Displaying posts categorized under

BOOKS

Common Sense About China By Robert Curry

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/21/common-sense-about-china/

A review “Communist China’s War Inside America,” by Brian Kennedy (Encounter, 56

China’s goal, Brian Kennedy writes, is “demoralizing the United States to the point where America believes that further resistance is futile.” They can’t succeed without the help of America’s elite.

Something really strange is going on in America today. If you have wondered why political correctness requires you to avoid using the word “Chinese” with regard to a virus that came from China, then I have the book for you. It’s Communist China’s War Inside America by my friend Brian Kennedy. The good news is that the book—the latest in Encounter Books’ “Broadside” series—is very brief (the main text is only 49 pages). It is also written in a beautiful, clear style. Despite its brevity, it provides all you need to understand the nature of the Chinese threat to America, and to understand what can be done and must be done.

Kennedy gets straight to the point, writing that the Chinese 

are confident that America has grown corrupt, and that its political, financial, and cultural elites are in near-complete sympathy with the globalist project of an interdependent world, with the P.R.C. [the People’s Republic of China] at its head.

And make no mistake: the Chinese have ample evidence that their confidence in America’s elites is not misplaced. 

I have a story from my own life that illustrates Kennedy’s point. Recalling what it was like before the pandemic panic took total control of American life will help to set the stage. Back then, the media, the celebrities, and the politicians had not yet mastered the talking points of the COVID-19 narrative. During one of those early days, a local radio news personality announced with great excitement that she had secured an interview with a prominent epidemiologist from the most prestigious university in our region. After thanking the professor profusely for granting the interview, the reporter asked the obvious question, the one that was on my mind at that time: “What is the difference between this flu and the Spanish flu of 1918?” 

Mary Trump Abusing Psychology to Abuse Her Uncle By Sheldon Roth, MD

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/mary_trump_abusing_psychology_to_abuse_her_uncle.html

Sheldon Roth, M.D., a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, is the author of recently published Psychologically Sound: The Mind of Donald J. Trump.

Hidden Messages

Before you open this book or turn a page, look at the cover.  What do we see?  A handsome, young Donald Trump, in dashing cadet uniform, during one of the finest periods of his life.  In his five years at New York Military Academy, he reaped undiluted acclaim from faculty and classmates — a model student in behavior and academics, popular with classmates, a star athlete elected to the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame, garnering offers from Major League Baseball.  For a book entitled Too Much and Not Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, what is the meaning of this charming cover?  Is it Simon & Schuster’s unconscious peeking through Mary Trump’s agonized victimization?  Do they know something she is disinclined to acknowledge?

Turning to the book’s pages conjures another challenging image, a lexical one: Tolstoy’s opening line of Anna Karenina — “All happy families are alike, unhappy families are unhappy each in their own ways.”  The story of the first proposition is yet to be written, since conflict — unhappiness — is inherent to life.  Some families have more conflict, some less, but it is inescapable.  Any family in COVID-19 lockdown will readily testify to this truism.

A Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Mary Trump turns all Trump family conflict into prima facie psychopathology.  Relying as she does on fantastical speculation for thin formulations about the childhood experience of Fred Sr. and Mary Anne Trump’s complicated family of seven (decades before Mary Trump was born) further muddies her questionable psychological lens.  Equally startling is the biased degree to which she views her deceased father, Fred Jr. — perpetrator of domestic wife abuse leading to divorce, repeated abject employment failures, and an ugly history of debilitating alcoholism that contributed to his early death — as the only “self-made” hero of the family.  Even if one accepted her dubious psychological judgments, which I do not, her objectivity defies credulity.

The Trump Century: How Our President Changed the Course of History Forever : Lou Dobbs

How did Donald Trump almost single-handedly reverse America’s decline?

As the 21st Century began, the world’s only superpower was economically adrift, policing the world at the expense of American lives and trillions of dollars, weighed down by one-sided trade and security agreements with Europe and China ratified in a different era. 

Elites of both political parties battled over who would manage America’s decline from preeminent world power.

In The Trump Century, the indomitable Lou Dobbs explains how Trump has steered the debate every day he has been in politics, greatly expanding what Washington thinks is possible. By 2016, the globalist elites demanded no one speak about limiting illegal immigration or securing our borders. The elites told you communist China would soon be like us, and the PC orthodoxy told you what you could or could not say. You were told America’s Middle Class could never grow again and wages would be stagnant into perpetuity. Trump reversed all of that as radical Democrats and the Deep State conspired to overthrow his Presidency, as the deadly pandemic raged, and orchestrated street protests and violent riots dominated news headlines. 

He has not only made America great again but created a new standard for all future Presidents and likely has set the American agenda for the next hundred years. 

The Trump Century opens a window into Trump’s thinking on the economy, foreign policy, and border security and will energize his allies when they realize the future they’ve shaped.

An American’s Odyssey in Soviet Russia: Will We Heed His Warning? By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/an_americans_odyssey_in_soviet_russia_will_we_heed_his_warning.html

After I wrote the article titled “The Soviet Plan for ‘Ideological Subversion’ Describes Our Current Turmoil,” Charles Cole, author of In Russian Wonderland: An American’s Odyssey in Soviet Russia, contacted me.  His memoir recounts his time in 1972 as a Russian-speaking American “guide” in various Soviet cities where the “Research and Development in the USA” exhibit was on display. 

He chronicles the lives of average Soviet citizens at that period and describes how people lived under the tyranny of an omnipotent government.  He is exhorting Americans to perceive the lessons of the failed communist experience.  Like others who have reviewed the book, I was struck by the following anecdote, where an elderly man gave Cole a bag of ten freshly picked apples.  At the bottom of the bag, Cole found a piece of paper folded into a tiny cube. It read,  “We have a totalitarian regime. If we had a democratic republic, we would have progressed further and achieved more.  Nowadays the psychiatric hospitals are filled with dissidents[.]  You should take pride in having such a democratic country and not be overly tolerant in the face of those who have been blinded and deceived by propaganda.”

Also illuminating is the story that Cole recounts of when he and his fellow guides went to dinner.  They were approached by English-speaking black men from Africa.  Cole asked if their country sent a lot of exchange students to Moscow.

‘Oh, yes,’ replied one, ‘we send all of them here to the Soviet Union.’ He explained why: ‘We used to send quite a few of our students to Princeton, Columbia, and Berkeley, but they all came back Marxists. Now we send them here, and after three or four years in the USSR, they all return dedicated anti-communists.’

It’s a lesson that American parents still haven’t learned. They send their kids to Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, and other universities, and they come back as radical leftists, and, yes, some of them flat-out Marxists.

TOM FITTON:A Republic Under Assault: The Left’s Ongoing Attack on American Freedom

In this explosive new book, New York Times bestselling author and president of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton explains how the Radical Left and the Deep State are trying to destroy the Trump presidency.

Tom Fitton’s first two New York Times bestselling books, The Corruption Chronicles and Clean House, exposed the hypocrisy and corruption of Obama’s two terms. Now, in Fitton’s latest investigative probe, he identifies the four major forces posing a continued threat to American democracy.

Deep State Efforts to Destroy the Trump Presidency: How the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign paid for the fraudulent anti-Trump “Steele Dossier,” and how it was used by the Obama FBI and DOJ to dupe the FISA Court to allow it to spy on the Trump presidential campaign AND President Trump. These and more dirty secrets of Obamagate and the impeachment coup attempt are exposed.

Hillary Clinton Email Scandal: How the Clinton team and senior officials at the Obama State Department conspired to cover up Hillary Clinton’s secret email system—and shocking revelations that tie the Obama White House to the cover-up!

Voter Fraud: How Soros-funded groups attack states that seek to protect clean elections by challenging voter ID laws, and how the Left is cynically peddling COVID-19 crisis electoral “reforms,” such as mail-in voting, which could increase voter fraud and election chaos. And shocking numbers about dirty voting rolls across the nation!

Illegal Immigration: How deadly illegal “sanctuary” policies are exploding across America, and how our nation’s sovereignty has been under assault by radical open-border advocates.

Subversive Deep State collaborators with ties to the Clinton and Obama machines not only launched countless—often illegal—operations to stop and then remove Trump, but even more alarmingly, are working to transform the United States into something truly unrecognizable to all who believe in liberty and the rule of law.

Today one of their main targets is President Donald J. Trump.

Tomorrow it could be you and anyone who believes in the US Constitution, believes the United States must have clearly defined and protected borders, believes in the need for a strong military, believes in the value of hard work and faith, and believes in the rule of law and American exceptionalism.

A REVIEW OF DAVID GOLDMAN’S BOOK “YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED: CHINA’S PLAN TO SINO-FORM THE WORLD BY by SCOTT A. SHAY

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/07/10/you-might-not-be-interested-in-china-but-china-is-interested-in-you/

OU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN CHINA, BUT CHINA IS INTERESTED IN YOU

n September of 2019, I was invited to a gathering of Jewish Joe Biden supporters. Rather than ask about Israel, the Iran deal, or frankly anything else Jewish, I asked Biden about China. In a nutshell, my question was: China is currently leading the US in quantum communications, quantum computing, 5G, artificial intelligence, and chip manufacturing. China was just the first country to land a spacecraft on the dark side of the moon. We are no longer a feared military adversary in the South China Sea. The Belt and Road Initiative has the potential to totally redraw the trade patterns that have been so advantageous to the US. And China has yet to be taken to task about its human rights violations. As president, what would be your China policy?

Biden began by saying that President Donald Trump correctly diagnosed that China presents novel issues for the US, but that Trump’s China policies had failed. Then he simply noted his many years of foreign policy experience and his private dinners with China’s leader Xi Jinping. He also spoke extensively about the greatness of US research universities. His answer was underwhelming to say the least.

Unfortunately, as David Goldman argues in his new book You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-form the World, Biden, like previous administration leaders of both parties and Congresses, including Trump, has no cogent China strategy.

Goldman attributes this shocking omission to American overconfidence, a bipartisan failure to understand China’s goals, and a lack of political will to establish a long-term plan to counter them. Further, as Goldman explains, if the US does not act soon, China will dominate the world; even in Israel, the Chinese are primary investors in key sectors like rail and ports. The US will not only be unable to stand up to China, but it too will be under its thumb.

‘Airborne’ By Matt Margolis Is the Definitive Guide to the Media’s COVID-19 Malfeasance and Malpractice By Stacey Lennox

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stacey-lennox/2020/07/11/airborne-by-matt-margolis-is-the-definitive-guide-to-the-medias-covid-19-malfeasance-and-malpractice-n626922

The COVID-19 pandemic has given the corporate media an unparalleled opportunity to show Americans that they are little more than partisan activists. The daily Coronavirus Task Force briefings were a stunning display of the media’s childish and partisan behavior. They appeared neither serious nor smart, and American’s trust in the press continued to tumble. In Airborne, author Matt Margolis details some of their most egregious distortions, misfires, and outright lies during the pandemic.

As the election nears, it is a near certainty that the media will resurface the pandemic response to try and damage President Trump. As noted in the book’s introduction, the COVID-19 response will be weaponized this cycle in the same way Hurricane Katrina was weaponized against George W. Bush. In both cases, the response was robust and appropriate. Yet the corporate media will spin a narrative not remotely related to the reality of the situation.

In Airborne, Margolis gives the president’s supporters a complete guide to combatting COVID-19 lies. The news cycle moves so quickly that the full list of dirty deeds by the corporate talking heads is challenging to recall. Many highlighted in the book are astonishing in their boldness.

The Prophetic Pessimism of Michel Houellebecq Anthony Daniels

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/07-08/the-prophetic-pessimism-of-michel-houellebecq/

Asked what the post-COVID world would be like, the most famous of contemporary French writers, Michel Houellebecq (above), replied with his customary asperity, “The same—only worse.”

This is because, according to him, if I have read him aright, deterioration in our modern world never misses an opportunity to take place. Man does not learn from experience or from anything else, for that matter; and because time’s arrow flies in one direction only, we cannot reconstitute or restore our civilisation once we have smashed it up. In short, we are doomed.

Strangely enough, this superficially depressing view, that everything is terrible and getting constantly worse, is in a way consolatory, which is perhaps why Houellebecq is so wildly popular (his last book, Sérotonine, had an initial print-run of 330,000 in France alone). If we are doomed whatever we do, we are absolved of responsibility for our own doom. Moreover, by the time we have finished reading his enumeration and examination of the vacuity of existence in consumer society, we feel much the better for it. At least we are not as bad as that, and we have had a good laugh en route to the dismal conclusion.

Houellebecq is a gifted and brilliant, but also somewhat limited, writer who has gross lapses of taste. His brilliance can be appreciated by consideration of the titles of his last two books alone: Soumission (submission) and Sérotonine (serotonin).

Submission is, of course, what Islam means, but in the book it is France that submits to submission, not because of the intellectual strength of Islam (no one could have been more contemptuous of Islam’s claims to intellectual value than Houellebecq, who famously said of the Koran that it was a wretched, a truly wretched, book), but because of the nihilistic lack of faith of the French population in anything spiritually transcendent: especially in the intelligentsia and upper echelons who, after all, decisively set the tone for the whole of society. And what is true of France, of course, is true of the West in general.

Julie Kelly’s NeverTrump Exposé ‘Disloyal Opposition’ Hits Store Shelves Today By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/07/julie-kellys-nevertrump-expose-disloyal-opposition-hits-store-shelves-today/

Like no one else in conservative media, American Greatness author Julie Kelly has gleefully needled, mocked, and embarrassed the obnoxious NeverTrump movement in numerous articles and posts on Twitter. Most importantly, she has strived to expose them as the shameless and soulless grifters they are.

Her new book, Disloyal Opposition: How the NeverTrump Right Tried―And Failed―To Take Down the President, hits store shelves today, taking her one woman crusade against these “petty, vengeful, bombastic, reactionary, and abusive” fake conservatives to new heights.

Purifying Publishing The cultural commissars come for conservative books. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/purifying-publishing-bruce-bawer/

Of America’s most powerful and prominent cultural institutions, it’s quick work naming those that aren’t entirely left-wing satrapies. TV? Fox News, although things are looking less and less encouraging there. Colleges? Hillsdale, I guess, though how many Ivy League faculty members would ever admit to having heard of it? Newspapers? The New York Post (sometimes), Wall Street Journal (kind of), and perhaps one or two others from sea to shining sea. Silicon Valley? Nothing. Hollywood? ¡Nada! Big business? Hmm: what is there, nowadays, honestly, other than that My Pillow guy?

One field in which there’s at least a soupçon of ideological diversity is the book trade. Yes, staffers at the major publishing houses are overwhelmingly on the left. Ditto bookstore employees. Plus the people who give out the major book awards. Not to mention that the heftiest advances for political books go to Democrats. Since the turn of the century, the biggest nonfiction book deal, amounting to at least $65 million, was for Michelle Obama’s Becoming (2018) and for an as-yet-unpublished opus by Barack; second – raking in $15 million – was Bill Clinton’s My Life (2004); third – at $14 million – was Hillary’s Hard Choices (2014).

One more thing about the reflexive leftism of the book scene. Thanks to today’s lethal cancel culture, even classics are at risk. Recently, in an article for the School Library Journal headlined “Little House, Big Problem: What To Do with ‘Classic’ Books That Are Also Racist,” Marva Hinton identified both Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as racist. No, she didn’t just say that they contained racist language, which would have been fair enough; she asserted that these two books – both of them key texts in the history of the American struggle against racism – are in fact racist.