General

Playing to the stereotype

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In the time-honored tradition of so many American graduate students before me, many years ago after I dropped out of the Ph.D. program in English which I had nearly completed, I drove a taxi cab for several years. In Philadelphia.

How I came to punctuate a solid academic career that had raised reasonable expectations in my professors of potential future success with this tragic note is not relevant to this essay; a scene of some fairly predictable absurdity is, and is also relevant to this particular moment in the news cycle.

When I was driving a cab, having grown monumentally frustrated with the goings-on of the Black population of Philadelphia as customers—the nastiness, the violence, the hysteria, the thieving, the guns, etc., etc.—one night, as yet another Black customer exited the cab making quite clear his intentions not to pay, because I sensed he was a mere low-life and not a gun-toting killer, I couldn’t help myself. I began to remonstrate with him.

“Why are you doing this?” I yelled. “Don’t you realize you’re only strengthening justification for the negative racial feelings people may already harbor? Don’t you care how this affects other cab drivers and how they treat your fellow man? Why are you living down to low expectations? Why are you playing to the stereotype?” I shrieked.

The low life stood there grinning like the village idiot while I harangued him on his social responsibilities, but he was undoubtedly hearing nothing more than the sound adults make in Peanuts cartoons.

He stumbled away, completely unabashed, knowing he had nothing to fear. I, on the other hand, just couldn’t let it go. The muted trombone continued, although hardly quiet. My head still hanging out of the window, I continued screeching my sermon.

“Wah wah wah wah!!” And more, “Wah wah wah wah.” And finally, after I’d pulled out into traffic, still half out the window, my final thrust, “Wah, wah wah, WAH!!”

There, I’d got him. My lesson was delivered. I put the trombone away and settled back into my seat and drove on.

Rather silly of me, huh? Unfortunately, I have plenty more anecdotes drawn from the repertoire of the Theatre of the Absurd. After all, at that time I was a fully indoctrinated member of the liberal intelligentsia, and, doggonit, the world had to be made to conform to what I’d read in the books.

*                 *                 *                 *                 *                 *

Decades later, it’s déjà vous all over again. Once again, I’m having this same indignation roiling through me, and I’m experiencing a strangely familiar urge to open windows and start shouting. Only this time, my frustration is instigated by what I’m seeing on my computer screen. I’m observing with incredulity the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt and a significant number of other powerful Jewish movers and shakers pile on to a handful of celebrities who have made critical observations about Jews and Jewish power structures in the entertainment industry.

As RockaBoatus said in his essay, “Is the Golden Age for Jews Coming to an End?”:

Kanye West’s recent Tweets about Jews has helped to further open discussion on these matters. To the chagrin of many Jews, his claims and their consequences have only served to prove the very point he was making in his Tweets. He complained about the hugely disproportionate influence and power that Jews have in Hollywood and in corporate media. Though Jewish advocacy groups tried to sway public opinion by describing such notions as “old anti-Semitic canards,” their actions demonstrated the very truth of West’s claims when one corporation after another cut all financial ties from him.

“Huh?” I want to yell from the rooftops. “This is the move chosen by those who possess that vaunted Ashkenazi IQ? What?”

This isn’t any better than all those Black lowlifes who had no shame viewing cabs as their personal ATMs. After all, according to the dictates of critical race theory, Black people must eschew “planning ahead” as it is symptomatic of “whiteness.” And “planning ahead” translates as “thinking ahead” so perhaps it’s understandable that misbehaving members of Philadelphia’s Black community can’t see the future social impact of their actions. But Greenblatt et al couldn’t think that through?

Just like the fare-skipper, the Jewish movers and shakers have played right into the stereotype.

Democrats, Not ‘Democracy,’ at Risk Today

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Democrats, Not 'Democracy,' at Risk Today by Patrick Buchanan

 

What do liberal Democrats do, if, in a free and fair election, U.S. voters throw them out and replace them with people our elites routinely equate with fascists and Nazis? We may be about to find out.

“Make no mistake — democracy is on the ballot for us all.”

So declaiming in his Union Station speech to the nation on the real stakes in the 2022 elections, President Joe Biden, who was immediately echoed by Barack Obama, painted himself and his party into a corner.

For if Trump Republicans carry the day Tuesday, Biden will have to declare, if there is any consistency left in him, a “defeat for democracy” and a victory for the party that he has said is steeped in “semi-fascism.”

Assume, for the sake of argument, a GOP capture of the House of Representatives and of a majority of the U.S. Senate.

How would Biden describe that GOP victory, if he has persisted in his stated belief that the fate of “democracy” itself was on the table? Would he say that “democracy” had been rejected in America, dealt a crippling blow, a “shellacking,” by a party dominated by semi-fascists?

How does Biden then work for the next two years with leaders of a party whose ascendancy James Clyburn, third-ranking Democrat in the House, has just compared to the Nazis coming to power in Germany?

If you have equated your rising Republican rivals across the aisle in the early 2020s with the ascendant Nazis in the early 1930s, how do you work together with such as these on a common agenda?

What do liberal Democrats do, if, in a free and fair election, U.S. voters throw them out and replace them with people our elites routinely equate with fascists and Nazis?

We may be about to find out.

Indeed, if Trump Republicans are what the Democratic leaders say they are, and the country still votes them into office, what would that tell us about the character of the American electorate and American people?

Prediction: Democrats, if defeated Tuesday, will find a way to work with the victorious Republicans. Why? Because they do not truly believe in the names they have been calling Republicans, and because they lack the courage and conviction to rise up and rout genuine Nazis, if they should one day confront them.

Which brings us to what the election is really all about: the failure of a regime, and of the president, party and philosophy steering that regime.

In a republic such as ours, the government has many major duties.

High among them are resisting foreign invasions, securing the nation’s borders, protecting the value of the currency and securing the rights of citizens, first and foremost, the right to be free from domestic violence.

The Democratic Party that controls both houses of the Congress and the presidency has abjectly failed in all of these fundamental duties.

Consider.

In Biden’s 22 months in office, the U.S. has witnessed an invasion across its 1,900-mile southern border by millions of illegal aliens. Another million illegals have entered our country while effectively evading contact with U.S. authorities. These are the “gotaways.”

We do not know who these people are, where they came from and why, or where they are now, except to say that they have broken our laws and broken into our national home and are living here among us.

Some 250,000 migrants are now arriving at the border every month, irretrievably altering the character and composition of our country over the enraged protests of its citizens.

The president is thus failing abysmally in one of his foremost duties — to secure our borders. And neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris has shown the least interest in protecting that bleeding border, or even visiting it.

As for protecting the value of the U.S. dollars that constitute the wages, salaries and savings of our people, that value has been eaten up for a year by a cancerous 8% inflation that began soon after Biden began to implement his policies.

As for protecting the rights of citizens of this republic to be free from domestic violence, the Biden years have been witness to a pandemic of murders, rapes, robberies and assaults. Media reports and videos of the new savagery in our society have converted “crime” into one of the primary national concerns in a nation we used to call “God’s Country.”

This, then, is what Tuesday’s election is really all about.

“Democracy” is not on the ballot. What is on the ballot is a huge slice of the leadership and ruling class of the national Democratic Party, which is not the same thing. What is being decided by the ballots this election season is the verdict of the nation on a president who has failed, a party that has failed, and a political philosophy that has failed.

Democracy has not failed America. The reigning Democrats have failed America. And their desperate leaders are urging us to equate their party’s defeat and repudiation with a rejection of our political system.

If we lose the election to these Republicans, Democratic leaders have been telling America, it is because the American people preferred fascism to democracy.

This is the Big Lie of 2022.

 

Tom Sunic: The Double Helix of Victimhood and Identity

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Warning! Crime Deniers on the Ballot in All 50 States!

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Warning! Crime Deniers on the Ballot in All 50 States!

Next Tuesday, voters, please remember that Democrats will never run out of excuses for criminals. They drone on about “racism,” “root causes,” “poverty,” “drug addiction,” “his gun dropped,” “mental illness,” “learning disabilities,” “he made a mistake” and “prison doesn’t work”!

It’s not the government’s job to probe criminals’ psyches. These are predators, monsters, feral beasts attacking civilization, with no regard for your property, bodily integrity or life. The government’s only job is to keep them away from us, not to ensure that they have fulfilling lives.

At the New York gubernatorial debate last week, feisty Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin hit Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, hard on the crime wave engulfing New York. Finally, he said, “We’re halfway through the debate, she still hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes.”

In a city where citizens are afraid to leave their homes because of crime, Hochul’s blithe response made headlines. She said: “I don’t know why that’s so important to you.”

Her unfathomably out-of-touch reply was so infuriating, viewers might have missed the first part of her answer: “Anyone who commits a crime under our laws, especially with the change we made to bail, has consequences.”

“Has consequences.” Take note, New Yorkers! She did not say, “will go to jail” or “will be prosecuted” or “will be removed from the streets for the welfare of society.”

“Has consequences” is progressive code for “restorative justice.” In lieu of actual punishment, the criminal will be required to write a letter to the victim, hug it out or attend a family “mediation.” Thus, if a pack of teenagers beat the crap out of your kid at school, he will be forced to sit down with his attackers so they can tell him, Hey, sorry, man, we thought you dissed us.

One of the major drivers of New York’s unprecedented increase in crime is the “no bail” law — meaning “no jail.” The same predators are arrested over and over again but can never be put in jail, thanks to the Democrats.

Apart from their overriding objective of keeping “black bodies” out of jail — as opposed to, say, protecting the White and Black bodies of their victims — the Democrats’ argument for never jailing arrestees is that bail “discriminates” against the poor, who can’t afford to pay. First, show me the rich person mugging New Yorkers or shoving commuters in front of subway trains.

Second, we’re lucky when we can even catch one of these monsters. And, if caught, the vast majority of guilty criminals will never spend a day in prison. Only about 30% of those arrested for a violent crime go to prison — and those were the statistics before Soros-backed district attorneys started releasing criminals all over the country. Those were the statistics before the racial reckoning.

Another fantastic Democrat idea for reducing crime is to deploy “violence interrupters,” i.e., otherwise difficult-to-employ ex-cons who get a nice social work job from the city. Or to fund endless “mental health” services, the sole purpose of which is to create more useless government jobs for Victim Studies majors from Bard College.

Look, if some idiot wants to counsel rapists and muggers in prison — fantastic! They can volunteer. But the counseling needs to take place behind prison walls, where their clients belong.

Though I think it’s kind of important to mention that there is no evidence that “mental health” counseling has ever worked. The New York Times admitted as much in an uncharacteristic burst of honesty in 1983: “Dozens of studies … have found that rehabilitation programs in prison have failed, that there is no reliable way of telling whether a prisoner has reformed and that many released early commit new crimes.”

No matter what they call it, liberals have been pushing their anything-but-prison plans forever.

Here are some Times headlines from as far back as the 1980s:

1982: “According to a recent Rand Corporation study, [putting fewer criminals in prison] could reduce both the prison population and the crime rate.”

1987: “After years of increased sentences, and an extraordinary drain on our state’s treasury, we need to acknowledge that longer sentences do not deter most crime.”

1988: “An Answer to Jails Is Reading.”

1989: “Prison Can Be a Dumb Solution.”

1991: “Alternative to Prison Mends Fences and Lives.”

Note that it wasn’t until 1994, and the election of Rudolph Giuliani, that crime actually, for the first time, went down. (Giuliani did not follow the Times’ advice.)

And leaping ahead to the present, here is the Times in 2020: “Can Prosecutors Be Taught To Avoid Jail Sentences?”

(I couldn’t help but notice that every one of the writers above was a female. So the good news is, we have no shortage of prison volunteers!)

“Alternatives to prison” never have worked, never will work, and liberals don’t care that they don’t work. They just don’t want criminals in prison [except the “criminals” who were involved in the Jan. 6 “insurrection”].

This is a parlor game of one-upmanship for Democrats:

I’m the most compassionate!

No, I am!

Look — the object of my compassion is way worse than yours! He’s a rapist and a murderer!

The purpose of the criminal justice system is to lock up bad guys, not to allow liberals to feel good about themselves. (Least of all is it to ensure that all ethnicities are incarcerated at the exact same percentages. [Exactly. I think much of this is motivated by the current craze of enabling Black criminality, because liberals think that any disproportion must be due to “racism”])

In fact, now that I think about it, separating criminals from the law-abiding is the government’s most basic responsibility. It’s also the only government program where liberals suddenly become hard-nosed fiscal conservatives. In just this one case, we get detailed breakdowns of the cost of prison. How much do the public schools cost? How about the cost of subsidized housing for able-bodied (but nonworking) Americans? How about food stamps? How about the endless layers of “social workers”?

Democrats can’t change and won’t change — they can only be defeated at the polls. (Even that’s only a start.) If you ever want to leave your home again, without fear of your body or property being violated, vote Republican on Nov. 8.

COPYRIGHT 2022 ANN COULTER

Why a Red Wave Is Suddenly Possible

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WHY A RED WAVE IS SUDDENLY POSSIBLE

After months of warning you about the GOP’s chronic overconfidence problem, now I’m feeling overconfident! Inasmuch as I will be giving a speech at my alma mater, Cornell University, the day after the election, I’m about to do something very stupid: make an election prediction.

My reasoning is, here we are, three weeks from the election, and this week, two major polls, Harvard Harris and Times Sienna, suddenly show Republicans gaining ground. This triggered a primordial memory from the 1980 election, the first presidential race I paid attention to.

That’s when I discovered the iron rule of election polls: They will never, ever be wrong in favor of Republicans. Another is that polls will generally show the Democrat winning until the election gets close — and the media finally start telling the truth.

Thus, for example, after being hectored for most of 1980 that Ronald Reagan was headed for another Goldwater-style fiasco, here’s the sort of thing a teenager would have read in The New York Times weeks before he won a landslide victory against President Jimmy Carter, taking 489 electoral college votes to Carter’s 49.

1980

— Sept. 15, 1980: “Reagan and Carter Even In Washington Post Poll”

— Sept. 21, 1980 “Allowing for the margin of error, the polls indicate a virtual dead heat between Mr.Carter and Mr. Reagan”

— Oct. 23, 1980: “Poll Shows President Has Pulled To Even Position With Reagan”

In mid-September, the Times’ Anthony Lewis painted a vivid picture of Reagan’s coming annihilation, citing a bunch of state polls:

— “A recent New York Times poll of registered likely voters [in New York] showed Carter leading Reagan, 44 to 38.”

ACTUAL RESULT: REAGAN: 47; CARTER: 44

— In Washington state, “a poll for the Carter campaign put the president ahead by 3 points against Reagan.”

ACTUAL RESULT: REAGAN: 50; CARTER: 37

— In Illinois, a “poll for Carter’s campaign put him ahead by 5 points.”

ACTUAL RESULT: REAGAN: 50; CARTER 48.

— In Connecticut, a “Hartford Courant poll showed: Reagan 36, Carter 35.”

ACTUAL RESULT: REAGAN: 48; CARTER: 39

A month later, the Times produced yet more polls of gloom:

— Oct. 9, 1980 headline: “Texas Looming As A Close Battle Between President And Reagan”

ACTUAL RESULT: REAGAN: 55%; CARTER: 41%

— Oct. 16, 1980, headline: “Ohio Race Expected To Be Close As Labor Mobilizes For President”

ACTUAL RESULT: REAGAN: 52, CARTER 41

And then Reagan won more electoral college votes than any non-incumbent in history. You’d think the polls would have picked up on the fact that history was about to be made. Nope!

This is not just an enjoyable stroll down memory lane, though it is that. It is to remind Republican-leaning voters, even in seemingly blue strongholds like New York, Oregon and Washington, to please vote. Because, win or lose, one thing polls will never do is overestimate a Republican’s chances.

1976

— Sept. 23, Roper Poll: Carter leads Gerald Ford 46%-29%. 

ACTUAL RESULT: Jimmy Carter won by 2 percentage points.

1984

— Oct. 15, The New York Daily News poll: Reagan 45%; Walter Mondale 41%.

ACTUAL RESULT: Reagan beat Mondale by nearly 20 points, 58.8% to 40%.

1988

— Oct. 5, New York Times/CBS News Poll: George H.W. Bush 45%; Michael Dukakis 43%. 

ACTUAL RESULT: Bush 53.4%; Dukakis 45.6%.

1992

Oct. 18, Newsweek poll: Bill Clinton 46%; GHW Bush 31%

ACTUAL RESULT: Clinton: 43%; GHW Bush: 37.7%

1996

— Oct. 22, The New York Times/CBS News Poll: Clinton 55%; Bob Dole 33%. 

ACTUAL RESULT: Clinton 49%; Dole 40%.

2000

— Oct. 3, The New York Times/CBS News Poll: Al Gore 45%; George W. Bush 39%.

ACTUAL RESULT: Bush 47.9%; Gore 48.4%.

For some mysterious reason, election polls were pretty accurate in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections. Perhaps pollsters had gotten better. Maybe they noticed that people sometimes do look back at their forecasts. Or it could be that Republicans were running such losers those years that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to underestimate their performance.

But, boy, did the pollsters make up for any inadvertent honesty when Donald Trump ran in 2016!

2016

The Times had the best pollsters in the business and sophisticated computer modeling. Based on their high-tech number-crunching, on Oct. 18, the paper reported: “Hillary has a 91% chance to win.” On Election Day, the forecasters were a little less exuberant, announcing that Hillary had a mere 85% chance of winning. A Trump victory, the Times said, was as likely as “an NFL kicker miss[ing] a 37-yard field goal.”

We know how that turned out.

2020

On Election Day 2020, Times’s forecasters exulted that Joe Biden was ahead “by more than 8 points nationwide — the largest lead a candidate has held in the final polls since Bill Clinton in 1996.”

He won by 4 points.

Maybe it’s not a wild and reckless prediction, but the news this week suggests that the media are slowly edging up to the truth, and that Republicans could be on track to well outperform the polls.

This would be a good year for it. The Senate map, combined with five GOPs retiring, make 2022 a tough year for Republicans, who are defending seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina, and trying to flip at least one state out of Nevada, Arizona and Georgia for a bare majority.

But Republicans winning requires that voters not be discouraged by the polls and remember to vote, even when the media tell you it’s hopeless, like in New York, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Mostly, I just want to wake up the morning after the election and find out Dr. Mehmet Oz has won in Pennsylvania and defeated that slovenly, goatee-sporting Michael Moore-wannabe, John Fetterman, who is passionate about only two things: not bathing and releasing vicious murderers. And that Lee Zeldin has beaten the demented, “release all the criminals!” New York governor, Kathy Hochul, with the crazy “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” makeup.

Then, the world will make sense again.

Tucker Carlson on anti-White hate in the progressive media

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Sometimes one despairs of White people waking up to the logical consequences of the hatred against them—the hatred that we see all around us in the media (e.g., advertising), but especially in the progressive media and among non-White activists in general. I realize that Tucker Carlson is not all we would like him to be, but this is the sort of thing that can wake White people up to the possible (probable?) consequences of the Great Replacement.

Where US and Ukrainian War Aims Collide

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Where US and Ukrainian War Aims Collide By Patrick Buchanan

For us, the crucial concern in this Ukraine-Russia war is not who ends up in control of Crimea and the Donbas, but that the U.S. not be sucked into a war with Russia that could escalate into a world war and a nuclear war.

To President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbas are national territories whose retrieval justifies all-out war to expel the invading armies of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Yet, who controls Crimea and the Donbas has, in the history of U.S.-Russian relations, never been an issue to justify a war between us.

America has never had a vital interest in who rules in Kyiv.

Through the 19th and almost all of the 20th century, Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire or the USSR, ruled from Moscow. And that condition presented no issue of concern to the USA, 5,000 miles away.

For us, the crucial concern in this Ukraine-Russia war is not who ends up in control of Crimea and the Donbas, but that the U.S. not be sucked into a war with Russia that could escalate into a world war and a nuclear war.

That is America’s paramount interest in this crisis.

Nothing in Eastern Europe would justify an all-out U.S. war with Russia. After all, Moscow’s control of Eastern and Central Europe was the situation that existed throughout the Cold War from 1945 to 1989.

And the U.S. never militarily challenged that result of World War II.

We lived with it. When Hungarians rose up in 1956 for freedom and independence, the U.S. refused to intervene. Rather than risk war with Russia, the Hungarian patriots were left to their fate by President Dwight Eisenhower.

How the world has changed in the 21st century.

Today, while the U.S. is under no obligation to go to war for Ukraine, we are obliged, under the NATO treaty, to go to war if Slovakia, Czechia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia are attacked.

And, though Kyiv is not a member of NATO, the U.S. finds itself the financier and principal armorer of Ukraine in a war with Russia over Crimea and the Donbas, which could involve the use of nuclear weapons for the first time since Nagasaki.

In short, our vital interest — avoidance of a U.S. war with a nuclear-armed Russia — may soon clash with the strategic war goals of Ukraine — i.e., full retrieval of Crimea and the Donbas.

If Putin is serious about an indefinite war to hold Crimea and the Donbas as Russian territory, how far are we willing to go to aid Ukraine in driving the Russians out and taking these lands back?

What appears to be emerging is a situation something like this:

As U.S. weapons help drive Russian soldiers out of the occupied regions of Ukraine, Russia and Putin are being driven into a corner, where the alternatives left to them shrink to two: accept defeat, humiliation and all its consequences, or escalate to hold onto what they have.

At some point, escalation to prevent defeat can require crossing the nuclear threshold. And Putin and his retinue have said as much.

Bottom line: At some point in this conflict, achieving the war aims of Ukraine must force Moscow to consider escalation or accept defeat.

For Russia, the worse the war situation is, the sooner comes the day when Putin must either play his ace of spades to avoid defeat, or accept defeat, humiliation and his potential overthrow in Moscow.

As Russia’s use of nuclear weapons could lead to a war that could involve the United States, Kyiv’s relentless pursuit of its vital interests — retrieval of all the lands taken by Russia, including the Donbas and Crimea — will eventually imperil vital U.S. interests.

If Kyiv, with U.S. weapons and support, pushes the Russians out of Crimea and the Donbas, Kyiv pushes its war with Russia closer and closer to a nuclear war.

As Kyiv seeks to reconquer all its territory lost to Russia since 2014, it pushes Russia closer and closer toward consideration of the only way to avert defeat and national humiliation, use of tactical nuclear weapons, which means moving closer to war with the United States.

The higher the casualty rates for Putin’s Russia, the worse the defeats inflicted on Russia by U.S.-armed and -equipped Ukrainians, the greater the likelihood Russia plays its ace of spades, nuclear weapons, to stave off defeat and humiliation and ensure the survival of the regime.

In short, the closer Putin comes to defeat, the closer we come to nuclear war, for that increasingly appears to be the only way Putin can prevent a Russian defeat, disgrace and humiliation.

Americans had best begin to consider what is the outcome to this war that can end the bloodshed, restore much of Ukraine to Kyiv, but not be seen as a historic humiliation for Russia.

Some Americans see this war as an opportunity to inflict a defeat and disgrace on Putin’s regime and Russia. Those seeking such goals should recognize that the closer they come to achieving their goals, the closer we come to Russia’s use of nuclear weapons.

Recall: President John F. Kennedy sought to provide an honorable way out of the Cuban missile crisis for the Soviet dictator and nation who precipitated it.