Does Reality Still Bite?

You will believe what we tell you to believe. 

You will not doubt what we tell you to believe.

You will accept as real whatever we say is real.

You will neither question nor doubt our word. If you do, we will shut you down and shut you up.

There is no such thing as freedom of expression. Governments in Great Britain and France have recently done everything in their power to take control over expression. 

Even the Biden administration has been leaning on social media to suppress stories it does not like. 

You have no right to disagree, lest you want to be thrown in jail.

You will be charged with inciting to riot. You will be denounced as a Holocaust denier, a climate denier or perhaps a Covid denier. 

You will demonstrate your superior virtue by walking around with a little paper mask covering your face. Serious bureaucrats dreamed this up, as a way to limit the damage of the Covid virus.

In the end, as everyone knows by now, the country of Sweden, where leaders did not lose their minds over the epidemic, had a better health record than did other countries where people did lose their minds.

And, you must believe that we are facing a climate crisis, and that the world, the planet and the environment is being threatened with extinction. You can fight the good fight by flinging a can of paint at a painting in a museum. It will make you feel better, but it will do nothing for the miserable planet.

So, orthodoxy must prevail. You must hold to the correct dogmas. As Roger Kimball points out, society will rise up and smite you if you disagree:

Imagine: because people like Al Gore, Bill Gates and Greta Thunberg declare that there is a “climate emergency,” politicians enact policies to curtail the use of fossil fuels, the magic key to energy production and hence prosperity. A huge industry of “green energy” initiatives emerges to capitalize on this exacerbated gullibility. As with Covid, all dissent, no matter how well founded, is angrily repudiated as a form of “climate denial,” a tort some campaigners propose to punish with long prison sentences or even death. This rank insanity is transmogrified into normal behavior by reverse gaslighting.

Of course, as we have often had occasion to point out, this form of climate hysteria assumes that we know what will happen tomorrow, and that we know it to a scientific certainty. Yet, as Wittgenstein himself once said: There is no such thing as a scientific fact about tomorrow. Hypothesis, yes; fact; no.

How do serious authorities persuade people to accept a lie as the truth? Why, they threaten you with ostracism. People who fail to accept the prevalent dogma are punished, by being expelled from polite and even impolite society. 

The goal is to create a society where everyone thinks the same thoughts, feels the same feelings and believes the same beliefs. It has been tried before, generally in terms of religious dogma. We are so sophisticated that we no longer accept religious dogma, but have made everything else into dogma.

Of course, this is an especially pernicious way to produce social cohesion. No one really ever knows what you do or do not believe. Most people do not read minds. Mental states are not as clearly visible as are actions.

The most obvious consequence is distrust and suspicion. If you spend your time questioning what your friends and colleagues really believe and what they accept as dogmatic truth you will have very little bandwidth to work together and to produce something useful.

The most flagrant example lies in the world of transmania.

Kimball explains:

Imagine: biological males — or, to avoid the pleonasm, just “males” — pretend to be females so they can compete as women in sporting events. That practice, and the bureaucracy that encourages and protects it, is insane. But our media, the people we have elected to represent us, and the battalions of unelected minions who enforce the zeitgeist not only insist that it is normal, but insist as well that we pledge our allegiance to its normality.

Of course, as I have sometimes remarked, women should boycott events where they are being forced to compete against biological males. One understands that this entails risk, but someone somewhere needs to do something.

It ought to be obvious that those who are delusionally persuaded that they were born in the wrong body suffer from some severe psychological discomfort. They reject the idea that their delusions are discordant with reality; they think that their delusions are reality.

So they must find another culprit-- and that must be other people. The transgendered imagine that they are suffering because other people do not universally consider them to belong to the sex they imagine they belong to.

They are suffering because someone misgendered them. Or because someone referred to them with the wrong pronouns. Nothing is quite so totalitarian as forcing other people to use the pronouns that you prefer. And if you do not go along, if you commit this crime against their delusions, you will be expelled from society. 

This line of argument assumes that there is no such thing as an objective reality. It assumes that reality is what everyone thinks is real. But, in that circumstance we cannot judge a hypothesis against reality, or against an experiment. Rather than apply a reality test, we try to force everyone to believe it. 

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Philosophy and Therapy

Gary Borjesson came to therapy from philosophy. He used to teach philosophy, but gave it all up to become a therapist. 

I know more than a few people who have followed the same path, and I wish Borjesson much success. When you examine his understanding of philosophy, you are likely to conclude, with me, that he is better off doing therapy. His sense of philosophy is superficial and uninteresting.

As a side note, in Paris, over the last several decades, more and more philosophy students and professors have transformed themselves into psychoanalysts. Training in that city, as I can attest, is long on philosophy and short on medicine.

That Borjesson does not seem to know about this strikes me as near inexcusable.

Soi, Borjesson promotes the notion that therapy provides meaning; it gives people a sense of their whole self; it helps them to understand who they really, really are.

It sounds like a secular religion. That is because it is a secular religion.

In the world of psychoanalysis people undergo so-called treatment as an initiation ritual. Finish the initiation and you become a member of a cult.

It requires you to absorb and affirm a certain set of beliefs. In some corners of the psychoanalytic world, those beliefs count as dogmas. 

The cults have leaders who function as human idols. Their word is law.

Now, Borjesson does not seem to belong to such a cult, though he did manage to throw away his tenure in order to join a new monastic order.

In his view philosophy and therapy are developmental journeys. In truth, this does not apply to all philosophy, but why quibble. This journey ought to provide something like self-awareness and self-understanding, as though you have nothing else to do with your time and energy.

One can only wonder whether this journey of self-discovery tells you something beyond the fact that you belong to a certain family, have certain roles within that family, follow certain rules of comportment and deportment, and assume certain duties and obligations.

Understanding theory will not tell you very much about any of this. And yet, if you want to join a therapy cult you will need to understand the theory, down to the minutiae and particulars.

Borjesson does not really explain what he means when he says that therapy will provide understanding and awareness. He ought to have said that it involves narratives. 

From the beginning Freud posited that we are playing out roles in narratives, unbeknownst to ourselves. Family and social relations involved enacting theatrical performances. You can play it well or poorly. You might even try to rewrite the script. At the least, you are a character caught in a narrative. Congratulations if that makes you feel better.

Borjesson offers his version of therapy:

That said, if therapy is to encourage deeper self-exploration, it needs to go beyond symptoms to the whole person suffering them. Thus “psychotherapy” as I mean it here is curious about the patient’s history, about who they are and want to be; about their gifts, passions, loves, hopes, fears, and aspirations. We typically call these depth therapies. The depth comes from deliberate attention to early childhood experience, unconscious processes, and larger questions of meaning and significance. Psychoanalysis and Jungian analytic psychology are prominent examples.

Obviously, this collection of banalities does not really tell you anything about yourself. 

In principle, you have better things to do with your time than to excavate your childhood memories. In truth, and in fact, the more time you spend obsessing about your upbringing, the less time and attention you will have to learn how to deal with everyday conundra.

If you are competing in a chess game, you are not going to improve your ability to play the game by trying to understand your infantile attachment issues or your family dynamic. You will be distracted from the game and will end up with weak performance.

Now, Borjesson introduces a patient who declares that he wants to figure out what he wants out of life and what it takes to be a good human being. In truth, the first question is vapid. As I have noted, it reduces treatment to a line from a pop song: Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

The same patient declares that he wants to discover what it means to be a good person. The question is not philosophical. It is vapid. But it does have an element of truth in it.

The problem is that the term “person” is meaningless. It derives from a Latin word, persona, that means theatrical mask. You do not want to know how better to play whatever role you imagine you have been cast in. You do want to know the right thing to do for someone who is a mother or a father, an aunt or an uncle, a son or a daughter. Not to mention, an officer, an executive and so on.

Borjesson considers this an existential question. In fact, it’s an ethical question. It tells us why he gave up teaching philosophy for a field where he could more safely bullshit.

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Sundaze Are Fund-days

Around these parts Sundaze are fund-days. One is happy to receive subscriptions on other days, but one likes the pun here.

So, consider this a gentle reminder for those who have not yet subscribed. 

Obviously, it takes time and effort to do the job, and I could not have done it without the financial support of you, my readers.

I try to make my writing sound effortless, and, as the old saying goes, it takes a lot of work to make anything seem effortless.

The internet is awash in blogs and Substacks. I am grateful to those who have chosen to spend a small part of their days reading mine. I have tried to be worthy of their confidence, by presenting reflections and analysis that are unlikely to be found elsewhere. 

If you would like to express your gratitude by donating please make use of the Paypal button on this page. If you prefer, you can mail a check to 310 East 46th St. 24H. New York, NY 10017.

If you have already donated, please pass the word along to your friends, family, associates and colleagues.

Thank  you in advance.

Demographic Suicide

Joel Kotkin bemoans the general failure of young people today to marry, and especially, to reproduce. The failure seems to be almost universal, though he seems to limit himself to America and East Asian countries. In other parts of the world, people are reproducing effectively. 

Evidently, strong families produce social cohesion. Family dinners, it has often been remarked, contribute mightily to children’s good mental health. 

And then there is the problem of replacement value. In countries that are drowning in debt, population reduction will entail a danger-- that economic growth will not suffice to pay off the national debt.

But, then, Kotkin closes with this peculiar assertion:

….what is needed is nothing less than a rediscovery of romantic love and embracing the value of nurturing offspring. 

Not to be too persnickety, but these are both womanly values. And, dare we mention, romantic love has only rarely been connected with marriage. In the vast majority of marriages romantic love has barely entered the equation. 

We might make a better case to the effect that equating marriage with romantic love has damaged marriage. If you fall in love and get married, what do you do when the first blush of true love fades? If you are following your bliss, do you really believe that your bliss want you to be married to the same person forever.

The vast majority of marriages in human history have been arrangements. Such is more or less still the case in the world’s largest nation, India. Romantic love has existed outside of marriage, within the realm of adultery, of courtesanship.

One finds it somewhat amusing that a leading presidential candidate today, a champion of woman’s rights, got her start as a courtesan, fucking powerful men. What has feminism become?

Then again, her seductions served her career advancement, not family formation. In time she married into a family, in order to advance her career-- by becoming a wife and step-mother.

How did we get to this point?

On one side it was necessary to remove the stigma that had been previously attached to single women. On another side it was necessary to render the role of wife a sign of subjugation. Finally, it was necessary to make a fetish of aborting pregnancy, rather than allowing a pregnancy to come to term. And, it was necessary to define career success as a goal to which all women had to aspire.

In Mongolia-- to take an example at random-- the authorities noticed a falling birth rate. Their solution-- to place greater value on motherhood, to make motherhood a very positive thing. Strangely, it seems to have worked.

Modern women seem unwilling to assume the duties of motherhood. Some of them want to be mothers, but do not want to be wives. Others, especially in Japan, seem to have sworn off men altogether, as in Lysistrata. 

Of course, we need to mention that certain groups do not fit this template. Muslims, for example, are reproducing at a rate that goes beyond replacement. At a time when we value democracy, our future increasingly seems to belong to those who reproduce more offspring.

To some extent, the problem is a woman’s problem. And the problem must be feminism. As a force for cultural revolution feminism has redefined the role of women in society. Like it or not, it has contributed to a stark division between men and women.

The result has shown itself in politics. According to Kotkin, and to many others, young men are more likely to veer toward right wing causes while young women in particular veer toward the political left. 

Worse yet, America in the future will be comprised, Kotkin suggests, of disconnected individuals who are warring against their own feelings of loneliness. 

Yet, if some groups out-reproduce others, then they will have an outsized influence over the future.

Obviously, this is a Western, more than an Eastern problem. People from around the world come to America and Europe. When they do, they can become Americans or Europeans.

If they migrate to Japan, they are never going to become Japanese.

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Saturday Miscellany

First, just when you thought that they could get any dumber, we have Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo-- formerly governor of Rhode Island.

An interviewer asked Raimondo to comment on the simple fact, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that it had been overstating jobs-- by some 818,000. 

Incapable of anything that resembles serious thought, dumb Gina replied that she had heard Donald Trump mention the number, so she had to assume that it’s a lie, because Trump never does anything but lie.

So, failing to keep abreast of the job market, dumb Gina blames it on Trump. Doesn’t this show us the brain freeze of Democratic Party politicians? And doesn’t this show the true face of demonization and hatred-- and bigotry. 

It’s identity politics, in reverse.

Second, you probably thought that queer theory was basically harmless. Surely, no one would apply it to nuclear weapons policy.

Well, think again. The Biden administration has just hired a queer theorist to work on nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy.

Like yours truly, you imagine that this must be a joke. Apparently not. The New York Post has the story:

A fresh hire within President Biden’s Department of Energy previously wrote an op-ed about “queering nuclear weapons” — in which she argued that “queer theory” was crucial to US nuclear policy.

Sneha Nair co-authored the article just months before she was hired in February as a special assistant at the DOE’s nuclear security wing, the National Nuclear Security Administration, noted Fox News, which first reported on it.

In the wide-ranging piece, Nair argued that queer theory could “help change how nuclear practitioners, experts, and the public think about nuclear weapons” as she touched on the sprawling diversity, equity and inclusion ideology.

The article — titled “Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament” — also laid bare her belief that discrimination against queer people could “undermine nuclear security and increase nuclear threat.”

“It’s about people. Equity and inclusion for queer people is not just a box-ticking exercise in ethics and social justice; it is also essential for creating effective nuclear policy,” she wrote in the piece published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

You are thinking that it cannot be true. But, apparently it is. 

Third, speaking of hate, Glenn Beck suggests that the Democratic campaign was all about hating on Donald Trump. 

He wrote this on Twitter:

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than inflation.

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than open borders.

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than fentanyl and drugs on our streets.

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than our children being killed by illegals.

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than the homelessness epidemic.

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than the abortion cult of death.

They need you to hate Donald Trump more than the possibility of nuclear war.

That’s what a vote for Kamala Harris is actually about.

Fourth, nothing like a little disinformation, aka lying, from PBS. So-called journalist Judy Woodruff announced that Donald Trump had called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to ask him to hold off any peace deal with Hamas, until after the election. Presumably, such a deal would have been helpful to the Harris candidacy.

As it happened, the story was untrue. It did appear in certain news outlets, but the phone call never happened.

So, Woodruff apologized, via Twitter:

I want to clarify my remarks on the PBS News special on Monday night about the ongoing cease fire talks in the Middle East.As I said, this was not based on my original reporting; I was referring to reports I had read, in Axios and Reuters, about former President Trump having spoken to the Israeli Prime Minister. In the live TV moment, I repeated the story because I hadn't seen later reporting that both sides denied it.  This was a mistake and I apologize for it.

Now, the Village Crazy Lady-- if you do not believe her, who will you believe-- offered her own correction:

1. Neither Reuters nor Axios ever alleged the purpose of the phone call. You made that up 100% on your own. 

2. Both news agencies updated their stories within 24 hours of publishing to acknowledge that both sides denied it ever occurring. 

You made those remarks 4 DAYS after this clarification.

Better yet, Megan Kelly offered this commentary:

PBS should be completely defunded. If you are incapable of doing research before opening your mouth, then you're not a journalist, you're a nasty mouthpiece. The only thing you're sorry about is being called out.

Fifth, over at the Independent Women’s Forum, Ginny Gentles brings us up to date on America’s educational deficiencies. The news is not good.

According to the Nation’s Report Card, 13-year-old students scored significantly worse on their 2023 National Assessment for Educational Program (NAEP) reading and math assessments than three years before. In fact, scores have been declining since 2012.

As parents became aware of curricula concentrated on racial victimhood and gender identity, their alarm led many to boldly expose inappropriate and activist-driven material. When teachers unions and education bureaucrats indoctrinate students with opinions instead of instructing them in matters of reading, writing, and mathematics, parents have the right to review curricula and voice their concerns. However, schools have levied outrageously high fees on parents interested in assessing classroom materials.

Sixth, the epidemic of retail theft has caused the expected reaction. Stores are shutting down in certain neighborhoods. After all, businesses are smart enough to leave places where they are not wanted. 

Soft-on-crime prosecuting attorneys are ignoring it all. And they imagine that if they ignore it, it does not exist. Apparently, the companies have had another idea. 

The New York Post reports on the latest from Target:

Target’s sales and customer traffic bounced back this week after it closed crime-afflicted stores – suggesting more retailers may begin shuttering locations over shoplifting, sources told The Post.

The “cheap chic” discounter posted earnings and revenue that beat Wall Street’s forecasts on Wednesday as markdowns lured inflation-weary shoppers. But Target COO Michael Fiddelke also cited a decrease in “inventory shrink” – or losses from shoplifting – for the company’s rebound. 

Target said it was making “progress” addressing its shrinkage. The retailer closed nine crime-prone stores last year, in cities like NYC and Seattle.

If such retail retreats become a wider trend — and experts warn that they will if cities fail to crack down on crime — shoppers could get trapped in “retail deserts” with nowhere to turn for affordable clothing, food and prescription medicines, according to experts.

Seventh, as you have no doubt heard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has suspended his presidential campaign and thrown his support behind President Donald Trump. 

You might have heard, from the Democratic convention, that Trump is an egomaniac who refuses to deal with anyone. And you might have also heard that Democrats are the fearless defenders of liberal democracy.

In truth, when Kennedy reached out to the Harris team, they blew him off. When he reached out to Trump, the latter met with him and treated him with respect. Harris tried to shut him down. Trump negotiated with him. 

If you heard the Democrats you would not have predicted this outcome.

As for Kennedy himself, his statement speaks for itself:

How did the Democratic party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answer. They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters.

Eighth, yesterday the enlightened Germans had a festival to celebrate diversity in the city of Solingen. As you have doubtless heard, a knifeman murdered three festival goers and injured several more.

He got away.

No one knows his motives, but authorities suspect that he was an Arab.

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Crispin's Case Concluded

Herewith I conclude the case fiction I have presented over the last two Fridays.

When Crispin came to his next session, he had a glow of satisfaction mixed with a distrust of what had happened, or better, what had not happened. He felt satisfied because Pansy had shown up for breakfast and because the encounter had been reasonably smooth. He had maintained his composure and kept the conversation on the plane of banality.

Finally, as the breakfast was concluding, he managed an expression of regret for his behavior: “I have no excuses, but I am really sorry about what happened.” Not the best apology, but Pansy took it well, adding: “I don’t feel like I was the best girlfriend either.”

And so it went. Crispin was disappointed that there had been no resolution, no deep communication on either one’s part. They had, however, agreed to another breakfast, so he felt slightly encouraged. 

At the least, Crispin seemed to have some measure of self-control, even if the idea of breakfast dates seemed rather silly compared with the great love he had lost. 

Ernestine allowed him some self-criticism, and some modification of his excessively inflated self-image. She did not want him to have too much self-pity or self-doubt. She tried to modulate his criticism, pointing out that he must also have been doing something right.

Their work was advancing well. Crispin started feeling like he was back in the game and out of the drama. She tried to remind him that the value of his foray into adult communication did not depend on whether or not he got Pansy back.

But then, after the third breakfast meeting between Crispin and Pansy, her client walked into her office thoroughly shaken-- wild eyed and agitated. He had been awaiting Pansy’s arrival at the Coffee Shop when he looked up to see, not only Pansy, but, standing next to her, with a stern frown, Blake.

“I ran into Blake as I was walking over, so I invited her to join us,” were her words. Crispin nearly swallowed his tongue. “So happy to see you again, Blake” was all he could squeeze out. His mind was in turmoil, assailed by the phrase, “perfidious bitch.” 

Feeling his body tense up and his jaw lock, he rose to offer them their seats. He was glaring at both of them, fact which seemed to amuse them mildly, as he attempted to regain his balance. Were they lovers, was this a test or a trick? The best he could do was offer a couple of mindless remarks about the weather. 

Pansy and Blake seemed pleased with themselves, as though his squirming amused them. They began an easy banter, seemingly continuing the chat they had been having on the street. Crispin felt that he was quickly receding into the wallpaper. He then put on his mental brakes and addressed Blake: “It’s good to see you, Blake. How have you been?” When she did not respond he added a snide addendum: “How are things in the world of flakes?”

“Oh,” she replied, “sales have gone way up since we put a picture of Philippa Norwell, the superstar water polo player on the box. And it was Pansy’s idea. She is so good at what she does.”

Crispin felt that she had just ripped the skin off of one side of his face and was massaging the open wound with sandpaper. He felt that she was talking about having sex with Pansy. He did not feel well.

As he described this colloquy to Ernestine, Crispin gave free reign to his love of sports metaphors. He described a pitcher throwing hard sliders. The best he could do was foul them off. Ernestine was less familiar with baseball terms, so he explained that a hard slider was a pitch that looked like a fastball, coming straight over the plate, only at the last instant to drop down and away, as though it had fallen off a table. Only the most Herculean effort could allow the batter to redirect his swing, hopefully getting enough of it to foul it off. 

Crispin continued to explain that he had ended the breakfast by inviting both of them to join him the next week, same time, same place. They looked a little surprised and offered a tentative yes. Pansy is going to call to confirm. He concluded that he felt that he had made some progress.

Over the next few weeks a reinvigorated Crispin effectively advanced his cause. Blake did not return for any future meetings, though he astutely enquired about her. 

Three weeks after their breakfast menage-a-trois, as he had started to call it, he felt that he could invite her to a performance of the Firebird by the Royal Ballet. A friend had dumped two tickets on him and he knew that Pansy loved the ballet. Ernestine had occasionally remarked that he had rarely considered Pansy’s taste when inviting her out. 

Crispin considered ballet a bore but Pansy loved every minute of it. During her adolescence  she had even thought to pursue a career as a dancer. Seeing that her former love had been acting more rationally, she accepted the invitation. She was not convinced of the wisdom of getting involved with him again, but she was uncertain about whether she wanted to close the book on him definitively.

Thus, the couple drifted into a relationship that represented a substantial improvement over what had been before. Crispin gradually came to his own understanding of the game of courtship, and needed less advice and guidance. Often Ernestine mused to herself that the story would have a happy ending, though she did not consider a trip to the altar to be definitive proof of success.

Thus, she was caught somewhat off balance when, eight months later, Crispin announced that he had decided with Pansy that they were not made for each other. Their bickering and fighting, their prior distancing and regrettable contentiousness, to say nothing of Crispin’s near-delusional jealousy, had merely been an attempt  to fabricate an artificial connection between two people who had little in common and who barely got along.

Ernestine would have preferred a happy ending. It made for a better story. She had suspected that the relationship damage was so severe that there was really no going back. But, she kept it to herself. On this score Crispin needed to find out for himself. And he needed to learn how to function within social situations, without drama and certainly without violence. Somehow or other, he and Pansy had arrived at the best conclusion.

It does not happen everyday, but she put it down in the plus column.

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Barbenheimer

Of course, the analogy is a bit stretched. And it is, as Niall Ferguson recognizes, off by a year. 

Last summer everyone was talking about a return to the box office, by films like Barbie and Oppenheimer. So Ferguson suggests that we are currently witnessing an election between Kamala Harris, a modern Barbie, and Donald Trump, a man who brings to mind the threat of nuclear destruction. 

As I said, it’s a bit of a stretch.

Nevertheless, Ferguson is on to something, especially when he concludes that in a nuclear world, we do best not to pin our faith and hope on the most vacuous and vapid presidential candidate ever.

For we do not live in a Barbie world. We live in a world of nuclear weapons and other instruments of mass destruction. We live in a world with five major wars (conflicts with an annual death toll of around 10,000) and dozens of smaller conflicts. We live in a world with more than 117 million forcibly displaced people, of whom 49 million have been driven abroad. We also live in late-Soviet America, where the cost of paying interest on the federal debt now exceeds the defense budget. 

This election may be over for the journalists who have signed up uncritically to spread the vibes for the Harris campaign. But for the voters in the real world, it surely is not. Like it or not, we live in Oppenheimer’s world—with the difference that the next Manhattan Project, the weaponization of artificial intelligence, will not be the kind of government program Democrats still love.

True enough, Kamala has the ultimate girlie vibe. I prefer to see her as courtesan in chief, appealing to a lost sense of femininity, indulging in effortless and mindless girltalk while pretending to be supremely qualified.

Kamala is the outcome of diversity hiring. She cannot do any of the jobs that she has assumed over the years, so she has gotten promoted. As for why she giggles all the time, it is a sign that she is receiving credits she did not earn. 

A fawning press, now become a propaganda machine, tells us that schoolgirl giggles constitute a qualification for the highest office in the land. They call it vibe or some such thing, and it seems to represent the women who were elevated to jobs they could not do, but who do not want to admit it. Think of the former presidents of Ivy League colleges, women who got their jobs because of their sex, and who lost their jobs for being incompetent.

Did they have the right vibe? Does that count as a job qualification? Does the Kamala giggle add something to her candidacy, something that no man could equal?

At the least it means that we have overcome merit and achievement as qualifications for important jobs. And yet, at a time when companies across America are dialing back their DEI programs, the Democrat Party is highlighting incompetence.

Those who are up in arms about Trump warn us of pending chaos. Under the Biden leadership, or lack of same, wars have broken out in various places across the globe. The Trump reaction, with which one would have difficulty finding fault, was simply that when he was president, we did not have a war in Ukraine and did not have October 7 in Israel. 

I fail to see why that makes him the chaos candidate. It would be more accurate to say that the Biden team, through its singular ineptitude, has undermined the world order. Trump’s great achievement, the Abraham Accords, had nothing to do with nuclear energy.

Fair enough, those who are drooling over Kamala Harris live in a Barbie world. They are detached from reality and believe that wishing makes it so. In place of competence they have joy and vibes. It is a sad story, but it is only part of the story.

No one seems to notice but the enemies of Donald Trump mounted their own insurrection during the spring and summer of 2020. The George Floyd riots did not fall from the heavens. They enacted the rhetorical violence so often used to attack Donald Trump. 

Is it an accident that the Democratic candidate for president was leading the march to bail out the Minnesota rioters or that the Democratic candidate for vice president sat on his hands while rioters burned down his city?

Clearly, the insurrection did not stop with 2020. In truth, cities across America have seen an epidemic of smash and grab robberies, of organized retail theft. Leftist prosecutors have refused to prosecute the miscreants.

So, for all the talk about vibes and joy, the Democratic party is threatening the nation. The chaos they are warning against is the chaos they are going to visit on the nation if their candidate loses.

Dare we suggest that the frenzy over January 6 was largely designed to obscure the other insurrection, the one that surrounded the George Floyd killing. 

One can find much to criticize in the Donald Trump political performance. But, we ought also to notice that he has been subjected to constant vitriolic attacks since he stepped foot on the political scene. The rhetoric does not bespeak respect. It manifests derision and a wish to destroy.

One ignores the simple fact that in our system of government, political opponents should show respect for their adversaries. It might be limited to a perfunctory expression-- as in, the right honorable gentleman. After uttering those words, politicians proceed to say whatever they have to say. Normally they limit themselves to the issues at hands and avoid ad hominem attacks.

With the advent of Trump, his opponents have done everything in their power to destroy him, not to debate with him, not to address his ideas.

You cannot have a government defined by deliberative debate when you are spending your time trying to destroy the opposition, to dismiss everything he said on the grounds that you consider him to be dishonorable and evil. If you are not smart enough to argue the issues, you reduced everything to name-calling, slander and defamation.

Surely, Donald Trump has not been a model of decorum. He based no small part of his political career on insulting his opponents. 

And yet, as he has pointed out, Democrats have been inventing laws in the effort to put him in jail. By his lights, as he often mentioned, it was not a good idea to prosecute or jail Hillary Clinton, on the grounds of decorum, but doing the same to Trump was acceptable. 

By now, many of Trump’s supporters have been trying to stage an intervention, to show him that the best response to slander and defamation is not slander and defamation. 

The Biblical saying has it that we should do unto others as we would have others do unto us. It does not say that we should do unto others as others have done unto us.

See the difference?

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