The Overbearing Conceit of the Oligarchs

The ugliness and malice of the oligarchy’s propaganda may be overreaching, thus making it easier for us deplorables to imitate Solzhenitsyn’s courage.

by Glen Elmers for American Greatness

"Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me! "

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Deceit and propaganda define virtually all authoritative liberal commentary these days. This dishonesty is critical because as the rule of the left-wing oligarchy over this country becomes increasingly violent, the lies are its necessary and only cover. And this means for the rest of us there is one great strength: the truth, and only the truth, will set us free. 

David Brooks’s report on “NatCon2” in the current Atlantic is a bravura performance of the “new normal” exhibitions of dishonesty. The National Conservatism conference assembled leading figures from the Right to discuss the “the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing.” Reporting from the conference, Brooks styles himself a latter-day Mark Antony, delivering himself of a self-promoting oration meant to excite the base passions of his audience, as the original Antony did in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Unlike Antony, however, Brooks came not to praise, but to bury—the truth in this case. Brooks is not an honorable man. 

The essay is an example of the most common form of the Left’s Big Lie, which is to accuse their enemies on the Right with straightforward projections of their own assumptions and intentions. In the closing lines of his essay, Brooks mournfully reflects on a “NatCon World” that is “a hermetically sealed dystopian universe.” He tries to console himself with the thought that this is just “the brainchild of a few isolated intellectuals with a screwy view of American politics and history.” But he is not to be consoled, because in reality, NatCon World is “just one piece of a larger illiberal populist revolt that is strong and rising.”

In fact, Brooks himself is working feverishly here to keep intact the epistemological bubble in which he and his Atlantic readers live. This is a critical part of their strategy: keeping their base—with some variations in emphasis—angry, sanctimonious, resentful, fearful . . . but above all misinformed. 

Did you notice the statements on social media by a handful of honest liberals about how surprised they were to discover that the thugs Kyle Rittenhouse was forced to defend himself against were white? Are there more of such honest liberals out there who are still unaware of the shocking and frightening mistreatment of the January 6 prisoners?

To prevent such damaging infiltrations of truth, Brooks’ job, like most of the regime media, is to work night and day to keep Democratic voters inside the information airlock. This means his essay isn’t merely misguided; he doesn’t just get the facts wrong. One can’t even call it delusional. He probably knows, at some level, that he’s lying through his teeth, and engaged in a deeply cynical campaign of Orwellian newspeak. 

Take this bit:

[the Conservative schtick] demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being. It’s a cynical game . . . 

Cynical indeed. Again, this is pure projection and gaslighting. Consider his absurd examples, from which you would think we are living in 1953. The transgender kid “alone”—as if schools don’t move heaven and earth today to affirm transgender students. (They can even go into a girls’ bathroom and rape another student.) The “Black man trying to be seen . . .” Surely Brooks had to laugh when he wrote that one. We live in a country where any killing of a black man by the police—no matter the circumstances—triggers massive nationwide riots. Yet a black man “struggles to be seen” in the America of 2021!  

These desiccated tropes are the shadow paintings that many liberals barely (but just barely) still believe, the stories they tell themselves and each other in an increasingly tenuous alternate reality. The bubble survives because the Left invests vast effort in maintaining it. 

But those few honest liberals who discovered that they were lied to about Kyle Rittenhouse have revealed a great and possibly momentous secret. They have shown just how thin the bubble is. This should give us cause for hope. The Left is very certain of itself. After all, progress is on their side. But this hubris may be a fatal error. 

As a case in point, look at how Brooks’s ham-handed propaganda dispenses even logical consistency. He writes:

The NatCons are wrong to think there is a unified thing called “the left” that hates America. This is just the apocalyptic menace many of them had to invent in order to justify their decision to vote for Donald Trump.

They are wrong, too, to think there is a wokeist Anschluss taking over all the institutions of American life. 

Then, just three paragraphs later, without a blush, he admits that the NatCons are right. 

Left-wing parties are now rooted in the rich metro areas and are more and more becoming an unsteady alliance between young AOC left-populists and Google  . . .

Trump understood better than [other Republicans] did the coalescence of the new American cultural/corporate elite . . . 

Even the self-contradiction is deliberate, or by now instinctive. It is classic Soviet-style disinformation, psychological warfare. It’s like the Time magazine article that boasted, “Yeah we stole the election; here’s how.” Of course the woke are taking over all the institutions in the country. The Left boasts about it one minute, then denies it the next, to throw us off balance. But they don’t yet have absolute power to dictate their lies, so this is a risky gambit. It’s a sign of their desperation.

Brooks’ essay concludes with a boilerplate warning to his Atlantic  bubble-dwellers: Stay alert! Keep voting and contributing. Stick to the script. But there’s also note of real concern when he writes, “the disconcerting reality is that America’s rarified NatCon World is just one piece of a larger illiberal populist revolt that is strong and rising.” It’s worth wondering whether the habitual lie meant to stoke resentment and fear has given way to hubris, inadvertently revealing what Brooks thinks will really happen. 

The overbearing conceit, the ugliness and malice, of the oligarchy’s propaganda may be overreaching, thus making it easier for us deplorables to imitate Solzhenitsyn’s courage and resist the official lies even in the smallest way—to take courage from the Gospel’s promise that truth will set us free.

X22, SGT Report, and more-Dec 2nd

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Third Worldizing America ~ VDH

Our elites, like the Third World rich, have mastered ignoring and navigating around the misery of others in their midst.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Our elites, like the Third World rich, have mastered ignoring—and navigating around—the misery of others in their midst.

In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s—hole of a city.”

The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger. 

Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood he had his own car broken into 15 times—but thought little of it. 

Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder—the actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Angeles area, guarded by sophisticated security systems and fencing.

Vineyard roadsides used as dumps—a normal scene along rural avenues near my home

Yet both Neistat and Rogen accurately defined Third Worldization: the utter breakdown of the law and the ability of the rich within such a feudal society to find ways to avoid the violent chaos.

After traveling the last 45 years in the Middle East, southern Europe, Mexico, and Asia Minor, I observed some common characteristics of a so-called Third-World society. And all of them might feel increasingly familiar to contemporary Americans.

Whether in Cairo or Naples, theft was commonplace. Yet property crimes were almost never seriously prosecuted. 

In a medieval-type society of two rather than three classes, the rich in walled estates rarely worry that much about thievery. Crime is written off as an intramural problem of the poor, especially when the middle class is in decline or nonexistent. 

Violent crime is now soaring in America. But two things are different about America’s new criminality. 

One is the virtual impunity of it. Thieves now brazenly swarm a store, ransack, steal, and flee with the content without worry of arrest. 

Second, the Left often justifies crime as a sort of righteous payback against a supposedly exploitative system. 

So, the architect of the so-called 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, preened of the summer 2020 riotous destruction of property: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” 

Third Worldization reflects the asymmetry of law enforcement. Ideology and money, not the law, adjudicate who gets arrested and tried, and who does not. 

There were 120 days of continuous looting, arson, and lethal violence in summer 2020. The riots were variously characterized by the burning of courthouses, police precincts, and an iconic church. 

And there was also a frightening riot on January 6, where a mob entered the Capitol and damaged federal property. 

Among those arrested in the latter Washington, D.C. violence many are often held in solitary confinement or under harsh jail conditions. That one-day riot is currently the subject of a congressional investigation.

Some of those arrested are still,, 10 months later, awaiting trial. The convicted are facing long prison sentences. 

In contrast, some 14,000 were arrested in the longer and more violent rioting of 2020. Most were released without bail. The majority had their charges dropped. Very few are still being held awaiting capital charges.

A common denominator to recent controversies at the Justice Department, CIA, FBI, and Pentagon is that all these agencies under dubious pretexts have investigated American citizens with little or no justification—after demonizing their targets as “treasonous,,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists,” or “racists.”

In the Third World, basic services—power, fuel, transportation, water—are characteristically unreliable: In other words, much like a frequent California brownout. 

I’ve been on five flights in my life where it was announced there was not enough fuel to continue to the scheduled destination—requiring either turning around or landing somewhere on the way. One such aborted flight took off from Cairo, another from southern Mexico. The other three were this spring and summer inside the United States.

One of the most memorable scenes that I remember of Ankara, Old Cairo, or Algiers of the early 1970s were legions of beggars and the impoverished sleeping on sidewalks. 

But such impoverishment pales in comparison to the encampments of present-day Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, or San Francisco. Tens of thousands live on sidewalks and in open view use them to defecate, urinate, inject drugs, and dispose of refuse.  

In the old Third World, extreme wealth and poverty existed in close proximity. It was common to see peasants on horse-drawn wagons a few miles from coastal villas. 

But there is now far more contiguous wealth and poverty in Silicon Valley. In Redwood City and East Palo Alto, multiple families cram into tiny bungalows and garages—often a few blocks from tony Atherton. 

On the main streets outside of Stanford University and the Google campus, the helot classes sleep in decrepit trailers and buses parked on the streets.  

Neistat was right in identifying a pandemic of crime in Los Angeles as Third Worldization. 

But so was Rogen, though unknowingly so. The actor played the predictable role of the smug, indifferent Third W World rich who master ignoring—and navigating around—the misery of others in their midst.

If You Don’t Know What Time It Is, Get Out Of Politics Now

If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing to achieve it — you are unfit to lead.

by Ben Weingarten for The Federalist

The defining political question of our time is this: “Do you know what time it is?”

The line, popularized by the Claremont Institute’s David Reaboi, succinctly captures the most essential of points: If you don’t understand the stakes, and how fraught the situation is — that the ruling class seeks total power, is closing in on it, and will stop at nothing to achieve it — you are unfit to lead. You ought to exit the playing field.

Knowing what time it is leads one to prioritize different ends and to pursue them using different means. Among those on the right, although more so in the chattering class than among activists, there appears to be a divide over the stakes inadvertently elucidated in some of the recent debates over national conservatism.

In the Wall Street Journal, Chris DeMuth and Matthew Continetti jousted over it. Continetti took issue with DeMuth’s argument endorsing national conservatism in part by claiming essentially that the movement captured so many schools of thought as to be incoherent, and that he favored his “conservatism without modification — constitutionalist, market-oriented and unapologetically American.”

I laid out what it is that unites national conservatives in a recent piece here at The Federalist — noting that a shared understanding of the stakes is inherent to the movement.

The idea that conservatism needs no modifier becomes questionable if conservatism — which has in many quarters focused on economic liberalism while ceding most everything else — is not conserving or doing everything it can to restore what it ought to in the face of a ruling class onslaught.

Nor is it clear why a conservatism unmoored from or even effectively hostile to the national interest can be treated as “conservative.” Hence the utility in part of “national conservatism,” in contrast with a globalist, values-neutral liberalism that ultimately aims at a nationless, secular progressive, likely China-dominated world.

Anachronistic Concerns

In response to Continetti’s formulation, one colleague commented: “I’m sorry but these days when I read the phrases ‘market-oriented’ and ‘limited government’ coming from people on the right I kind of throw up in my mouth a little.” Why do these words ring hollow to those traditionally most receptive to them?

Because such concerns are anachronistic. Thomas Jefferson’s statue was just removed from New York’s City Hall. People are being deemed inherently evil based on their skin color, and the country deemed evil itself. “Equal rights for all and special privileges for none” has given way to a ruling class ethos of unequal rights and special privileges.

We do not share a common belief in our history, the righteousness of our cause, or the cultural basis for a free and flourishing society. These fundamental issues make economic policy and the size of government of secondary concern. It is futile to focus on them when facing an existential crisis in which the ability to even freely debate anything of consequence is under assault.

Cultural Over the Material

When one hears bromides today about free enterprise and limited government — as if those are not only the main thing, but perhaps the only thing — this is a sign that one may not know what time it is. It also implies a certain focus on the material over the cultural, again when we are in the throes of an anti-cultural revolution, and it is the culture that is preeminent.

What does “market-oriented” matter if you’ve lost the culture on which a genuinely free enterprise system — which we are nowhere near — relies, and the market actors themselves are among the most culpable actors in killing that underlying culture?

What good is “limited government” when the state is colluding with non-state actors to erode the core values and principles on which the republic was founded? Does “limited government” mean exercising restraint while those who loathe our system run roughshod over it? Does it mean the Constitution is a suicide pact, whereby conservatives keep their arms tied behind their back and the left waltzes to victory almost by default?

It’s not that these ideals are not imperative or worth defending. I’d like to abolish the administrative state, reinstitute sound money, and see a massive redistribution of federal power to the states and more importantly the people — along with a host of other policies associated with traditional conservatism and libertarianism.

But an emphasis on these issues to the detriment or exclusion of the almost pre-political, existential challenges we face, indicates a focus on a world, and a time, that we might wish for, but in which we are not currently residing.

A Cold Civil War

To reiterate: We are in a fight about the most fundamental things, mired in a Cold Civil War at home and a Hot War by Other Means abroad. The aggressors are our woke ruling class and Communist China, to which the former kowtows and increasingly seeks to emulate.

Big business hates our guts. Big tech wants us silenced. Schools want to indoctrinate our kids into racial Marxism. The justice system punishes dissenters from ruling class orthodoxy and rewards its friends. The national security apparatus wants to pursue rightly outraged parents like they’re al-Qaida.

At every turn, the institutions privilege non-Americans, and criminals, over law-abiding Americans. The ruling class breaks every rule, and seeks to break the Americans they hold in such contempt with those rules.

This effort accelerated with the revolt of every power center of the country against Donald Trump. But it is climaxing with every power center in the country targeting dissenters down to the last nameless, faceless resister of its every diktat.

To focus on anything else is to bury the lede. When the ruling class is obliterating the American way of life, the old emphases are simply inapt. We must know what time it is, and operate accordingly.

Covid: Germany puts major restrictions on unvaccinated

 

Germany's national and regional leaders have agreed to bar unvaccinated people from much of public life in a bid to fend off a fourth wave of Covid-19.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel described the far-reaching measures as an act of "national solidarity".

Only those who have been vaccinated or recently recovered from Covid will be allowed in restaurants, cinemas, leisure facilities and many shops.

Vaccinations could be made mandatory by February, the chancellor added.

Germany's fourth wave of Covid is its most severe so far, with another 388 deaths recorded in the past 24 hours.

There is also growing concern about the spread of the Omicron variant, which EU health officials warn is likely to cause over half of all Covid cases in the next few months.

Mrs Merkel said hospitals were stretched to the point of patients having to be moved to different areas for treatment. "The fourth wave must be broken and this has not yet been achieved."

"Given the situation, I think it is appropriate to adopt compulsory vaccination," she said, while making clear that this would have to be approved by parliament.   

The new measures are not described as a lockdown on the unvaccinated, although outgoing Health Minister Jens Spahn spoke earlier of a "quasi lockdown".

Some German states already operate so-called 2G policies, and these will now become nationwide - 2G stands for genesen (recovered in the past six months) or geimpft (vaccinated).

Under the measures agreed by Germany's 16 states and federal leaders:

• Unvaccinated people will be limited to meetings with their own household and two other people

• The 2G rule will be enforced at restaurants and cultural venues and non-essential shops

• Clubs will shut in areas where 350 cases have been recorded per 100,000 people in the past seven days - the national rate is over 400

• Up to 30 million vaccinations will be carried out by Christmas - first, second or boosters

• Outdoor events, including Bundesliga football, will have limited crowds of 15,000 and 2G rules

• Fireworks on New Year's Eve will be banned  

  
  

  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59502180  

  
  
  

  
  

 

STFU About Racial Justice If You Don’t Raise Your Voice About Our Failing Schools

Until you step to the plate to demand this obscenity end, and end today, no one should give a damn what you think about any other subject.

by John Conlin for American Greatness

The Rittenhouse verdict has unleashed a torrent of stupidity and racist rhetoric from commentators across the country. The usual race peddlers seem to have kicked into high gear—even though everyone involved was a person of pallor.

But for me it only got my blood boiling. Let me explain.

In the course of my management consulting, I’ve been to some of the roughest neighborhoods in the country.

If you do business in these areas, you know to always visit them relatively early in the morning—before the animals who prowl these areas wake up. Thus, in my travels I’d see four and five-year old kids playing outside like all four and five-year olds do.

But, as they got older, they developed an increasingly hard look in their eyes. And, by only nine or 10, many had a look in their eyes no child in America should have.

Even at that age, they had put up with more crap than one can imagine. The neighborhoods they were born into have astonishing crime rates—often matching or exceeding war-torn countries. The few terrorize the many and, unlike the police, they don’t leave.

In many of these places, a culture has taken root where the very keys to success are viewed as being somehow foreign and something to reject, not embrace. These realities are true regardless of one’s heritage but it has fallen disproportionally on black Americans.

Even for those children with supporting, dedicated parents a chance for a better life does not come easy. A hand up is not an easy thing to find in these neighborhoods.

Yet, do we hear from the race-baiters and the usual subjects about the profound injustices done to these children whose only sin is being born poor? Nope. 

Rather than ranting about the latest performative injustice of the day, perhaps they should raise their voices to actually do something to change the trajectory of these poor, young lives.

The inner-city schools these children are forced to attend are a national disgrace—and have been for decades. Education has been called the civil rights issue of our time by political leaders across the political spectrum. I disagree. It is the moral issue of our time.

These children are often pretty much screwed from the womb with their only hope being a chance for a decent education. Without that they are lost. Without that they have little hope. In the face of this desperate need, the schools that are forced upon these children are an obscenity.

Yet where have the race peddlers been for the past few decades as hundreds of thousands of young black lives have been destroyed by the public schools they are forced to attend?

The NAACP says the Rittenhouse trial was worse than Emmett Till! They spend their time suing over January 6 yet where is their righteous anger over this decades-long destruction of the poor, black family?

Where have they been all this time?

As for others, it is quite easy for someone who has never witnessed these realities to talk about hard work and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. It is much easier said than done. What future truly awaits a 14-year-old with very poor reading and writing skills, little to no math skills, and no command of the English language? Is he supposed to happily pursue jobs pushing a broom or flipping burgers? 

Far too many of these inner-city schools are simply a stop on the assembly line from school to prison or the cemetery.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

But the public education system is doing neither for those forced to attend these soul-destroying institutions.

How many of the problems of the inner-cities in general and of black Americans in particular find their roots in generations of failed education? We will never address the issues of race, crime, poverty and the pathologies they unleash until we at least provide an opportunity for every child in America to attend a quality school where his or her intelligence and character are developed so as to develop their unrealized potential.

Will every parent and child take advantage of this? Of course not. But until everyone who wants it is given a true opportunity to send their kids to quality schools, this country will fail in its basic commitment to the poorest among us.

For the richest country the world has ever seen to allow this state of affairs is simply wrong. Not every parent is “parent-of-the-month” material but at least let’s give those who cry out for help a chance by offering them a school that has the potential to save the lives of their children rather than guarantee their destruction.

And I loudly say STFU to all the others who seem to be ok with the present state of a poor child’s K-12 public education yet are outraged by the latest social media story of the day

Your words and actions are hollow—and in many cases they have been for decades. Until you step to the plate to demand this obscenity end, and end today, no one should give a damn what you think about any other subject.

Pope calls on Cypriot Church to welcome change and diversity with patience

 In the first official discourse of his Apostolic visit to Cyprus and Greece, Pope Francis addresses Bishops, Priests, Men and Women Religious, and Catechists, inviting them to be patient as they go forth in a spirit of fraternity, forgiveness, mercy, and openness.   

A “patient” church is the one best suited for the reality in Cyprus, “a church that does not allow itself to be upset and troubled by change, but calmly welcomes newness and discerns situations in the light of the Gospel.”

This is Pope Francis’ vision and encouragement for Catholic clergy, religious, and catechists gathered in Nicosia’s Maronite Cathedral of Our Lady of Grace at the start of his Apostolic visit to Cyprus.

Addressing representatives of all the Catholic Rites present in Cyprus – the Latin Rite, the Maronites and the Armenian Catholics – the Pope upheld the wealth of their diversity and urged them to persevere “without growing weary or discouraged.”

Amongst those to welcome him were the Maronite Archbishop of Cyprus Selim Sfeir,  the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch Bechara Boutros Rai, and the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa.  

Lebanon

Greeting representatives of the Maronite Church, the Pope spoke of his concern for crises currently crippling Lebanon: “I am sensitive to the sufferings of a people wearied and tested by violence and adversity. I carry in my prayer the desire for peace that rises from the heart of that country.”  

The patience of St. Barnabas  

Getting to the heart of his message, the Pope reflected on the heritage of Cyprus’s patron, Saint Barnabas, whom, he said, was a man of faith and wisdom, whose attitude was one of utmost patience: “the patience to keep moving forward; the patience to enter into the lives of hitherto unknown individuals; the patience to accept what was new without rushing to judgment.”

Barnabas, he continued, also had the patience of discernment, the patience to “study” other cultures and traditions, the patience of accompaniment, shown by how he accompanied newcomers to the faith by taking them by the hand and dialoguing with them. 

The open arms of the Cypriot Church

Pope Francis encouraged those present to continue in this path, welcoming newness and discerning situations in the light of the Gospel.

He upheld the work carried out on the island as it welcomes “new brothers and sisters arriving from other shores of the world,” never leaving anyone bereft of its loving embrace. 

A message for the Church throughout Europe

“This is also an important message for the Church throughout Europe, marked by the crisis of faith. It does little good to be impulsive and tempestuous, nostalgic or querulous; instead, we do well to march forward, reading the signs of the times as well as the signs of the crisis,” he said.

The Pope also called on priests to be patient in proclaiming the Gospel to the next generation, and on bishops to be patient in being close to their priests and in encountering our brothers and sisters of other confessions.

He asked them to cultivate a culture of forgiveness and mercy and the capacity to have open ears and hearts for different spiritual sensibilities, different ways of expressing the faith, different cultures.

The Church, he said, “does not want to reduce everything to uniformity, but to integrate with patience.” 

The need for a fraternal Church

Pope Francis went on to highlight the significance of Barnabas’ encounter with Paul of Tarsus, “an approach of friendship and sharing of life.” He urged those present to take up the history of others, “taking the time to get to know them without labeling them, bearing them on our shoulders when they are tired or wounded, as the good Samaritan did. This is fraternity, and it is our second word.”

He recalled the time the two apostles, who had journeyed together evangelizing the eastern Mediterranean region, had a disagreement and went their separate ways.

However, the Pope noted, although they had different ideas, there was no rancour between them: “This is what fraternity in the Church means: we can argue about visions, sensibilities, and differing ideas.”

“We need a fraternal Church,” the Holy Father reiterated, “one that is an agent of fraternity in our world,” inviting us not to experience diversity as a threat to identity.  

Brothers and sisters, all of us!

We are brothers and sisters loved by a single Father, the Pope said, noting that the Church in Cyprus is immersed in the Mediterranean, "a sea rich in history, a sea that has been the cradle of many civilizations, a sea from which today many individuals, peoples, and cultures from every part of the world still disembark.”

He concluded by urging them to remind everyone, and Europe as a whole, “that we need to work together to build a future worthy of humanity, to overcome divisions, to break down walls, to dream and work for unity.  We need to welcome and integrate one another, and to walk together as brothers and sisters, all of us!”  

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-12/pope-cyprus-discourse-clergy-bishops-catechists-religious.html  

NEW: Waukesha Massacre Suspect Darrell Brooks Finally Speaks

Bonchie reporting for RedState

In an incredibly odd occurrence, Darrell Brooks, who is accused of intentionally ramming his SUV into a parade — killing at least six, and injuring dozens of others — gave an interview today. For the last 10 days since his arrest, we’ve heard nothing from Brooks and essentially nothing from law enforcement on why he did what he did.

Now, he’s complaining about being “demonized” and that his mother has not visited him. Fox News has the exclusive.

Darrell Brooks Jr. has spent the last 10 days locked up in a Wisconsin jail cell after allegedly mowing through the barricades and into revelers at the Waukesha Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring 62.

Now he feels “dehumanized,” he told Fox News Digital Wednesday in his first remarks to the media, seemingly surprised that he had visitors.

“I just feel like I’m being monster – demonized,” Brooks, 39, said during a brief video visit in Waukesha County Jail – a stone’s throw from where tragedy struck over a week earlier.

I don’t know what to make of this. Why would Brooks be allowed visitors in the first place? Much less two Fox News reporters? Regardless, the last thing Brooks needs to concern himself with is what people are saying about him. He’s got far worse problems, namely the six murder charges he faces for the horrific act he committed. The article makes no note of him showing any remorse.

As to why he did what he did, Brooks gave no clues to the reporters. That may tell us something, though. If this wasn’t an intentional act (prosecutors have already said it was), you would think he’d be proclaiming his innocence. That he didn’t when asked speaks volumes. Clearly, as has been previously indicated, this was no accident.

So what was the motive? Until I’m introduced to an alternate theory that makes some semblance of sense, I continue to think you can’t just ignore his radical, racist statements on social media. No one runs into a parade of elderly women and children without a reason, and Brooks had one, even if he’s not saying what it is yet.

The rest of the Fox News write-up was light on details. It appears that the interview was promptly cut short after Brooks began possibly crying, stood up, and was escorted back to his cell. Prior to that, he had noted that his mother had not visited him and that despite his vast criminal record (which includes child sex offenses and beating women), they were previously close. Fox News further described Brooks as soft-spoken and coherent during the interview.

Personally, I find this entire thing bizarre. How did they get to speak to him? Why is he still not stating a motive? Why are law enforcement officials not giving detailed updates after such a horrific crime? Something doesn’t feel right here. Hopefully, we can get more information soon because all this obfuscation is not helping anyone, much less the families of the victims.

Jen Psaki Announces President Biden Will Visit Family Of Traumatized Waukesha SUV Driver

Babylon Bee🐝

WASHINGTON D.C.—During a press conference today, Jen Psaki confirmed that President Biden will soon be visiting Waukesha to comfort the family of the traumatized SUV driver.

"President Biden has a big heart, and he truly cares for hurting people," said Psaki. "He will be visiting Waukesha next week to console the family of Darrell Brooks, as they mourn the arrest of their loved one. Mr. Brooks was clearly the real victim here." 

"That Brooks guy's a good guy, just made a mistake," said Biden to the diaper pail in the corner of his restroom. "He was obviously scared and was running away from white supremacy or something like that. Made a wrong turn and then ran over 70 people while zig-zagging to hit as many as possible. Just slipped up, is all! Happens to the best of us! Come on, man!"

When asked whether Biden would be visiting the families of the victims, Psaki replied that the President has a busy schedule but they are in his thoughts and prayers.

 

Article by Pandra Selivanov in The American Thinker

Has Alec Baldwin had a psychological break, or is this a tryout for his defense?

We've all heard the slogan "guns don't kill people, people kill people," and human nature seems to bear out that bit of wisdom.  The beginning of the book of Genesis recounts the story of Cain and Abel, two brothers who had a fatal falling out long before guns were invented.  The only human remains found in the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles belonged to a young woman who seems to have been a homicide victim 9,000 years ago — again, long before guns were invented.

Even after the invention of guns, people continue to kill each other with everything from common household implements to exotic poisons to complicated bombs.  The most rabid gun control advocates generally concede that guns don't jump up and shoot someone of their own accord.

I suspect that even Alec Baldwin, before he killed Halyna Hutchins on the set of his movie Rust, would have agreed that a gun can't shoot someone of its own accord.  Be that as it may, Baldwin sat down for an interview with ABC News to insist that he did not pull the trigger on the gun that fired the bullet that killed Halyna.

I'm sure Baldwin is genuinely grief-stricken at what he did — perhaps so grief-stricken that he's having some kind of mental dislocation in which he honestly believes the gun somehow went off by itself without any help from him.  He says, "I would never point a gun at anyone and then pull the trigger, never."  Perhaps he truly wants to believe that somehow the gun pointed itself at Halyna and pulled its own trigger.

Since the day he took Halyna's life, Baldwin has said and done some things that at best could be considered odd.  He paraded his family all over the internet for Halloween to show what a happy holiday his children were having, while Halyna's little boy Andros was mute with grief.  He called for police to be on movie sets to monitor safety when guns are being used, a suggestion the police find ridiculous.  The NRA is the pre-eminent gun safety organization in America today, but Alec Baldwin still would never consider using NRA members on a movie set.

Baldwin still doesn't think gun safety is his responsibility, and, in the ABC News interview, he says Halyna's death is the worst thing that has ever happened to him.  I would think Halyna's death is the worst thing that ever happened to her, and her parents and husband and child, but I digress.

The salient point is that Alec Baldwin has found the perfect way to avoid any responsibility for causing Halyna's death and to make himself into a victim of the tragedy that he caused.  In his mind, guns do kill people, and the people who are holding the guns, pointing them at another human being, and pulling the trigger are just the innocent bystanders.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/has_alec_baldwin_had_a_psychological_break_or_is_this_a_tryout_for_his_defense.html

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What’s Behind The Massive Spike In Violence Inside Public Schools Nationwide

This is a dangerous cocktail: missed socialization from lockdowns, falling suspension rates, demonizing police, praising looters, and encouraging activism.

Dan Lennington & Will Flanders for The Federalist

Ask any public high school student: violent in-school fights are on the rise and discipline is on the decline. Just consider one public high school: Madison East in Madison, Wisconsin.

In late September, local media reported a series of “disturbing” cell phone videos depicting vicious fights and beatings occurring in class and on school grounds over the course of several days. Then, several hundred students walked out of school twice in one week protesting the school’s sexual harassment policies.

The protest apparently spilled over to other local high schools, resulting in marauding groups of students causing “harm to others,” damaging “property in the downtown area,” and publicly “calling out” suspected sexual harassers, according to an email from one of the area school districts.

A few days later, on Oct. 20, 10 police officers responded to fights in a “massive crowd” of more than 100 students at Madison East. On Nov. 8, more than 15 police officers responded to what the media described as a “melee” in which five students were taken to the hospital. The next day, more than one-third of all students stayed home out of fear.

In all, Madison police were called to Madison East and its “surrounding area” 63 times during the first few months of the school year.

Madison East is no outlier. A simple Google search reveals similar headlines from around the country: “Woman with gun arrested as IMPD breaks up large fight at George Washington High School” in Indiana, “Big brawl At Woodhaven High School results in minor injuries” in Michigan, “Police investigating after large fight in parking lot of West Mecklenburg High School” in North Carolina, and “Reynolds Middle School is shutting down in-person learning for 3 weeks to address student fights, misbehavior” in Oregon. All these stories originated during the same week.

So what could be causing such a spike? Or perhaps more frighteningly, is this a new normal? Many factors may be contributing to this upward trend, but a few probable culprits require serious scrutiny.

Missed Socialization From COVID Closures

Even before COVID, the trend was towards more violence in schools. The number of violent incidents on public school campuses increased a staggering 185 percent from 2016 to 2019, according to a recent study. But following months of lockdowns, closed schools, and virtual learning, this trend accelerated as kids returned to school.

For example, the National Association of School Resource Officers reported a tripling of gun-related incidents in schools between August and October 2021, compared to the same three-month period in 2019. One Florida principal, at a recent national school safety conference, summed up what many schools are experiencing: “Some students, who had no history of issues, suddenly started aggressive behavior when our high school resumed last August.”

Perhaps this should be no surprise. With students returning to school after a year of missed socialization, and the emotional damage it wrought, it seems only natural that student-on-student violence would increase.

Less Discipline and Fewer School Resource Officers

In addition to COVID policies and their impact on socialization, schools are contributing to the problem by intentionally weakening discipline policies. Largely in the name of political correctness, school districts around the nation have been working to reduce racial disparities in suspensions.

Based on the notion that any difference in suspension rates among students of different races is inherently racist, suspension rates around the nation have declined significantly in recent years, with little evidence of improved student behavior. Previous research by our organization, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, has found that declining suspension rates are directly correlated to students feeling less safe in schools.

Exacerbating the decision to reduce suspensions, many school districts have also cut ties with local law enforcement by removing School Resource Officers (SROs). SROs are uniformed police officers specially trained, hired, and paid by police departments to work in public schools. Since the death of George Floyd, at least 33 public school districts (mostly in large cities), including the district covering Madison East, ended their relationships with local law enforcement and removed SROs.

Anti-Police, Pro-Riot Rhetoric

Relatedly, anti-police curriculum is increasing. Nationwide, examples abound of teachers portraying police officers as racist murderers, displaying banners such as “F-CK THE POLICE,” and even teaching children as young as three that police are racist because a “white-supremacy fairy” whispers evil thoughts into their ears.

On the other hand, students are taught to praise lawless protesters and looters. One teacher was fired after he was caught on tape praising the violent and extreme political movement Antifa. Another public school teacher justified riots as an “uprising” and labeled rioters as “freedom fighters.”

Yet another teacher took to Facebook to express his desire for rioting and looting to come to his hometown, posting “Burn down the entire city as well!” and later “I mean what I said. Loot and burn it down!” Another teacher was fired for doing the opposite: criticizing looting and rioting in Chicago.

Tied up in this curricula is also an increasing call for students to embrace “activism.” For example, the “BLM at School” curriculum, which is taught in many public schools, promotes a “national uprising” and student-led protests.

Portland public schools even promoted multiple “mock protests” with children as young as five raising their “black power” fists, middle schoolers calling for defunding the police, and high school students demanding reparations while marching through “the whitest part of the city.” Teach For America, a nonprofit aimed at putting well-educated teachers in urban school districts, claims that “youth-led activism,” and not high-achieving students, “is key to building a better world.”

This is a dangerous cocktail: missed socialization due to lockdowns, falling suspension rates, sidelining and demonizing police, praising looters, and encouraging activism. When these policies are considered together, perhaps it is no surprise that our public schools are becoming more violent.

One silver lining is that each of these policies can be reversed. At bottom, this is a matter of school policy. Nothing inherently wrong with our kids. It is therefore time for education policymakers to abandon their current anti-authority and anti-discipline policies, and return schools to what they should be: safe learning environments for our children.