The Ukrainian Dilemma

 Much of geopolitical thinking is still rooted in the horrors of the 20^th century.  The land grabs of Hitler and Stalin, the tremendous death toll and human costs scarred humanity for generations and for good reason.  Poland, for example, lost 20 percent of its population between them during WWII.  Ukraine was starved out (See the film Mr. Jones which vividly depicts it and the fake news campaign of Stalin) under Stalin.  Millions perished and millions more were enslaved under the Soviet system until the Berlin Wall fell in 1991.

It was natural, then, that the West should oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine- his attempt to pull it back into the Russian orbit last February.   As it did with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the world community was correct to respond by opposing the incursion into another country’s sovereignty.  The invasion was ordered by Vladimir Putin, the hated autocrat of Russia, hated even worse because U.S. Democrats had blamed Putin for meddling in the 2016 election, and impeached Trump over “Russian collusion,” which was never proved.  Still, Ukraine would be his third venture outside his borders, after Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014. 

As someone that grew up with people that fled the Soviet bear claw, I am well aware of the terror and pain Russia is capable of inflicting on its neighbors.  Many of the parents and grandparents of my friends were put in detention camps, deported in boxcars, beaten, shot, and hunted like animals.  Putin is a bad actor and I have no sympathy for him.

Yet, I have a great deal of skepticism around Volodymir Zelenskyy and Ukraine. 

First of all, Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country, and has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Hunter Biden clearly did not get a board position on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma because of his energy expertise.  Further, Zelenskyy has banned the opposition party, and shut down the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.  The U.S. is not making the world safe for democracy in its support of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy himself became a media darling from the very beginning of the conflict.  “Churchillian” was the word most used to describe him.  There were lots of media photos purportedly showing Zelenskyy in trenches in his battle fatigues, defying the powerful Russian army.  At first, it was effective.  But then Zelenskyy started showing signs of overplaying his hand.  Instead of pleading for help, he started making demands.   He did an ill-advised photoshoot for Vogue magazine belied a lust for international fame and attention, as did his photo ops with various members of Congress, and his recent visit to the Golden Globe Awards.  His wife went on a $40,000 shopping spree in New York.  The worst incident was when Zelenskyy asserted that Russian missiles had landed on Polish soil and demanded a response from NATO.  The missiles turned out to be Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles.   Zelenskyy has raised eyebrows by pitching economic development and mentioning BlackRock and Goldman Sachs—you know, the guys that helped engineer the crash of ’08.  All of this has been bad optics.  People that talk about investing in a war torn area as an “opportunity” like those that spoke about the pandemic as an “opportunity” sets off a flashing yellow.

Another factor that raises some suspicion is his background as an actor, with ties to the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab.   This puts him in the same class with AOC and Greta Thunberg.  Zelenskyy is skilled at manipulating an audience.

Yet another issue that raises eyebrows is the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine in the form of cash and weaponry --$50 billion or so in 2022.  With that much of a blank check flowing into a corrupt country, asking where it is all going is a legitimate concern.  Yet, when Rand Paul threatened to hold up funding over an accounting for it all, he was denounced as an obstructionist.  We do know that some of it ended up with disgraced bitcoin pioneer Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt company.  There are rumors that Zelenskyy has helped himself to a healthy helping of taxpayer dollars.  The massive amount of additional debt that the U.S. has to shoulder leaves our government open to the obvious charge of why we are spending so much money to defend another nation’s borders when our own southern border remains wide open.   Zelenskyy is like the pro bono litigation client.  Since he’s not spending his own money, he has no incentive to come to the table and settle.

Finally, there is the geopolitical problem that I have been most worried about—Russian-Chinese collusion.  One of the primary reasons for Nixon’s visit to China in 1969 was to triangulate against the Soviet Union.  China and Russia should be natural antagonists but our clumsy foreign policy has created allies of them.  The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between Russia and Nazi Germany demonstrated that countries don’t have to like each other to become allies—at least temporarily.   But the reality is that Russia and China have held joint military exercises and have publicly acknowledged their alliance.  It is not far fetched to think that Xi and Putin agreed that Putin would continue to prosecute the war in Ukraine with Xi’s help and support.  The Ukrainian war is draining  the U.S. treasury and armaments, and the Biden Administration drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  To make matters worse, the Administration began to discharge warriors that refused the jab.  To fight a war, you need money, energy,  armaments, and skilled people—and under the Ukraine commitment and because of our own missteps all four have dwindled.   The U.S. simply does not have the industrial base to ramp up quickly to fight a major war against a peer competitor.  To top it off, our military command seems to be more interested in deterring “white rage” and having an environmentally “green” force than in deterring an aggressive China.

It seems there are no good guys in this drama. And there have been no articulated objectives.  Zelenskyy has, at various times,  asserted that regime change is his ultimate goal.  At others, it is to push every Russian out of Ukraine, even Crimea.  There has been no real push to broker a peace deal.  Secretary Blinken seems more absent than Buttigieg was on his paternity leave.  Henry Kissinger is advocating NATO membership with Ukraine.  Yet, Russia remains a nuclear power, and has threatened their use. 

What is to be done?

The West is sending  tanks—Germany is sending Leopards and the US is sending M1s, and this represents a substantial escalation.  Yet, there seems to be no consensus on a satisfactory outcome. Is it to roll back the current aggression?  Push every Russian out of Ukraine, including Crimea?  Topple Putin? Unless there is back channel talks we are unaware of, Secretary of State Blinken is as disconnected and absent in this as Buttigieg has been in every transportation problem this administration has faced.  There is no diplomatic effort to stop the killing and the protesters for peace that we saw in 1991 and Vietnam have aged out, and the New Left ironically has no interest in finding a peaceful solution.  How long will it be before Putin does resort to a nuke, or American advisors and trainers get killed?  At the very least, before another dollar is spent, we need to understand the objectives and must get an accounting for all of the money.

 

With at best ambiguous players in this awful scenario, and no end game in sight, Xi can only rub his hands together in glee as the West drains resources away.  

Jumping to Conclusions

 I typically divide up my New Year]s Resolutions by category and actually try to monitor them throughout the year.  I actually do accomplish some things and fall short in others.   I don’t even refer to them as “resolutions” but rather they are goals for the year.

One of the goals which is a carryover from last year and which I have had some success over the past two years is not jumping to conclusions.  

I got my first taste of it a few years ago when the incident involving the Covington kids popped up.  The imagery splurged across legacy media and social media was of a smug looking teenager sporting a MAGA hat looking down on a grizzled Native American as if he were harassing him.  The New York Times described him as a Vietnam Vet, and the framing of the photo was meant to look like a young white supremacist needling this patriotic old American Indian.  Several people immediately posted it on social media with their derisive comments, calling for the kid’s head.  And I admit, I was almost sucked in.  The narrative and images were quite persuasive.  But I refrained from posting any comment.

And it turned out that my inhibitions were correct.  When videos with other camera angles were revealed and the true facts came to light, we learned that the reality was just the opposite of what was portrayed by the media.  It was the Native American that was harassing Nicholas Sandmann, who then sued several media outlets and won settlement in his defamation lawsuits with the Washington Post and CNN. 

You would think that after the confrontation with the Covington kids, the fake hate crime of Jussie Smollett, and the fake noose of Bubba Wallace, that people would not rush to judgment following an event.  It’s pretty clear that legacy media and social media are willing to censor, distort or outright lie.  And when the facts turn out differently than are first presented, it can be quite embarrassing.  Nikki Haley found out the hard way when she rushed to decry the supposed “hate crime” perpetrated against Bubba Wallace, only to learn that the “noose” was merely a garage pull. 

But the Twitter crowd remains undeterred. 

When Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed with a cardiac issue recently, and we feared that we might have the first on field death since Detroit Lions player Chuck Hughes collapsed and died in 1971.  The Twitter crowd immediately began pointing fingers at the vaccine.  That may or may not be the case, but it was much too soon to leap to that conclusion.  It’s certainly possible, but demonizing Pfizer or Moderna is simply premature.

Then we had the sabotage against an electrical substation in North Carolina that plunged thousands into darkness for 4 days.  The sabotage occurred on the day following a large protest against a proposed drag queen show at a local theater.   Immediately, Twitter was flooded with posts claiming that the entire area is full of racists and bigots.  Several posts derided the sheriff as a redneck.  But there was not a shred of evidence that the act was motivated by the drag queen show (notwithstanding the fact that citizens are perfectly within their rights to object to such a thing in their community).   There have been several other attacks and intrusions on power stations throughout the country, and while no parties have been caught, it is increasingly unlikely that the drag queen show had anything to do with it.

Jumping to conclusions reveals a lack of critical thinking.  While the immediacy of social media tempts one to respond, a response often simply tells the world that you are siloed and vulnerable to confirmation bias.  People wanted to believe that far right redneck sabateurs were responsible for the attack on the substation in North Carolina.  People want to believe that the vaccination was the cause of Damar Hamlin’s near death experience.   People wanted to believe that the garage pull in Bubba Wallace’s garage was a noose put there by some racist.  Media bias and the number of false flags, especially in matters of alleged racist or bigoted acts (Smollett was the king of that) suggests that it is wise to wait for an event to simmer for awhile before commenting.  While some on social media could win a gold medal in an Olympic leaping to conclusions event, at least that is one of my continuing goals this year is to refrain from doing so.

Detachment

 Ordinarily, I write a year end wrap-up with a list of “best ofs” in music, film, books, and so on.  This year, I’m going to do something a little different because the times demand it.  There were, I believe, a paucity of things to rave about as we emerged from our COVID cocoons.  Oh, in the literary world, I enjoyed Ian McKewan’s Lessons and Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses and Top Gun: Maverick was quite inventive for such a long awaited sequel, but beyond that, I didn’t find much that was compelling.

Instead, I’m going to write my final essay of 2022 on what I found to be the theme of the year, and that is detachment.  It was during the year that I finally came to terms with the reality that my relationships with certain people and certain institutions have been severed.  The combination of COVID and Wokeness took their toll, as did the polarization of the Trump years (although I do not affix blame solely on Trump). 

One casualty was my relationship with The University of Chicago.  As someone with two degrees from that once august institution, I credit that place with developing my intellect in ways that probably could not have been done elsewhere.  And, as a former-student athlete, I formed many lifelong friendships there and I often returned to campus to renew my connection at homecoming and Reunion Weekend.  I count my time there as an undergraduate as the happiest of my life.

Yet I began to see things falter when one of the chief architects of the “Chicago Principles” of free speech, law school professor Geoffrey Stone caved to demands that he stop using the “n” word in his First Amendment class when the mob came after him. It seemed like a small concession at the time, but the mob always comes back for more.  You can’t give an inch to them.

Then, following the George Floyd riots, the English Department announced that in the coming academic year, it would only admit students into its graduate program that were interested in Black Studies.  Being “inclusive” absurdly meant a de facto exclusion of white students. 

The final straw came this autumn when the school proposed to offer a course entitled The Problem of Whiteness, triggering a backlash when a student called attention to it on social media.  Claiming she received death threats and a “flood of racist, misogynist, and homophobic” emails, Rebecca Journey took to media calling the student a cyberterrorist and otherwise smearing him and justifying her faux scholarship and racist course as an examination of the “problem of whiteness” from a “philosophical perspective.” 

What does that even mean?  And doesn’t this student also have a right to express his views?  There were no allegations that he violated the law or university policy.  Yet the university permitted a professor to defame a student.

With this incident, I finally came to the conclusion that I had to detach from the university completely.  I finally understood that while there were some holdouts like Japanese soldiers on remote islands that fought on long after the war had ended, my alma mater had largely been swallowed up in the wave of Wokeness and, reluctantly, it was time to say goodbye.

The second major detachment is from professional sports.  It’s hard to believe now but watching the Chicago Bears and NFL playoffs was a weekly ritual for me.  But since Colin Kaepernick began kneeling before the National Anthem, I stopped altogether and haven’t watched a game in three years. I simply lost all interest.  The antics of LeBron James and the NBA’s deference to the CCP caused the same distaste for the NBA and when major league baseball decided to jump into politics and move its all star game from Atlanta due to Georgia’s tightening of its voting laws (in addition to changing the name of the Cleveland Indians), I dropped baseball too.  Hockey was my last holdout but when the league recently announced that it was “too white” my affinity for that spectator sport flickered too.  I can’t say that I miss it much, actually.   And the benefit of detaching from pro sports is that I have shifted those hours into actually doing physical things rather than spectating. 

Perhaps the hardest part of this is detaching from certain people.  Jodi Shaw, who was canceled at Smith College, said that Wokeness in our culture necessarily means that your circles will shrink.  Some old friendships have disappeared, both by my choice and theirs.  I even lost a relative, who adhered to the Greta Thunberg theology of climate science.  When I stated my case based on facts and data, I received a nasty, vituperative email in return (from someone that claims to be a devout Christian, no less).  I lost my entire regular golf foursome to Trump Derangement Syndrome (even though I attempt to be even handed about Trump, seeing his positive traits and his deficiencies, I was considered a “Trumper”).  I lost one friend when he criticized my concerns about Biden for being “provocative” and said that he expected Biden to govern as a “moderate.”   I save the email in a separate folder but have not heard from him since, nor do I expect to.

Life moves on.  Perhaps I never appreciated how fragile and ephemeral some of these relationships were.  And I certainly underestimated the strength and pervasiveness of the Woke movement.  But 2022 for me was a Year of Detachment.  I finally admitted that these relationships could no longer be sustained.  As it occurs with a relative or friend that is a drug or alcohol addict, there is only one avenue open—detachment.  Just disconnect and don't look back.

The Night the Lights Went Out in Moore County

 Last weekend, a couple of electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina were sabotaged in a coordinated firearms attack that plunged Pinehurst and Southern Pines into darkness for several days.  In the days leading up to the attack, residents had been protesting a drag queen event at the local theater.

The attack left thousands without power for days, induced a curfew and caused quite a stir, but I’m as interested in the response to the incident as the incident itself. 

Without a shred of evidence, Twitter was flooded with posts blaming the attack on the extreme right and painting the area as racist, homophobic, and redneck. 

“As a former Moore County resident, the extremism broiling in that small area is very Concerning.”

“The community knows why this happened.”

“F**k those terrorists and f**k everyone who has fueled anti-LGBTQ hate.”

Never mind that within days, there were attacks on substations in Oregon and Washington and documented “intrustions” into substations in Florida.  It’s as if these people learned nothing from the Jussie Smollett and Bubba Wallace “nooses” or “hands up don’t shoot.”  They so desperately want the narrative to be true, they don’t wait for facts to come in.  Or they invent facts.  The whole incident overlooks the fact that people in a community have every right to protest a drag show and complain about the event on the main commercial strip in their town.

In the same week, we learned that there is a warrant out for the arrest of Sam Brinton, the freaky, flamboyant LGBTQ undersecretary of energy tin charge of nuclear waste disposal and also attests to the fact that his non-binary partner and he are “animal play enthusiasts.”  Call me an extremist, but I prefer to have the person in charge of the disposal of nuclear materials to be a deadly serious person with no badges of mental health issues or propensity to engage in criminal behavior.   Brinton evidently has a habit of swiping other peoples’ luggage from airport carousels along with jewels.

So far, the Biden administration has resisted demands for his firing.

In Chicago, Project Veritas caught a dean at Chicago’s highbrow Francis Parker High School boasting about how much he enjoyed passing around sex toys in their sex ed class and explaining how they worked during Pride Week, igniting a firestorm on Twitter and featured on Sean Hannity.  As in the Moore County incident, it was the response of the school that was most disturbing.  Instead of relieving this gent of his duties, the president of the school went on the attack, claiming that “far right”  Project Veritas “misrepresented” the conversation and edited the tape.   Apparently, if you use the word “inclusive” in your response, it grants a license to engage in any kind of depravity with minors.

To finish the week, the Biden administration swapped notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout with America hating WNBA star Britney Griner.  I did not revel in her harsh penalty despite her flouting her contempt for this country.  But the swap echoed of the Bowie Bergdahl trade in which Obama swapped 5 Taliban killers for traitor Bergdahl.   The Taliban immediately put these guys back into circulation.  Worse, NBC reported that the administration could have had the release of Marine Paul Whelan instead.  Griner’s release will undoubtedly cost lives as Bout will be back in business shortly.

These incidents are not independent events and  demonstrate a real and troubling pattern.  Under the guise of LGBT rights, and  “tolerance” institutions are advancing an agenda that has insidious aspects to it.  First, it grants a hall pass with alphabet sexuality.   That Brinton hasn’t been fired for criminal activity is appalling.   In the case of the dean at Francis Parker, the school backed his highly inappropriate course and instead railed against objecting parents and Project Veritas.    Second, as we’ve seen in the Francis Parker incident and many others,  the movement uses the pretext of sex ed to start to normalize pedophilia.   Schools are making sexually charged materials available to minors, not to mention pushing transgenderism.  Third, even where there is no connection as in the attack on the substations in North Carolina, the movement is quick to demonize objectors as “haters” and anti-LGBT bigots.   If you object to explicit sexual materials in middle school libraries, the screech “book banner!” They have learned from the BLM movement that it works.  In the Griner case, it has demonstrated that the life of Griner (who is gay) trumps the lives of others that will almost certainly die as a consequence of the release of Viktor Bout.  We just don’t know who they are or how many there will be yet.

There are some very insidious aspects to this movement and conservatives must be steadfast in their opposition to them.   Their weapons are formidable. The goal is to divide the community over these issues, and so far they are winning.

 

That Smell

 Something smelled bad from the beginning.  It was like the slight whiff that you pick up when your stove burner accidentally gets turned on and the pilot light hasn’t ignited the burner yet.   At first, you barely notice it, but gradually, the odor gets stronger and stronger until it becomes unmistakable and  you rush to the kitchen to turn off the stove before your kitchen blows up.

Vlodomor Zelenskyy emitted that odor pretty early on, but few picked it up.  

The first signs were the gushing press.  Not since Barack Obama had the media been so effusive in its praise, swooning over this two bit comedic actor cum courageous leader.  “Churchillian" was the word most frequently used to describe him.   Photos of him in his green shirt and combat helmet among his fighters were plastered all over the media.  It was all so believable.   The brave young inspirational warrior fighting back against the unprovoked attack from the dark and sinister ex-KGB totalitarian Vladimir Putin.     

But then things began to take a slight turn.  Rather than make a plea for help, Zelenskyy started making demands on the West.   Even conservative commentators found that a bit odd.  Then, like Dr. Fauci, the MSM began glamorize him and feature him on the cover of magazines, reaching unseemly levels with the Vogue photoshoot with his wife last summer.  All the while, the U.S. was shoveling billions into the war torn country. Certainly, we all have sympathy for the people of Ukraine, desire to see an end to the fighting and roll back Putin’s aggression.  But when Rand Paul had the temerity to even suggest that we ask for an accounting of where the money was being spent, he was shouted down by Democrats as a “Putin lover” and an “obstructionist.”

Zelenskyy started to take on the appearance of that ungrateful pro bono litigation client.  Pro bono litigants have NO incentive to make any concessions while someone else is paying the freight.

Most revealing of late was Zelenskyy’s demand that the West take action immediately after missiles fell in Poland, killing two people and injuring several others.   Without confirming with his own military, Zelenkyy recklessly attempted to bait the Western alliance into a hot war with Russia.   The missiles turned out not to be an attack on Polish soil by Russia but rather an anti-aircraft missile from Ukraine itself.  Those are the things you need to get right.

Grift is easy to bury within a moral imperative.  And what better moral imperative than to turn back the kleptomanic Vladimir Putin.  Yet, Zelenskyy shut down the opposition party.

Closely linked to the unending and unaccountable flow of funds to the corrupt Ukraine has been the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.  Founder Sam Bankman Fried (SBF) learned from Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff and scaled it.   The facts are still unfolding but we do know that Ukraine placed some funds with FTX.  SBF was the second largest Democratic donor behind George Soros.  SBF’s parents were vocal leftists at the Stanford law school and SBF’s father had a close relationship with SEC chairman Gary Gensler.  SBF’s parents along with other FTX executives bought property in the Bahamas worth $121 million.  Caroline Ellison, SBF’s 28 year old ex-girlfriend, ran FTX’s trading arm, Alameda.  While we are unraveling the threads of this debacle, we know that SBF cloaked himself in virtue signaling—ESG, anti-racism, the whole lot.  He asserted that he only wanted to make money in order to give it away to pet progressive causes.   It gave him the smokescreen needed to enrich himself and his family and launder money back to the Democratic party which was providing air cover for him, rather than investigating his financial shenanigans.

Finally, there was BLM, which was showered with millions in the wake of the death of George Floyd (notice, I did not say murder).   Corporate America and wealthy individuals skipped over normal due diligence that is standard in the giving world to demonstrate their solidarity with the BLM movement.  Large corporate donations always have strings and a specific purpose attached.  Not this time.  The result was predictable.  Not a single project that attempted to better actual Black lives materialized.  Not a scholarship fund.  Not a health care center.  No endowments to HBCUs.  What did happen, just as with SBF, is that the leaders of BLM became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.  To date, Patricia Cullors has not been indicted, or even seriously investigated for perpetrating this fraud.

The radical Left, camouflaged in virtue, has gotten very skilled at washing money, using tax dollars and charitable contributions to buy influence, fund its candidates, and enrich its leaders.

Rand Paul is one of the only ones that understands the scale of this.

The Problem With Whiteness

 Every time I see an article or a posting from the mainstream media now, my default reaction is “how am I being manipulated?” rather than “how am I being informed.”

So it was yesterday when I saw the lead article in the Chicago Sun Times about Rebecca Journey, the instructor at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, who postponed her class, The Problem of Whiteness after an outcry purportedly instigated by sophomore Daniel Schmidt, a student that brought this course to light in social media.

The Chicago Sun Times dutifully picked up the story and, without any critical analysis or questioning, posted it.   As is the case in most articles, a piece that should have been relegated to the opinion pages was out there on the front page, masquerading as news.  The tone and slant of the piece could have (and perhaps was) penned by Ms. Journey herself.

The response by Journey is a boringly predictable one from the neo-Marxist, operating under the camouflage of “scholarship.”

The first tactic of Leftists is exaggeration or outright prevarication.  Journey claims, without support, that she was subject to death threats, cyberbullying and that her inbox was flooded with “racist, misogynistic and antisemitic attacks and threats.”  No specifics, just the labels here.  I’m actually surprised she didn’t find a noose dangling from her office door handle.   It’s possible but it’s more likely she received a few  emails objecting to her nonsense and inflated them. Committed Leftists now have a track record of exaggerating, or flat out lying.  Just ask Jussie Smollett, Bubba Wallace or AOC about her whereabouts on 1/6.   I highly doubt that the Sun Times reporter asked to see the “flood” of emails, and simply took her word for it.

The second is obfuscation in academic jargon.   “The class is emphatically not about ‘the problem with white people’” Journey disingenuously claims, the class approaches whiteness as a problem in the philosophical sense of an open question—whiteness as an object of critical inquiry.”  Oh, ok, then.  Bury the intent in academic mumbo-jumbo.  In other words, you plebes are too dumb to understand.  Well, I have a simple test of symmetry.  Applying the Iron Law of Reciprocity, can we assume that Ms. Journey will be offering the companion course in the following academic quarter, “The Problem with Blackness?”  Because if not, her rationalization fails.  More bluntly, it smacks of unadulterated BS.

Most predictably, Journey then predictably positioned herself as the poor victim, “This was a malicious attack not just on me as a teacher, but on anti-racist pedagogy writ large.”   She attacks a sophomore in college for having a viewpoint and exposing her faux scholarship.  Oh, poor me.  Oh, the drama.  The 19 year kid is not only a threat to her but to a whole body of scholarship, a grave enough threat that Journey feels compelled to go to the press to express her fears.   Playing victim is a standard leftist tactic.  Here, the professor is attempting to portray herself as being victimized by a student.

Journey is an activist pretending to be a scholar.  She met with resistance to her attempted use of a once great university as her platform to preach Wokeness doctrine.  She may deceive some with her  artifice, but those of us that have spent any time at all listening to thinkers like James Lindsay or Jordan Peterson know EXACTLY what she is doing.

It has been very sad to see The University of Chicago succumb to Woke madness so quickly.  From the English Department’s decision to only accept students in its graduate program that  want to pursue Black studies to the establishment of an entire department devoted to Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, Woke had gotten into its bones like leukemia. 

What Went Wrong

 The Red Wave that was eagerly awaited by us conservatives and libertarians after suffering through two years of the most radically socialist regime in American history fizzled out quickly and turned out to be red drizzle.  And as of this writing, as more ballots are found, trucked in and counted and recounted, it looks like Republicans will not take the Senate and may not even have a majority in the House.   Like most, I fell victim to unrealistic expectations.   The stage was set for a Democratic thrashing.  Gas prices were astronomical as were food prices as inflation raged.  The economy was contracting.  Our foreign policy was in disarray.   Violent crime was rampant in most American cities.  People were angry.  I felt sure that there would be a massive course correction.

It never materialized.

The talking heads are busy doing their most mortem analysis.  I’ll throw in my two cents but in the final analysis, the reason is quite simple--- there is a fundamental asymmetry at play and unless it gets cured fairly quickly and decisively, America will soon become Venezuela North.   When one side is committed to a vibrant, competitive two party system where candidates fully and and openly fully inform citizens of their positions, and the other side is ruthless, unprincipled and comfortable with deception, you know who will prevail in the end.

But I must do some finger pointing.   While the Democratic party is united in its lust for power (even saying the exact same lines in the weeks before the election, “Democracy is on the ballot this November.”), the Republican party is hopelessly divided. Mitch McConnell dissed several candidates and withheld funds from many while spooning out funds to demi-Democrats like Lisa Murkowski.  Trump damaged the cause by slamming DiSantis three days before the election and both DiSantis and Youngkin immediately after.  Even people that were generally supportive of Trump pounded our heads against the wall on this one.  At some point I knew his costs would outweigh his benefits and we seem to have crossed that line.  DiSantis and Youngkin ironically are the two candidates that explicitly took on Woke ideology head on.  And to say DiSantis was an “average” governor is simply not true.  He may be the most competent on the American stage right now.   I support leaders that put the country ahead of their own narrow interests.  Trump just demonstrated that he can’t put it above is own ego.

Then there is the phenomenon of Illinois, New York, and Michigan.   These three states carried out the most punishing, restrictive and civil liberties crushing COVID policies in the country.   Masking kids, closing schools, requiring vaxx passes, firing unvaccinated workers.  Governor Pritzker canceled the entire 2020 high school football season while no other contiguous state did.  Whitmer chased 70ish barber around for not complying with lockdown.   I assumed that enough anger would rise up to throw these people out of office.  But alas, each was rewarded with another term.  It is beyond comprehension.   Perhaps voters in these states are like abused spouses.  No matter how many beatings they incur, they inexplicably always go back.  And perhaps the net outflow of citizens has been enough to tip the elections.  People that would otherwise have voted against them have already left.

Several years ago, I heard outgoing Democratic leader Dick Gephardt speak at a function.  While I was no big fan of Gephardt in office, he said one thing that stuck with me, “In America, our democracy functions because losers accept the outcome.”   That is no longer the case.  The nonsense that the MAGA wing of the Republican party are election deniers ignores the blatant shenanigans that have been going on, were accelerated by COVID and mail-in ballots and have been perfected by Democrats.   If what is going on now in Arizona had been going on in any Latin American country 10,20, or 30 years ago, American leaders would be screaming for international monitors.   It began with the election of Al Franken in Minnesota, got tested with the election of Brad Schneider in the contested 10^th district in Illinois, where Schneider improbably got 85% of the absentee vote in 2012, just enough to put him over the top.  It is on full display now with ballot harvesting, mail in voting and changing rules to ensure that fraud is nearly undetectable.  The Democratic response was, “There is no evidence of massive fraud!!!”  Well, you don’t really need massive fraud.  You just need a little, coordinated fraud in the right places in close elections.   And there is enough monkey business to shatter faith in the system.

The cheating comes in several forms.  The ballot harvesting and drop boxes are bad enough.  But when Big Tech and the media are controlling information and actively preventing citizens from obtaining relevant information (i.e., hiding Hunter’s laptop and Fetterman’s condition), the system breaks down.  And now we see several avenues of money laundering to Democratic causes—from BLM to FTX (not to mention the Soros DA’s that are breaking down our cities), to 10% for the Big Guy,  the flow of funds is drowning our republic.

To be sure,  there were some small victories.  Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams, creations of the media, have been taken off the game board.   Democrats spent a lot of money trying to get these two elected.  But Abrams served her purpose.  By constantly howling about the fiction of voter suppression, she helped institutionalize mail in voting and ballot harvesting, thus cementing the mechanisms by which Democrats will steer election outcomes for the foreseeable future.  She has been rewarded handsomely for it, going from deeply in debt to having a sizeable net worth in just a few years.

What I fear is really going on is national mitosis.  Mitosis, as you science geeks know, is the process by which a cell divides into two.  It doesn’t happen abruptly but is, in fact, a process.  It’s occurring with outmigration from New York, Illinois and California.  People who can are moving at an accelerating pace away from single party rule and the attendant crime, taxes and corruption.   If it were simply geographic, we’d probably be split by now.  Even Victor Davis Hanson admitted in his last podcast, “We are two nations now.”   Once enough of the population moves, then the optimal solution may be to negotiate a split as Czechoslovakia did under Vaclav Havel.   We do not need a destructive second civil war.