Turn off the television

 

Adam Mill at American Greatness shares with his readers why they need to turn off the television:

If Americans can’t get reliable information from
the subverted legacy media, then we’ll find other routes

. . . One day we may learn the circumstances and terms under which the legacy news media surrendered its independence to the permanent government’s operation to control and manipulate domestic political opinion. Totalitarian governments can look with envy upon the message discipline across the supposedly independent American media outlets of our supposedly free press. But like so many other things the Left touches, it destroyed the legitimacy and effectiveness of the legacy news media. Americans can tell when they’re being manipulated. So they’ve increasingly turned off television news.

To paraphrase Matt Walsh’s movie title, “What is a television?” That flat screen mounted on your wall might be capable of receiving televised signals from broadcasters. But more likely, the “television” on your wall has become just another screen on which to watch videos streaming from the internet. If you want to watch cable television, you probably need to find an airport or to go pay your grandparents a visit. Otherwise, there’s no longer any need to suffer through the coordinated Soviet-style propaganda.

The full column is here. 

NOTE:  This blog is moving to Substack during June 2023: the above blog now also appears at the new site here.  If you’re a regular reader, bookmark the new location! 

# # #

COVID studies: The Retractions

 

Retraction Watch monitors retractions of peer-reviewed articles/research that don’t hold up under scrutiny. It’s utterly damning to see the sheer number of peer-reviewed reports -- on COVID -- retracted – always after the damage is done: 

We’ve been tracking retractions of papers about COVID-19 as part of our database. Here’s a running list:

Retracted

“5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells,” published in Biological Regulators & Homeostatic Agents on July 16, 2020, withdrawn on July 24, 2020. Our coverage here.

“A Case Series of Stent Thrombosis During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” published on May 27, 2020 in JACC: Case Reports; retraction date is unknown.  Retracted as a duplicate publication by journal error.

“A Comparison of Early Rehabilitation in the Intensive Care Units of Patients With Severe COVID-19: A Propensity Score Matching Analysis,” published November 10, 2022 in Cureus; retracted on April 4, 2023.

“A data-mining based analysis of traditional Chinese medicine in diagnosing and treating COVID-19,” published on June 24, 2021 in The Anatomical Record; unknown when retracted.

“A deep learning model and machine learning methods for the classification of potential coronavirus treatments on a single human cell,” published on October 17, 2020 in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research; retracted on August 16, 2021.

“A Discourse Analysis of Quotidian Expressions of Nationalism during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chinese Cyberspace,” published on September 8, 2020; retracted on April 12, 2022.

“A mechanistic analysis placental intravascular thrombus formation in COVID-19 patients,” published on April 25, 2020 in Annals of Diagnostic Pathology.  Retracted on June 22, 2020 as a duplicate publication by journal error.

“A meta-analysis of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) antibody treatment for COVID-19 patients,” published on August 20, 2021 in Therapeutic Advances in Chronic Disease; retracted on November 21, 2021. See our coverage here.

“A Model Based Analysis for COVID-19 Pandemic in India: Implications for Health Systems and Policy for Low- and Middle-Income Countries,” preprint possted on June 12, 2020 in medRxiv; retracted on August 18, 2020.

“A psychosocial exploration of body dissatisfaction: A narrative review With a focus on India during COVID-19,” published on July 29, 2021 in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health; retracted on January 19, 2023. 

 . . .

The rest of the list is here.  (Links via the original article)

RELATED:   Ben Bartee at PJ Media: “Peer-Reviewed Study: 'The Higher the Number of Vaccines Previously Received, the Higher the Risk of Contracting COVID-19' “

And American Greatness has more: click here. 

# # #

Radical Green New Deal predictions

 

Jack Hellner at American Thinker debunks some “global warming” myths: 

Here are some of the destructive policies of the radical greenies that are based on predictions, not scientific data:

The destruction of energy-producing companies that produce reasonably priced energy.  (They clearly don't care about the harm to the poor and middle class by high inflation.)

The promotion of the highly flammable pollutant lithium while seeking to control CO2, a non-pollutant clear gas that makes plants grow and allows the world to be fed.

Spending trillions on carbon capture.

Selling worthless carbon credits so people like John Kerry can pretend they care as they fly in their private jets.

Outlawing gas stoves, furnaces, lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, and gas grills.

The destruction of fishing and killing of whales by wind farms.

Read the rest here.

RELATED:  Edward Ring at American Greatness just published “The Corruption of Climate Science”;  click here.

# # #

Relocate the DC swamp dwellers

 

 

Chip Bok cartoon via Townhall 

Roger Kimball published a fairly long column over the weekend, “Abandon the Swamp” at American Greatness.  Here are two paragraphs summarizing Mr Kimball’s solution to the ongoing progressives vs conservatives crisis:

The focus should be on eclipsing Washington, D.C. as the seat of government. It has long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city. It is a partisan sinkhole. Jefferson wanted the capital moved from New York to Washington in part to bring it closer to the South, but also to place it somewhere that was officially neutral. There is nothing neutral about Washington today. The city has some impressive architecture and urban vistas. They should be preserved and staffed as tourist attractions. But the reins of power should be relocated.

The more I think about our situation, the more I believe the only hope for the republic is to downgrade the place of Washington in our public life. The business of Washington is to make government bigger—forever. That is not what the people, who pay for it, want. Legitimacy is draining out of our governing institutions at an alarming rate. Stanching that debilitating flow requires that we redirect our attention away from the greedy puppet show in Washington to the true source of legitimacy, which is with the people.

“The greedy puppet show.”  Fits right in with Sundance’s scenario that all of the DC political construct is a “Potemkin Village”, maintained to provide us plebes with the “Illusion of Choice.”  Read Mr Kimball's column here.

# # #

Cashless ATM cards? Bad idea.

 

 

A report by Eric Lendrum at American Greatness references “cashless” ATMs – an obvious step on the way to digital currency.  Mr. Lendrum points out that several cities and states have banned cashless ATMs.  Ohio is not yet one of them:

A variety of businesses have begun implementing “cashless” ATMs that give out stored-value cards in exchange for cash.

. . .

However, several states and cities have passed laws to forbid businesses from doing so, in order to accommodate customers who don’t have bank accounts or credit cards of their own. The Federal Deposits Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says that these “unbanked” Americans account for roughly 4.5 percent of the overall American population.

The cities that have banned such devices include New York City, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia. The states of Colorado and New Jersey have also implemented bans on cashless ATMs.

The complete report is here.  It’s one way to resist Central Bank Digital Currency.  Well, at least it’s a start.

RELATED:  Justin Haskins at Fox News:  “Biden administration is quietly planning for a future where you don’t own money”

# # #

The endless war against merit

 

This blog frequently links to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s essays. At his recent essay at American Greatness, he considers the definitions and consequences of socialism and its derivatives ("Do We Even Know We Are All Socialists Now?”).  Here’s his conclusion:

. . . A final note: the Orwellian police state is central to socialism, since the ideology is contrary to innate human nature and when fully implemented quickly ruins all that it touches and is commensurately despised in its fruition. So to force compliance is a 360 degree, 24/7 project that transcends all our institutions and culture.

That is why the woke FBI goes after counter-revolutionary parents at school board meetings or traditionalist Catholics rather than Pentagon leakers or Islamic terrorists.

That is why the FBI and the CIA respectively tried to warp the 2016 election with the phony Steele dossier and in 2020 probably did so by suppressing the truth about the “bombshell” evidence found on wayward Hunter Biden’s laptop.

That is why news disappears off Facebook and the old Twitter. That is why the order of Google search results seems bizarre. That is why Disney or Budweiser suddenly virtue signal their nihilist politics, or why Nike makes the mediocrity Colin Kaepernick a multimillionaire, or Stanford University attempts to purge vocabulary such as “citizen,” “immigrant,” and “American.”

Once socialism takes hold, every mediocrity, every ossified bureaucracy, every constipated careerist, every hack writer and nobody actor, comes out of the woodwork to find his socialist “fair share” of what he lacked in talent or accomplishment.

In the end, perhaps the best definition of socialism is simply “The endless war against merit.”

Read the rest here.

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The only way out is: out

 

Bob Maistros thinks America has passed the point of no return.  Here’s the opening of his essay at American Greatness:

Victor Davis Hanson has recently pondered in back-to-back essays whether there is any way out of America’s previously “fast-tracked” and now accelerating decline. 

Meanwhile, Julie Kelly appears to see no way out of the “near-certainty” that a “D.C. grand jury . . . will indict Trump on multiple counts” in ways that will cause him to be treated “[n]ot as a former president but as a traitor.” 

Columnist Josh Hammer, addressing both Trump’s judicial travails and the broader “decadent civilizational morass,” insists in his own consecutive submissions that “sometimes, the only way out is through”—tit-for-tat action from the Right. 

The depressing reality? This time, with the progressive Left’s assault on America, in Hammer’s words, having far passed the “point of no return,” the only way out is: out.  . . .

Read the full essay here.  Not for the faint of heart.

# # #

Can We Do Anything About America’s Decline?

 

At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson asks what we’re all thinking:

Can We Do Anything About America’s Decline?

In the next five years, either cities will seek new governance to reduce taxes, break up municipal unions, mandate charter schools, restore police funding and manpower, recalibrate pensions, and prosecute criminals and corrupt officials—or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and a score of others will become Detroit.

One of the strangest phenomena amid our current debility are the millions of affluent leftists and liberals who have fled their unworkable, now unlivable blue-run, but naturally beautiful cities like San Francisco or Portland. They seem to lack an abstract recognition why they are leaving, or why and how their new chosen destinations are so different and therefore so inviting to them. Is their motto, “I am fleeing what I created, but I still hate those who created what I want”?

To have a “border problem,” one must have a border. The United States has no southern border. . . .

VDH concludes his essay on a sad note:

Election night is a mere construct. It is mostly meaningless. Local, state, and federal election results are stalled and descend into days, weeks, and sometimes even months of bickering, counter charges of ballot tampering and fraud, ballot harvesting and curing, and a loss of confidence in the integrity of the final result. Debates mean little anymore, once a large portion of the electorate has already voted. No wonder deceased candidates can win. Gaffes are now determined by whether they occur before or after the majority of voters has cast their ballots. 

There should be a national uniform standard that allows states to set their ballot procedures—as long as they result in 70 percent of the electorate voting in person on election day. 

America is in a similar position to where it was in 1861, 1929, 1941, and 1968—only perhaps worse, given in all those cases, there was at least a president and Congress that identified and reacted to the crisis, whereas today our elected government is what caused the crisis.

Read the full column here.

# # #

Fiddling America Away

 

So where are we now?  One of this blog's favorites, Victor Davis Hanson (VDH), looks at the big picture, and his column “Fiddling America Away” at American Greatness is not encouraging.  He begins:

The last few weeks, the world had been writing off the United States as either crazy or irrelevant as it watches America cannibalize itself. 

Friends tremble at our sudden decline. Enemies rejoice. Neutrals make the necessary adjustments to join the ascendant non-American side.

The symptoms of our decline abroad appear everywhere. The more Joe Biden brags about the crippling oil sanctions on Russia, friends like India and allies like Japan ignore them. And why not, when Biden has no idea how long the war in Ukraine will last, or how much wherewithal the United States can, should, or will give Kyiv, or how its on-to-Red-Square blank check will finally end?

Big Biden talks about more solar and wind farms, and green new deals won’t fill the gas tanks in Munich or heat the homes of Kyoto, or lower the price of imported oil in the United Kingdom. Claiming the Afghanistan mess was a success fools no one.

Allies ask who are our leaders. An impaired Joe Biden who never is quite sure where he is, what he is doing, or whom he is with?

And VDH concludes:

So America suffers the sins of omission—squabbling over the nonessential—and commission—losing wars, going broke, ruining its economy, flirting with civil war. We know these are all self-inflicted wounds. But apparently, we believe their remedies are worse than the original maladies. And so we fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve.

The world is terrified and stunned at the result—and increasingly looking elsewhere to non-American solutions.

VDH’s full column is here.

RELATED:  Just the News reports that “President Joe Biden promised that he would bring back the "good old days" in international relations, but instead Europe and much of the world seem to be leaving America behind to move forward to the China days.” 

# # #

Climate Alarmism vs Real Environmentalism

 

Edward Ring’s column at American Greatness on “Climate Alarmism” offers some facts that might just get through to your climate alarmist friends by making them think about something that motivates them:  guilt.

How Climate Alarmism Killed Real Environmentalism

The environmentalist movement is a political weapon. It unites the most powerful special interests in the world behind an agenda that will further centralize power and wealth, eliminate any hope of financial independence for the vast majority of people, and transition previously free and independent nations into managed, sham democracies that have lost their sovereign agency.

The overwhelming theme of environmentalism today, designed to obscure its true agenda, is the alleged “climate crisis.”

Americans may or may not eventually muster the impertinence to successfully challenge the political power grab masquerading as environmentalism today. But either way, its centerpiece, the “climate crisis,” is responsible for devastating harm both to what was once a legitimate environmentalist movement, as well as to the environment itself.

Policies ostensibly designed to manage the planet’s climate are taking attention and resources away from genuine environmental threats. At the same time, a growing percentage of people are recognizing the fraudulent essence of the “climate crisis” agenda and, as a result, are becoming indifferent to legitimate environmental concerns.

This is a tragedy. 

. . .

Here are just a few of the environmental disasters in progress that nobody talks about either because they’re making too much money pushing the climate change scam, or because they’re thoroughly disgusted with the climate change scam and disregard all environmentalist concerns.

Mr Ring then expands on each of the following bullet point topics:

• Loss of Insect Population
• Aquatic Dead Zones
• Overfishing
• Energy Security in Developing Nations
• The Biofuel Disaster
• Massive Oceanic Garbage Patches
• Population Crash

Mr Ring’s conclusion:

. . . By now, the fraudulent reality of “renewables” that aren’t renewable is well documented, even if that fact receives scant attention in the mainstream press. But this additional fact—that the climate alarmist focus on achieving “net zero” is discrediting environmentalism at large, and taking attention away from other serious environmental threats—is perhaps the saddest chapter in the story of a movement that has lost its way.

Mr Ring’s column is here.

# # #

Hillsdale College and government funding

 

In the wake of the Stanford University debacle, Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) scores again with “Who Owns The University?”  The entire column (at American Greatness) is, as usual, full of excellent insights, but these paragraphs particularly caught my eye:

. . . After all, Stanford, and thousands of private universities like it, are not Hillsdale College. Hillsdale long ago lost trust in federal and state government due to their efforts to use their partial funding as a means of politically leveraging the college. And therefore, it has refused all public monies ever since. 

Left-wing major colleges or universities have not done the same because they rightly assume the federal government shares their commitment to radical progressive change. And thus, Washington gives them free rein to discriminate in admission, housing, and hiring, as well as to suspend constitutional protections for faculty and staff—if in service to progressive-regressive agendas. 

But that was then, and this is now. If Stanford’s sordid law school psychodrama taught us anything, it was that the law school mob felt they could threaten, smear, scream, disrupt and shut down a public speaker and do so with complete impunity. And they were right on all counts. . . .

Hillsdale College has stood out for years as dedicated to offering a classical liberal arts education, including American history!  They can do so because they refuse all state and federal funding.  Our household subscribes to their newsletter Imprimus, which always contains a modified version of a recent lecture by a recognized conservative, such as VDH.  Read his column here.

# # #

Man learns from history that man never learns from history

 

Your weekend read:  Victor Davis Hanson points out the alarming parallels between the collapse of the Byzantines and the collapse of America.  He begins:

When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.

Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, avoiding military quagmires, and ensuring constant deterrence.

Generations of self-sacrifice ensured ample investment for infrastructure. Each generation inherited and improved on singular aqueducts and cisterns, sewer systems, and the most complex and formidable city fortifications in the world.

Brilliant scientific advancement and engineering gave the empire advantages like swift galleys and flame throwers—an ancient precursor to napalm.

The law reigned supreme for nearly a millennium after the emperor Justinian codified a prior thousand years of Roman jurisprudence.

Yet this millennium-old crown jewel of the ancient world that once was home to 800,000 citizens had only 50,000 inhabitants left when it fell.  . . .

And he concludes:

Like Byzantines, Americans have become snarky iconoclasts, more eager to tear down art and sculpture that they no longer have the talent to create. 

Current woke dogma, obscure word fights, and sanctimonious cancel culture are as antithetical to the past generations of World War II as the last generation of Constantinople was to the former great eras of the emperors Constantine, Justinian, Heraclius, and Leo.

The Byzantines never woke up in time to understand what they had become.

So far neither have Americans.

VDH’s full column at American Greatness is here.

# # #

Mis-named "renewable" energy sources

 

At American Greatness, Edward Ring published a good article on mis-named “renewable” energy sources, and it will surely be useful in those unavoidable debates with your relatives and friends who are true believers in the climate change / environmental protection rackets. The piece includes an excellent graph/chart.  Mr. Ring begins:

Today in America, there are obvious disconnects between observable reality and the narratives we get from the corporate special interests controlling the news we consume, along with politicians who are supposedly elected to represent us.

This is nothing new. Elites have defined America’s destiny throughout its history. The only difference today is that the internet, despite ongoing crackdowns, still manages to deliver an unprecedented volume of contrarian perspectives to millions of people. We aren’t any freer or less manipulated today than we ever were, we’re just more aware of it.

What may be different today, however, is the misanthropic folly of America’s current energy policies. America’s ruling elites are not only imposing these policies on everyone living here, they are attempting to impose them everywhere on earth. 

By now it should be beyond serious debate that “renewable” energy cannot possibly scale adequately to replace fossil fuels. Worse still, renewable energy systems are even less sustainable than fossil fuels and cause more environmental destruction. Renewables also fail to offer significant reductions in carbon emissions, and in some cases actually cause more carbon emissions.

Why these facts are dismissed by America’s elites is a story of corruption, collusion, megalomania, greed, cowardice, intellectual negligence, and delusional mass psychosis. Modern political theory offers solace to cynics who believe all democracies are actually just “managed” shams by suggesting pluralism and representative government are nonetheless at least approximated if there is competition among the powerful elites running a nation. But what if there is no inter-elite competition in the realm of ideas? What happens when every one of these elites believes the same things? When it comes to “renewables” and “net zero by 2050,” that’s what we have in America today. . . .

Read the full article here.

# # #

EGGS: The New Contraband

Eric Lendrum at American Greatness has the headline:

Smuggling of Eggs Across Border Skyrockets Amid Rising Prices

PowerLine’s “The Week in Pictures” has the meme:

# # #

Not your father’s Democrat party

This column by the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson was published a few days ago at American Greatness, and it’s a cautionary analysis:

For all Joe Biden’s talk about “semi-fascist” and “un-American,” “ultra-MAGA” Republicans, it is the Democratic Party that has far more radically changed. It is descended into a woke, neo-socialist, radically green party. And it is committed, as Barack Obama once promised, to fundamentally transforming America. How it proceeds with that agenda is now as entirely predictable as it is creepy.

And Hanson expands on the agenda and methods by category, specifically:

• Election Warping
• Projection
• Suppression
• Changing the Rules
• Asymmetries

Hanson’s conclusion:

Conservatives should be aware that they are not dealing with the party of JFK and LBJ. The Democratic Party has nothing in common with the agendas of a slick Bill Clinton and is well beyond the “fundamental transformations” of arch-narcissist Barack Obama. 

We are faced with a strictly disciplined, no-nonsense revolutionary party, well known from history that aims to change the nation into something unrecognizable by most Americans. And it feels that it has now created the means to do it.

Read the full article here.

# # #

January 6 two years on

Image credit: breakingthecode.ca

Today is the two year anniversary of the January 6 protest, continually mis-reported as an “insurrection”--  in DC.  Julie Kelly has been following the plight of the victims of the “insurrection”, and today she posted:

A few weeks before Christmas, federal authorities arrested a Washington state couple for their participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021.

. . .

So, what exactly did these alleged “domestic terrorists” do? They entered the Capitol through open doors as police officers stood by. Carrying no weapons, the couple took photos inside the Rotunda and wandered through some hallways; surveillance video shows Holly Christensen talking to a Capitol police officer. At another point, Scott Christensen chatted with a D.C. Metro police officer, a conversation captured on a body-worn camera. Police led the pair toward an exit door about 45 minutes later without arresting them.

For that uneventful jaunt through a public building that posed a threat to no one, the Christensens will now be destroyed by the Department of Justice, the federal court system, and the news media. Although both were charged with nonviolent misdemeanors—the same four offenses that represent the overwhelming majority of charges—journalists dishonestly portrayed the couple as traitors to their country. “Washington state couple to face Jan. 6 insurrection charges,” an Associated Press headline blared on December 12.

. . .

It’s a feat of political sorcery—fueled by lies, cover-ups, and careerism, not entirely unlike the first war on terror—to transform an unruly, four-hour protest into an act of domestic terror. American families such as the Christensens are merely collateral damage along the way.

The rest of Ms. Kelly’s report at American Greatness is here.  The American justice system is utterly corrupt and broken.  And the mainstream media is complicit.

# # #

Congress: a Confederacy of Traitors

   

Sad to wrap up the Christmas weekend with more bad news from Washington.  You will already be aware that Congress just passed another 4,000+ page Omnibus spending bill that does nothing for conservative Americans. Actually, it’s worse than nothing, as so much of your tax dollars will be funding progressive projects and agendas that will make your blood boil. 

So it is no surprise that Julie Kelly is beyond disgusted with Congress.  She’s furious at both (D) and (R) members of the Uniparty.  She closes her recent American Greatness column with outrage:

. . . No group of politicians has licked the boots of President Zelenskyy more than Republican senators. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is among Zelenskyy’s biggest supporters, insisting this week that “providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans. That’s how we see the challenges confronting the country at the moment.”

And there you have it. One of the most powerful—albeit most unpopular—leaders in Washington thinks lining Zelenskyy’s army-green pockets with more U.S. tax dollars is a greater need than tackling any number of ongoing crises roiling the country right now.

In a last bit of symbolism Wednesday night, Zelenskyy exited the House chambers carrying the case holding the folded American flag. A two-bit actor and international con man walked out with billions of American dollars and a cherished token of America’s sacrifice and in the real fight for freedom, justice, and security.

And the fiends in the hall systematically destroying that legacy for the people they are elected to represent cheered again.

Traitors.

She’s right.  Read her column here.   

# # #

“Trump Was A Mistake” – But Whose?

 

The headline on Dan Gelernter’s recent column at American Greatness  -- “Trump Was a Mistake” – is a bit misleading.  The mistake was that of the Uniparty.  Mr Gelernter compares the ascendency to the presidency in 1900 of Teddy Roosevelt (TR), who was much despised by the political establishment because it could not control him. The establishment’s mistake back then was nominating TR in the vice-presidency, thinking that they could rid New York of its governor and at the same time condemn TR to political obscurity as Vice President.  Didn’t work out that way.  Mr Gelernter concludes:

So remember: The GOP isn’t really our party. It never was. That is the central truth that the Trump phenomenon has exposed—or exposed anew. It’s a political machine, just like the Democratic Party, and it wants to run itself, not be run by “ordinary” people like you and me. Trump’s nomination the first time around, from the GOP’s perspective, was a huge mistake, just as TR’s had been. And they have no intention of repeating that kind of mistake.

The GOP and the Democrats and the media are all agreed on one, central point: Trump cannot become president again. All these power groups’ motivations are different, but their interests are aligned, and the stakes are practically existential.

Keep the story of the 1900 Republican Convention in mind, too, when you think of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: He’s a huge success in Florida, and is the only governor standing up to the federal government in any meaningful way. What could be better than to seduce him away from that role with the promise of the presidency? Kill two birds with one stone, and kill America, too, while you’re at it.

Trump was a huge mistake: He was the biggest mistake machine politicians had made in over a century. The success of Trump’s presidency dealt establishment politicians a heavy blow. A second Trump term might kill them, and they know it.

So, be prepared to hear nothing about Trump’s candidacy, nothing about his massive rallies, nothing about the unwavering enthusiasm of his supporters. Be prepared to hear only one thing: That the “people” don’t want him. But don’t believe it. Remember which people are doing the talking.

Read the full column here.

# # #

A great deal of ruin

Victor Davis Hanson does not like what he is seeing:

“Our Parasitic Generation”

Are we sure that there is all that much ruin left in the United States?

We are $31 trillion in collective debt. The new normal is $1.5 trillion budget deficits. The military is politicized and short of recruits. We trade lethal terrorists for woke celebrity athletes as if to confirm our enemies’ cynical stereotypes. 

Our FBI is corrupt and discredited, collaborating with Silicon Valley contractors to suppress free speech and warp elections. We practice segregation and racial discrimination and claim we do not because the right and good people support it and, anyway, the victims deserve it. The country has seen defeat before but never abject, deliberate humiliation as in Kabul, when we fled and abandoned to the terrorist Taliban a $1 billion embassy, a huge, remodeled air base, thousands of friends, and tens of billions of dollars in military hardware—and hard-earned deterrence.

We are witnessing the breakdown of basic norms essential for civilized life, from affordable food and fuel to available key antibiotics and baby formula. Old Cairo seems safer than an after-hours subway ride or stroll at dusk in many major American cities. Medieval London’s roadways were likely cleaner than Market Street in San Francisco. Speech was freer in 1920s America than it is now.

Lots more at American Greatness here.  It’s important.  And it’s grim.

# # #

The Biden Administration’s Wrecking Balls

 

Victor Davis Hanson recently published his essay “If You Really Wanted to Destroy the United States, Then . . .” at American Greatness here.  John Dale Dunn has condensed the essay into a column at American Thinker.  Mr Dunn begins:

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the most deservedly admired conservative writers, authors, and commentators in America.  That's why his recent essay about what it will take to destroy America is worthy of your attention. . . .

Hanson's essay breaks down into ten steps, which he analyzes in some detail.  I've summarized those ten points, although I urge you to read his entire essay.

First, surrender America's energy independence.  In this regard, Hanson touches upon attacking coal and nuclear power, draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, canceling oil and gas leases while blocking pipelines, and focusing excessively and expensively on green energy.

Second, inflate the currency and punish those with fixed income while increasing the welfare state. 

Third, erase America's borders while diluting the number of assimilated and patriotic citizens.

Fourth, destroy the public's faith in elections by changing the rules so as to allow for easy fraud via ballot-harvesting and mail-in voting. 

Read the rest of the ten points here or here.  Here’s the grim conclusion of the essay:

We have done all of the above. It would be hard to imagine any planned agenda to destroy America that would have been as injurious as what we already suffered the last two years. 

When Victor Davis Hanson loses his optimism, you know America is collapsing.  

# # #