The Last Longest Day - Fernandez

This coming week will mark the 75^th anniversary of the landings on the Normandy beaches. I’ll be posting a few blogs on the landmark remembrance of D-Day. Today, Richard Fernandez at PJ Media) contemplates the historical consequences of the Allied victories:

it is likely to be the last major D-Day anniversary while veterans are still alive.

. . .

Seventy-five years ago, the human impact of the invasion could scarcely be understated. Over 4,400 soldiers died in a single day, the Longest Day, so named in popular culture after Erwin Rommel's prescient observation: "The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive. . . . For the Allies as well as Germany, it will be the longest day."

It was an all-out throw of the dice. A maximum effort. There was no plan B if it didn't work.

. . .

And what of D-Day? Like the fading black and white chemical film on which its images were captured, modern culture has lost the detail, emotional tone and context once provided by living memory. What still remains is posterized, compressed and pixellated to the point where, to paraphrase Tennyson, "they are become a name." The Longest Day grows less distinct with each passing year.

Less distinct but no less real. . . .

Mr. Fernandez's full article, "The Last Longest Day," is here.

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Primal Screams and Mass Hysteria

art credit: MaliaLitman.com

We all had a good laugh over the anti-Trump “Screaming Helplessly at The Sky” temper tantrums last week, but in a sense, the Scream Fests are not funny. There is something on the order of mass hysteria going on here. It's a year after the election, and adults are still stamping their feet and wearing stupid pink hats and screaming in genuine outrage.

I’ve come across a few think pieces on the phenomenon. Victor Davis Hanson examines the various “hysterias and frenzies” we have been witnessing:

Human nature is prone to a herd mentality and the politics of excess. Groupthink offers a sense of belonging and reinforcement to most people. Democracies in particular in their radical egalitarian culture and exalted sense of self-righteousness are particularly prone to shared frenzies. 

Richard Fernandez, Mr. Belmont Club, summed up his take on the Primal Scream-a-thon:

What they were mourning was not some conservative's sublunar fallibility, but their own. Whatever happens now, the progressives have lost decades of "gains," not to the alt-right, which is nothing special, but to the realization of their own human frailty. 

  

Last summer, Dilbert / Scott Adams wrote about the “mass hysteria bubble” and how he defines it:

if you are not experiencing mass hysteria, you might be totally confused by the actions of the people who are. They appear to be irrational, but in ways that are hard to define. You can’t tell if they are stupid, unscrupulous, ignorant, mentally ill, emotionally unstable or what. It just looks frickin’ crazy.

I thought I would post these links, since we live in crazy times, and maybe we are not the crazy ones. All three articles are worth the read.

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The Health Care Compact: Moving to the front burner?

art credit: before it's news

Richard Fernandez (Wretchard’s Belmont Club, posting at PJ Media) speculates that the Health Care Compact may be one of the best options available to dismantle and repeal Obamacare. Rep. Tom Price, the nominee to head Health and Human Services, is a long-time advocate of the Health Care Compact. Here are a few extracts from Fernandez’s report:

According to the Congressional record the HCC [Health Care Compact]  would give "primary responsibility for regulation of health care to the state. Federal and state laws remain in effect in a member state until suspended by the state.  A member state is responsible for federal funding obligations that remain in effect in the state. Each year, a member state is entitled to federal funds equal to the total federal spending on health care in the state during FY2010, adjusted for inflation and population."  It turns federal funds into what amounts to a block grant, leaving states free to create, cooperate and compete.

The HCC specifically does not affect the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration. "The compact establishes the Interstate Advisory Health Care Commission to collect information and data to assist member states in their regulation of health care. The commission may make non-binding recommendations to the member states."

That would ironically make it an ideal vehicle for states like Vermont or California whose voters are largely opposed to the Trump administration to roll their own health care and effort in which other like-minded liberal states can join them.  HHS nominee Tom Price's rhetoric suggests he would have no objections in principle to  taking Washington out of the picture. In a quote cited by the Wall Street Journal Price said:  “We think it’s important that Washington not be in charge of health care,” the six-term congressman said in an interview this summer. “The problem that I have with Obamacare is that its premise is that Washington knows best.”

The general tenor of an Obamacare replacement plans emphasize giving consumers money to pick and choose policies instead of forcing them to consume Federally prescribed products.

. . .

The HCC like so many other dark horses in this year of unexpected upsets is now a real player.  Too many impossible things have taken place for anyone to easily dismiss anything out of hand now.  The next few weeks will give a clearer indication of where health care policy is trending.  But one thing is for sure.  The long shot's not such a long shot any more.

The article includes a key quote from (gasp) the New York Times. Read it and the rest of Fernandez’s article here.

The last time Cleveland Tea Party reported on the Ohio Health Care Compact was October 2015, when the House in Columbus passed the bill.  At that time, it was headed for the Senate. Perhaps the time has come.

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Brexit, snowflakes, and younger generations

cartoon by Ramirez via jewishworldreview.com

Glenn Reynolds, Mr. Instapundit, is one of my daily stops online for news and links. He ran a quote about British students (a/k/a snowflakes) complaining about the Brexit vote. And he posted Richard Fernandez’s (Mr. Belmont Club’s) response.

UK STUDENTS COMPLAIN ABOUT BREXIT: “A really important decision was made for us by the older generation” . . . “Essentially people much, much older than us — and who won’t be around for the consequences — are giving us a future we don’t want.”

On Facebook, Richard Fernandez’s response is brutal:

Essentially people much older than you gave you what you now take for granted. They won World War 2, fueled the great boom, walked through the valley of the shadow of nuclear death — and had you.

You didn’t make the present, nor as you now complain, are you making the future. No children, no national defense, no love of God or country.

But that’s just it. You’ve brainwashed yourselves into thinking someone else: the old, the older, the government, the dead would always do things for you.

If you learn anything from Brexit, learn that nobody got anywhere expecting someone to do things for him.

I wish I had thought to make such points when I was discussing the Brexit vote with one of my liberal friends (who was shocked when I said that my husband and I were planning to pop a special cork that evening to celebrate the vote).

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