Tag Archives: politics

I Have a Question

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In his article centered on the right-next-door-to-a coup d’etat playing out in Poland and by extension in Europe, the news writer likened both situations to the 11th century Investiture Controversy, a kerfuffle over who got to appoint Bishops in the Catholic Church, the Pope as head of the Church, or the Holy Roman Empire’s Emperor, as the guy with the armies. In the modern case, instead of letting the Poles deal with its internal dispute without external molestation, the EU has chosen to butt in and demand that the Polish supreme court, however populated, comport itself with EU law.

The analogy isn’t exact, but it’s extremely close. With the EU’s active interference, the argument is over

who has the authority to judge laws and constitutions in member states.

The Investiture Controversy, played out, left Europe in very weakened straits, with the Turks baying at their eastern marches and the Saracens hounding up from the south. Today, with the EU demanding unquestioned authority over the sovereign member states, the continent will be left just as weakened and divided with barbarian Russia howling at the continent’s eastern ramparts and a freshening flood of illegal aliens pouring up from the south.

Which brings me to my question, an old one, but still current: how many divisions does the European Union have?

“Media Bias”

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In his WSJ op-ed regarding Effective Altruism and media bias, Andy Kessler had this remark:

Mr Stewart says he isn’t a journalist, but he and others like him helped kill media’s credibility.

Not at all. Journalists—the “media”—killed their own credibility, beginning as far back in my lifetime with Cronkite’s manufactured anger embedded in his “What’s going on here?” in the early stages of the Tet offensive, when he knew full well that what was going on was the utter destruction of the Viet Cong as a political and military entity in that war. From the end of Tet on, that side of the war was fought exclusively by the North Vietnamese Army.

Nor was it Stewart and others like him, or comedians generally, who printed on the NYT front page that tabloid’s decision to take sides in its news “reporting;” they would no longer print news objectively.

Nor was it anyone else that prompted CBS‘ Bob Simon infamously to declare that there not two sides to every story. Some had only one side, and he and his fellow “journalists” were the sole determiners of when and where that would be determined.

Nor was it Stewart, et al., who caused the “media” to spike the Hunter Biden laptop story. “Journalists” did that all by themselves.

Nor was it comedians who censored viewpoints on social media. That was social media managers doing that all by themselves, even as they cowered behind the fig leaf of government “pressure.”

The list is pretty extensive, and this is just politics.

The list extends into “climate” hyping. For instance, the Los Angeles Times print “news” outlet announced that it would no longer print letters to the editor that rebutted global warming arguments, since the science was settled and there could be no rebuttal.

Kessler needs to get out more.

Hold Politicians Accountable?

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Dave Brody, of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, opened his Friday op-ed in the WSJ with this:

Michigan voters appear poised to approve a ballot initiative opposing “dark money” in politics on November 3. What Michiganders don’t seem to realize is that this proposal could keep them in the dark by making it harder for journalists to hold politicians accountable.

Even if we could take is strenuous self-congratulatory second paragraph or his crocodile tears later in his piece seriously, he would be an isolated outlier in the field of what passes for American journalism.

American journalism studiously spiked all reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop while the elder Biden was President.

American journalism determinedly downplayed then-Senator Joe Biden’s (D, DE) casual mishandling of classified documents.

American journalism enthusiastically hyped—and still does—President Donald Trump’s (R) every move and statement of which those worthies personally disapprove.

American journalism avidly yoks it up over one of their own bantering and joking with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) over the question of her alleged marriage to her brother.

American journalism hides its bias—and thereby exposes it—behind repeated cites and quotes of “officials familiar” and “people who were present” while just as determinedly refuses to answer any question of what standard of journalistic integrity they use after having long since walked away from an editorial requirement for at least two on-the-record sources to corroborate any number of anonymous sources in an article.

Journalists holding politicians accountable. It is to laugh. If Michigan voters vote up the dark money ballot initiative, they’ll lose nothing regarding journalism.

Bigotry and Virtue Signaling

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Making land acknowledgments purporting to recognize the inequity of modern political, social, and economic successes have been in vogue among the Left and Progressive-Democratic Party political jurisdictions for some years. The recently done land acknowledgment from Los Angeles County provides a clear and canonical example, its repeated bodice-ripping mea culpas are especially illustrative: We respectfully acknowledge… and We acknowledge… and We recognize….

What’s instructive, though, is the utter lack of proposed solutions in these so-called acknowledgments. “We’re so sorry about all this; sucks to be you, good luck.”

That’s not just hypocrisy by these Leftists and Progressive-Democratic Party members; these…statements…demonstrate the same racist bigotry, if far more invidiously, as the Left’s and Party’s insultingly bigoted premise that black Americans are intrinsically inferior and desperately need the plethora of special treatments from Government, from “affirmative” action programs to race-based (now sotto voce) selections into universities and employment, in order to be able to operate, much less compete, in the same world as the rest of us.

Virtue signaling. Too bad, so sad. Carry on.

Factions

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Recall that our Founders abhorred factions in our national politics, even considering it, in those first few elections, to be inappropriate for a candidate for office to personally campaign, the candidate relying instead on supporters to talk them up before the elections occurred. The Founders’ idea was that the subjects coming before Congress should be debated and then voted up or down by those initial 65 Congressmen and 26 Senators and signed into law by the President, or vetoed (and subsequently overridden by Congress, or not), on their individual view of the bill’s merits.

Of course, that goal quickly went into the trash heap, and immediately we got the straightforwardly named Pro- and Anti-Administration Parties, followed quickly by the Federalist Party and the Democratic Republican Party, and on through to the Progressive-Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the Democratic Socialists of America Party of today.

Today we have factionalism laid bare and operating especially nakedly. Grace Mauser, Co-Chair of the New York City chapter of the DSA:

If someone needs your votes to make something happen, they should give you something in return[.]

The incoming DSA Caucus of the Progressive-Democratic Party is not alone in this naked trading of support for support. The Chaos Caucus of the Republican Party paralyzed the House and prevented the Republican Party from getting much of anything done beyond one tax-cutting bill, most infamously failing to pass the SAVE Act, which would have made our elections more secure if only by limiting the franchise explicitly and nation-wide to American citizens.

There’s not even any pretense of acting on the merits of a proposal anymore. A bill passes or fails (and the President signs or vetoes) based on the pecuniary or political value of what’s offered in trade for a politician’s—or today, a claque small caucus’—support. All along, too, we’ve objected as a people to the buying and selling of votes in our elections, yet our politicians actively buy and sell their own votes in the halls of our Congress–and we accept that as the nature of political sausage.

Given that factionalism has been and is here to stay, the longer-term danger of today’s factionalism is that the Progressive-Democratic Party and its DSA Caucus in the House will avoid paralysis and get much of the latter’s socialist goals passed and sent up to a Senate controlled by a Progressive-Democratic Party with its own DSA Caucus of Senators. After all, during Nancy Pelosi’s reign as Party Leader, we had Party acting on everything in the Party, nothing outside the Party, nothing against the Party. That’s how we got Obamacare inflicted on us that last time we had the Progressive-Democratic Party unilaterally reigning.

We’ll see whether Party and its Caucus can maintain that discipline.