RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/culture/david-solway-2/2023/09/25/the-decline-and-fall-of-home-part-one-n1729442

The similarities between the current American decline as a world power and the collapse of the Roman Empire have often been remarked. (After the western part of the Roman Empire fell, the eastern half continued to exist as the Byzantine Empire for hundreds of years. Therefore, the “fall of Rome” really refers only to the fall of the western half of the Empire.) The analogy has become a staple cliché of popular opinion and historical scholarship. The correspondences between Rome and America are compelling and, when the issue is regarded with fresh eyes and attention to taxonomic detail, will strike us with a sense of genuine foreboding.

The factors leading to the fall of the Roman Empire, conventionally dated 476 AD, following the attack of the barbarian chieftain Odoacer, are eerily reminiscent of the nodal “single point failures” observable in 2023 America. Briefly:

The Welfare State

Starting in 123 BC, the powerful reformist Tribune Gaius Gracchus installed a monthly free dole of grain and provided for the entertainment of a decadent citizenry —  in poet Juvenal’s phrase from “The Satires” (Satire 10), circa 127 AD: “They shed their sense of responsibility/…and reveal their desire for two things only/bread and circuses.” The practice continued well into the later years of the Empire. The analogy with the American panoply of food stamps, “Great Society” amenities, payment to single mothers, provision of flat-screen TVs and other luxury items, and the contribution of welfare expansion to family breakdown, is stunning.

Debt

Under the Emperor Diocletian, personal debt led to the abandonment of mortgaged property — in our terms, the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Enormous public debt crippled Rome’s economy. America’s debt, both funded and unfunded, hovers in the unimaginable trillions. As Will and Ariel Durant wrote of Rome in “The Lessons of History,” “Huge bureaucratic machinery was unable to govern the empire effectively with the enormous, out-of-control debt.”

We are seeing the same disaster unfolding before our very eyes. Michael E. Newton warns in “The Path to Tyranny,” “By 2035, the debt is projected to be between 79 and 181 percent of GDP…The United States is clearly on the road to bankruptcy.”

https://pjmedia.com/culture/david-solway-2/2023/10/01/the-decline-and-fall-of-home-part-two-n1729757

When one considers the full extent of the Roman cataclysm leading to the inevitable fall — the plethora of corrupt and self-promoting politicians, the exposure of unwanted infants (open-air abortion) and the consequent decline in the reproductive ratio, the deterioration of road systems and infrastructure, the degrading of a once-mighty military, and the evident degeneration of sexual morality (as the fifth-century Christian historian Salvian declaimed, “Be ashamed of your lives, no cities are free of impurities”) — one cannot help but note the affinities and correlations between the Roman Empire and the American Republic.

Both have suffered what has come to be known as the Polybius trap, named after the second-century Greek-Roman historian Polybius, who expounded the notion in his “Histories.” The idea is that once the political equilibrium between the three branches of government — in Rome, the Consulship, Senate, and Tribunate; in America, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial — is shattered, decline is inevitable. It is as if the various units of the political engine have seized with improperly distributed or stranded energy. The concept of a malign disequilibrium also applies more generally to the entire complex system of social, political, and economic organization of state or empire. Rome and America may be historically distant from one another but there is little doubt that they are ideologically intimate and civilizationally aligned.

The old question unavoidably arises: What is to be done? In The Path to Tyranny, Michael Newton suggests the only possible (if fanciful) answer, the response of a desperate optimist: “How do we fight and oppose the approaching tyranny? Obviously, we must vote in elections and support those in politics who defend our liberty and Constitution… Most important of all, each of us must act as a modern-day Samuel, Solon, Socrates, Cicero, Cato, James Madison… persuading people of the advantages of liberty and informing them of the evils of big government.” A pretty tall order. Newton wrote in 2010, before the plummet in snowflake literacy, the censoring monopoly of the digital platforms, the oppressive COVID mandates of an autocratic government, the advent of Wokeism, the complete DEI annihilation of the University, and the advanced machinery of electoral fraud.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/03/as-stagflation-fears-mount-dems-urge-biden-to-stop-bragging-about-bidenomics/

In the three months since President Joe Biden decided to campaign on the glories of “Bidenomics,” inflation started creeping back up, the unemployment rate rose, and his approval ratings on the economy have steadily dropped. Now, stagflation is back in the news. All of it is leading Democrats to urge Biden to … shift his messaging.

Stagflation – the combination of rising inflation, high unemployment, and a stagnant economy not seen since the disastrous Jimmy Carter years – is suddenly in the headlines.

On Friday, for example, CNBC ran a story: “Stagflation is ‘the big bogeyman out there’ — and many increasingly fear its return.”

The story pointed out that climbing oil prices and “the specter of higher-for-longer inflation have reignited concern about stagflation risks.”

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is also ringing stagflation alarm bells, saying the Fed could have to raise interest rates to 7% to tame ongoing inflationary pressures.

“I am not sure if the world is prepared for 7%,” he told the Times of India. “I ask people in business, ‘Are you prepared for something like 7%?’ The worst case is 7% with stagflation. If they are going to have lower volumes and higher rates, there will be stress in the system. We urge our clients to be prepared for that kind of stress.”

Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at stockbroker CMC Markets, told CNN that the U.S. could “well be heading for a prolonged period of stagflation.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-preapproved-narratives-corrupt-science-false-studies-covid-climate-change-5bee0844?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Scientists were aghast last month when Patrick Brown, climate director at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, Calif., acknowledged that he’d censored one of his studies to increase his odds of getting published. Credit to him for being honest about something his peers also do but are loath to admit.

In an essay for the Free Press, Mr. Brown explained that he omitted “key aspects other than climate change” from a paper on California wildfires because such details would “dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.” Editors of scientific journals, he wrote, “have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives.”

Nature’s editor, Magdalena Skipper, denied that the journal has “a preferred narrative.” No doubt the editors at theNew York Times and ProPublica would say the same of their own pages.

Mr. Brown’s criticisms aren’t new. In 2005 Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis wrote an essay titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” He contended that scientists “may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings.”

“The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true,” Dr. Ioannidis argued. “Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure.”

In addition, many scientists use the peer-review process to suppress findings that challenge their own beliefs, which perpetuates “false dogma.” As Dr. Ioannidis explained, the more scientists there are in a field, the more competition there is to get published and the more likely they are to produce “impressive ‘positive’ results” and “extreme research claims.”

The same dynamic applies to Covid research. A July study in the Journal of the American Medical Association purported to find higher rates of excess deaths among Republican voters in Florida and Ohio after vaccines had been rolled out. Differences in partisan vaccination attitude, the study concluded, may have contributed to the “severity and trajectory of the pandemic.”

But the study lacked information on individuals’ vaccination and cause of death. It also didn’t adjust for confounding variables, such as underlying health conditions and behaviors. Charts buried in the study’s appendix showed excess deaths among older Republicans started to exceed Democrats in mid-2020—well before vaccines were available.

Despite these flaws, the study was published and pumped by left-wing journalists because it promoted their preferred narrative. The peer-review process is supposed to flag problems in studies that get submitted to journals. But as Dr. Ioannidis explained in a Sept. 22 JAMA editorial, the process is failing: “Many stakeholders try to profit from or influence the scientific literature in ways that do not necessarily serve science or enhance its benefits to society.” Those “stakeholders” include the scientific journals themselves, which he notes have among the highest profit margins of any industry—by some estimates, about 40%.

Journals often don’t compensate peer reviewers, which can result in perfunctory work. The bigger problem is that reviewers often disregard a study’s flaws when its conclusions reinforce their own biases. One result is that “a large share of what is published may not be replicable or is obviously false,” Dr. Ioannidis notes. “Even outright fraud may be becoming more common.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-new-york-fraud-trial-arthur-engoron-letitia-james-49ef3200?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

New York’s civil fraud trial against Donald Trump and his business empire started Monday in a Manhattan courtroom, and the great shame is that he and state Attorney General Letitia James can’t both lose. In comments at the courthouse, Mr. Trump called it a “witch hunt,” and he has a point. Yet the investigation also seems to have caught some typical Trumpian deception.

Judge Arthur Engoron granted partial summary judgment to the state last week, ruling that Mr. Trump presented grossly inflated financial figures to lenders. This is “not a matter of rounding errors or reasonable experts disagreeing,” he wrote. Mr. Trump’s famed triplex residence in Trump Tower is 10,996 square feet, but he repeatedly claimed 30,000 square feet.

“Defendants absurdly suggest that ‘the calculation of square footage is a subjective process that could lead to differing results,’” the judge added. “Well yes, perhaps, if the area is rounded or oddly shaped,” but “good-faith measurements could vary by as much as 10-20%, not 200%. A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.”

The ruling goes on for pages like this: Despite four appraisals pegging his Seven Springs estate at $30 million or less, Mr. Trump claimed it was worth $261 million. He valued apartments in New York as if their rents weren’t regulated. His figures for several golf clubs “included a 15% or 30% ‘premium’ based on the ‘Trump brand,’” according to the judge, even while lenders were told no such premium was added.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/diversity_division_disintegration.html

What is wrong with the U.S.? What is wrong with the Western world? Indeed, they are coming apart.

The terms “racist,” “racism,” and “hate” are now commonplace charges and allegations in political discourse and the sphere of public opinion where whites are called to ceremonially denounce the “white privilege” into which they were born.

The destiny of migrants illegally crossing the southern borders of the U.S. and the European Union is to replace white Americans and Europeans. As the ongoing invasion continues, native-born white Americans and Europeans have practically stopped reproducing themselves. Any such voluntary downturn in the birth rate has always been a sign of internal agony, collapse of society, social upheaval, and decaying civilization.

The question to which the rendering of the old fabricated answer, i.e., “diversity is our greatest strength,” has never been adequate: Is there no limit to the racial, religious, ideological, political, social, cultural, and ethnic diversity America can accommodate before it splinters into its parts?

Diversifying religious teachings leads to incompatible, opposing viewpoints about morality on the most divisive social issues of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc. Racial diversity and population exchange are enhancing and sharpening problems that have never been solved since the birth of the United States. In a few short years, white Americans will belong to racial minorities—the apparent goal of the ruling globalists.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/paying-iranian-terrorists-billions-in-ransom/

The going rate for an American hostage these days is around $1.3 billion. That’s what the Biden administration paid out for five Americans in a prisoner swap with the Islamic Republic of Iran this week. And with little overhead, it’s mostly profit for the mullahs.

But don’t let the term “prisoner swap” insinuate that there is any moral equivalence. These are not two normal countries trading spies or combatants. No, this is just old-fashioned extortion.

The Iranians released political hostages, snatched off the streets of Tehran after unwisely returning to visit family or attending funerals or protests. Many of them were reportedly thrown into the notorious Evin Prison for the crime of having dual citizenship. Some, like Siamak Namazi, were put in solitary confinement for over two years.

Conversely, the United States released a bunch of spies, most of them caught trying to send military and nuclear equipment back to Iran — all of them given the benefit of due process.

Having a moral imperative to retrieve American citizens from these fascist regimes is admirable. Incentivizing more kidnappings is not. So, it’s one thing for the Biden administration to contend, “we did what he had to do” and quite another for them to celebrate as if they had just signed the Peace of Westphalia.

Last week, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted out a triumphant picture of the Biden team and the released hostages, writing, “seven Americans on their way home from Iran alongside a world class group of American diplomats.”

The fact that Iran, a far weaker state with little leverage, walks away with its spies and $6 billion in sanctioned cash in exchange for five innocent people does not strike me as a great diplomatic coup … at least not for the United States.

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/rick-moran/2023/10/01/chicago-armed-robbers-on-an-extraordinary-rampage-everyone-is-so-freaked-out-n1731381

Chicago’s criminal class is feeling a little left out these days. They’re envious of all the smash-and-grab looters that are operating out west. So Chicago’s criminals decided to go the looters one better.

In a shocking series of armed robberies throughout the city, thieves have developed new tactics that allow them to hit a dozen or more unsuspecting victims on the street and disappear before the police can scoop them up.

The robbers use stolen cars and hit specific neighborhoods, accosting people and taking their valuables while brandishing automatic weapons in their faces.

One such spree included two armed thieves hitting two discount stores and robbing employees and then stealing wallets and other items from pedestrians on the street,

The police captured one of the crooks by sheer happenstance when a citizen called in a report of two men running from a stolen Kia. But this is a “drop in the bucket,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

In the days before and after those robberies, waves of other stickups were happening around the city, including a driver accosted by rifle-toting teens as he was unloading his car in Bucktown, a woman carjacked at gunpoint in Rogers Park, students walking near DePaul University’s Lincoln Park campus and a bar worker mugged after leaving work in the West Loop.

While armed robberies are nothing new in Chicago, a disturbing new pattern has emerged in recent months where crews of robbers — many of them juveniles — toting high-powered weapons go on crime sprees, robbing or carjacking multiple victims in a matter of minutes, often using stolen cars and dressed head to toe in black.

They seem to be constantly one step ahead of authorities. Before police can even respond to one scene, more have popped up, leaving dozens upon dozens of victims in their wake.

https://www.racket.news/p/footnote-i-faucius

The piece published earlier today, “Anthony Fauci Was America’s Warmup Dictator,” prompted a few hot texts and comments that deserve responses. A common theme is that I need to own being late to the topic.

It’s true. Fauci, Covid, and treatment of people like fired podcaster Alison Morrow and censored Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, and Aaron Kheriaty are on my conscience. Intimidated by the science, I decided early to sidestep pandemic stories, and as a result blew off people who could have used support. Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger were the ones who knew to look up Jay’s name in the Twitter Files. Their focus on Covid turned out to be key in spotting the worst mischief in those documents, because so many pandemic-related removals were based on narrative rather than factual transgressions. Suppression of posts supposedly encouraging “vaccine hesitancy” created the template for true political censorship. This was the moment when platforms and government agencies learned to punish based not on what was written, but the state of mind of the writer, a next-level dystopian technique.

I had to start over to get through jargon-laden texts like the Slack chats of the “Proximal Origin” authors. Going back through pandemic chronology was embarrassing — I can’t believe how much I missed in real time — but also drove home how much olé journalism went on among people who supposedly covered the story every day. There was close to zero meaningful pushback in the early months to public messaging on a slew of issues like natural immunity, age-specific risk, and especially the monstrous infection mortality rate error that sent the country into a panic from which it still hasn’t really recovered:

So, yes, there was an awful lot that anyone paying even minimal attention should have known then, but many official deceptions are also only becoming clear now. An example is this past week’s Public/Racket story about Fauci’s “big tour” promoting zoonotic origin to the CIA, State Department, and White House.

https://www.racket.news/p/anthony-fauci-was-americas-warmup?r=5mz1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Excerpt

Exposés in Public and Racket this week showed Anthony Fauci engaged in the bureaucratic version of witness tampering, using a dubious “Proximal Origin” paper he helped engineer to divert attention from the possibility that Covid-19, too, was a viral Frankenstein’s monster. Apart from a few conservative outlets, no one picked up the story. How screwed up is the U.S. right now? The nation’s top medical official for years worked in public and private to stifle investigation of our worst health crisis, which increasingly looks like a unparalleled man-made catastrophe. He’s going to skate on it, because upper-class America is now so deep into mass mental illness that it’s more likely to make a sex symbol of corruption than punish it.