RogerG

October 7, 2019October 9, 2019

The Correlation of Forces in the Trump Era

I was drawn back to the Soviet concept of the “correlation of forces” after reading Yuval Levin’s piece from over a week ago (Sept. 27), “The Impeachment Train”. The Soviet notion was fully researched by one of our Defense Dept.’s agencies (DARPA) in a report, “The Soviet Concept of the Correlation of Forces”, in 1976.

The Soviets sought to exploit what they considered to be favorable circumstances to advance their foreign policy goals at our expense – “the correlation of forces” so-called. The current period in our country’s history has all the ingredients for another “correlation of forces”, one that could drive the nation into strongly hostile camps resembling the antebellum divisions of the 1820’s to 1860, hopefully without the violence. The “correlation of forces” are present for all to see.

The divide has been described as a blue/red and urban/rural one. It’s true; we are deeply split in those two ways. I’ve written about this often. Since the divide is culturally-based, it has the capacity to be even more combustible. Enter Donald Trump. A divide that has been building for quite some time is deepened and widened by Trump’s style of politicking and personal mannerisms. Those manners drive people to their corners.

Part of the blame lies at Trump’s lack of a filter when he speaks (or Tweets). He’s not Bill Clinton who can compartmentalize. Trump in private is nearly the same as Trump in public. He doesn’t distinguish that much between a locker room and moments before microphones and cameras. He cares not about whether he’s talking to foreign dignitaries in private phone calls or crowds at one of his rallies. With Trump, you get what you see … everywhere. He’s unfiltered and inflammatory.

Thus, he elicits strong reactions. Trump’s presence isn’t a soothing one. Sparky talk incites sparky actions. Newton’s third law of motion comes to mind: for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

And for hypersensitive Dems, their over-the-top reactions are easily facilitated when the party has been lurching ever leftward for the past few decades. Today, there’s not much difference between them and the radical left of the 60’s. Much of it is driven by the cultural radicalization of our urban and suburban areas. The radical has become mainstream in the party. Sure, Trump makes it easier for them to embrace extremist policies as they seek to distinguish themselves from what they considered to be a wholly detestable figure. As the cultural undertow pulls the middle of the party to the left, the more moderate elements get dragged along. Of course, Trump’s behavior is no excuse to foist the poison of socialism on the country.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (right) speak during a press conference to announce Green New Deal legislation on Feb. 7. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Trump is not the reason for the Democrats’ love affair with socialism and their leftward leap. Environmentalism is. Environmentalism is a pseudo-religious ideology. It’s religious for its faith in a materialistic explanation of reality. Interestingly, the combination of “religious” and “materialistic” in the same sentence makes for a classic oxymoron. Recognition of the fact by the cultural left won’t stop them from papering over the disjunction by turning Jesus and the Bible into citadels of wokeness, to go along with the long-desired surrender of humanity to a semi-deity, mother nature. It’s pantheism at best. The dogmas are grotesquely incoherent.

Environmentalism provides excellent cover, though, for socialism’s expansion of government power into every facet of life. Is it really all that surprising for the party of government to be a party of socialism? Environmentalism satisfies the Democrats’ itch for government control. The modern Democratic Party is so immersed in its socialism that it doesn’t take much for their opponents to be cast as evil. They don’t need a Trump. Anyone not drinking the Kool-Aid can be branded a “denier”, “racist”, “xenophobe”, “fascist”, and on and on. They didn’t wait for Trump to brand George W. Bush a religious fanatic, a hater, a wanton killer in the chant “Bush lied, people died”, a fascist, a corrupt stooge of Big Oil, an instigator of 9-11, etc., etc.

Code Pink at the White House, about 2005.

A protester calling for the impeachment of Bush in June 16, 2005.

The word “impeachment” frequently graced their lips. Trump’s crude mannerisms make for an even easier target for their ideologically-driven hypersensitivities.

The entire gamut of woke communities – on our campuses, in our cities, among our super-rich tech and finance tycoons, amidst white collar public employees, et al – can be energized for lefty activism as need arises. Ask Brett Kavanaugh. Without a shred of evidence, accusers came out of the woodwork to level the worst kind of human conduct at him: perversion, rape, gang rape, a reveler in the grossest bacchanalias, you name it. Even the most “credible” accuser, Blasey Ford, turned out to be “incredible”. In law, we must keep in mind that a story is fiction till its proven. These were never proven, and probably couldn’t ever be proven. They are lies.

Brett Kavanaugh at confirmation hearings, September 2018.

Protesters demonstrating against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the steps of the Supreme Court.

The discredited and unsubstantiated Kavanaugh accusers.

The script is repeated on Trump. Instead of an engineered line of supposed female victims, we have the denizens of public employment near the top of the Leviathan pyramid coming forward under the cover of “whistleblower”. They are proof of the existence of a government worker subculture with its own set of norms, values, and expectations that are distinct from their reason for existence. Some of those norms are ideological and partisan. Though, it must be admitted in the case of Trump that a “D” and “R” designation isn’t as relevant as the collective judgment at the water cooler that Trump is reprehensible. Nonetheless, there are vastly more D’s than R’s on the rolls of taxpayer-funded employment. Virginia is blue for the fact. The administrative state isn’t exactly a level playing field.

The ginning up of the activists will require additional gripes to increase the credibility of the charges as per the Kavanaugh caper. It doesn’t matter if the tales are true or not. What matters is the number. The one “whistleblower” story will be followed by others. As I write, a new complaint against Trump is currently percolating from the depths of the Leviathan.

Could Trump adjust by dialing down the bombast? Yeah, but not likely. Trump is like the big post man in basketball who drains a 3-pointer in the beginning of the game. After that, he cannot be found anywhere near the bucket for the rest of the game. Trump believes that his outspoken and unfiltered self is the reason for his shocking victory in 2016, while ignoring the loss of the ‘burbs and married women. So, that’s what we’re going to get for the rest of his time in the White House. He’ll continue to do it till he faces defeat.

But who knows, he may turn out to be a great 3-point shooter. Color me skeptical.

Trump’s saving grace is … today’s Democratic Party. All the talk about Trump’s incivility ignores the Democrats’ irresponsible embrace of socialism and the cultural left. Trump’s behavior may be deplorable, but the Democrats cannot be trusted with our nation. This is one of the weaknesses of some of the criticisms coming from the center-right, like Yuval Levin’s column. I don’t know of anyone who can claim that a dethronement of Trump won’t lead to an empowerment of the Democrats’ socialism. For the average citizen, their choices appear bleak: continue the Trump drama or ruin the nation by handing the keys of power to the Democrats’ leftism.

Levin is right when he says the biggest victim will be a loss of faith in our institutions. Yet, it’s not as if those institutions weren’t deserving of disrepute. The Supreme Court, and the courts in general, have been way out of their lane. Modern presidents have turned the presidency into an almost divine-right branch. Obama had his phone and pen. Congress is a eunuch that performs like a clown show. The administrative state is a law unto itself, so huge as to be unmanageable. The Constitution is made an empty document and open to the manipulations of the whims of men. We have the rule of men, not laws.

At the center of this governance by malfeasance is the institutional presence and power of the Democratic Party and its socialism-at-all-costs ethic. Trump may be personally repulsive; the Democrats are thoroughly unfit for office. The correlation of forces is lining up for a real brouhaha. The modern correlation of forces are a divisive figure in the White House, the Democratic Party’s muscular socialism, the ongoing cultural substitution of Christianity with Environmentalism, the emergence of a very partisan administrative state as the fourth branch of government, and the media serving as a megaphone for the advancement of the Democrats’ socialism and its cultural leftism. Many of these malignant forces are emanating from those blue dots on the electoral map.

Buckle up because impeachment promises to be a real donnybrook.

RogerG

October 4, 2019October 4, 2019

Our Inheritance from the Progressives

Prelude: The 19th century Progressives bequeathed to us a many tentacled Leviathan. The monster grew out of the progressives’ fundamental premise that life is too complicated to be left to individuals. We need, they asserted, “experts” to guide and assist us in achieving our highest potential. They did not see the monster developing a mind of its own with distinct interests from those it was intended to serve. You might say, a culture evolved from its peculiar ecosystem. Out of this unique culture arose a predilection for certain views, born of its circumstances and concomitant norms and expectations. The 2016 election threw back the rug and exposed the thing for what it really is. It is a living and breathing thing no longer moored to its original raison d’être. Its purpose for existence is itself, not the country and the country’s citizens.

*******

At times Tucker Carlson drives me nuts. One of his favorite bogeymen is “neocons”, which occasionally crowds out his infatuation with UFO’s. To him, free markets are “just a tool”. He completely misses the point that they are what happens when the state leaves people alone. Free markets blossom when a state is created to protect our natural rights, not the creator of them. But I have to admit that he is onto something in most things Trump. The latest Trump furor erupted over a whistleblower complaint about his phone call (later referred to simply as “the Call”) to Ukrainian President Zelensky. A CIA veteran appeared on his show to present his view of the whistleblower’s complaint. His observations should raise at least a few eye brows. Watch.

The complaint (read here) according to former CIA officer John Kiriakou reads too polished and legally suave to be a product of a single person. In his view, the complaint by the time it got to Congress had passed through multiple hands. Maybe this is normal, but today’s political environment isn’t normal. Multiple hands might mean a coordinated effort. There are concerns that the administrative state is a hyper-partisan outfit, particularly in its DC stomping grounds. Is it possible that our bureaucracies in DC are a well-oiled special interest group with a clear ideological cast? Is the “whistleblower” a pseudonym for a cabal of apparatchiks intent on removing Trump?

Details about the complaint and the complainant are only now beginning to emerge. The existence of an accusation was known to Adam Schiff (D, Ca.), chairman of the House Intel Committee, as it was gestating in the intel bureaucracy (read about it here). According to the latest information, the accuser interacted with a Schiff aide and was referred to a lawyer. Who’s the lawyer? It’s none other than one of the many revolving-door Democrat apparatchiks who populate the environs of the DC Mall, Andrew Bakaj with Mark Zaid as co-counsel.

Andrew Bakaj of Comparr Rose Legal Group, PLLC

Previously, Bakaj has been at the center of insider politics to frustrate Trump appointees. In 2018, he went after Christopher Sharpley, Trump’s nominee for CIA Inspector General, ironically a holdover from Obama’s tenure where he served as deputy IG of the CIA, and functioned as acting IG under Trump. Out of the woodwork arose a cadre of former apparatchiks to blast Sharpley for allegedly punishing “whistleblowers”. At the tip of the spear was Bakaj. They successfully torpedoed Sharpley’s nomination when he withdrew his name rather than face the Dem gauntlet. And who was retained as Bakaj’s legal counsel in this earlier jig? It was Zaid. You can read about the episode here.

It’s time to clear up this business about “whistleblowers” before we go any further. “Whistleblowing” can be more than just a sincere exposure of those of public trust who cook the books. It also lends itself to partisan political crusades. Whistleblowing at this level looks a lot like leaking. Whistleblowing has the potential to be legal cover for leaking.

The motivations of the complaining actor (or actress) can be of a partisan nature. Speaking of partisan, look at Bakaj’s political background. The guy is fully marinated in Democratic Party politics. He interned for Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton in the Spring and Fall of 2001 according to his Linkedin page. He was employed at the CIA’s IG office during the Obama years. That’s where he ran afoul of Sharpley, the CIA’s Deputy IG, at a time when Obama was petrified over leaks. Even Democrats at that time were aware of the blurred line between “whistleblowing” and “leaking”.

Bakaj is now part of the web of professional handlers who are on speed dial with Democrat officeholders with a political ax to grind. So the Call’s digestive tract might look like this: leaker > Schiff aide > Schiff? > Bakaj > Zaid. As more information comes to light, we may have to add more entrails to the guts of the beast.

The Call’s coming to light is starting to eerily resemble the sliming of Kavanaugh. At the root of that campaign was Debra Katz, the DC lawyer who represented Christine Blasey-Ford and her completely unsubstantiated allegations. Is her’s (Katz) a fully objective legal mind? Are you kidding? She once crowed not long after Trump’s inauguration, “This administration’s explicit agenda is to wage an assault on our most basic rights — from reproductive rights to our rights to fair pay . . . We are determined to resist — fiercely and strategically.” She’s a charter member of the Resistance.

Debra Katz at The Wall Street Journal CFO Network on June 12, 2018. (Photo: Paul Morse for the WSJ)

Into this boiling stew is thrown the Call. Cutting through the bombast, we find the complaint adds nothing, other than what appears to be Democrat boilerplate. Trump trumped them by releasing the transcript of the Call. The very thing that was to be the accelerant for a full blown uproar was now equally in the possession of any congregation of people at a barber shop or supermarket. The mom with a basket full of groceries knows just as much as the “whistleblower”. With the transcript, we get to compare the whistleblower’s account of what was said with … what was actually said.

The New York Times’s report on the complaint refers to it as following the released transcript of the Call. Of course it does. Dah! But there’s much more to the complaint that sounds more like a legal brief than a singe person’s recollection. In-between references to the Call are interpretations and embellishments. These could have just as easily come out of the Resistance hothouse or Adam Schiff and the worst of the Democratic caucus. Examples are in order.

Example #1: Right at the start, in the introduction, the complaint rattles off a partisan indictment: “… the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”

This is not in the transcript. It’s in the mind of the complainant, and whoever else helped him (or her) write it. As we know, Trump requested assistance from the Ukraine in our investigation of possible governmental misbehavior surrounding the 2016 election. We have treaties for this purpose, one with the Ukraine. Any reference to the Bidens is brief and offhanded, and fleetingly mentioned to make the point of possible corruption and other wrongdoing of recent vintage. As for a “quid pro quo”, to be blunt, there ain’t one. This is clear if you listen to a dramatic reading of the Call in natural conversational tones and rhythms (One was performed on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Hour 2, 10/2/2019).

Example #2: Here’s chilling reminder of the cabal within the unleashed Leviathan: “Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to this effort.” Further, “It is routine for U.S. officials … to share such information with one another ….” Additonally and astoundingly, we have this admission: “I was not a direct witness to most of the events described. However, I found my colleagues’ accounts of these events to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another.”

“Fact patterns”? “Multiple officials”? “Share such information”? What are “fact patterns”? They are opinions usually fueled by bias. In today’s climate, there’s no hotter bias than DC Trump-hatred. As for the “sharing” and “multiple officials”, that sounds to me like “intrigue”. I would like to remind the Dem caucus that interpretation equally applies to the complaint as it does to the Call.

Example #3: The frequent appearance of the word “pressure” to characterize Trump’s request for assistance from Zelensky, president of the Ukraine, underscores the partisan bombast. “Pressure” is a very loaded verb. Once again, a natural oral recreation of the conversation conveys no such “pressure”. It is a provocative verb enlisted for the sole purpose of advancing a political agenda. The complaint has the odor of DNC press releases.

Example #4: To further the charge of Trump “pressuring” Zelensky, a quid pro quo was stitched together by the author(s). First, they attempt to paint White House officials as “deeply disturbed” as they “witnessed the President abuse his office for personal gain”. The “abuse” relies on cobbling together a line from the Ukrainian president’s account of the talk on his website with the fleeting reference to the Bidens. Here’s the Ukraine line in the complaint:

“Donald Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve Ukraine’s image and complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States.”

Attach the above with this:

“Aside from the above-mentioned ‘cases’ purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other “cases” were discussed.”

And you have a “quid pro quo”. Really? Yeah, in the minds of those in the fever swamp. So, we are supposed to believe in the space of a limited conversation that the mere mention of the Bidens is ipso facto proof of “give me dirt on the Bidens or we’ll let you die on the vine”. The only way to get away with the accusation is to be unfamiliar with the Call. Now that we have it to read during our morning constitution, we know that the shenanigans of the intel community and the FBI in DC, along with Crowdstrike, were mentioned. “No other cases”? The Bidens were one of three, all brought up during the length of a short phone talk. The complaint’s author(s) are lying.

I could parse more of the thing by going beyond the first 3 pages of the 9 in the screed. The document is risible. It will become more of a farce as more comes to light, maybe more about the complainant. Some reports have revealed the author to be a registered Democrat. Something not unexpected given the natural affinity between the party of government (Democratic Party) and the employees of government.

Neighboring states around DC all of a sudden have a predilection for Democratic Party candidates. The federal government grows and Democrats flock to DC and its environs. Examine the map of Virginia from the 2016 election. Notice the northern state house districts on the south side of the Potomac, a few bridges away from DC?

Republicans venturing into DC are lambs stumbling into a den of wolves.

The tale of the Call is the story of the sunset of popular sovereignty. We must recognize that the government is so big that it cannot be controlled through elections. In fact, if elections go against the lunch room zeitgeist, the new officeholders will be undermined or removed from office. Welcome to modern impeachment in the age of the institutional radical left.

Stay tuned for more from the impeachment clown show.

RogerG

October 3, 2019

What You Read Ain’t What You Hear

The transcript of the “infamous” call to Ukrainian president Zelensky by Pres. Trump, July 25, 2019.

Regarding Trump’s phone call to Zelensky, president of Ukraine, an oral message put on paper and then read isn’t the same as performance of the conversation in the manner in which it was delivered: person-to-person in conversational tones. Adam Schiff’s bastardized performance is a travesty. I’m talking about taking the original transcript and vocally delivering the actual words as they occur in a natural conversation. Once you do that, the air is taken out of the Democrat’s impeachment balloon. There’s no there there.

Hugh Hewitt and his producer, Duane Patterson, conducted such a reading (Hour 2, Hugh Hewitt Show, 10/2/19). If performed as it was originally delivered, certain conclusions about the call stand out:

(1) Trump is right. There was no quid pro quo. There was no use of presidential power to advance his candidacy. There was no offer, implied or otherwise, to withhold aid for purely partisan advantage.

(2) Zelensky brought up Giuliani, not Trump. Trump was asking Ukraine for their assistance in our probe of Russia-gate. Of course, Giuliani, being the personal attorney of the president, is also gathering evidence to defend his client against the Democrats’ anti-Trump jihad. Remember, Clinton had an entire war room devoted to the defense of our priapic 42nd chief executive. In fact, the conversation mostly skirts the mention of Giuliani.

(3) The aid that the US has given the Ukraine was mentioned to remind Zelensky that allies operate in a reciprocal manner, and Europe provides little help to Ukraine. We need some international help to investigate a matter of international scope, not necessarily to go after “lunch pale” Joe. We have treaties with other nations to cover these eventualities.

(4) Biden is mentioned by Trump in a brief, offhanded manner. It was mentioned to highlight the possibility of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. The Crowdstrike reference is brought up in the beginning by Trump to make the point. That’s the context.

I could say more. It is very strange for Congressional firebrands like Schiff to rush to impeachment over this frail thread. Is this an attempt to head off Barr and Durham as they draw close to the origins of Russia-gate? If so, indeed, we have a coup underway.

In this April 25, 2006, file photo, John Durham speaks to reporters on the steps of U.S. District Court in New Haven, Conn. (AP Photo/Bob Child, File) (Washington Examiner)

Something to think about. Eh?

RogerG

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019

Are We a Deliberative Citizen Republic or No?

Our politics has descended into a shout-fest. Trump doesn’t present reasoned arguments (argument as in viewpoint with reasons). He resorts to boilerplate and name-calling. The Dem leadership and its Squad are channeling a mix of over-caffeinated social justice warriors at a Charles Murray lecture and teenage inmates on acid in a juvenile hall cell block. Don’t expect much calm deliberation to come of it.

If you have one hour and 20 minutes – or as much as you can handle – here is an example of what civil discourse is supposed to sound like (go to here or click on the icon below).

The editors of National Review gather to discuss the issue-meltdown du jour. This session concerns the infamous call and impeachment. There’s quite a range of opinion from the hyper Trump skeptic David French to Charles W. Cooke to the constitutionally fastidious Luke Thompson to Michael Brendan Dougherty to Rich Lowry, the moderator. On the call and impeachment, French lies closer to Pelosi and Thompson closer to Trump. All are critical of Trump and the Democrats but vary in their degree and basis of condemnation

The consensus, if there is one, is that Trump behaved badly and the Dems could have possibly stepped on another rake. My take is closer to Thompson – Trump’s actions were within the historical bounds of presidential behavior and certainly not impeachable – and Cooke – what’s the standard for impeachable offenses given Andrew Jackson’s genocide to presidents making war without congressional approval to presidents with a phone and pen so as to slip the bounds of their oath of office? Impeachment, really, over this?

Take a listen.

RogerG

September 27, 2019

The Limits of Trump’s Non-Interventionism and the Call

Pres. Trump and National Security Adviser John Bolton

In the spat with the ousted John Bolton as National Security Adviser, Trump responded to Bolton by saying “guys like Bolton and others wanted to go into Iraq and that didn’t work out too well.” Leaving aside the fact that Bush and Petraeus had succeeded in stabilizing Iraq by September 2008, and Obama cut-and-ran in 2014, Trump exposes his selective memory and bent for near-isolationism. His approach to foreign affairs is a combination of bluster and bluff (“Rocket Man”, “We’ll respond with the likes of nothing you’ve ever seen before”), patronizing niceties as if he’s talking to a municipal planning board (“They’ve got tremendous potential”, etc.), and finding excuses not to use the US military that he boasts so much about. Trump sounds more like Charles Lindbergh and his 1940 America First Committee than Ronald Reagan. Trump is the one who refuses to see the bear in this Reagan campaign ad from 1984 (see below).

The bear ad came to mind after reading Jim Geraghty’s piece in National Review, “The Missing Word in Trump’s Call: ‘Russia’” (Read the article here). The phone transcript between Trump and Zelensky should be read with the pall of Russian aggression against Ukraine overhanging the conversation. It certainly was on the mind of Zelensky as his country is being dismembered by Russia, if it wasn’t in Trump’s head. The Ukraine is at the mercy of American military aid, since the bureaucratic pacifism of the European Union makes it a eunuch and the poor country is geographically isolated. The president talks about his personal squabbles with malevolent Democrats in the conversation as Zelensky’s Ukraine is invaded. I would think that Zelensky is at a severe disadvantage. Thus, he responds with the equivalent of “Yes, yes, Mr. President, yes …”

The crazy Democrats’ serial drive for impeachment and the president’s narrow focus on the never-ending domestic assaults against him must make the American political scene seem like kabuki theater to the guy at the other end of Trump’s phone line. We, Americans, are missing a more serious picture. Back to the bear ad and Lindbergh’s America First Committee, another pall should overhang Trump’s current management of our foreign relations. It’s the tumbling dominoes of the Rhineland (1936), the Anschluss (1938), Czechoslovakia (1938), and Poland (1939).

A zigzagging foreign policy careening from bluster and bluff to excuse-mongering inaction as we deal with thug countries like North Korea, Iran, and China is a disaster-in-waiting. The measure of success should not be the number of wars avoided but are we any safer and our interests protected.

Besides, the choices aren’t between a boots-on-the-ground invasion and the diplomacy of “All You Need is Love”. Whether Trump likes it or not, the US on the international scene corresponds to the high school Dean of Students. No, we’re not the cop but we are the disciplinarian of last resort. And by discipline, I don’t mean nation-building. To borrow from 19th century, there’s such a thing as “butcher and bolt”. Go in, smash ’em, and get out, as in Operation Praying Mantis from 1988.

An aerial view of the Iranian frigate IS ALVAND (71) burning after being attacked by aircraft of Carrier Air Wing 11 in retaliation for the mining of the guided missile frigate USS SAMUEL B. ROBERTS (FFG 58).

Oh, but Trump might still insist that we aren’t the world’s policeman. Okay then, Trump, continue you’re blustery bluffs followed by artful dodging on inaction. A new set of dominoes is being set up. It may take awhile but the ministries in Pyongyang, Tehran, and Beijing, and any erstwhile two-bit thug, are taking notes. A principle from ancient Rome applies: If you want peace, prepare for war. I would like to add a corollary: And be prepared to occasionally use it to make it real. If not, inaction comes at a bigger price later. Unless, of course, you claim the power to repeal human nature and assert that it never had a role and never will. Now that would qualify as sheer fantasy.

Trump, drop the America First Committee shtick as you fight off the loons in the Democratic Party.

RogerG

September 25, 2019September 26, 2019

The Transcript Says Something Other Than “Impeachment”

The transcript, read it for yourself here.

The transcript is a Rorschach test exposing the realities of domestic and international politics. What does it mean? Here’s my take.

(1) Politics brings out the crudity in people. Yes, Trump is crude, him being a political neophyte with all the rough edges and a huge ego. But have you watched the Democrats’ presidential sweepstakes lately? It’s insanity on parade. Their rants include more than wacko ideas but also serial insults to Trump (“punch him in the face”, etc.) and half of the electorate (“racist”, “anti-gay”, “we’re going to forcibly take your guns”, etc.). Trump is crude and the Democrats are crude and unelectable.

(2) Washington, DC, is a cesspool – not the city but the environs around the capitol. There is a Deep State and it’s in those dozens of blocks encompassing the Mall. The “whistleblower” apears to be a never-Trumper. The whistleblowing complaint apparently is based on scuttlebutt from water-cooler or social banter. The complainant wasn’t tapped into the president’s line. If he’s a never-Trumper, he (or she, et al) will have to join the hierarchy in the State Dept., Justice Dept., and intelligence community in 2016 and 2017. A partisan leak has been recast as whistleblowing.

(3) The transcript shows the nature of politics as it has existed since political power was wedded to a human being. Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not unknown in history. For example, FDR’s shenanigans in going after Samuel Insull, a prominent utility CEO, just because he needed a scalp for the Depression, was sickening. After they finally got their hands on him, and after much chicanery with France, Greece, and Turkey, all FDR and the boys (girls, et al) got was an innocent verdict on all counts. Do I need to delve into the more egregious antics of JFK, LBJ, and Richard Nixon?

(4) Trump’s call has an interesting predicate: Joe Biden’s on-air boast in 2016 that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired. He was the same prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma Holdings for corruption at the time his son was on the Board of Directors. Intriguing, eh?

(5) The transcript of Trump’s call shows no quid pro quo: as in, you give me the dirt on Biden and I’ll give you American aid. You could argue that it is implied, but that would be no more dispositive than Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, demanding the end of investigations critical of Robert Mueller’s probe. They demanded that he “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.” You can read about the episode here.

(6) The Ukraine seems to be as entwined in American politics circa 2016 as Russia was alleged to be. Trump’s call makes it abundantly clear. First, Ukraine may have been on helpful terms with at least Obama if not the Democrats in that election cycle. How helpful? The transcript shows Trump mentioning two things: Crowdstrike and the US ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. The ambassador was, not surprisingly, an Obama administration conduit to the Ukraine, and given the spying capers on Trump in 2016, would be involved in any Ukrainian hanky-panky. Speculation? Yep, but no different than the knee-jerk cries of “outrageous” regarding anything Trump. And there’s the mention of the cyber-security firm Crowdstrike. It was the company who was paid by the DNC to take possession of their server and examine it for evidence of hacking. It’s out of this Democrat-funded escapade that we have the Russia-hacked-our-election chant. What’s the Ukrainian connection? Well, there’s enough intriguing evidence for John Durham to be looking into it. You can read about it here.

I’m sure that more can be said and will be said in the coming days. As for me, as of right now, one more thing needs to be mentioned. The Democrats are out to reverse an election. Suburban voters in the 2018 elections handed power to a party bent on imposing socialism and removing a president. Is this what these voters wanted? I kinda doubt it, but they are getting it anyway. Indeed, they should have known this would happen because the party leadership said as much since inauguration day 2017.

The 2018 elections show one weakness of democracy. It was indicative of how an electorate can be whipsawed from detestation of presidential behavior to handing power to the irresponsible. The individuals who were elected in swing districts may not be like the core of the party, but the newcomers will help a party with statist socialism in their political DNA to gain majority status. Those 40 reps pale when compared to the 195 others. It’s simply a matter of math.

Thank you swing-district voters. Now we have an impeachment-palooza and socialism on the cusp of being the law of the land.

RogerG

September 24, 2019September 24, 2019

The Right to Impose

Piedmont, Ca., seventh-graders participate in the global strike for climate change in San Francisco on Sept. 20, 2019. (Credit: Andrew Reed/EdSource)

Overton Window: noun; the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse, also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range.

A Google search produced the above definition (more on the concept here). We are experiencing an attempt to impose the limits of acceptable opinion on certain issues. That word, imposition and its derivatives, will occur a lot in this piece. No better example can be found than the construction of an Overton window on the issue of climate change. As with any imposition, the range of acceptability is being forced upon all, while also being arbitrary with the mode of enforcement more indicative of mob behavior. A highly excitable throng endeavors to manhandle the window leftward.

The Global Climate Strike of students of September 20-27, 2019, brought to mind the idea of the Overton window. Here we have young people ranging in age from elementary to college boycotting their classes to engage in protests demanding more government power to control people for the purpose of “saving the planet”. I have my doubts about whether the goal is to “save the planet” or simply expand government power to impose a political clique’s narrow vision of the good.

Means and ends get muddled here. I was a college adjunct instructor in Physical Geography and was continually exposed to the ideological dogmas of climate change – “climate change” being the more robust and useful term as compared to the mere “global warming”. “Ideological” is the correct adjective for the belief system that riddles the curriculum, support materials (textbooks, et al), and teacher preparation. There is much about the movement’s claims to scientifically question. Yet, the movement glosses over the uncertainty about the climate issue’s severity, the exact nature of the phenomena, and the realities of proposed solutions to immediately rush to the goal of revolutionary social, economic, and political reorganization.

However, before the zealots get to their beloved revolution, prudence requires the rest of us to seriously consider a simple question: Are the zealots’ claims correct? Much has been said and written about the issue but only a small slice gets the light of day. To be clear, the purpose of this article is not to present a detailed examination of the activists’ assertions about “climate change”, but to report on a singular episode – the students’ Global Climate Strike – as part of an ongoing campaign to use politicized science so one may foist on the general public a drastic alteration in our settled social, economic, and political arrangements and confer near-totalitarian power in the hands of a select few.

If interested, if you have 32 minutes, below is a reminder that an honest debate on the science of climate change actually exists, something the fanatics would like to squelch and close the Overton window..

What happens when fanaticism replaces scientific inquiry? Well, we get young and impressionable minds ditching school for a day to help stampede lawmakers into creating the environmentalists’ Leviathan. How were the kids primed? Well, the ideology-as-science corrupted the dogma’s purveyors, the teachers, and permeates the kids’ media-rich social ecosystem. I know; I’ve been there, particularly at the campaign’s pedagogical front.

It’s interesting to know that the professional and degreed people with the least scientific background take up positions as the most prominent mouthpieces of the movement, some in taxpayer-funded government posts and some riding their earlier name-recognition in politics to a new and very lucrative career in climate change. Does the name “Al Gore” come to mind?

Almost any metropolis and city with a university presence will have a municipal position solely devoted to the issue of climate change. For instance, in my state of Montana, Chase Jones serves as the Energy Conservation Coordinator for the City of Missoula with the portfolio of developing and coordinating the city’s climate plan.

Chase Jones, City of Missoula Energy Conservation Coordinator

In a radio interview, he stipulated that he has a degree in Communications from University of West Virginia. He cut his teeth in Montana environmentalism through the Montana Conservation Corps, an environmental non-profit. The Chairperson of the Corps’s Board of Directors is Jan Lombardi who has a rich personal history in Democratic Party politics, Planned Parenthood, National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), etc. Another member of the Board is Chris Pope, the Democrat representative of Montana House District 65 and possessor of a Spanish Degree from University of Oregon and Masters in Public and Private Management from Yale. Chase’s background and the résumés of those around him are symptomatic of the kinds of experiences that inclines them to accept broad and general scientific claims, especially if they confirm ideological biases, while they lack the detailed understanding to debate the substance of any of the many scientific aspects of a meta-issue like climate change.

Jan Lombardi (center), chairperson of the Montana Conservation Corps

These people are impressed by the pronouncements of large groups, as if the announcements put finis to any further scientific inquiry, and closes the Overton window to those who dispute them. They then can announce a “consensus” to dismiss the irritating queries of those of a more scientifically skeptical mind. All the while, they ignore the vast scholarship on groupthink and Public Choice Theory which does more to explain the behavior of large associations and bureaucracies in perverting pure science. The stance may work for the politically-motivated non-scientist, but it isn’t science. It’s partisan politics masquerading under the rubric of science.

Non-scientists are pushing the issue with the assistance of politicized scientists and their politicized associations. Large and long-established professional associations are particularly prone to fashionable political moods. Blacklisting is common. Remember McCarthyism? In regards to climate, remember nuclear winter, global cooling, and now global warming? Remember the Union of Concerned Scientists and their Doomsday Clock during Reagan’s defense buildup to counter the Soviet threat? Remember the blowback to Reagan’s idea of missile defense? Going back further, how about scientists’ enthusiasm for eugenics that would ultimately seep into the Final Solution? The wreckage is astounding whenever science is mingled with politics.

“Best Baby” contests promoted eugenics at the Oregon State Fair in the early 1900s. (courtesy of The Oregonian)

“Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) in Poland during German occupation, May/June 1944. (Wikimedia Commons/Yad Vashem)

Inevitably, science will be the handmaiden to politics when the two are merged, with disastrous consequences.

The loudest advocates of a Green New Deal are likely to have the least acquaintance with real science. If anything, they have just enough exposure to be dangerous. Their stunted view is propagated to the young in a never-ending torrent from one grade to the next, from one movie to the next, and from one social media post to the next . The stage is set for a critical mass of people who lack the tolerance for opinions cynical of the artificial zeitgeist. The radical all of a sudden becomes the popularly “sensible” and those outside of this favored cohort will be dismissed, or worse. The eco-revolutionaries, hiding behind the innocence of youth, are well on their way to the kind of power to upend our way of life and build a new green order.

Some concessions to popular consent will have to be made, but the threat of an opposing majority will have been lessened by a demography-wide closed mind. It will be a constituency willing to cede great power to a set of elite experts in the arts of the eco-gnosis. But to be on the cusp of power in the first place requires more than indoctrination. It’s necessary but not sufficient. To tip the edifice into a revolution, a panic must be created through crisis-mongering, or as long-dead progressive/socialist leading lights would have called it, the moral equivalent of war. What goes for the “conscience” of the Democratic Party, our giddy sophomore class president and congressional blowhard from NY’s 14th congressional district (AOC), parrots the war line along with sycophants in the party’s presidential derby. After the panic attack produces electoral success, once in power, they aren’t going to give it up because the population happens to be profoundly discomforted by the mandated changes. In this ends-justifies-means world, popular sovereignty will be luxury that can no longer be afforded. The whole scheme could end up being one man (or woman, et al)/one vote/one time.

A 1968 Cultural Revolution poster. The caption reads: “Destroy the old world; Forge the new world.” Today’s eco-activism is reminiscent of Mao’s campaign to reinvigorate the revolution.

This is more than a slippery slope. It’s a well-trodden path through the pages of history. Why are eco-activists so intent on repeating the horrifying record? Interesting question but the answer is obvious. They think that they’re immune to the trap many others have fallen into over the past couple of millennia.

They are kidding themselves. Over those very same millennia, power has proven to be quite an intoxicant. It overwhelms a person’s conciliatory and moderating nature. The goal of eco-purity will crowd out everything including tolerance for the opposition. To borrow from Lenin, a vanguard elite leading the way to the green future won’t trifle with elections unless they can be manipulated into validating predetermined decisions. Pure and simple, it comes down to imposing a small group’s preferred mode of living on a broad population who may be unaware of what is happening.

The 1920 Presidium of the 9th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Seated from left to right are Enukidze, Kalinin, Bukharin, Tomsky, Lashevich, Kamenev, Preobrazhensky, Serebryakov, Lenin and Rykov.

I’m reminded of the circumstances in Russia in the few decades before the Revolution of 1917. One is struck by the wide acceptance of radicalism among the educated classes (teachers, the professoriate, students), many circles in urban populations, and some of the well-off gentry in the years leading up to the Revolution. It even penetrated the military’s officer corps. Denunciations bordering on treason, even advocating the assassination of government officials from the czar on down, riddled the last couple of decades of the regime. Socialism of a variety of shades was trendy, as is the “green future” and “sustainability” today.

Policy mistakes compounded the troubles. One was the decision in 1906 to confer a safe space from police intervention for university campuses. It was hoped that the policy would quiet things down on the campuses. It did no such thing. The radicalism was allowed to fester and boil over to nearly all sectors of society. The radicalized young of 1905 became the violent revolutionaries of 1917 and later Lenin’s shock troops in the imposition of the Bolshevik conception of the good.

Russia, 1917: Mass political meeting of workers at the giant Putilov factory. Bolshevik and other radical student agitators were active in fomenting strikes and other upheavals Tsarist Rusia.

Sound familiar as you view the images of the young faces demanding a Green New Deal in the Global Climate Strike? Those scenes of a radicalized youth who are radicalized by a radicalized curriculum, sustained over the many years of their matriculation, should send shivers down the spines of anyone knowledgeable of Russian history circa 1890 to 1921. In the end, a radicalized caste will get the opportunity to impose their narrow vision of the good on a population ignorant of their own children’s indoctrination.

The Overton window of tolerance for opposing views is shifting left. The zealot’s politicized science will be the only approved form of science. That means that the only accepted version of science will be the kind that has garnered the assent of the governing elite. It must, like everything else, serve the ends of the secular dogma’s dream of the good life. It’s so Orwellian.

In the end, prepare to retreat back a couple of centuries in quality of life. These vision quests aren’t concerned about the production of wealth so much as dictating the smallest details of living for 330 million people. Conditions gradually deteriorate as the legacy of prior affluence begins to erode. Some flee and others adjust to a world without variance from the rules of the eco-commissars.

I’ll end this piece where it started: the student Global Climate Strike. Watch the speech of a sincere but naive youngster before a UN panel as she tearfully pleads for the erection of the eco-Leviathan. Also observe the shamelessness of the adults as they exploit a child whose personal identity has been supplanted by a fanatic’s nightmare of impending doom. Watching her as she gives her speech is wrenching enough, but remembering what has been done to her is much more terrifying.

RogerG

September 17, 2019September 17, 2019

Boy Did I Retire at the Right Time!

I am a retired California teacher (since 2015) after 29+ years in California high schools. The state has become a zoo, and now so will the classrooms. AB 493 would require teacher training in LGBTQ ideology. SB 419 will make suspensions for, among other things, unruly behavior almost non-existent. For teachers, it’s like being wheeled into the operating room and seeing the medical staff armed with sledge hammers. There won’t be much improvement in your condition but there will be a big mess to clean up.

493 takes teachers out of the classroom to be indoctrinated in all things sex-related. The propaganda line is as follows: Forget the Bible and millennias of understanding and accept the idea that a person can will themselves into another sex. Transgenderism is an important part of the coursework. Of course, we can’t do the same thing with race or ethnicity. Remember cultural appropriation? We can’t do the same thing in regards to height or long fingers. But teachers will learn that genitalia and chromosomes don’t matter.

I know; I know. The ideologues have a chest full of rhetoric and vocabulary to make others well-versed in the pseudo-science. Just remember, this isn’t the first time “experts” were enthralled by intellectual mumbo jumbo. Remember phrenology? Remember eugenics? If you do a deeper dive, you’ll find more bunk.

If that isn’t enough, 419 moves the schools further down the road to a suspension-free utopia … or maybe dystopia is more accurate. A school is commanded by the ideologues in Sacramento to jump through more hoops before a kid can be suspended for unruly behavior. It’s not as if schools already don’t do this. They do, and a lot. In some cases, too much. Nikolas Cruz of Parkland fame benefited from this bend-yourself-into-pretzels disciplinary regime. Last year, California’s Kern High School District teachers rebelled against the imposition of the “restorative justice” flim-flam.

So, the not-so-golden state will have boys-now-girls in the girls’ bathroom, locker room, track team, soccer team, …. Chaos in sex and gender will be supplemented by classrooms that more resemble prison riots. Teachers might begin to act like the Lloyd Bridges air traffic control character in “Airplane”: “Looks like I took the wrong week to quit ….”

“Steve” (Lloyd Bridges) sniffing glue in “Airplane”.

The whole situation will drive teachers to more than the bottle. It’ll drive many out of the state … if they remain sober enough to operate a U-haul.

RogerG

September 14, 2019

A “Woke” Walmart, Part III

I got a reply from “cushelp.com” at Walmart regarding my comment on the company’s new gun policies. The company’s online respondent indicated that the comment will go up the chain of command, and included a link of the newsletter/memo from President and CEO, John McMillon, to the employees (see the first edition of “A ‘Woke’ Walmart” for the link). This only further drew my ire. After reading McMillon’s missive to employees, I pounded a reply. Here is my rebuttal:

Thanks so much for your timely reply to my email which contained a link to a company circular from Doug McMillon, President and CEO, to associates about the new policy. Apparently somebody read my detailed response to your new policy on guns and ammunition. Again, thanks for taking the time to read it. However, rather than allay my concerns, they have been heightened.

McMIllon’s announcement to associates reads like a heated reaction to an issue-of-the-moment. Indeed, it goes further. It adopts wholesale the line of argument of partisan gun control activists such as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, etc., etc. All in all, Walmart is gradually aligning itself with the center/left. McMillon is confirming John O’Sullivan’s famous aphorism: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”

Let me count the ways. Surprisingly, I am not bothered so much by the company’s decision not to allow open carry in the stores. The problem lies with joining well-publicized nationwide gun-control crusades, emblematic in the demand that “the status quo is unacceptable”. It’s part of the usual rhetoric coming from the usual hive of gun-control groups and the Democratic Party. Parts of the memorandum could just as easily come out of Chuck Schumer’s office (D, NY).

I’d like to remind Walmart that the Second Amendment is part of the “status quo”. The Supreme Court defined the ownership of firearms to be an individual right, not a collective one. It’s presence in the Constitution is not for hunting or protection from MS-13. The Amendment is an avatar for citizen control of their government. A lesson in the English Civil War would work wonders in the corporate boardroom at Walmart.

So, what parts of the “status quo” is to be subjected to change? Well, it’s inanimate things like guns and ammo that are to be targeted (no pun intended) for punishment. The unstated premise is that the availability of these things constitutes a danger to the public. You tout the the company’s previous decision not to sell “military-style rifles”. The policy is nonsense as is the call to join a debate on resurrecting the Assault Weapon Ban. Calling for a debate are weasel words for establishing one (Ban). The debate on the Ban has been over for quite some time: the thing didn’t work, was allowed to lapse, and the Democrats refused to bring it back when they had the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress.

Further, the “military-style” nomenclature is silliness on stilts. It’s all about a gun’s cosmetic qualities. These guns are no more dangerous than any semi-automatic gun. By the way, guns are by their nature “dangerous” … as are crossbows. If they weren’t, they’d be no good for hunting. The AR platform and its knock-offs are associated with the miscreants of mass shootings because they are broadly popular with the gun-buying consumer base in the general public. They are the most highly demanded product in a gun manufacturer’s inventory. Hopefully, you’re not suggesting that all these buyers are crazed lunatics. If semi-auto shotguns with more compact barrels were to be all the rage in the murderous-loser class, would a call for a ban on semi-auto shotguns be next? Strange legal principle: find out what’s popular with lunatics and prohibit it.

The ludicrous nature of the Ban can be seen in the bumbling attempts to codify the concept into law. Is it the pistol grip? Is it the semi-auto nature of the thing? Is it the magazine capacity of over 4 rounds? Is it because it looks like something in a John Wick movie? Going from state to state examining their bans is an exercise in chaos theory. Usually the laws are written by people with the least knowledge about firearms. Watching them at a press conference is a real hoot. The big problem with the ban stems from the quixotic desire to proscribe a product for its cosmetic qualities. That’s it!

Then Walmart stacks its current silliness with more silliness on the ammo front. No handgun and .223 ammo. What’s the logic behind that? Clearly, the company associates those cartridges with mayhem. Why else put them on the no-go list? What’s next, a ban on 12 gauge? Any cartridge’s survival on Walmart’s shelves hangs by the thread of a killer’s choices.

Astoundingly, McMillon applauds the likely decline in the company’s market share in ammo. Now that’s a first: a company defining success as a decline in market share. Sears and JCPenney should be popping champagne corks instead of wringing their hands. It seems like the national Walmart is taking its cues from California Walmart. California is a mess and hardly an example to be imitated. I fled the state as a third generation native Californian to Montana. The state is no place to raise kids. Are the Walmarts in Montana soon to be looking like the ones in that lefty loony bin?

As always in these kinds of circulars, there are some palatable suggestions. Shoring up FixNICS and competently-written red flag laws are things to consider. But the gun and ammo ideas are just warmed over goofiness in Democratic Party bullet points. None of the ideas have a scintilla of relevance to curbing these mass shootings. Ditto for the much-vaunted “universal background checks”. Try to enforce that idea when family heirlooms are passed down from parent to child. The dribble is trotted out each time for the sole purpose of hammering more traditional and conservative circles in our population.

I suspect a general leftward orientation in corporate boardrooms. Others have noticed it as well. Walmart has not been inoculated. I attribute the phenomena to an increasing isolation in corporate governance from the common people, particularly in flyover country. Socio-economically, the “suits” identify with each other and the urban values of their location. Much has been written about this. Now these collectivist values appear to be seeping into Walmart. O’Sullivan might be proven right once again.

For your information, I shifted my recent tire purchase from Walmart to Discount Tire. In fact, I used your cheaper price to get a price match from them. You are to be thanked for providing the price leverage. But to be honest, I would have agreed to a higher price to avoid doing business with a company who appears to be lurching left. I will be doing the same with our other consumer purchases. Don’t look for my car in your parking lot.

……………………………………

Once again, the online receptionist indicated that my response will go up the chain of command. I suspect the reply is boilerplate.

Roger Graf

September 14, 2019

A “Woke” Walmart, Part II

After learning of Walmart’s new gun policy after the murderous rampage in an El Paso Walmart, I spirited off a reply on Walmart’s website comment link. Here is my initial comment to the company’s new policy:

I am commenting on your recent policy regarding guns and ammunition. I hope somebody reads it.

Right at the start: I am no gun enthusiast but am a strong believer in the Second Amendment and its pure and historical purpose. Also, I have come to notice the left-leaning tendencies in corporate boardrooms across the country. More and more, corporate policies are reflecting the left-wing zeitgeist of our urban and academic centers. I could provide more detail about this orientation if a history and philosophy lesson is required. Still, the trend is increasingly becoming apparent at Walmart.

Certain ideologically-laden code words keep recurring in many corporate policies, including Walmart’s. These are partisan leitmotifs that are littered throughout in more than just bland pronouncements on the company website, but also in company actions. Take for instance “corporate responsibility”. In the past, I have come to associate the phrase with Walmart’s attentiveness to community needs such as assistance to homeless shelters and schools. Well, it’s gone way beyond that. “Sustainability” has glommed onto the phrase. “Sustainability” has morphed into much more than roadside trash pickups. The word is corrupted with lefty crusades such as the massively politicized “climate change”, the wars on fossil fuels and plastics, and the never-ending campaigns to force “equality” in all its intersectional and “marginalized” guises, in the name of “equity” – whatever that means.

The last one is a war on tradition. Established notions of public morality, institutions like marriage and family, and values such as self-reliance, personal responsibility, and economic freedom are assaulted in the pursuit of making the “new man/woman”. Call it social engineering; something reminiscent of more sordid episodes of the 20th century.

I am sad to see that Walmart has succumbed to the zeitgeist. Now, it’s guns. The new policy about open carry and ammunition may have something to do with liability issues. Nonetheless, the corporate course on these matters is still troubling. A mob is afoot emanating from our megalopolises, the worst in academia, and the media that is tied to the two. It takes courage to stand athwart the mob. Yours appears to be waning.

I’m reminded of Simon Schama’s chronicle of the French Revolution, “Citizens”. The mob of Paris and its fire-breathing demagogues were the bane of civil governance for the country for centuries. Threats, intimidation, violence, and blackmail were all-too-common. The lid blew off in 1789 and France plunged into darkness and dictatorship for decades afterwards. At the time, some people made their peace with the Revolution. Have you made yours?

Don’t mistake fashionable trends of thought for wisdom. The Second Amendment is a symbol of citizen control of our polity. As such, I’m exercising my sovereignty in severing any personal commercial association with Walmart.

Roger Graf