RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/protests-urban-chaos-americans-will-seek-to-avoid-big-cities/

 I n Aesop’s Fables and Horace’s Satires a common classical allegory is variously retold about the country mouse and his sophisticated urban cousin.

The city-slicker mouse first visits his rustic cousin’s simple rural hole and is quickly bored and unimpressed by both the calm and the simple fare.

When the roles are soon reversed, the country cousin at first is delighted by big-city mouse’s sumptuous urban food scraps and the majestic halls where they may scuttle about. But as the crafty clawed house cat and sharp-toothed guard dogs threaten both, and the noise and bustle mount, the stressed-out country mouse scampers home — at last realizing that his unappreciated quiet and safe abode trump action and sophistication every time.

These Greek and Roman fables reflect the classical world’s paradox of not particularly enjoying life in the fetid, plague-ridden, and dangerous big cities of Athens, Rome, and Alexandria that nevertheless gave the world Socrates, Virgil, and magnificent libraries. As towns grew into metropolises, their sheen as heady places for art, literature, and cultural change began to fade. In response, the once commonplace farm and distant town were increasingly romanticized, especially in such genres as pastoralism and bucolic poetry. The escape to the country estate was the ideal of the Roman senator, the same way that the “ranch” sometimes becomes the getaway from the Washington swamp for American presidents.

Originally, city man was “astute” (asteios/astu: town)  and country man a rustic agroikos or bumpkin (argoikos/agros: farm). But it was not such a simple dichotomy, as even today “urbane” is not always an unqualified compliment, and “rustic” is sometimes a grudging commendation of authenticity.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/22/the-con-of-the-surrender-cons/

The column, written in the heated aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, sounded like a typical anti-American screed published in the New York Times or posted on MSNBC.

“Racism in America is a fatal wound,” the author lamented. “Every time another incident occurs we put a Band-Aid on it, but the Band-Aid keeps falling off. Band-Aids are not enough to ever stitch this country back together.”

She went on: “Nothing can bring George Floyd back to life. But if his horrific and needless death proves to be a turning point to make Americans finally end the ugly racism that stains our nation’s history and afflicts us like a cancer of the soul, he will leave behind a legacy we sorely need.”

That inflammatory, crude condemnation of America—not to mention the glorification of Floyd, a man with a criminal record who was doped up on drugs and committing another crime when the fatal encounter occurred—was made by Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation. James, the first woman and first African American to head the conservative think tank, like so many on the performative Right, jumped on the Left’s latest anti-America crusade while betraying the constituency her organization purports to represent.

Embracing the Left’s Language

It is a reflex, unfortunately, that’s commonplace on the establishment Right, an infuriating capitulation to our country’s most insidious foes. The Left intends to destroy the nation and use race as the carpet-bomb—and that approach is working even as blacks continue to make solid economic, occupational, and educational gains.

So, what was James’s point? There is no evidence Floyd’s death had anything to do with race. One incident, or even a random handful, hardly proves her diagnosis that racism is a “fatal wound” to America. The unfolding mayhem and chaos that followed Floyd’s death would have been a perfect opportunity for James to explain why conservatives, not radicals on the Left, have better solutions to improve the lives of all minorities. James, after all, has a triumphant personal story of her own; her success is a testament to our country’s unparalleled progress on matters of race and equality.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/appetite_for_destruction_lincoln_grant_churchill_statues_coming_down_lenin_going_up.html

Statues and monuments to some of the most important Western historical figures of all time have been summarily defaced and destroyed in recent weeks, including those of Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Winston Churchill. None of these figures had a damn thing to do with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone because the wanton destruction of symbols of the West’s past has nothing to do with the killing of Floyd, either.

 Columbus “discovered” the New World and died well over 100 years before the first slave ship came from Africa to America. Washington was one of the most principled men who ever lived and was “The Father” of the country that has done more to advance human freedom than any other. Lincoln saved that country while freeing the slaves. He directed a war effort that saw nearly 350,000 union troops die…in part to put an end to slavery – and died a martyr himself. Grant defeated the Confederacy, trashed the Ku Klux Klan and fought to protect the newly won rights of black people in the years after the war. Churchill stood alone in the West against the Third Reich and its NAZIs for over 17 consecutive months.

So what is the orgy of anarchy and destruction about? It is nothing short of a planned assault on the West and the values it used to hold so dear. It is a Marxist insurrection hoping to bring about the end of the U.S.—and the West—as we knew it. It is anti-capitalist, anti-rule of law, anti-Christian and anti-freedom. The leaders of Antifa and BLM have openly admitted this. Even if they hadn’t, it is abundantly clear to see for any sentient being connecting the dots. It is also utterly racist, classist and intolerant.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/teddy-roosevelt-gets-canceled-11592867171?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The Committee for the Removal of Public Monuments has bagged its biggest trophy to date. On Sunday New York Mayor Bill de Blasio acceded to a request from Ellen Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, to remove the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, that fronts the museum entrance on Central Park West.

“The Statue has long been controversial because of the hierarchical composition that places one figure on horseback and the others walking alongside, and many of us find its depictions of the Native American and African figures and their placement in the monument racist,” Ms. Futter wrote in a letter to the mayor. She added, “While the Statue is owned by the City, the Museum recognizes the importance of taking a position at this time. We believe that the Statue should no longer remain and have requested that it be moved.”

The Roosevelt statue has long been a target for progressives. Last year the museum organized an exhibition, “Addressing the Statue,” which did a poor job of exploring the issues involved. As our critic Edward Rothstein wrote at the time, “[T]he exhibition actually does very little to help explain the statue or to put it in context. And while it claims to want to participate in a ‘national conversation’ by presenting a variety of views, its own weigh down the scales.”

This current anti-monument wave degrades what originated as a legitimate grievance: the presence of Confederate monuments, many erected during the Jim Crow era to perpetuate the Lost Cause myth and advance white supremacy. But that idea has been taken over now by what has turned into a mob intent on willy-nilly eradication of chunks of American history.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/statues-and-limitations/

Spasmodic attempts to remake the world invariably involve the throwing out of the good along with the bad. Our ongoing bout of statuary iconoclasm has proven no exception.

The list of figures whose likenesses have been defaced now includes Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, Cervantes, Robert the Bruce, Voltaire, General Schuyler, the abolitionist Mathias Baldwin, and the guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. One can only imagine the philosophy that could draw a line around as motley a crew as that.

Of course, no such philosophy exists — and nor will it. Rather, we find ourselves in the middle stages of a cultural riot in which everything — and everyone — has become fair game. What do Cervantes and Stevie Ray Vaughan have in common? Well, that they are both made of bronze, and are thus liable to make a sickening thud when pulled by force from their pedestals. The violence, to borrow a fashionable phrase, is the point.

But it is not acceptable. Irrespective of the nature of their grievance — or of the strength of the feeling undergirding it — violent mobs can’t make decisions on behalf of everyone else.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-dont-matter-to-black-lives-matter_3397428.html#

In case you missed it, and you could have considering the endless thumb sucking regarding just how many came or didn’t to the Trump rally in Tulsa, 60 were shot, 9 fatally, at last count, over Father’s Day weekend in Chicago.

These included a 13-year old girl in the Austin neighborhood of the West Side, Two hours earlier, in the same area, someone pulled up alongside a Blue Honda in an SUV and fired several rounds at the driver, striking and killing his three-year old son.

Similar carnage occurred in Chi-town only a couple of weeks before over Memorial Day weekend when 39 were wounded and 10 died, including a 16-year old boy.

And then of course we have Minneapolis, where most of the recent contretemps began, where last night 1 died and 11 were wounded in a shooting spree.

All of this was black on black violence of the most tragic sort.

Where was Black Lives Matter? Nowhere to be found, since the cops didn’t do any of it. BLM doesn’t seem to care about violence done to blacks if the police are not involved, even though black on black is by many multiples more lethal and more common, resulting in exponentially more black casualties.

BLM’s primary interest appears to be smashing the state, creating revolution with their pals in Antifa in order to take power themselves.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/theodore-with-all-thy-faults/91170/

President Trump no doubt speaks for millions of New Yorkers and other Americans when he protests the decision to remove the statue of Theodore Roosevelt from in front of the Museum of Natural History. He calls the decision “ridiculous.” There are serious differing views. Ours is that it’s a sad day for those who thrill to the spirit of liberalism in our city and the inclusive Americanism for which Roosevelt stood during his heroic life.

The museum is trying to cast its decision as being animated by something other than disapproval for Roosevelt himself. The museum’s president, Ellen Futter, is insisting to the Times that its decision to remove the monument “is based on the statue, that is the hierarchical composition that’s depicted in it.” She is referring to the Native American man and African man on either side of TR and the steed on which he is mounted.

We, for one, find that distinction unconvincing, even if art is in the eye of the beholder. The protesters who forced the museum’s hand hate Roosevelt as much as his statue. The sculptor himself, James Earle Fraser, intended the two figures beside TR to symbolize “Roosevelt’s friendliness to all races.” Roosevelt mightn’t pass muster with today’s protesters, but in his own time, he was a progressive.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/22/john-bolton-is-the-perfect-washington-man/

Bolton is a thin-skinned and snarky figure who succeeded in convincing a surprising number of smart people in Washington that he is somehow serious and statesmanlike.

In the good old days of the internet blogosphere, there was a running bit at Jeff Goldstein’s blog Protein Wisdom which provided a name for John Bolton’s prominent mustache – “Regis”, a globe-trotting nuke-loving Hamas-bashing sexually aggressive bon-vivant with lush whiskey-tinged follicles. The image is ridiculous of course, but it is not far from the image the real John Bolton paints of himself in the absurdly entertaining pages of his book, the inaptly named The Room Where It Happened.

First, let me say that I love this book. I love everything about it. It is true unadulterated fan-fic for Bolton lovers everywhere. He is always right. He is always noble. His purposes are always true. Anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot, or possibly worse. Edward from Twilight has more flaws than this iteration of John Bolton, the mustachioed hero who can do no wrong… except to be, at a critical moment, surrounded entirely by idiots.

If you don’t believe me, just read the reviews from others who have welcomed most if not all of the quite profitable books by insiders excoriating the president released in the past several years.

From The New York Times review:

Underneath it all courses a festering obsession with his enemies … The book is bloated with self-importance, even though what it mostly recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much. It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged … When it comes to Bolton’s comments on impeachment, the clotted prose, the garbled argument and the sanctimonious defensiveness would seem to indicate some sort of ambivalence on his part—a feeling that he doesn’t seem to have very often.

From The New Yorker review:

Bolton mocks, disparages, or clashes with Steven Mnuchin, Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, Mike Pompeo, and others, all within the book’s first hundred pages. By the end of the nearly five-hundred-page book, Bolton also criticizes Mick Mulvaney, Jared Kushner, the entire White House economic team, many of his foreign counterparts, and, although he shares their misgivings about Donald Trump, the House Democrats who impeached the President.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_soviet_plan_for_ideological_subversion_precisely_describes_our_current_turmoil.html

A good friend of mine who fled the Soviet Union many years ago recently sent me a most chilling interview on You Tube.  Under ten minutes long, it needs to be seen by every American who wonders why the country is unraveling before our very eyes.  The interview features Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB spy and state media propagandist who defected to Canada in 1970.  Bezmenov cogently explains how “ideological subversion” is an essential method used by communists to undermine and destabilize Western countries.  His explanation crystallizes so much of what has happened in America in the last 40 years. 

Basically there are four steps to ideological subversion or “changing the perspective of reality” — in other words a mass brainwashing.  The first step is known as demoralization and it takes 15-20 years — the span of time needed to educate one generation by exposing them to the “ideology of the enemy.”  In America we have had

Marxist-Leninist ideology pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (patriotism).

And it makes not a whit of difference if these students are exposed to true information because “a person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information.”  Their minds are cemented.  Total denial is in force.  Does this not explain why statues are being destroyed and America is continually depicted as a racist country when, in fact, it is not?

In fact, it would take another few generations to change the “tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism.”

The second step in ideological subversion is destabilization. This step can be accomplished in as little as five years and the focus is on “destabilizing sectors such as the economy, law enforcement, foreign relations, media, and defense systems.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-truth-rationalism-religion

When I think of the Waverly Diner on 6th Avenue and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, I am moved by romantic nostalgia. By that I only mean that when I think of the Waverly I feel, in some way, what it was like to be young and in the rush of the conversation. The conversation was everything. It flowed all around us, in the subways and the streets, in the diners and the high-rise apartments, and if you could master it, it could take you anywhere. You could still smoke inside of diners back then and sometimes we spent whole days around an ashtray and a plate of disco fries, getting refills on the coffee. I’m not saying all the arguments were good, but sometimes it was thrilling.

Perhaps that’s a uniquely New York thing, to place so much faith in talking. But it once felt very American, too; the diner-booth yapper animated by argument, one version of the big city fast talker who reflected an aspect of the national character right there alongside the taciturn cowboy, the trapper frontiersman, and the Puritan. American because, if you could think it and you could argue it, then maybe you could be it, too. It was at least possible. And it was democratic in the best sense. You could talk to anyone, butt into any stranger’s conversation, as long as you had something interesting to say.

I don’t know how to argue in America anymore, or whether it’s even worth it. For someone like me, that is a real tragedy and so I would like to understand how this new reality came about.

There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational empiricism and religious sermonizing in American history. But these two modes seem to have become fused together in a new form of argumentation that is validated by elite institutions like the universities, The New York Times, Gracie Mansion, and especially on the new technology platforms where battles over the discourse are now waged. The new mode is argument by commandment: It borrows the form to game the discourse of rational argumentation in order to issue moral commandments. No official doctrine yet exists for this syncretic belief system but its features have been on display in all of the major debates over political morality of the past decade. Marrying the technical nomenclature of rational proof to the soaring eschatology of the sermon, it releases adherents from the normal bounds of reason. The arguer-commander is animated by a vision of secular hell—unremitting racial oppression that never improves despite myths about progress; society as a ceaseless subjection to rape and sexual assault; Trump himself, arriving to inaugurate a Luciferean reign of torture. Those in possession of this vision do not offer the possibility of redemption or transcendence, they come to deliver justice. In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired from your job and socially shunned.