[Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers] From A Polite and Ernest Semi-Angry Reader:
Dear Mr. Hanson,
I am a senior woman from Michigan, snowbird over the winter in Florida. I am so sad these days that anything written by either side is vituperative, mean spirited, and anger provoking. Your 10 new rules by radicals could have had a much nicer tone. Frankly, I think you are way off base by taking such an exaggerated view of all your beefs. It irritates the left and inflames the right. Ugh. I would appreciate it if you would rewrite that article with a gentler approach.
I have grown up respecting the two party system, and want it to survive in the most healthy fashion. My husband and I have great friends on both sides of the aisle, but it is not easy these days to have a civilized conversation, so we just avoid anything political. That is very sad, because growing up in a "mixed" family, we had wonderful disagreements, and we chewed on lots of issues without drawing blood.
Hopefully that will happen again. Please help that happen.
Respectfully, Anne
Dear Polite and Earnest Semi-Angry Reader Anne,
I don't think my 10 rules are "beefs," but simply descriptions of a new America, in which debt is not really considered debt; whether laws are enforced fully depends on the social/cultural context; and wokeness is a new religion. Do you disagree? If so, please explain where and why. When we owe $25 trillion in national debt and borrow $5 trillion over 2 years do you think it is more important to warn the country about the danger of insolvency or to keep silent so as not to "irritate the Left" or "inflame the Right"?
You and I grew up with a conventional two-party system, I in a Democratic household of the JFK brand.
The 8-hr work-day, Social Security, civil rights, disability insurance, meritocratic admissions to preclude racial prejudice, secure borders to ensure entry-level good wages, fair housing‐all this was the Democratic Party until the 1970s/1980s. And even in the 1990s a radical child of the 1960s, Bill Clinton, could at times be reasonable (see the Democratic 1996 convention platform on illegal immigration and speeches on it by the like of Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.) He was responsible with Newt Gingrich in working out a way to reduce budget deficits.
But we have now two new parties: a hard left socialist/progressive movement that appeals to the very, very wealthy, the corporate elite, woke minorities ‐ versus a middle class, populist working-class party that wishes to retain traditions and customs and seeks to appeal by class rather than racial interests. The former Party has created the cancel culture, the boycott culture, and the transformation culture. It is at war with the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The ACLU is not the ACLU of the 1960s but something quite different. The Left, not the conservative party, wants to alter the Constitution and ancient customs, by ending the 9-Justice Supreme Court, the filibuster, the states' laws concerning national voting, a 50-state nation, and far more ‐ largely because it feels its agendas do not win 50 percent support, whether the Green New Deal, open borders, reparations, or changes to the Constitution.
In my experience, conservatives usually don't bring up politics, or like to argue; theirs is more a live and let live attitude. In most families with political tensions, the more leftward demand "discussions" and seek to prompt political debate, and see politics as more important than friendships.
Politics is part of life not an end in itself. Traditionalists don't hunt down officials at their homes to "get in their faces" or metaphorically "bring a gun to a knife fight." So I don't think your admonition is quite as symmetrical as you think. Look at the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney; both were reduced to caricatures of greedy, white capitalists. Trump was a creation of pent-up anger, it is true, but the anger was that of taking punches in a world where the Left had weaponized Wall Street, Silicon Valley, professional sports, academia, foundations, Hollywood, entertainment, and the corporate boardroom, etc. What is the political message you receive before a NBA game, or from a new Hollywood movie, or within a new commercial, or in a college president's letter, or from Facebook's rules?
I do think we can all avoid unnecessary animus. I try not to attack any writers/thinkers in personal terms and avoid naming them wherever possible, but do insist on replying to those who engage in attacks. Otherwise, the untruth is never addressed, much less corrected.
I wish a return to the old bipartisan give-and-take, but whether we like it or not, the country is moving in one direction of massive debt, larger government, less personal freedom, more tribal tensions, open borders, less meritocracy, and less civility‐and most important, as I pointed out, a general decline in knowledge, given the watering down of K-12 curricula. Consensual government will not work when citizens do not know much at all of their nation's origins and history, and feel their country is sinful and innately flawed at its beginning.
I appreciate your kind advice, but beg to differ this time. I try to give rational spirited critiques that can remind people of what is going both well and poorly. Simply hoping for the good times to return if we all forget our differences won't work. If history is any guide, the smiling ostrich with his head in a hole will only empower those who have very focused and quite dangerous agendas.
Respectfully,
Victor Hanson
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/07/2021 07:45 ||
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[Babylon Bee] HAMPTON FALLS, IA—White liberals gathered in the town of Hampton Falls were shocked and astonished as local black man, accountant, and father of three Michael Sparkton walked right into a DOT office and acquired an ID without any assitance from liberals whatsoever.
"It was amazing -- he was smart, clean, and articulate enough to walk right in and acquire the ID without consulting us white people at all," said anti-racist activist Chloe Ryder to reporters. "He walked right in and got the ID, no questions asked. We thought it would be way above his intelligence level because, well. You know what I'm saying, right? Yeah. You know."
Reporters said they did not know, and Ryder was forced to whisper, "because he's black and I don't think he's capable of doing it!"
At publishing time, the liberals were amazed to see he had walked up to a vending machine and purchased a bottle of water all by himself.
#2
Leaving aside the fact that nobody has actually produced any eligible individual let alone group that has been prevented from voting for lack of ID, consider the corporate woke-aroti of the field.
If Coke to pick but one has such a problem, did it never occur to them to organize a free ID campaign? Of course not, because it's not any remote kind of problem in the first place.
[AlAraby] When Idriss Deby visited his troops on the front line with rebels from Libya on 19 April, he had just received election results guaranteeing him another term in power after ruling Chad for 30 years.
The subsequent events are shrouded in mystery. When news reports broke that the president had been assassinated in a rebel attack, many were surprised. Deby, who died from his wounds on 20 April, had been a key ally of Western powers in the fight against jihadist organizations in the Sahel.
Since his death, subsequent events have been accompanied by conspiracy theories about the nature of his liquidation, and whether there was a coup attempt fuelled by the ambitions of regional powers. The truth may be a mix of all these things.
Idriss Deby was anything but a democratic leader. While he had strong ties with Western countries — especially La Belle France - his rule was marked by controversies and human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. abuses, as well as continuous festivities with numerous rebel groups.
Although rarely in the news, the country is of strategic importance. Gay Paree needs stability in its former colony and N'Djamena houses thousands of French soldiers engaged in anti-terrorist special operations.
Located between Cameroon ...a long, narrow country that fills the space between Nigeria and Chad on the northeast, CAR to the southeast. Prior to incursions by Boko Haram nothing ever happened there... , the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Sudan, Niger and Nigeria, Chad is at the epicentre of geopolitical and economic interests of both regional and global powers. La Belle France is there, as is the United States. Russia also has a heightened appetite for the region, and at the time of Deby's liquidation the Kremlin already had forces stationed in Libya, Sudan, and the CAR, and a mission to Nigeria. From whichever angle one looks, Chad has no easy geopolitical choices. However, if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning... the northern border with Libya had been the most worrying for Deby. More at the link
[Townhall] ...According to Forbes's 35th annual ranking of billionaires, last year witnessed a population explosion. Some 660 new billionaires were added to the number for a total of 2,755.
And more than one in every four billionaires is an American.
..."The United States had the most billionaires, at 724, extending a rapid rise in wealth that hasn't happened since the Rockefellers and the Carnegies roughly a century ago. China, including Macau and Hong Kong, had the second highest number of billionaires: 698."
This tripling of the wealth of the world's billionaires and 30% increase in their number came during a year when America and the West endured the worst pandemic in a century and worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
"While most of the world's wealthiest people prospered during the pandemic, thanks in part to stock prices," writes the Post, "millions of Americans grappled with job loss, food insecurity, debt, eviction and poverty."
Query: Where was the outrage?
In previous times like these, where the rich got richer and the poor and working class rode the rails, we would have heard the excoriations of economic populists and echoes of TR's "malefactors of great wealth" and FDR's "forces of entrenched greed."
But Forbes' report of the population explosion among billionaires in 2020 passed seemingly without protest.
The dogs did not bark. Why not?
...today's billionaires' boys club has come to understand how to make its astonishing wealth acceptable, by ingratiating themselves with their old ideological enemies.
Set up a tax-exempt foundation, fund it with billions of dollars, invite in liberals to sit on the board, and, at munificent salaries, to run it and distribute its income to liberal causes. The way to diminish leftist resentment at huge piles of private wealth is to give them a cut.
...Yet, of greater interest, and import, is that the China of the new Great Helmsman, Xi Jinping, a one-party Communist dictatorship, coexists with hundreds of Chinese billionaires.
...One wonders: Has China found the formula for global ascendancy that eluded the Soviet Union of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev?
Use state capitalism and market incentives to build the economic wealth that can be translated into the growth to enable China to ascend to a level of power where it is indisputably the first nation on earth?
Are the Chinese billionaires the geese laying the golden eggs for the Chinese Communist party? Is Communist doctrine being updated to accommodate the most successful Communist country of them all?
[AP] President Joe Biden is facing a fresh challenge to his oft-repeated commitment to diversity in his administration: assembling a diplomatic corps that gives a nod to key political allies and donors while staying true to a campaign pledge to appoint ambassadors who look like America.
More than three months into his administration, Biden has put forward just 11 ambassador nominations and has more than 80 such slots to fill around the globe. Administration officials this week signaled that Biden is ready to ramp up ambassador nominations as the president prepares for foreign travel and turns greater attention to global efforts to fight the coronavirus.
Lobbying has intensified for more sought-after ambassadorial postings — including dozens of assignments that past presidents often dispensed as rewards to political allies and top donors. Those appointments often come with an expectation that the appointees can foot the bill for entertaining on behalf of the United States in pricey, high-profile capitals.
But as he did with the assembling of his Cabinet and hiring top advisers, Biden is putting a premium on broadening representation in what historically has been one of the least diverse areas of government, White House officials say.
"The president looks to ensuring that the people representing him — not just in the United States, but around the world — represent the diversity of the country," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters this week.
#1
Diversity test? The gov't has been flooding the zone for decades. WTF, are we now suddenly running low on 'non-white' people? My television and 'Wheel of Fortune', they betray me.
A crisis of their very own creation. AP continues to struggle with valid news reporting.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Dear Mr. Hanson,
[Babylon Bee] HAMPTON FALLS, IA—White liberals gathered in the town of Hampton Falls were shocked and astonished as local black man, accountant, and father of three Michael Sparkton walked right into a DOT office and acquired an ID without any assitance from liberals whatsoever.
