Maybe there’s hope after all

 

Richard Fernandez, a/k/a Wretchard The Cat, has more optimism than some of us.  Mr. Instapundit posted this:

click to embiggen or click on the Instapundit link above

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Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit?

 

Richard Fernandez raises a timely question, and one that puts the Western world at a crossroads.  The column is at PJ Media; here are some extracts:

Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit?

… By declaring vaccine petitioners a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views,” Trudeau turned a public health issue into political dynamite. It’s a classic case study on how to escalate a problem into a crisis, turning an issue of lifting restrictions on a fading epidemic into a referendum on civil liberty and prime ministerial leadership. By declaring vaccine petitioners a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views,” Trudeau turned a public health issue into political dynamite. It’s a classic case study on how to escalate a problem into a crisis, turning an issue of lifting restrictions on a fading epidemic into a referendum on civil liberty and prime ministerial leadership. 

. . .

For some, an end to the pandemic signals the closing of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake the world. As the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) writes: “The so-called Freedom Convoy is a far-right rabble… spearheaded by fascist activists who have assaulted homeless people and workers trying to enforce anti-COVID measures and brought guns and other weaponry into downtown Ottawa.”

. . .

When the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, the names of many drugs — Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, sotrovimab — will be mentioned. But the account will be incomplete if the distorting effect of the most powerful and addictive drug of all, political power, is omitted. The public, out of fear, gave politicians enormous power. What we’re about to see, the world over, is whether they can take it back.

Mr. Fernandez’s full column is here.

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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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Outlasting the daily assaults and memes

Pensive thoughts for Easter weekend from Richard Fernandez a/k/a Wretchard at PJ Media:

If a viral cocktail of political correctness, socialist dysfunction, and moral relativism is now besetting the West, then reason is as useless against it as Veritatis splendor [The Splendor of the Truth, an encyclical by Pope John Paul II expressing the Catholic Church’s role in moral teaching] was against the devil. The meme can continue to spread regardless of damage until it pulls the host down to its energy level. Is there a way out? The Roman Empire never solved the problem of how to dominate a malignant meme, but humanity found a way of outlasting it. "Western Christianity survived by clinging to places like Skellig Michael, a pinnacle of rock [seven] miles from the Irish coast, rising seven hundred feet out of the sea." The mission of the monks was to remember God -- to remember the truth -- until the mysterious workings of the system brought them forth again…

The rest of his column is here.

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Twitter, Facebook, and The Thought Police

art credit: thebiganswer.info

Boris Zelkin at American Greatness cancelled his Twitter account:

This had been building for some time for two primary reasons. First, Twitter, like Facebook (which I had given up a few months ago), is a hate machine. Second, Twitter’s ever-changing terms of service and curiously selective enforcement of said terms via shadow and outright bans made it increasingly obvious that Twitter is less interested in real conversation than it is in kabuki theater conversation—censored one-sided shadow-boxing—replacing freedom of speech with speech at the pleasure of one’s betters.

As such, Twitter has became a platform I can no longer support with my participation.

From my perspective, participation on a platform that actively censors political speech, even when that participation consists of criticism the platform, is a tacit approval. Remember how you felt when you saw those “Occupy Wall Street” folks using iPhones to bemoan capitalism? That’s how I began seeing giving Twitter my voice, a voice that they could choose to either allow or silence if it became pesky or popular enough.

Richard Fernandez at PJ Media reports that Mr. Instapundit dropped his Twitter account:

Glenn Reynolds has deactivated his Twitter account, citing the banning of Jesse Kelly for no apparent reason as the immediate cause of his disillusionment with the platform. Explaining his decision, he wrote:

Why should I provide free content to people I don’t like, who hate me? I’m currently working on a book on social media, and I keep coming back to the point that Twitter is far and away the most socially destructive of the various platforms. So I decided to suspend them, as they are suspending others. At least I’m giving my reasons, which is more than they’ve done usually.

He may have beaten the digital bouncers to the door by only a little. The Thought Police are rushing to ensure that everyone toes the line. 

I found several supposed alternatives to Facebook here, but I had not heard of any of them. Any Tea Party people identifying any good alternatives?

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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 Russians Are Coming and Fake News

“Whatcha doin’ up on the wall there, Muriel?”

Doro Merande in The Russians Are Coming at Great Big Canvas

Just got back from out-of-town, so blogging has been light. But I did some of my usual web-surfing en route, and one of my regular Sunday stops is at the American Thinker.  ICYMI, Clarice Feldman’s “Clarice’s Pieces” was a good way to sift through some of the Fake News in the MSM. including the seemingly endless obsession with The Russians Are Coming. She references Mr. Belmont Club (Richard Fernandez at PJ Media), Scott McKay at American Spectator, and PowerLine, among others, so if you’re short on time, check out her Sunday articles for quick links to good analyses of phony baloney reports:

the non-stop media promotion of some nefarious scheme between Russia and Trump does not pass even the most cursory forensic examination, proving once again in the age of fake news, you cannot remain a passive consumer of news. You have to bring to each story the good sense and diligence with which you handle your most important personal affairs. . .

Nothing so illustrates why the media has deservedly lost all credibility than its unending, overdone effort to fit any action on the part of the President or those around him into a narrative of Russia somehow colluding with him to defeat Hillary. This week’s take was the short meeting his son held with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower last summer. . . 

You’ll just have to work harder in the face of such ignorance and bias to find out what you need to know.  

Clarice makes it a little bit easier.

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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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VP candidate Sen. Tim Kaine, the GOP, and the Uniparty

Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club at the PJ Media blogsite) has a good analysis of the GOP official website statement about Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary’s pick for Vice President. Fernandez call it a “stunningly awful” statement, an almost GOP-lite endorsement of Kaine:

A Career Spent Taking Cautious Positions 

Anathema To The Party's Liberal Base

. . . It is as if Reince told the interns to "Come up with something that makes Kaine as likable as possible to our people."

For Tea Party readers who have been following Sundance’s blogs at Conservative Treehouse over the past couple of years, the mushy GOP website statement on Kaine comes as no surprise. The GOP establishment, and party chairman Reince Priebus, are reluctant, at best, to support Trump’s candidacy. At worst, some of the GOPe are downright hostile to the Trump candidacy, as seen in the “Never Trump” delegates from Iowa and Colorado who marched out of the Republican National Convention in a huff.

For Tea Party people who have not heard of the terms “Uniparty” or “Splitter Strategy,” nor followed Sundance’s “Tripwire” predictions based on his “Uniparty” analyses, today’s blog on Conservative Treehouse here gives a handy summary. At the bottom of the article, you’ll find links to Sundance’s previous blog posts that outlined the “Uniparty” theory, linked to the new GOP primary rules state-by-state to define the “Splitter Strategy,” and then calculated the Tripwires or predictions that give credence to the Uniparty theory. It was the accuracy of the many predictions – in sequence – that persuaded many readers to change their minds about what was unfolding. Not politics as usual. (Maybe readers will want to bookmark the page to go through all the posts linked at the bottom, as time permits.)

Once readers recognized what the “Uniparty” was, the behavior of the political class, the donor class, and the media became more comprehensible, albeit more reprehensible. Scrolling through the reader comments at Treehouse can be helpful and even reassuring; it’s a bit unnerving when we find ourselves in such uncharted waters.

Link to Sundance / Treehouse: click here.

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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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