The Illusion of Choice

Laurie T. Vass is co- author with Thomas E. Vass of Reclaiming the American Democratic Impulse (2017). I had not heard of the title, and there were no reader reviews at Amazon.  She recently posted a reader comment at Conservative Treehouse that fills in more of the blanks in Sundance’s ongoing Uniparty exposés and explanations:

. . .Sundance states that,  

“both the DNC and RNC are private corporations with no affiliation to government. [The differences between the two private corporations] is NOT primarily ideological. In the modern era, the corporate priority first begins with a battle over who controls [the internal power] in each corporation.”

. . .

Our historical analysis begins around 1985, with two political party developments in America.

During this early era, the Democrats slowly transformed from a political party that promoted the financial interests of working class citizens, to a more overtly Marxist party, that sought to implement a Marxist regime in America.

In the case of Democrats, they abandoned the working class, and embraced the class war rhetoric of Marx.

The election of Obama, in 2008, completed the transition of the Democrat Party to an ideological party, intent on the overthrow of the American government.

Beginning around 1985, with the opening of China as a trading partner, Republicans abandoned the national economic sovereignty interest of growing the economic pie, in favor of an open-border globalism that directed the benefits of global trade to themselves.

As Sundance correctly points out, when the Republican Party transitioned to an overtly global corporatist orientation, working and middle class MAGA citizens lost a political voice within the Vichy Republican Party.

As Sundance stated,

“The RNC want to give the illusion of support for MAGA conservatism because they need the base voter, and they need to maintain the illusion of choice.”

Sundance’s posting titled “Mid-Tier Donor Class Very Worried About Ron DeSantis 2024 Management Agenda” is here.  Scroll down for reader comments including the one quoted above, or search the comments pages for “Laurie Vass”.  The extract above is a brief one from a much longer comment.  I don't know if I agree with her conclusions, but then, I have not read either her 2017 or her forthcoming book.

# # #

The progressive left: what they want and why

 

A blogger at Substack publishing as “eugyppius” analyzes the priorities and motivations of Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, the progressive political left, and in general, globalist elites. It’s a long essay, but very illuminating.  He explores the widely held perception that Mr. Gates is promoting depopulation, but he digs a bit deeper into the reasons.  The blogger builds methodically to his conclusion:

. . . A globalist cabal plotting the depopulation of the world would be a grave problem, but one with a clear enough solution. We’re facing, instead, an entire moral and ideological system, with very deep roots in prosperous Western culture. This isn’t a universe where everybody wakes up tomorrow, elects to put Bill Gates on trial for his crimes against humanity, and returns thereafter to sensible public health policy. It’s a world where millions of people share the ideological anxieties of eccentric children like Greta Thunberg, manifest escalating indifference to adverse policy outcomes in their own countries, and dream of a future earth devoid of humans like themselves. Because the driving forces operate at the level of moral instinct and emotion, no amount of evidence or appeals to reason that can stop this. Probably the best hope lies in its naivete and idealism. Worsening conditions will ultimately deprive these ideologies of their cultural appeal; how bad things have to get before this happens, is the terrifying question.

The complete essay is here.

# # #

Do you trust your physician?

 

At American Mind, Steven Goldsmith laments the decline of the medical profession:

The Profession Formerly Known As Medicine

. . . To estrange themselves further from their calling, doctors bow as never before to the state and the corporation. They grovel before the altar of the “electronic health record,” or EHR, a corporate creation that widgetizes and dehumanizes doctor and patient. In 2016, MDs spent almost 40% of their patient care time (now surely higher) pecking on computers. No wonder they retire or leap from ledges.

With the advent of EHRs, weekly meetings of the clinical staff where I once worked no longer included discussions of actual patients. Instead we war-gamed how to enter EHR data so as to satisfy insurers, the government, and our corporate overseers. Such trends are as congenial to good medicine as spike proteins are to coronary arteries. . . .

. . . Events of the past three years highlighted an even more ominous problem. Physicians jettisoned their souls and became felons as they shilled for their new gods. They hacked off body parts of confused minors. They foisted dangerous drugs—remdesivir and gene shots—upon us without informed consent, that is, the transmission of truthful information about risks, benefits, and alternatives. Some practitioners even refused treatment to those unwilling to acquiesce.

. . .

The profession to which I have devoted five decades is sinking fast. I hesitate these days to seek a medical appointment for myself, so dissolute has medicine become. Doctors, in order to save yourselves, you must decentralize your work away from large groups with their soul-sucking cultures and toward small, intimate groups and solo practices. True, you will earn less—perhaps a lot less—and in the process you will need to decide your purpose in life, why you are here. Stop being Big Pharma’s bitches, and learn about natural treatments. Be healers, not ideologues. Develop parallel systems of medical training and care that emphasize prevention and the treatment of the whole person.  . . .

The complete article is here.

# # #

Merit vs Diversity

AF Branco [Americans for Limited Government] cartoon at Townhall    

In his column “Destroying Meritocracy Is Deadly” at Townhall, Victor Davis Hanson discusses the decline in the aviation industries, both commercial and military, but his concerns could as easily be about the medical, educational, agricultural, energy and other professions. VDH concludes:

. . . America's security, safety, prosperity, and postmodern lifestyles are not our birthright.

They are the dividends of centuries of prior hard work, unfettered freedom of speech, disinterested research, and a meritocracy.

Tamper with any of that and the system begins to fall apart.

The United States will then resemble the miasma we see in most of the world abroad where ideology suppresses free inquiry, political correctness warps research, and tribalism trumps meritocracy.

Many of the major airlines have established racial and gender quotes for government pilot training programs. United Airlines has set quotas to ensure half of its trainees will be minorities or women. Since 2013, the FAA has been lowering standards for air traffic control qualifications to achieve de facto race and gender quotas.

In testimony before Congress our top military brass has bragged not of their reduction in standards for enlistment, but of their "diversity" hiring, as they purportedly ferret out "white supremacy" and "white rage."

In sum, our government is playing with our lives as it prefers diversity, equity, and inclusion over ensuring the best qualified employees are hired on the basis of racially and gender-blind competitive tests and experience.

Keep it up, and there are going to be a lot more Afghanistan-style surrenders, Chinese surveillance craft in our skies, and airline nightmares.

The full column is here.

# # #

A bloodless coup d’etat

 

At American Thinker, J.A. Frascino outlines the coup d’etat that’s unfolding before our very eyes:

Any system, no matter how well devised, upon encountering the realities of terrestrial existence, will fail to function as conceived.  Failings of the system can be approached in two ways:  troubleshoot and strengthen the system to repair its flaws, or change the system.

Not long ago, the left sought to uphold the system and ameliorate its flaws.  It assisted in countering worker abuse, upheld women’s rights, and brought focus on environmental pollution.  Democrat administrations developed Social Security and Medicare programs.  The Democrat party was the voice of the middle class, the minorities, the marginalized, helping them realize the promise of the system.

That is no longer the position of the left.  Driven by its innate tendency to dissidence and immediate gratification, it has grown increasingly intolerant of and impatient with the system.  The system must now change.  . . .

And the article goes on to explain exactly how it’s changing.  We are seeing it now.  Click here for the full scenario.

# # #

Mark Wauck: “settled science” and "misinformation"

 

Whether it’s challenges to the claims about “man-made climate change,” the COVID vaxx, or other examples of “misinformation,” a judge in California has issued an injunction against that state’s attempt to muzzle and penalize any doctors who disagree with the CDC’s and other government mandates on COVID (vaxx, masks, etc.). Mark Wauck at Meaning in History reports:

This tactic cleverly relies upon the common misconception that “science” consists of a body of settled knowledge that is above challenge, rather than being a process of continuing inquiry that relies to a great degree precisely upon challenges to previous consensus (I simplify, of course). This notion of a settled body of knowledge—identified as such by Leftist ideologues without regard to evidence as such—is then used to shut down debate on whatever happens to be the latest Leftist pseudo scientific cause—”settled science” so just shut up! You’re an ignoramus if you dare object, or if you demand evidence to back up the Left’s latest campaign.

We’ve seen this tactic employed repeatedly, first in “social science” fields and now even in the “hard” sciences. Most recently, with the use of the charge of “misinformation—it has evolved into a full assault of the First Amendment and an instrument of social control. The Covid Regime, with its numerous scientifically unjustified mandates—masks, distancing, plexiglass screens, and so forth—has offered fertile ground for the extension of draconian anti-freedom controls over the populace. All in the name of an invented and often contradictory “scientific consensus” which usually boils down to an uninformed and arbitrary bureaucratic consensus.

. . . Specifically, [Judge William] Shubb attacks the definition of “misinformation” as something that is contradicted by a supposed “scientific consensus”—a highly problematic concept.

In an order Wednesday, Shubb criticized the law’s definition of “misinformation,” which is “false information contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”

Shubb, who called the definition “nonsense” at a court hearing Monday, said in Wednesday’s order that it was “grammatically incoherent.”

Beyond that, Shubb’s order also criticized the phrase “contemporary scientific consensus,” saying that it doesn’t have an established meaning in the medical field.

“The statute provides no clarity on the term’s meaning, leaving open multiple important questions,” the order said. “For instance, who determines whether a consensus exists to begin with? If a consensus does exist, among whom must the consensus exist (for example practicing physicians, or professional organizations, or medical researchers, or public health officials, or perhaps a combination)?”

That lack of clarity, the judge added, makes it impossible to determine what the new law prohibits.

“I think he correctly analyzed the facts and the law and understood that the concept of a ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ is highly problematic,” said Richard Jaffe, an attorney representing one of the challenges to the rule.

Mr. Wauck concludes:

Given that the federal judiciary—right up to the SCOTUS—has largely been missing in action while the Left has been running roughshod over our constitutionally protected freedoms, it’s refreshing to see a judge directly challenging these tactics. Hopefully this case will establish a precedent for dismantling this Leftist assault on freedom.

Source links are here and here.

# # #

 

Whither the Red Wave

 

Gary Varvel cartoon at Townhall

Gen Z = voters under 30.  Robert Spencer at PJ Media explains the mid-term election results:

If Della Volpe’s numbers are correct, and 64% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 really voted for Democrats, then one thing is clear: the corruption and politicization of our educational system has worked.

. . .

What he is crowing about is the apparent fact that the voting group with the least life experience and the most recent subjection to the Leftist indoctrination that dominates America’s educational system ended up voting as it was brainwashed to do. Gee, that’s terrific, if you like evidence of the success of the relentless propagandizing of a vulnerable and impressionable captive audience, but neither John Della Volpe nor anyone else should be proud of it. What it shows is not that the Leftist case is compelling or persuasive; it shows that patriotic Americans have been far too complacent in allowing public schools to become centers of Leftist indoctrination and hatred of our own nation and heritage.

. . .

. . . In China, Communist leader Mao Zedong began the Long March in 1934 to evade nationalist forces; the term, however, came to be associated with his slow, steady, patient rise to power, culminating in the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1949. The Long March Through the Institutions was the same kind of slow, steady takeover, as Communists, leftists, and their allies gradually gained control of America’s colleges and universities, its primary and secondary educational systems, its popular culture, and above all its ever-growing federal bureaucracy.

Mr Spencer concludes:

Many, if not most, of the Gen Z-ers who voted overwhelmingly for the Left will, as they get older, come to realize how foolish and wrongheaded they were to support socialist internationalism and the managed decline of the United States. But others will never wake up, and will applaud that decline as retribution for centuries of alleged racism and colonialism. Even as their own cities and towns become ever more squalid, poor, dirty, and dangerous, they will continue to think of themselves as righteous for having chosen all that. That pride will be all they have left.

Full column is here. 

# # #

Victor Davis Hanson: Mar-A-Lago Raid and the Rule of Law

 

The interview took place on August 9, but I only just now came across it.  Michael W. Chapman at CNS News reports on Victor Davis Hanson take on the Mar-a-Lago raid:

When asked about the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach, Fla., professor, author, and political commentator Victor David Hanson said, "right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington," and added that, "The FBI is beyond redemption."

Hanson, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush, made his remarks on the Aug. 9 edition of FNC's Tucker Carlson Tonight, guest-hosted by Will Cain.  

Cain asked Hanson why the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and why were they targeting Trump.

"Well, they're afraid in the short term," he said, in reference to the Democrats and the left, "but in the long term they believe they're morally superior to America, and therefore any means necessary or justifiable for their morally superior ends."

"And right now, we don't have the rule of law in Washington," said Hanson. "Whether you're targeted or exempt depends on your ideology."

. . .

As for the FBI, Hanson remarked, "I never thought I would say this: The FBI is beyond redemption. It is -- all of its bureaus and its institutions that have to be farmed out and broken up. If you have a warrant, an FBI warrant, there is no guarantee that that has not been altered. If you subpoena and you want FBI records on phones ... they will be wiped clean."

"We just saw [FBI Director] Christopher Wray and he just stonewalled every question and then he flew on an FBI plane, our plane, a luxury jet because he had to go to his own vacation spot. He took over, remember, from Andrew McCabe -- what did he do? He lied four times to federal investigators, and his wife was running for an office with Clinton-related PAC money while he was investigating Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal."

. . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

Daniel Greenfield on policy: deliberate destruction

 

Daniel Greenfield cross-posts his Front Page commentary at his blog, Sultan Knish.  He weighs in on the subject of the Biden administration's policy of deliberate destruction of America's economy and society. Here’s Mr. Greenfield’s conclusion:

This is not a conspiracy theory. The only assumption being made here is that the Left is achieving its stated goals as the result of a plan rather than a series of accidental coincidences.

Too many Republicans are failing to hold the Left accountable by refusing to state what is going on. Hanlon’s Razor, “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” is fine when it’s not being applied to an ideology that is achieving its objectives through its actions.

That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s policy.

Pasting Biden’s “I Did It” stickers on gas pumps is fine, but he’s completely expendable.

If Americans don’t understand that our misery isn’t an accident or incompetence, but part of a plan, then the downward cycle will continue to play out with increasingly worse outcomes.

Until the Left finally gets what it wants. And then the rest of us won’t have anything left.

Read the rest here. Hard to argue with Mr. Greenfield’s assessment.

# # #

Patrick Hampton on Medical Tyranny

 

Whether you decide to get the COVID jab or not, the vaxx-passport - - or some other proof of vaccination, is yet another wedge that tyrants use to divide their subjects (that would be us).  And it’s happening here and now.  Patrick Hampton at Patriot Post adds to the discussion:

With mask mandates lifted in most states, many Americans are enjoying their return to what they believe is normal. But we are also seeing the true faces of those in power who seek to use sensitive medical information — like vaccination status — to oppress others.

Private companies, organizations, and educational institutions announce their plans as people return to the office and classrooms — some requiring proof of full COVID-19 vaccination before walking through their doors. Some businesses plan to even segregate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.

Not getting the “jab” is the new Scarlet Letter. Once worn as a punitive mark to label someone as an adulterer based on the American novel bearing the same name, those who are open about their non-vaccinated status will be forced to exist on the fringes of society.

. . .

It’s not even about science anymore. It’s about control and an allegiance to certain ideas — possibly totalitarianism.

. . .

Read the rest of Mr. Hampton's article here.  Previously posted and related CTP posts are here and here.

# # #

By the Book: The Strange Death of Europe

Amazon cover

Just finished Douglas Murray’s frightening must-read The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. If America needed another wake-up call, this is it.  This book examines the paramount problem of today: uncontrolled immigration. And from all angles, based on his research and his extensive travels, particularly in Europe. 

Murray covers history, philosophy and religion, Islam and Christianity, demographics, cultural suicide, political correctness, ideologies, political landscapes, corruption, voter preferences vs government “leaders”, humanity, immigration pros and cons, good stories, bad stories, as well as the what-do-we-do-now and current dilemma scenarios. His conclusions about Europe are a preview of coming attractions here in the USA. 

And it's cheap on Kindle.

# # #

See No Jihad

art credit: 123rf.com

IMHO, Andrew McCarthy is one of the go-to columnists on matters jihad. Back in January, when McCarthy wrote his short piece for the Conservatives Against Trump issue of National Review online, I shook my head in disappointment. Here’s a short quote:

A president may not have to be good with names to oppose [the jihad agenda] effectively, but he has to grasp the animating ideology, the power relations, and the goals of the players — and how weakening one by strengthening another can degrade rather than promote our security.

Donald Trump does not have a clue about any of this,  careening wildly from vows to stay out of the fray (leaving it in Vladimir Putin’s nefarious hands) to promises that the earth will be indiscriminately scorched. The threat against us has metastasized in our eighth year under a president who quite consciously appeases the enemy. But the remedy is not a president oblivious of the enemy.

I wonder if Mr. McCarthy has reconsidered his opinion. I’d like to think that back in January, he was towing the NR anti-Trump line half-heartedly, but maybe he still thinks Trump has no clue. 

However, in view of McCarthy’s analysis today of the jihad attacks in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota, it would be difficult to square his Never Trump position with the presidential race. Today, Trump is the candidate speaking in plain English about the threat of jihad to Americans and about screening those who would enter the United States from overseas. Here’s McCarthy on the latest spate of jihad attacks on US soil:

In the all too familiar pattern, things are going boom, Americans are under attack, and the American political class is already busy playing the “See No Jihad” minuet.

In a rational world, where our highest imperative would be to understand the threat that confronts us rather than to find the least offensive way of describing it, it would be patently, undeniably obvious that we are targets of international terrorism fueled by Islamic supremacist ideology. Nevertheless, the political class can only bring itself to say this kicking and screaming, and only if there is no other plausible alternative — which basically means a terrorist caught in the act while wearing an ISIS T-shirt.

. . .

Here is reality: The enemy that unifies the terrorist siege against the U.S., Israel, and the West is Islamic supremacist ideology, which aims to bring the world under sharia dominion. This ideology is far more important than ISIS and al-Qaeda because it is what created ISIS and al-Qaeda. It was the catalyst before those jihadist organizations existed, and it will be around when they are gone — for as long as we fail to take it on without apology and discredit it in the light of day.

The attacks spurred by this ideology, like those carried out this weekend, are international terrorist attacks, regardless of whether the operatives who execute them are affiliated with or inspired by a designated international terrorist organization. There are no “homegrown” attacks because the ideology is alien. There are no “lone wolves” because the wolves are part of a huge pack — a fundamentalist Islamic anti-Western movement that has millions of adherents, some percentage of which will always be willing to take up arms and kill for the cause.

Pro-American Muslims need us to help them discredit the fundamentalists. We cannot do this without openly acknowledging — as, for example, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has courageously done — that the roots of jihadist aggression are Muslim scriptures. This must not be obscured by political correctness. The scriptures in question must be acknowledged and reinterpreted in a manner that confines them to their historic context and nullifies a literal interpretation of them in modern life.

If we don’t confront the animating ideology and its stealth supporters with every bit as much energy as our police pursue the murderous jihadists, we lose. Winning begins with cashiering political correctness, with speaking openly about, and understanding, what we are up against.

Read the rest here. (And Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is meeting with both presidential candidates during his visit to New York and the United Nations this week.)

# # #