market share. It should not be confused with journalism.

Those in politics, whether staff or politicians, possessed of illusory superiority may well bring down the republic. Quite a few seem convinced that by losing the executive branch, the House and the Senate, they are somehow saving the country rather than actually pulling the grenade-pin that will bring about the collapse of the nation’s economy, free-speech, and our very future.

We all know someone whose favorite pastime seems to be knowing something about everything better than anyone.

You know.

The one who lamented to a friend, “I told my husband he should not have sold that stock!”

“Well,” was the response, “Then maybe, you would like to invest some of your own money yourself?”

That was, apparently, not the right answer. Still, that sardonic exchange, labeled, “illusory superiority,” and once confined to inconsequential conversation, has now seeped into our political world, harming the ability to voice opinions, destroying open campus debate, and creating an environment that despite the opinion of the voters, allows government staff to view itself as far smarter than the person elected to office.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Fear is an elemental emotion. It can have positive attributes. In combat, fear is a governor on impulse. Fear of wild animals and other tribes was a factor in early man’s forming of communities. It is ubiquitous. We have fears of darkness and loneliness, of failure or rejection, of making wrong decisions. We fear becoming ill or being a burden to loved ones. Fear, we were told by Bertrand Russell, is the main source of superstition. Fear of sorcery was behind the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which saw fourteen women and five men hung. It descends from ignorance, which wrote Herman Melville in Moby Dick, “is the parent of fear.” Unwarranted fear prevents us from expanding our horizons and improving our lives.  

Unscrupulous politicians use fear to seek and hold power. Tyrant-like, they tell us what cannot be done. Classical liberals, like the Founding Fathers, tell us what rights we have – what can be done. With COVID-19, fear has been used for political gain. By the end of 2019, President Trump’s policies had accelerated economic growth. They had provided the lowest unemployment on record, including Black unemployment. Increases in wages for low-income workers outpaced pay rises for upper-income workers. Amir Taheri, the Iranian-born, Europe-based author, wrote: “Prior to the coronavirus crisis, his [Trump’s] administration had one of the best records in job creation and the reduction of poverty among black Americans.” Since the economy is the single most important aspect in a Presidential election, Mr. Trump’s glidepath to re-election, while by no means assured, appeared to have few – and manageable – obstacles.

The arrival of COVID-19 and the resulting shut-down of schools, colleges and the economy changed election dynamics. There is no question that COVID-19 was (and is) a serious health concern, particularly for the elderly and especially for those with comorbidities. Nevertheless, fear was the instrument employed by politicians of both parties. While younger people could (and do) contact the disease, and potentially contaminate riskier segments of the population, the risk to their health was not much worse than that of a bad case of the flu. We will never know what death counts would have been had there been no early shutdowns, but we do know the death tolls from the flu pandemics of 1917-19, 1957-58 and 1968, when there was no shuttering of the economy or schools. Adjusted for changes in population, death rates, with the exception of 1917-1919, were worse during the previous pandemics. In fact, in speaking to friends with whom I was at school in 1957-58 not one had any memory of the flu that year. Yet it killed 116,000 Americans when the population was about one half of what it is today.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/20/reopening_schools_and_the_limi

The last thing you want to hear from your brain surgeon (aside from “Oops”) is “Wow, I’ve always wanted to do one of these.” You’ll feel a lot better hearing, “I’ve done 30 operations like this over the past month and published several articles about them.”

Expertise like that is essential for brain surgery, building rockets, constructing skyscrapers, and much, much more. Our modern world is built upon it. We need such expert advice as we decide whether to open schools this fall, and we should turn to educators, physicians, and economists to get it. But ultimately we, as citizens and the local officials we elect, should make the choices. These are not technical decisions but political ones that incorporate technical issues and projections. We should hold our representatives, not the experts, responsible for the choices they make.

When we listen to experts, we should remember Clint Eastwood’s comment in “Magnum Force”:  “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Even the best authorities have them, and one, ironically, is that they seldom admit them, even to themselves. It is important for us both to appreciate expert advice and to recognize its limits every time we’re told to “be quiet and do what they say.” We should listen, think it over, and then make our own decisions as citizens, parents, teachers, business owners, workers, retirees — and voters.

The best way to understand why we need experts but also why we need to weigh their advice, not swallow it whole and uncooked, is to consider this illustration: Should we build a hydroelectric dam in a beautiful valley? If we construct it, we certainly need the best engineers and construction workers. We need engineering firms to project the cost and economists to project the price of its energy and potable water. Their expertise is essential.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/19/will-2021-be-1984/

Cultural revolutions are insidious and not just because they seek to change the way people think, write, speak, and act. They are also dangerous because they are fueled by self-righteous sanctimoniousness, expressed in seemingly innocuous terms such as “social activism,” “equality,” and “fairness.”

The ultimate aim of the Jacobin, Bolshevik, or Maoist is raw power—force of the sort sought by Hugo Chavez or the Castro dynasty to get rich, inflict payback on their perceived enemies, reward friends, and pose as saviors.

Cubans and Venezuelans got poor and killed; woke Chavezes and Castros got rich and murderous.

Leftist agendas are harder to thwart than those of right-wing dictators such as Spain’s Francisco Franco because they mask their ruthlessness with talk of sacrifice for the “poor” and concern about the “weak.” 

Strong-man Baathists, Iranian Khomeinists, and the German National Socialists claimed they hated capitalism. So beware when the Marxist racialists who run Black Lives Matter, the wannabe Maoists of Antifa, the George Soros-paid activists, “the Squad” and hundreds of state and local officials like them in cities such as Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis, and Big Tech billionaires take power. These are “caring” people who couldn’t care less about the working classes or the hundreds of African-Americans murdered in America’s inner cities.

Vice President as President

If Joe Biden is elected, the effort to remove him by those now supporting him will begin the day after the election and it will not be as crude as rounding up a Yale psychiatrist to testify to his dementia in Congress or shaming the White House physician to give him the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test in the manner that the Left went after Donald Trump.

It will be far more insidious and successful: leaked stories to the New York Times and Washington Post from empathetic White House insiders will speak of how “heroically” Biden is fighting his inevitable decline—and how gamely he tries to marshal his progressive forces even as his faculties desert him. We would read about why Biden is a national treasure by sacrificing his health to get elected and then nobly bowing out as he realized the cost of his sacrifice on his person and family.