A Bloodbath of Regime Media Credibility

posted by Kurt Schlichter at TownhallVIP 

You know, there’s a popular meme going around out there about how you don’t hate the regime media enough, and that just goes to show you that every meme contains a glimmer of truth. In fact, you don’t hate the regime media anywhere near enough. It’s theoretically impossible to hate the regime media enough. You would have to have a council of champion haters working 24/7, supported by thousands of hater minions, in order to even begin approaching how much you should hate the regime media. And then you would still fall short.

Donald Trump said, “Bloodbath!” It doesn’t matter what the context was because context doesn’t matter. Figurative language stops being a thing when used by Donald Trump. Perhaps the left is pretending or perhaps it assumes that all of its adherents are slack-jawed morons. But maybe it’s not that either. Maybe it’s just a deep cynicism among the liars and the lied-to where they both know it’s bullSchiff and silently agree to pretend that the lie is the truth. I don’t know how you live like that. I don’t know how you could have any self-respect. Of course, if I were part of the regime media or our ruling class, I wouldn’t have any self-respect either.

You need not wonder what the point of the never-ending “TRUMP SAID!” lies is. We know how communists work, and we know why Pinochet tossed them out of helicopters. Communists lie, and then they expect you to lie along with them to demonstrate your obedience. Lying is an act of solidarity. You can certainly sacrifice your life for communism, but it’s even more of a sacrifice if you kill your own honor and self-respect. That’s what they’re doing. That’s what they do when they nod along with what they know to be a lie. They show themselves as miserable creatures, mollusks, unworthy of respect, ineligible for basic dignity.

What a despicable state that is. It’s mortifying. Imagine yourself being someone who lies, knowing it’s a lie, to people who know you are lying, and they then they lie back when they agree with you. Think about that. If you saw someone else do that, you would have nothing but contempt for him. But to choose to do it as a sign of submission  to a grotesque ideology of scumbags, murderers, and losers. Sickening.

Oh no, Donald Trump is threatening a civil war if he loses the election! Donald Trump is a lot of things, but Donald Trump isn’t anywhere near violent. If he were, he would have unleashed the military on the BLM and Antifa scumbags who were launching a murder and looting spree throughout the country. Of course, that wouldn’t have been a bad thing. Maintaining law and order is a good thing. Even the left agrees, except only in one particular case that occurred one time on January 6 within a couple blocks inside our nation’s capital. Other than that, the left is against it.

But let’s assume that Donald Trump is threatening a reign of terror and a mass murder spree on par with that of the Palestinians that most of these commie scumbags adore. What are the woke wine mommies and pinko femboys going to do about it? We’ve got all the guns. And, with our rural rage and our racism, sexism, transphobia, fatphobia, and all the other -isms and -phobias, we’re pretty awful people, right? It seems like we are really scary. Maybe they shouldn’t screw with us.

But they do, so, why aren’t they scared? I mean, if there were somebody ready, willing, and able to kill me, I’d think twice about running my piehole. But they don’t think twice about it because they don’t think we will ever do it. But here’s the problem. By normalizing the accusation, they are going to normalize the action. Right now, there are morals, norms, and guardrails still in place, at least for us patriots – so far, we’re not trying to put our main political opponent in prison for the rest of his life for the crime of opposing the elite. But when they normalize such things, such things become normal. They start throwing around “bloodbath” libels and pretty soon, when somebody does propose a bloodbath for real, they are going to scream about it like little sissies, and everyone’s going to shrug because they have established themselves as liars. Remember the boy who cried wolf? Yeah, that involves gender assumptions and probably ticks off PETA, but focus on the moral of the story. You only have so much credibility, and when you burn it up, it’s burned up.

As I have observed before, Trump isn’t our last chance. Trump is their last chance. With Trump, you have a guy who actually accepts most of the premises of the garbage ruling class. He was famously a member of it until he dared to defy it. He has not imprisoned anybody or killed anybody. He’s not likely to start. That nonsense about him sending SEAL Team 6 after his enemies was just stupid, but the commies pretend like it’s real. That’s nothing new. Remember how they treated Mitt Romney? That invertebrate was going to put black people back in chains, remember that? When everybody’s the worst, what’s the incentive for not being the worst if you’re going to get blamed for it anyway? If there’s no additional cost for being awful, why wouldn’t you always be awful if that was your advantage? They look back on George Bush – Bu$Hitlerburton! – but now he’s a great statesman. The aforementioned Romney is no longer attempting to re-enslave black people – he’s a hero to the MSNBCNN set. What’s going to happen to them when the next guy comes along after DJT, and he really is mean? They’ll look back on Trump and say, “You know, he was totally Hitler 2.0, but he really wasn’t quite so bad.”

Smart people would leave the hyperventilation and 100% freakouts for those very rare situations that justify hyperventilation and 100% freakouts. You saw what happened with the word “racism.” No one cares if he’s called a racist anymore. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s completely devoid of any kind of power. At one time, they called you a racist and you would take a personal inventory to make sure you were not. Now, you laugh because you can be certain that it’s a cheesy attempt to shut you up. The word is now a punchline, and that is all on the people who most loudly proclaim their alleged anti-racism.

The same will be true of “bloodbath.” What happens when there’s somebody who really will use violence to crush the opposition? What if he threatens a bloodbath? What’s everyone going to do, take the regime media seriously? They’re going to think it is a liar because the regime media is a liar.

Like the memers say, you can’t hate the regime media enough. The problem for the regime media is that its stupidity is likely to bring people to power who will act on that hatred. And when that happens, they best not look to us normal people for help when they face a real bloodbath. We will be too busy saying, “We told you so.”

X22, And we Know, and more- March 20

 

Ukraine’s War: Let’s Hope Trump Wins

posted by S.R. Piccoli at American Thinker 

When three weeks ago French President Emmanuel Macron said he refused to rule out sending ground troops to Ukraine, his words stood in stark contrast to both the European and American “red line” when it comes to putting boots on the ground in that country. As a matter of fact, several NATO countries, including the U.S., Germany and the UK, were quick to rule out that hypothesis. The "path to victory" is providing military aid "so Ukrainian troops have the weapons and ammunition they need to defend themselves," a White House statement said. Analogously, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman, and the office of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni reiterated the agreed commitment to supporting Ukraine without including the presence of troops from European or NATO states on Ukrainian territory.

Since then things haven’t changed that much, except that the awareness that the risk of plunging the world into the Third World War has increased. This is especially thanks to three factors. The first is the so-called Weimar Triangle. “Today we agreed on a number of priorities, including the immediate procurement of even more weapons for Ukraine on the entire world market,” announced Scholz at the end of a summit meeting, held on March 15, with the French president and the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk referring to the launch of “a coalition of Ukraine’s allies for long-range weapons.”

 The second factor is the insistence with which Macron reiterates his position.  “Maybe at some point -- I don't want it, I won't take the initiative -- we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” the French president told newspaper Le Parisien in an interview on Friday.

The third factor is the myopia with which NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg keeps repeating mantras such as “Ukraine will join NATO. It is not a question of if, but of when,” or  influential experts such as former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder are reiterating their calls to bring Ukraine into NATO sooner rather than later. Echoing a fairly widespread belief, Stoltenberg says that Russian President Vladimir Putin “started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door... but he has achieved the exact opposite: Ukraine is now closer to NATO than ever before.” Yet, the major premise of the syllogism is misleading, since while it correctly assumes that one event (Putin’s will to close NATO’s door to Ukraine) caused another (Russia-Ukraine war), it seems to erroneously take for granted something which is in reality not so -- that  Ukraine’s entry into NATO  is in itself a good thing, regardless of the context and consequences.

Who cares if NATO expansion eastward is seen by Russians as directed against their country? Actually, only the unwary can imagine that the prospect of Ukraine’s entry into NATO wouldn’t escalate tensions with Russia, potentially leading to further conflict or instability in the region. Putin has been clear for many years that if continued, the expansion would likely be met with serious resistance by Russia. Among Western observers, Biden’s CIA director, William J. Burns, has been warning about the provocative effect of NATO expansion on Russia since 1995. But even apart from all this, there are sound reasons why NATO should not accept Ukraine -- for Ukraine’s sake. Bringing Ukraine into NATO now “is a bad idea” that will prolong the war and leave Kyiv in an even worse position over time, writes Stephen M. Walt, the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International relations at Harvard University. Membership now will only prolong the war: 

“If I’m correct that Moscow attacked in good part to prevent Kyiv from joining NATO, then bringing Ukraine in now will simply prolong a war that the country is presently losing. If that’s why Putin launched his ‘special military operation,’ he’s not likely to end it if his forces are doing decently well and Ukrainian accession to NATO is still on the table. The result is that Ukraine will sustain even more damage, conceivably putting its own long-term future at risk. Ukraine was one of the most rapidly depopulating countries in Europe before the war began, and the effects of the fighting (fleeing refugees, declining fertility, battlefield deaths, etc.) will make this problem worse.”

Add to this that the country does not sufficiently meet the requirements for membership. Still a fragile democracy at best, corruption is endemic and structural, elections have been suspended since the beginning of the war, and there are still influential elements in Ukrainian society whose commitment to democratic norms is questionable. For these and other reasons, the Economist Democracy Index rated the country a “hybrid regime” last year.

In short, the scenario is that of a western world in the grip of a strange obsession arising from a misunderstanding, whereby we are confronted with the possibility of WW III without there being any good reason for it.

 Donald Trump offers an alternative. He “will not give a penny” to Ukraine if he is re-elected U.S. President, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said after a meeting with Trump in Florida. This would be the first great step towards the attainment of peace, because it is obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own feet. “If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, the war is over. And if the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone can’t finance this war. And then the war is over,” said Orbàn. Furthermore, according to the Hungarian President, Trump has a “detailed plan” to end the Ukraine war. All of our hopes for peace in that part of the world are entrusted to that plan.

Gaza Humanitarian Aid Port is a Terrible Idea

The Gaza mission would likely end in tears and lost lives, and it would also risk direct conflict with both Hamas and the IDF while providing very little tangible help to the Palestinians.

by Christopher Roach for American Greatness

Just like people, countries also suffer greatly when they do not learn from their mistakes. While we do not always get to choose where and whom our military fights, if we are honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge that a lot of these missions are optional. If we did not undertake them, our national security would remain intact. And the money that would otherwise be spent and the lives that would be lost would instead remain among us.

Consider the ill-fated American deployment to Somalia in 1992.

Humanitarian Missions Often Go Awry

America was riding high in those days. We had just decisively won the Gulf War, and George H.W. Bush promoted the concept of a New World Order—a fancy phrase for the United States’ domination of the rest of the world using its ample power-projection capability justified by resolutions from the United Nations Security Council.

At the time, Somalia was a typical third-world shithole and remains one today. Indeed, it has always been a bit worse than average, even by the standards of Africa. In 1992, it was emerging from one of its many civil wars, after which the belligerents used control over food aid to starve their enemies. Our troops were there to secure the delivery of food aid. The military gave the mission a wholesome name: Operation Restore Hope.

Once our troops arrived on the scene, it soon became apparent that the only way to protect the aid was to neutralize some of the armed factions. And the only way to do that was to designate some of them as the good guys and others as the not-so-good guys. Pretty soon our army was in a real fight, and locals resented our presence because, like people everywhere, Somalians were not too fond of outsiders telling them what to do and didn’t like us shooting their relatives.

Eventually, one of these groups conducted a very successful counter-ambush after an American raid to capture one of their leaders. Although the raid successfully snatched the target, the Somalis shot down a Blackhawk helicopter during the extraction phase. Soon, the entire neighborhood was shooting guns at the Americans. When it was over, 18 Army Rangers and Special Forces soldiers were dead—an event memorialized in the movie Blackhawk Down. The American people went from indifferent to hostile overnight.

What were we even doing there? The political class never had a good answer. Sensing public weariness with the ill-defined expedition, President Bill Clinton quickly withdrew our troops after the Blackhawk Down incident.

Peacekeeping Puts Our Forces in an Impossible Position

Even worse than Somalia was the Lebanon peacekeeping mission in 1982. The vague mission was ambitious and ambiguous enough to border on insanity.

After being expelled from Jordan, Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) set up shop in Lebanon in 1970, much to the annoyance of many Lebanese. In those years, the PLO occasionally shot rockets or sent raiding parties into Israel, but they were equally hostile to the Christian-dominated Lebanese government. These factors contributed to the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975.

Against this backdrop of hostile anarchy, Israel had set up a separatist, pro-Israel rump state manned by its Maronite Christian allies in the south of Lebanon. Even so, attacks on Israel continued.

Its patience having run out, Israel’s defense minister, Ariel Sharon, decided to cut the Gordian Knot by attacking Lebanon in 1982. The invasion was ambitiously named Operation Peace for Galilee.

Pretty soon, much like their current operations in Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were bogged down with difficult urban combat. This was no blitzkrieg along the lines of Israel’s impressive armored feat in the 1967 Six Day War. The war dragged on and eventually morphed into an unconventional war.

Like current operations in Gaza, the IDF’s use of artillery against civilian targets, including the Beirut Airport, led to extensive civilian casualties and widespread international condemnation. When the IDF eventually surrounded the PLO, the United States envoy negotiated a deal whereby the parties would observe a ceasefire and the PLO would depart for Tunisia. To protect the participants, the United Nations authorized a multinational peacekeeping force, in which the French, the Italians, the British, and the U.S. Marines famously participated.

The peacekeepers were there to supervise the mutual departure of the PLO and IDF and support the fragile Lebanese state while keeping the various militias and other belligerents separated. This mission was complicated by the presence of Syrian forces, Shia, Sunni, Druze, and Christian militias, non-PLO Palestinian militant groups, and a large number of IDF elements. Each of these groups was alternately hostile or allied to one another in unpredictable ways.

This is where things went sideways. Not quite sure how to deal with peacekeeping and also trying to manage the widespread Vietnam Syndrome among the American public, the military and civilian leadership made some very odd decisions to emphasize the peaceful nature of the intervention. This included not allowing the Marines to have magazines loaded or rounds in the chambers of their weapons, along with the imposition of restrictive rules of engagement that increased the danger to the American forces.

In addition to the difficulties of fending off attacks from hostile militias under these restrictions, America’s ostensible allies in the IDF began to harass the American Marines. This put the Marines, who were technically present as neutral peacekeepers, in an untenable position.

After weeks of rising hostilities, one of the Lebanese militia groups—likely Hezbollah—successfully attacked the Marines’ Beirut barracks with a suicide bomber, killing 241 Marines and sailors in the process. Occurring only a few years after the Iran hostage crisis, the American public was shocked, angry, and also confused about the goals of the Lebanon mission. President Reagan said there would be vengeance, but he and his cabinet soon decided to end the mission and withdraw our forces in 1984.

As Andrew Bacevich described the matter in America’s War for the Greater Middle East, “The sad fact is that those who sent the Marines into Lebanon had no real idea what they were doing or what they were getting into. For the most part, the resulting failure there served to broadcast American ignorance, ineptitude, and lack of staying power. As for those expectations of dramatizing America’s role as peacemaker, enhancing U.S. credibility in Arab eyes, and demonstrating a capacity to police the region: None of it happened.”

Indeed, one can say much the same about the recent, long-running campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, we lost a lot of men, failed to find weapons of mass destruction, and created a democratic ally of Iran. In Afghanistan, after the initial dispersion of al Qaeda, we spent a fortune trying to impose western values and create law and order, only to have the Taliban retake the country and reimpose their austere vision of Islam as we hastily departed.

Three Is Not A Charm

It is with all of this in mind that I must respond with horrified concern to the idea recently proposed by Joe Biden that the U.S. military will be building a temporary port to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

In the current campaign, Israel has significantly slowed aid coming through Egypt, ostensibly to prevent the smuggling of arms to Hamas. The people in Gaza are now starting to experience real hunger because of the destruction of the infrastructure necessary to support a population of millions. The proposed American port is supposed to relieve this hunger while assuaging Israeli concerns about weapons smuggling since the aid delivery would be supervised by the United States.

The United States is a staunch ally of Israel and has supplied it with money, arms, ammunition, and other forms of support for decades. The perception of complicity with the IDF’s worst excesses has caused Biden real grief with the younger, more progressive voters in the Democratic Party. Perhaps he hopes a success with the humanitarian port would mollify those blaming the United States for complicity with the ethnic cleansing of the civilian population in Gaza.

This is doubtful. Gaza is becoming uninhabitable because of the ongoing destruction of thousands of civilian buildings. This is a manifest Israeli policy, not a mere side effect of a precision bombing campaign. Photos of Gaza look more like Dresden, Hiroshima, or the surface of the moon than they do a city. Even if it arrives, the food aid will not easily undo the effects of destroyed roads, water pipes, power lines, medical buildings, and people’s homes.

This proposal also creates substantial reputational and physical risks for our military. What would happen if some armed faction of Palestinians attacked the Americans building the humanitarian port or delivering the food aid? Would a response with force cause our troops to be seen as actual belligerents on the side of Israel? Won’t they be perceived as such in any case because of extensive and ongoing American financial and military support for Israel?

And what are our troops supposed to do if they are threatened or attacked by the IDF? After all, things like this happened in the 1982 Lebanon intervention. Such an event would be a moral and diplomatic disaster for both countries.

While there is a lot to criticize in American foreign policy, there is something noble in the widespread American desire to do some good around the world and remain above the fray of primitive, tribal conflicts. But ideas and impulses can be both idealistic and also really dangerous. Foreign policy must not be a realm of sentimentality and good intentions but of hard-headed caution and prudence.

Our country has a track record of failed humanitarian interventions in this part of the world. Public support is usually a mile wide and an inch deep and quickly collapses if there are significant casualties or a lack of progress. Like Somalia and Lebanon, the Gaza mission would likely end in tears and lost lives while providing very little tangible help to the Palestinians. The mission would also risk direct conflict with both Hamas and the IDF.

Instead of deepening our involvement in the Middle East, we should be pulling the plug on military and foreign aid to Israel and its neighbors and create maximum distance from the belligerents, lest we be pulled again into this hopeless vortex of violence and intrigue.

NY state asks court not to let Trump forgo $454M bond during fraud case appeal

 https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/ny-state-asks-court-not-to-let-trump-forgo-454m-bond-during-fraud-case-appeal/ar-BB1kexIP?ocid=socialshare&pc=EDGEXST&cvid=3e9b4dc49e6c48cab731d455e07bb439&ei=6

“For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” wrote Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies.”

“The Eighth Amendment’s prohibi­tion on excessive fines applies in full to the States,” wrote Thomas.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York state lawyers urged an appeals court Wednesday not to buy former President Donald Trump's claims that it's impossible to post a bond fully covering a $454 million civil fraud judgment while he appeals.

The presumptive Republican nominee's lawyers said earlier this week that he couldn't find an underwriter willing to take on the entire amount. But the state is arguing that Trump and his co-defendants didn't explore every option.

The “defendants fail to propose a serious alternative to fully secure the judgment," Dennis Fan, a lawyer in the state attorney general's office, wrote in papers sent to the appeals court.

He suggested those alternatives could include dividing the total among multiple bonds from different underwriters — or letting a court hold some of Trump's real estate while he appeals. He's challenging a judge's ruling last month that he, his company and key executives inflated his wealth on financial statements that were used to get loans and insurance.

Messages seeking comment on the state's new papers were sent to Trump's attorneys. In a radio interview before the latest development, Trump reiterated his complaints about the case, the judgment and the bond requirement.

“They don’t even give you a chance to appeal. They want you to put up money before the appeal. So if you sell a property or do something, and then you win the appeal, you don’t have the property,” Trump said on WABC radio's “Sid & Friends In The Morning.”

Under the judgment, Trump needs to pay more than $454 million in penalties and ever-growing interest; some of his co-defendants owe additional money. So far, courts have said that if the former president wants to as contributor?stave off collection while he appeals, he’ll have to post a bond for his entire liability.

Trump said last year that he has “fairly substantially over $400 million in cash.” But he's now facing more than $543 million in personal legal liabilities from judgments in the civil fraud case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, and in two lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. The advice columnist said Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, then defamed her after she came forward in 2019.

He denies all the allegations.

Trump recently posted a $91.6 million appeal bond to cover the judgment, plus interest, in one of Carroll's suits. In the other, he put over $5 million in escrow while he appeals.

But in a court filing Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked the state’s intermediate appeals court to excuse him from having to post a bond for the $454 million judgment in the business fraud case.

The attorneys wrote that “it is not possible under the circumstances presented.” They said underwriters insisted on cash or other liquid assets instead of real estate as collateral, which would have to cover 120% of the judgment, or more than $557 million.

Insurance broker Gary Giulietti — a Trump golf buddy who handles some of his company's insurance needs and testified for him in the fraud trial — wrote in a sworn statement that “a bond of this size is rarely, if ever, seen.” The few provided go to huge public companies, Giulietti said. Trump's company is private.

But Fan, the lawyer in the attorney general's office, wrote Wednesday that “there is nothing unusual about even billion-dollar judgments being fully bonded on appeal,” citing a handful of cases. They largely involved publicly traded companies.

Fan asked the appeals court to turn down Trump's request to hold off collection, without a bond, while he appeals.

If the appeals court doesn't intervene, James can start taking steps March 25 toward enforcing the judgment. The attorney general, a Democrat, has said she will seek to seize some of Trump’s assets if he can’t pay.

Conservative 'Hippies' and the New Counterculture

posted by Becky Noble at RedStateVIP 

In every society, there are distinct periods of time when it seems the core of that society, the very fabric of it, is torn apart. Most people, if they had to choose a particular era in American history, especially those who lived through it, would say the 1960s was that time. Assassinations, war, and upheaval of societal norms of the day challenged Americans' values, ideals, and views like no other period. Those doing most of that challenging, young people, were looked at as agitators and troublemakers by traditional society, but they saw themselves as nonconformists and even revolutionaries. Traditional society dubbed them the "counter-culture." On Tuesday, former Acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell tweeted that "It's counter-culture to vote for Trump. The elites all want Biden." Could it be that conservatives, those straight-laced church-going folks, could be the new hippies and that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for the new counterculture? 

It’s counter-culture to vote for Trump.

The elites all want Biden.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 19, 2024

I have written about this idea for years. It is not a new one. I first wrote about it in 2018 during that year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It was hard not to notice throngs of college students and in some cases high school students excited and revved up about conservatism. But even way back when in 2018, it was probably a safe bet that those conservative college students were not advertising their views on college campuses. We know for certain the conservative college student's experience is even worse if he speaks up. 

But what if it is not just college students? What if we as conservatives really are the new hippies, the new counterculture? As a devoted student of the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, I heard the great El-Rushbo explain many times how liberals, the left, don't really see themselves as liberals or leftists. What they believe is normal, is mainstream. Conservatives are the ones who are the fringe kooks. To them, there is no "left-wing," there is only right-wing. 

The new form of counterculture is a bit different. It does not involve much protesting and demonstrating. But it is getting easier to brand ourselves as the new counterculture. Look around at all of the abnormality the left is trying to convince us is normal. From allowing millions of illegal immigrants to cross our southern border who have no intention of assimilating and becoming Americans to those who are convinced they can change the sex they were born to trying to tell us that it is perfectly normal and family-friendly to have drag queens read to children. The idea is to spread the message that abnormal is normal. When we do protest or demonstrate against that notion, we are the fringe kooks. 

Being a conservative is going to be considered “cool” soon. We are counterculture. Part of the revolution. Take Miami for instance, young people are fleeing cities across the country for a taste of freedom.

— Lisa Boothe 🇺🇸 (@LisaMarieBoothe) February 20, 2022

So, what do you have to do to be considered a new hippie, a part of the new conservative counterculture? It seems that the most outward expression of that today would be believing in freedom of speech. In the old days, it was liberals who were the guardians of the First Amendment. Ironically, it was the University of California-Berkeley that is considered the "birthplace of free speech." Not anymore. Try being a conservative speaker on a college campus today. The Hippies of yesteryear might have been all about peace, love, and equality. Those same people now have no love for anyone who does not hold the same views they do, continue to support throwing billions of dollars at the war in Ukraine, and as far as equality, if being a conservative speaker on a college campus isn't enough for you, try being black and conservative. 

Today's conservatives, a.k.a. hippies, come from all walks of life and backgrounds, and we don't always agree on every point, but we can debate the issues. In fact, we like a good debate. Not so with former hippies. They will ramble on about how "diverse" they are, but what they really want is conformity, conformity of thought. Those college conservatives can attest to that.

The new counterculture says it's okay to have faith, whatever that faith might be. It's okay to have a traditional family, a good job where you don't rely on the government, belief and love of country. Patriotism is welcomed. America is not a horrible place. We love everyone and want them to be successful. We want our children to be educated in reading, writing, and arithmetic and that's all. But most of all, we believe in freedom. Pretty amazing that believing in freedom is counterculture. The Hippies of the '60s are now the elites of the 2020s. They do all want Joe Biden, and they are awfully silent when "resistance" comes in the form of conservatism. Conservatives being the new revolutionaries, the new counterculture, what a groovy idea.

We are the new punk rock!

— Mayson Burch (@MaysonBurch) March 19, 2024

America’s Forfeiture of Niger Emerges as Part of a Pattern Stretching All the Way to Australia

 Biden's Destruction of American foreign policy continues unabated IMO.

Amid uncertainty over America coming through with promised submarines, the minister of trade at Canberra is ‘not sure’ Yanks are Australia’s ‘most trusted ally.’

America’s recent forfeiture of its military stronghold in Niger is the latest win for its adversaries. It coincides with Communist China’s expanded security reach in the South Pacific, bolstered by Fiji’s latest decision to uphold a policing agreement with Beijing, and Australia’s ostensible shift towards a softer stance on China, which comes days after Washington announced that submarines promised to it under Aukus might not be delivered. 

These are troubling signs. Global challenges posed by the axis of China, Russia, and Iran are growing more urgent as America’s influence wanes. President Biden’s foreign policy agenda deserves much of the blame. An undue emphasis on diversity and inclusion, coupled with wavering loyalties to core allies and ambiguity over our adversaries, has made us an unreliable partner to many governments crucial for our success.

On March 16, three days after it met with a delegation of American officials including Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee and General Michael Langley, commander of U.S. Africa Command, Niger’s ruling junta terminated its military cooperation with Washington. Military support had been limited since October 2023, after the Biden Administration designated the junta’s takeover a coup.

Yet there were indications that Washington was again open to restoring security ties. Given Niger’s critical role in American military operations in the Sahel, notably through Air Base 201 — a $110 million drone installation, the largest Air Force-led construction project in history, housing some 1,000 troops — this would have been a welcome development. Now, the base will likely be handed to Niger and, indirectly, Russia.

Since it seized power, Niger’s junta has been strengthening its ties with Moscow. Iran, too. Washington has now ostensibly fast-tracked those alliances. And for what? “Frank discussions” about Niger’s “democratic path.” A review of State Department reports, including its 2023 Equity Action Plan, and official statements, makes apparent that, for President Biden, democracy is interpreted through the prism of diversity and inclusion.

The merits of such a merger are one matter. The diplomatic hurdles of engaging a military junta another. Yet that, given the stakes involved, Washington opted to lead with this issue over matters of security is something else entirely. Niger, too, is one case among many. Across the Global South, the Biden Administration has woven its woke agenda into our foreign relations with allies that neither identify nor are interested in it.

The State Department’s Fiji country strategy similarly prioritizes “diversity and gender equality.” Yet such issues appear not to be similarly ranked by Suva. Last week, the government concluded a three-month national security review aimed at formulating a policy aligned with its “national ethos.” The result, in part, is a renewed policing agreement with China that involves intelligence sharing and Chinese training for Fijian police forces.

Chinese police are also likely to be embedded in local units. No doubt, Fiji’s decision to partner with China was not solely based on values. Washington, too, assists the nation in military training and maritime security. Yet such support is increasingly deemed insufficient. Congress’ delayed funding for the Freely Associated States, our closest Pacific allies, has also raised doubts about America’s commitment to the region. Perceptions matter.

The emerging perception of America is of a nation consumed by woke proclivities, waning in military might, and in retreat. Proposed cuts to our fiscal 2025 defense budget do not help. Neither does the fact that the cuts involve a reduction in the production of Virginia-class submarines — the very type promised to Australia under Aukus. If the subs do not arrive, Australia will have no submarines to put at sea.

The entire Aukus construct could begin to unravel. It is then perhaps unsurprising, and opportune, that China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, is in Australia this week — his first visit in seven years. Canberra’s ties with China have steadily improved since the center-left Labor government was elected in 2022. This week, its trade minister, Senator Don Farrell, said he was “not sure” that America is Australia’s “most trusted ally.”

If I were told I might be denied crucial weapons as China expands its security reach, I wouldn’t be sure either. President Biden’s confused policies continue to push our allies towards our adversaries. Needed is a serious defense budget and a ridding of woke politics from our foreign policy. Needed is a sense of urgency. Events in Australia, Niger, and Fiji unfolded in four days, since Saturday. Our enemies are pressing.

ALEKSANDRA GADZALA TIRZIU

Ms. Gadzala Tirziu is a contributing editor of The New York Sun, covering foreign affairs. She is also Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council, Visiting Fellow with the Independent Women's Forum, and lecturer in international relations at the University of Zurich.