RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/comedy-dies-in-woke-darkness/

Last week four stand-up comedians were disinvited from a comedy club in Seattle, right around the corner from the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or CHAZ, a glorified squatters’ camp created by antifa and BLM “peaceful” rioters during the 2020 “summer of love.” The four comedians fell afoul of neighborhood wokesters who complained to the club’s management in order to “ensure the programming stayed aligned with the socially diligent enclave’s ethos.”

Such stories have become so frequent that many people just shrug off the seriousness of their implications. But comedy is not just a type of entertainment, or a matter of taste. Comedy is much more than that: it is a critical part of the political institutions in governments in which citizens are free to speak publicly, and have the right to hold their leaders accountable to the people and, in the U.S., the Constitution.

Censorship, “cancel culture,” speech codes––in short, punishing the speech that one faction strives to silence for political gain–– all strike at the heart of our freedom and unalienable rights. Indeed, from the time decades ago that the “politically correct” Nurse Ratched feminists started scolding “sexist” jokes by saying, “That’s not funny!”, the woke have insidiously intensified their war on humor and the First Amendment.

The political heritage of comedy arose with the creation of constitutional rule by citizens in the ancient Greek poleis, particularly in Athens where citizenship was extended to the non-elites as well as to the rich and noble. This epochal development required extensive adjustments to the old order of aristocrats for whom ruling the state was a birthright, what Pindar, the celebrator of aristocrat achievements in the Panhellenic games, called the “splendor in the blood,” the inherited superiority of talent, charisma, wisdom, and character needed to be leaders of men.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/we-are-the-victims-and-everything-we-do-is-justified/

At the heart of everything from the debate over the Gaza War to DEI to toxic interpersonal relationships is a disastrous loop known as the “self-reinforcing victim/villain” cycle.

The self-reinforcing victim/villain cycle is a deceptively simple and incredibly destructive paradigm for any kind of relationship, national, communal or personal, in which one party constantly attacks the other while claiming that it is the victim fighting against oppression.

The paradigm is guided by the idea that there is a permanently fixed victim and villain, that the victim is constantly suffering attacks from the villain and that anything the victim does is justified because he or she has no agency except to resist the assaults of the villain.

While some Hamas supporters have lied or tried to cover up the atrocities of Oct 7, Ghazi Hammad, a Hamas official, initially denied them, but then burst out with, “the existence of Israel is what causes all that pain, blood, and tears. It is Israel, not us. We are the victims of the occupation. Period. Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 – everything we do is justified.”

“We are the victims”, “nobody should blame us” and “everything we do is justified” perfectly capture the cruel workings of the cycle. So many westerners have sided with Hamas because they accept, incorporate and make use of the same cycle in their own politics and lives.

The very same arguments adapted from Marxism and therapy culture play out routinely in “whiteness” and “colonialist” discourse in America, Europe and other free world nations.

The “self-reinforcing victim/villain” cycle dispenses with arguments, evidence or any reasoned assessments of rights. These may occasionally be thrown in when convenient, but make no real difference because the central premise of the cycle is the lack of any objective standard that both sides have to meet. International law, racial tolerance, peace treaties or negotiations are invoked in a purely one-sided fashion. It is understood that the officially designated victim never has to abide by international law, to stop hating or to sincerely agree to stop the violence.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/giving-dei-the-pink-slip

Last year, conservatives began taking action against the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy. The Manhattan Institute released a model policy to abolish DEI, exposed abuses in public universities, and advised political leaders, most notably Florida governor Ron DeSantis, in the crafting of legislation abolishing public-university DEI programs at the state level. To date, three states—Florida, Texas, and Tennessee—have passed laws abolishing or restricting DEI. A total of 17 states have either passed such laws or are considering them.

Our efforts are bearing fruit. Last week, the University of Florida, the flagship state institution, announced that it had dissolved its DEI department and terminated the employment of all DEI officials. UF was spending an astonishing $5 million per year on DEI programs, which university president Ben Sasse wisely redirected toward faculty recruitment. The new budget would presumably include recruitment for UF’s Hamilton Center, a new home for conservative scholars. Sasse also offered a positive alternative to DEI, promising to hold the institution to the much better standard of “universal human dignity.”

Conservatives are rightly celebrating the move as a watershed. DEI is not an inevitability; it is a choice that can be undone.

Corporate America is following suit. Firms including Google, Meta, and Zoom have quietly cut back DEI departments and laid off employees. I have recently spoken with a number of Fortune 500 executives, who explained that, following the summer of George Floyd, companies felt immense pressure to “do something” about racial disparities. But four years later, they have realized that DEI programs undermine productivity, destroy merit-based systems, and poison corporate culture. Because of our successful campaign to expose the true nature of DEI, they now have the political space—in essence, the social permission—to wind down these programs.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Apart from Israel, which has a TFR (Total Fertility Rate) of 2.9, no Western nation (including Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) has a birthrate above replacement rate, which implies – barring immigration – a West that faces aging and, ultimately, declining populations. (It is only fair to point out that China, Russia, and North Korea also have declining birthrates.

As Mr. Karabell wrote in the review quoted above: “Governments worldwide have evolved to meet the challenge of managing more people, not fewer and older.” Yet the opposite is in the offing. The effect on living standards could be startling. Economic growth depends on many factors: free markets, rule of law, global and fair trade, the right to property ownership, innovation, entrepreneurship, secure borders, but also on an expanding working-age populations.

Or, at least, a growing population has always been a key driver for economic growth. However, in a 2019 review of Paul Morland’s The Human Tide, Jason Willick wrote: “New technology such as cloning, space travel and artificial intelligence could mean the current demographic slowdown is not an endpoint but an interregnum before another era of radical political change sweeps all before it.” That is possible, and it is also possible that artificial intelligence will forego the need for additional white-collar jobs. But there is no way to avoid an aging population, along with ever-higher costs of healthcare for the elderly. Robots and computers do not pay taxes; people do.

The United States is better situated than most Western nations, as it attracts migrants to offset declining birthrates, though our population continues to age. Europe, as well, attracts migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, but at a lesser rate, and with less assimilation. While birthrates have declined in developing countries, many are still positive. Nigeria, for example, with a population of 226 million and a TFR of 5.3, is projected to have a population of 550 million by 2100. According to projections both Pakistan and Nigeria will surpass the United States in terms of population by 2100. China’s population will shrink to about one half that of India, the only country predicted to have a population over one billion in 2100.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/05/are-dei-and-esg-finally-going-mia/

The efforts by government, captured institutions and radical activists to manipulate and menace can feel like an endless loop. But is it possible we’ve turned a corner, or at least nearing one that we can take? Recent events suggest so.

The flagship institution of higher education in the red state of Florida is shutting down its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office. The University of Florida is ridding itself of the malign chief diversity officer position, sacking the program’s useless staff, and is also “halting any contracts involving the subject,” the Associated Press reports. 

What a welcome development, thanks to a bill passed and signed last year that forbids schools from using state and federal funds to support discriminatory initiatives.

Writing earlier this year for I&I, Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller identified “DEI theology” as a movement that has warped universities’ moral compasses.

“These often improbably huge campus bureaucracies are the engine of sheltering and groupthink. DEI offers ‘protection’ in the form of tribalization – the perfect growth medium for prejudice and alienation – and a hair trigger for any perceived slight, insult, or anything deemed exclusionary.” 

In one of many egregious instances of DEI indoctrination, every student-athlete at North Carolina’s Davidson College was required to watch “I’m Not Racist, Am I?” which, yes, Glenn Reynolds, does sound “like a hostile educational environment on account of race.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/up_to_us.html

The time’s fast coming when America will rip itself apart if reasonable people don’t stand up to injustice and stupidity masquerading as social justice

Some years ago, Ann Coulter commented about the TV series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: “The scripts involve the sort of real-life crimes that are a lot more common since our country has become ‘diverse,’ such as child rape and incest. But the child-rapists are never diverse, as they are in real life. No, the perps are always blond, blue-eyed American men. In fact, the modern American white male is the least rapey, most gentle, protective, chivalrous creature God has ever created.”

This has been obvious to anyone interested in the truth for, oh, six decades or thereabouts. People who can think follow facts to logical, reasonable conclusions. They don’t force-fit reality to a template based on doubtful assumptions that produce silly rules and policy, such as the presumption of police racism that led to the prohibition on profiling. We all profile as a matter of course. To profile is to think, to narrow a search universe. When you look for a lost sock, you ignore panties and pencils.

The Left, sticking to social justice templates and assumptions, refuses to acknowledge reality that doesn’t fit. So it’s up to conservatives to re-establish law and order by using common sense and following facts to reasonable, lawful conclusions. The time’s fast coming when America will rip itself apart if reasonable people don’t stand up to injustice and stupidity masquerading as social justice.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/american-paralysis-and-decline/

“We can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.”

So shrugged the ancient historian Livy (59 B.C.- A.D. 17) of the long decline of Roman national character that, in his age, finally ended the Roman Republic.

Like a patient whose medicine proves worse than the disease, Livy lamented that the Romans knew that they had become corrupt and lawless.

But the very contemplation of the hard medicine needed for restoration—and the furious reaction that would meet the remedy—made it impossible to save the patient.

America is nearing such an impasse.

We know that no state can long exist after opening its borders to over 7 million illegal aliens, requiring neither background checks nor legality.

The recent murder of a Georgia female jogger by an illegal alien and the savage beating of New York policemen by similar others hardly merit media attention.

Everyone knows that neither new appropriations nor new laws are needed to secure the border as it was in 2020.

Instead, we could just stop suicidal catch-and-release, deport lawbreakers, privilege the legal over the illegal immigrant, demand would-be refugees apply for asylum first in their native countries, finish the border wall, and pressure Mexico to stop undermining the territorial integrity of its northern neighbor.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/04/even-biden-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-bidenomics-anymore/

After President Joe Biden embraced the term “Bidenomics,” he and his White House staff couldn’t get enough of it. But either Biden’s forgotten all about it, or the administration realized that it was doing no good to brag about something the public didn’t believe. Either way, the term is vanishing from use.

It was in a speech in Chicago on June 28, 2023, that Biden decided to bear-hug the term.

“I didn’t come up with the name. I really didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t realize the economists in the Wall Street Journal did.  But I’m happy to call it ‘Bidenomics.’ And guess what? Bidenomics is working.”

Biden thought he was catching a wave. The economy seemed to be turning a corner, the rate of inflation was decelerating, job growth was strong. Surely the public would come to realize that the worst was behind.

Embracing the term would make it easy, the thinking probably was, to claim credit for any good news.

And, boy, did Biden try to tie “Bidenomics” to whatever good news he could find. At least initially.

The problem was that the more Biden tried to tell the public how he’d rescued the economy, the less the public believed it. Biden’s approval rating continued to slide. His grades on his handling of the economy did likewise.

In our I&I/TIPP Poll last June – taken just before Biden started talking up Bidenomics – we asked Americans if they agreed with Biden that the economy was strong. Only 36% did so. A New York Times/Sienna poll released over the weekend finds that only 18% those surveyed think Biden’s policies have helped them personally. (That compares with 40% who say Donald Trump’s policies helped them personally.)

His numbers haven’t improved since then. The TIPP Economic Optimism Index is lower today than it was then. Just 27% now give Biden an “A” or “B” grade on handling the economy, while 53% give him a “D” or an “F.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/youre-not-imagining-food-inflation/

On the menu today: A new report in the Wall Street Journal confirms what you likely suspected — despite the Consumer Price Index numbers (CPI) getting much closer to normal, you’re still paying more to eat, whether you’re shopping at the grocery store or going out to a restaurant. In fact, Americans haven’t spent this much of their money on food since the early 1990s — a fact that is likely to widen the divide between the administration’s happy talk about the economy and Americans’ perceptions that they’re constantly being squeezed, even if they’re making more money than a few years ago. Meanwhile, to fight the rising cost of living, states are hiking the minimum wage, left and right. Hey, it’s not like that increased cost of labor could ever get passed along to consumers, right?

The ‘Shrinkflation’ Election

Have you had this experience? You read that the year-to-year numbers of the CPI indicate that inflation is largely, if not completely, beaten . . . and then you go to Trader Joe’s or your local grocery store, or you take the family out to eat, and when the bill comes you think someone has mistaken you for a much wealthier person. Did I accidentally get charged for a Lamborghini in there somewhere?

(This is where the typical Biden-defending lefty will jump in and say, “This is because you’re shopping at expensive stores and restaurants!” For what it’s worth, Trader Joe’s is less expensive than the average grocery store*. And if you want to argue that by living in northern Virginia, I’m buying food in a part of the country with a higher cost of living, fine, but the point is not that things are expensive compared to other places, it’s that things are expensive in this place compared to prices in the not-so-distant past in this place. )

Over in the Wall Street Journal, Jesse Newman and Heather Haddon lay out the numbers demonstrating that we’re not just imagining this. Americans are spending the biggest share of their income on food since 1991:

The last time Americans spent this much of their money on food, George H.W. Bush was in office, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” was in theaters and C+C Music Factory was rocking the Billboard charts.