RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/27/the-sheer-madness-of-todays-left/

“Madness! Madness . . . madness!”
— The Bridge on the River Kwai

With that exclamation, director David Lean ended his epic film about a dutiful but vainglorious British officer who sought to display to his Japanese captors superior British discipline and morale in a prisoner of war camp. As proof of British engineering superiority, he pursues his agendas by ordering his POWs to build for their Japanese captors a strategic bridge that otherwise they could not have built—only to try to destroy the efforts of fellow Allied soldiers sent to blow-up his masterpiece. For the delusional ideologue, reality must never intrude.

So it is now. When the rock of green and woke ideology hits the hard place of reality, sheer madness always results.

The world prices of oil and natural gas are skyrocketing. At the time of a major war in Ukraine, the Western democracies have framed the conflict as existential, with a Russia/Mordor on the attack against a declining West/Gondor. 

A subtext of the struggle is that the world’s illiberal regimes—fossil-fuel exporting Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and the various Middle Eastern autocracies—are getting richer by the day while destroying Mother Earth, as noble gas and oil importing green Western nations can scarcely afford to drive or heat their homes. 

Normally, the mad Left would not object terribly to the ensuing fuel price hikes. Remember, Joe Biden bragged on the campaign trail that he would end fossil fuels during his tenure. 

Obama’s soon-to-be Energy Secretary Steven Chu said during the 2008 campaign he wished to see American gas prices match those in Europe (i.e. $9-10 a gallon). And then President Obama himself did not disagree. He meekly added that such increases should be “gradual.” He had also warned that his cap-and-trade initiatives would necessarily “skyrocket” electricity prices—without suggesting that his off-guard brag was even a gaffe of unexpectedly telling the truth. 

So green orthodoxy dictates that the highest possible fossil fuel prices are good. Unaffordability will hasten the end of gas and oil, ensuring currently subsidized but uneconomical green energy as the only remaining alternative. 

But like most leftist top-down agendas, the details and consequences are usually hidden. After all, green wokeism usually exempts the lifestyles of its elite advocates. The Obamas currently are building a most un-green luxury Hawaiian beach mansion (their third such estate). And Al “Earth in the Balance” Gore got rich selling his failed cable outlet to a carbon-fueled Al Jazeera. 

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/democratic-led-congress-might-still-pass-bidens-spending-package-after-raising

The Democrat-led Congress might still be able to garner enough votes to pass President Biden’s massive spending package, despite already raising federal spending by more than 6% and presiding over record deficit and debt levels.

The national debt is climbing to a staggering $31 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. The federal deficit hit record numbers in FY2020 ($3.1 trillion) and FY2021 ($2.8 trillion), driven by large coronavirus stimulus measures. The deficit in the first 5 months of this year is $475 billion.

According to a recent analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the fiscal year (FY) 2022 omnibus appropriations bill that Congress recently passed “provides $1.512 trillion of budget authority for FY2022, $88 billion (6 percent) higher than FY 2021 levels, $50 billion higher than in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent baseline, and in line with FY 2021 levels when adjusted for higher inflation.”

https://straightarrownews.com/cc/manchin-i-intend-to-vote-for-supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson/

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) may have decided whether Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will become the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. After four days of nomination hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Manchin released a statement Friday, saying, “I have determined I intend to vote for her nomination to serve on the Supreme Court.”

“I am confident Judge Jackson is supremely qualified and has the disposition necessary to serve as our nation’s next Supreme Court Justice,” Sen. Manchin said in the statement. “Her wide array of experiences in varying sectors of our judicial system have provided Judge Jackson a unique perspective that will serve her well on our nation’s highest court.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/mar/27/most-americans-lack-confidence-bidens-ability-hand/

An NBC News poll released Sunday found more than two-thirds of Americans doubt President Biden has the chops to manage the Ukraine crisis as his approval rating hit a new low.

The poll of 1,000 adults showed that 71% have “just some” or “very little” confidence in Mr. Biden when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while 28% said they had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in the Democratic president.

The survey was conducted March 18-22, before Mr. Biden met last week with European allies on Ukraine and before he declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” an unscripted line that the administration immediately walked back.

In addition, the poll found Mr. Biden’s job approval rating fell to 40%, down from 43% in January, for his lowest score on the survey since taking office. More than half, or 55%, disapproved of the president’s performance, up from 54%.

“What this poll says is that President Biden and Democrats are headed for a catastrophic election,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategy, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates.

https://spectator.org/the-corruption-of-the-biden-administration-is-now-in-plain-sight/

EXCERPTS

Corruption has been around for a long time.

The problem is when we detach power from benevolent responsibility.

So, it should not be surprising that our government of the people, by the people, and for the people could and has at times become the playground of corrupt people. Even in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln, an exceptional politician in any age, there was corruption. Carl Sandburg writes of how Rep. Thad Stevens complained that Secretary of War Simon Cameron was so dishonest that the only thing he wouldn’t steal was a red-hot stove. Cameron, of course, took offense, and Lincoln tried to calm things down by asking Stevens to retract. “All right,” goes a version of how Stevens replied, “I will retract. He would steal the stove, too.”

In the words quoted, Amos skewered the use of power to obtain sex as well as money. History confirms that this too is a proclivity of powerful people. Whether we speak of the constant parade of women through the bedchambers of such monarchs as Charles II of Britain or Louis XV of France, or of similar parades through the chambers of the Kennedy White House or of wherever Bill Clinton went, or the line of the powerful who flew on the Lolita Express, there is much evidence that power is a supreme aphrodisiac. In grimmer governments, force was used instead (which was made the object of very dark cinematic humor in the British masterpiece The Death of Stalin).

Implicit in Amos’ words is that there is an inevitable price to pay for tolerating corruption. Skilled politicians, adept at feeling the pulse of the people, lose their sharpness through their indulgences. As their corruption increases, competence decreases. Managing the many pretenses that hide its ill-gotten benefits takes up more and more time and energy. Lies need more lies to hide them and so the story keeps getting more and more complicated and less and less plausible. Leaks spring in the dike that quickly become controllable. The collapse can come very quickly.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/a-ghost-story?token=

EXCERPT

In the summer of 2020, George Floyd was killed by a white police officer, and Black Lives Matter protests erupted in cities all over the United States. I feel comfortable saying this now: I felt conflicted. I remember surrendering to the peer pressure to donate every single day, and to post receipts of those donations (like I was in trouble for something—oh yeah, being “white”). I remember my Instagram stories were just re-post after re-post of this, that and the other activist, of whom I had no background knowledge, but who I was told were the people to re-post. I’ve since unfollowed them all because all of them showed themselves to be antisemitic.

I was performing. I was absolutely performing. And I am not ashamed to admit it. I was so scared. I was still a hired freelance journalist, and I knew the impact of staying silent. Freelance writing isn’t a joke. You cannot pay rent if you offend people. So I kept a foot in the world of music writing, and with my paychecks, I splurged on bailing out protestors via GoFundMe pages, or whatnot. At least, I think I did. Who knows?

I remember that Lady Gaga’s album “Chromatica” came out within 48 hours of Floyd’s death, and there was an unspoken directive on Twitter that only BIPOC people were allowed to be joyous about this album release. It was for them and nobody else.

https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/the-democrats-common-sense-problem?s=r

The Democrats are bleeding voters, particularly working class voters of all races. There are lots of reasons for this and I’ve written about some of them. One important throughline here is what we might call the common sense problem. As in, Democrats seem to have abandoned it in many areas. This helps explain why there hasn’t been a ”Trump disenchantment dividend” for the Democrats as the former President’s popularity has fallen and for that matter a “nutty GOP politicians” dividend as various Republican pols do and say fairly crazy things. Voters just aren’t sure the Democrats are that well-grounded either.

Awhile ago, I tried to codify some of voters’ common sense views and values into ten short statements to illustrate how Democrats are losing the plot relative to the median voter. I’ll go through some of them here with the aid of some new data demonstrating how widely this common sense is embraced by ordinary Americans in contrast to their rejection by woke liberal activists and some politicians associated with the Democratic party.

1. Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not. Americans love equal opportunity! But lately more and more Democrats have embraced, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that we must equalize outcomes as well by emphasizing policies that promote “equity” as opposed to simple equality.

But Americans’ common sense is that opportunities should be made equal if they are not and then let people achieve as they will. There is no guarantee, nor should there be, that everyone will wind up in the same place.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/26/of-boiling-and-jumping-frogs/

“When average families can no longer pay their rent or mortgage, gas up their car, or even put food on the table, all bets are off. Our rulers think they have anesthetized those portions of the population they have not simply bought off. They might find that there is quite a lot of jump left in the frog yet. If so, they may be the ones in hot water.”

It’s said that if you toss a frog into a pot of hot water it will instantly jump out. If, however, you toss it into a pot of cold water and then very gradually increase the heat to the boiling point, the frog will linger languidly in the increasingly hot bath as it is slowly cooked alive. 

Despotic politicians who also abhor the fuss of public unrest have long noted the application of this apologue to human affairs. In early March 2020, if Anthony Fauci had said that we were about to shut down the economy for two years, force people to wear paper masks, “socially distance,” and forcibly prevent people from going to church, or visiting their dying friends and relatives, there might well have been a revolt. 

But that isn’t how it happened. Fauci and the health police got everything they wanted, they destroyed thousands of middle-class businesses, enriched the entitled class, and, more generally, made fools and peons of us all. But they did it slowly. “Two weeks to flatten the curve.” Remember that? Remember when, early on, Fauci said that it would be fine for young, healthy people to go on a cruise? Remember when he pooh-poohed the effectiveness of masks? 

Whatever else they demonstrated, the regime’s COVID policies, and the public’s response to those policies, showed that entire populations could be herded and shorn like sheep. All you needed was a public health pretext—not a genuine emergency, mind you, just a pretext—and battalions of aspiring Gauleiters willing to enforce the rules and, bang, instant and prolonged hysteria. 

Like a well masticated stick of chewing gum, COVID has lost its savor. New gambits must be devised to cow the public. “Climate change” and green energy are hardy perennials, but the economic devastation wrought by their advocates has stripped the sheen off those baubels of elite, virtue-signaling.