RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/from-campus-intifadas-to-pronoun-mandates-who-is-our-common-enemy/

Some people need to be hit over the head to tie abstractions together under a Conceptual Common Denominator, and that is what we need as we look out at the various maladies afflicting American civilization, from the campus intifada protests calling for both the Islamification of the United States and the destruction of Israel, to the new pronoun mandate for workers, employers and even customers issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as part of the civil rights agency’s first move in a quarter-century to bring its workplace guidelines up to date with legal precedent and evolving social norms. This decision is the consequence of decades of queer scholarship and legal machinations to gain civil rights protection for behaviors once regarded as deviant but now part of a set of mainstream norms that protects trans people not only from being misgendered, but from having to use a bathroom that does not accord with their chosen gender.

The age of nihilism is upon us. We have witnessed the radical queering of America: the tran-sexualizing of students behind their parents’ backs; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that overtly discriminate against white men; Critical Race Theory that reinforces the idea—among others—that structural and systemic barriers still exist to keep blacks outside of public and private institutions; and the decimation of our universities that are now Marxist, anti-American indoctrination centers. This article will not list all the myriad social ills plaguing our republic today. They are well known to our readers.

The detritus, the putrefaction, the moral decay, all the forces of evil were possible because of one conceptual common denominator: liberalism. Everybody got let into the future and all standards were dropped to the lowest common denominator of the cheapest harlot on the block, who was told her inclusion was as valued as that of the righteous man. Every social ballast dragging down humanity was told, You too belong. Even pedophiles have been rebranded as Minor Attracted Persons (MAPs) as part of a sinister path towards normalizing pedophilia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-trial-manhattan-alvin-bragg-juan-merchan-41dd619d?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Love him or loathe him, Donald Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, not the sleazy scene that New York prosecutors produced Tuesday after calling Stormy Daniels to the witness stand. What the jurors thought of her detailed account, to use a euphemism, is anyone’s guess. But the judge denied a mistrial on grounds of prejudicial testimony, and now Mr. Trump will surely add this to his reasons for appeal if convicted.

As a refresher on the facts, Ms. Daniels has said she and Mr. Trump had sex once in 2006. Mr. Trump denies it. But his fixer Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to keep Ms. Daniels quiet before the 2016 election. Now Mr. Trump stands accused of falsifying business records to conceal his reimbursement to Mr. Cohen. The ostensible point of putting Ms. Daniels on the stand is for prosecutors to show the jury she’s credible, and that Mr. Trump would be highly motivated to cover it all up.

Her testimony was never going to reflect well on Mr. Trump, but the level of irrelevant detail prosecutors coaxed out of Ms. Daniels was egregious. Her recollection of what happened in Mr. Trump’s hotel room that day was almost a play by play: where, how, what articles of clothing were on and off. The jury doesn’t require the salacious details of an alleged extramarital affair two decades ago.

Then there were Ms. Daniels’s insinuations of coercion. She told “60 Minutes” in 2018 that she wasn’t attracted to Mr. Trump and didn’t want to have sex with him, but she “didn’t say no” and agreed it was entirely consensual. In her book, she called it “an out-of-body experience.” On Tuesday she testified to the jury that Mr. Trump stood up between her and the door, blocking the way, and she “blacked out,” despite not consuming drugs or alcohol.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/let-officers-control-unruly-protests

Since October 7, New York City has seen nearly 2,000 protests—about 12 protests per day, averaging 135 people each, though bridge-blocking actions can number up to 10,000 protesters. Indeed, unruly anti-Israel demonstrators in New York City have blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, Holland Tunnel, Columbus Circle, United Nations, John F. Kennedy International Airport, the New York Public Library, and, bizarrely, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The protesters are breaking the law by obstructing traffic, resisting arrest, and committing other acts of disorderly conduct. They are also harassing Jews and Jewish institutions, contributing to the tripling of anti-Semitic hate crimes between the first three months and last three months of 2023.

Where are New York’s police and prosecutors in all this? They are hamstrung by permissive state law, new city restrictions on police, and the decriminalization of “low-level” offenses. City leadership can restore order, but so far, it’s failing to do so.

Start with Mayor Eric Adams. In September, the mayor approved a settlement in a lawsuit brought against the city and police department by 2020’s “racial justice” demonstrators, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society, and state attorney general Letitia James. Adams praised the decree as “a collaborative process” that struck a balance between public safety and protesters’ rights of free expression. It does no such thing. Instead, the settlement has crippled the NYPD’s ability to keep demonstrations under control, contributing to the anti-Semitic disorder breaking out in city streets.

The settlement reduces officer discretion by creating four “tiers” for escalating law enforcement. It institutes “red light” offenses that require senior brass to authorize any arrest, even if they’re not on the scene. It dictates the number of officers permitted at demonstrations, specifies the units they can belong to, and determines what equipment they can bring. And its “kettling” ban—to use a tendentious term for ordinary crowd-control tactics—ties officers’ hands in the event that safety demands large-scale arrests.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/08/dont-let-the-left-demoralize-you-into-staying-on-the-sidelines/

The left wants you demoralized to keep you planted on the sidelines. But you know down deep that you need to get in the game—while you still can. Don’t let them keep you from “fighting the good fight.

When former Soviet KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov defected to the West from Russia, he set about exposing the strategies used within the KGB to spread propaganda and keep the Soviet people in line with the agenda of their political overlords. There were myriad tactics employed in this campaign of what today has been labeled mis- or dis-information.

One of the most effective tools for subjugation in the former Soviet Union was known as “demoralization,” which Bezmenov explained this way:

Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him, even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures… he will refuse to believe it. That’s the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.

You can learn more about this particular method and many other tools of keeping citizens compliant by viewing an interview Bezmenov gave to Canadian television back in 1984. I also expand on the effects of demoralization in a key chapter titled “What Prevents People from Seeing the Truth?” in my new book, Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It.

As we can see, demoralization brings about an attitude of “What’s the use?” And excuses such as, “You can’t fight The Machine.” And inaction associated with, “If I stand up, will anyone join me?”

In Religionless Christianity, the new book by best-selling author Eric Metaxas, Metaxas outlines many “idols” employed by Christians to rationalize in their own hearts and minds their reasons to stay on the sidelines of the present-day fight to preserve basic tenets of America’s foundation. In a world where “evil is called good and good evil,” many people who fill church pews Sunday after Sunday are sitting this one out.