Read it.

A California health department poured millions of taxpayer dollars into anti-police groups over the last year for projects ranging from COVID-19 treatment to coaching teens on social justice activism, a Washington Free Beacon review of state grant spending found.

The Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), which runs the Golden State’s Medicaid program for some 15 million residents, or a third of the population, doled out nearly $2.4 million to the anti-police groups. Recipients include the Anti Police-Terror Project, an Oakland-based police abolition group, and several organizations that joined its defund the police coalition, such as Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.

DHCS, which has a $164 billion budget and a staff of nearly 4,700, promises “to use our state’s tax dollars as effectively as possible.” The grants, meanwhile, were awarded during the 2023-24 budget year, as California faced a $22.5 billion shortfall. A DHCS spokeswoman said the department wouldn’t be able to provide a response before “the middle of next week.”

Read it.

On November 16, 2023, just before 8:00 a.m., hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters formed a human chain across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, blocking all westbound traffic and trapping tens of thousands of vehicles in a five-mile backup.

Among those vehicles were three trucks associated with the University of California, San Francisco, health system. Each was transporting organs that were set to be transplanted later that day, and the couriers, who had budgeted just 30 minutes of travel time, had their arrival delayed by nearly four hours.

The holdup forced UCSF to postpone pressing operations and put organ recipients at greater risk. “Every minute of time on ice is hard for the organs,” Garrett Roll, a UCSF transplant surgeon, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time, adding that organs function less well for patients the longer they remain in transit. Twenty-six demonstrators were ultimately charged, eight of them with felonies.

Read it..

The red-area members of President-elect Donald Trump’s America are increasingly disenfranchised by being the governance of Democrat strangleholds their deep-blue states like California, Illinois, and Oregon.

Read it.

Donald Trump’s transition team is making a list of senior military officers who oversaw the disastrous 2021 withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, and considering the possibility of court-martialing them for their failings, according to two sources cited by NBC News.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” said a source who claims to have knowledge of the initiative. The most notorious incident of the chaotic withdrawal was the Aug. 26, 2021 suicide bombing at Abbey Gate, just outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Thirteen US service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians were killed. In the following days, a US airstrike intended to kill the leader of the Islamic State instead killed 10 innocents. The rapid collapse of the US-sponsored Afghanistan government allowed enormous quantities of US weapons to fall into the hands of the Taliban.

Read it.

A year ago this month, I was able to rid my left-wing college of liberal gender ideology. In January, President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party have a historic opportunity to do the same for the entire nation.

Final victory against the woke mind virus is possible. I know, because I did it myself at just 19 years old.

The Register.

Google has decided the European Union’s Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising will be so hard to comply with it’s better off not trying.

The search and ads giant on Thursday announced that it will stop serving political advertising in the EU sometime before October 2025 – when the Regulation (TTPA) comes into force.

Annette Kroeber-Riel, the big G’s veep for government affairs and public policy in Europe, wrote that the TTPA “unfortunately introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms.”

“For example, the TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale,” she wrote. Another concern is the “lack of reliable local election data permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local, regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States.”

Read it.

Adolph would be so proud.

Thank God for the First Amendment.

Wall Street Journal.

From the dense jungle connecting Panama and Colombia to the banks of the Rio Grande, human smugglers are spreading a message to U.S.-bound migrants: Hurry up and sneak in before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Trump’s second term is creating an incentive for migrants to try to reach U.S. soil before the Jan. 20 inauguration, because many anticipate the president-elect will dismantle legal pathways to entry. Those paths include a U.S. government app that allows people to apply for U.S. asylum while in Mexico and then cross legally when they have an appointment—a system created last year that some migrants think will be upended by Trump.

Beatriz Fuentes, who manages the Casa Fuente shelter for women and children in Mexico City, said her shelter began emptying out even before the election. “They were told to hurry up in case of a possible change,” she said.

Read it.

The number has grown each year, and represents 6 to 7 percent of ICE detainers issued in those years. Each declined detainer represednts a deportable criminal alien who was released back into the community and given the opportunity to prey on more victims. The number reported by ICE include detainers declined by the law enforcement agency with custody of the alien, cases in which the local law enforcement agency provided insufficient notice to ICE to arrive before the alien’s release, and early releases of aliens despite a detainer.

Read it.

In the history of the social sciences, no other field of study has attracted so great a level of hostility as the science of economics. Since the inception of the science, the onslaught against it has been on the rise, extending across individuals and groups. And the outlook for a favorable reception of the science is bleak, given that a significant number of people are incapable of following through the extended chains of reasoning required for comprehending economic arguments.

Economics takes ends and goals of action as a given and—in matters of value judgments—it assumes neutrality (i.e., non-normativity), which is characteristic of a science. However, questions of suitability of means and various policies adopted to attain chosen ends are not beyond the scope of economic analysis.

David Brooks.

i’ve spent much of my adult life attending or teaching at elite universities. They are impressive institutions filled with impressive people. But they remain stuck in the apparatus that Conant and his peers put in place before 1950. In fact, all of us are trapped in this vast sorting system. Parents can’t unilaterally disarm, lest their children get surpassed by the children of the tiger mom down the street. Teachers can’t teach what they love, because the system is built around teaching to standardized tests. Students can’t focus on the academic subjects they’re passionate about, because the gods of the grade point average demand that they get straight A’s. Even being a well-rounded kid with multiple interests can be self-defeating, because admissions officers are seeking the proverbial “spiky” kids—the ones who stand out for having cultivated some highly distinct skill or identity. All of this militates against a childhood full of curiosity and exploration.

Most admissions officers at elite universities genuinely want to see each candidate as a whole person. They genuinely want to build a campus with a diverse community and a strong learning environment. But they, like the rest of us, are enmeshed in the mechanism that segregates not by what we personally admire, but by what the system, typified by the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, demands. (In one survey, 87 percent of admissions officers and high-school college counselors said the U.S. News rankings force schools to take measures that are “counterproductive” to their educational mission.)

…

The whole meritocracy is a system of segregation. Segregate your family into a fancy school district. If you’re a valedictorian in Ohio, don’t go to Ohio State; go to one of the coastal elite schools where all the smart rich kids are.

The American Mind.

With his historic re-election to the presidency, it would seem that Donald Trump’s legal problems are over. Trump, as practically everybody knows, has been the target over the last two years of numerous federal, state, and local prosecutions. Now that Trump will be returning to the nation’s highest office, these cases will be put indefinitely on hold or dropped altogether.

But if Trump’s problems in this respect are over, America’s are not. These cases present a problem for the nation because of the popular perception that they were merely a form of political “lawfare” brought to damage Trump, impair his candidacy, and prevent his return to power. Polls have shown that substantial numbers of Americans view these cases as politically motivated. Indeed, in what may come as a galling surprise to Trump’s political enemies, exit polls indicate that he won a majority of the votes of those Americans who believe democracy is under threat. This result surely reflects these voters’ sense that the various prosecutions of Trump were really an attempt to undermine democratic self-government by depriving the people of a free choice in the presidential contest.

Read it.

The Brookings Institution, an entity substantially funded by Big Tech and leftist billionaire George Soros, is whining for increased censorship in the wake of the 2024 election.

On Nov. 7, Brookings senior fellow Darrell West asserted Republicans won the 2024 election due to insufficient censorship of so-called online disinformation. Disturbingly, Brookings has financial ties to multiple Big Tech platforms that can censor speech online.

Brookings’ new commentary complained about President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans’ 2024 landslide victory, which reclaimed the House and Senate. Brookings highlighted “inflation fears, concerns about border security, worries about cultural issues related to race, gender, and sexuality, and feelings that President Joe Biden and the country as a whole were headed in the wrong direction,” but ultimately blamed alleged “disinformation.”

Read it.

A journalist with the London Telegraph has been visited unannounced at her home by police in the UK who told her they are investigating a “non-crime hate incident” over a tweet she posted a year ago.

Yes, really.

Allison Pearson relates what happened on Sunday in an article, noting that police will not tell her which post is the subject of the investigation, nor will they tell her who her accuser is or what they feel offended about.

Read it.

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

Read it.

The UN Climate Change Conference, known this year as COP29, kicked off on Monday and will last through the 22nd of this month. Many of the usual climate grifters have skipped the event as de-growth ‘green’ policies in the US are being prepared to be rolled back to some degree under a Trump presidency. Even Swedish far-left activist Greta Thunberg skipped the event (pre-occupied with pro-Palestine protests?).

On Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the world leaders who attended the event that last year’s meeting was a “master class in climate destruction,” adding, “The sound you hear is the ticking clock.”

Guterres also said the transition to clean energy “won’t be stopped by no group, no business, and no government.” He was likely referring to Trump’s plan to roll back certain climate policies that are strangling the economy and simultaneously boosting inflation, making US companies unable to compete in international markets. At the same time, China operates free of these de-growth policies.

Read it.

It is no coincidence that both of the Democratic Party’s ‘black’ presidential nominees were not black Americans, but the children of radical third world students who appropriated the rhetoric of the civil rights movement to get ahead, without having any actual history or part in it.

Obama and Kamala are not the legacy of the slave trade, much as they have exploited that history, but the third world immigrants and students ushered in by the JFK administration.

Barack Obama Sr., Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris all arrived in America as foreign students within a few years of each other. They were part of a flood of foreign students brought to America by Cold War legislation meant to educate foreign elites in the United States.

Instead of ‘Americanizing’ the third world, Obama, Gopalan, Harris and thousands of others like them helped radicalize and ‘third worldize’ America. Many of the foreign students, like Kamala’s parents, never had any real intention of going home. Some stayed to radicalize American colleges and their American born children absorbed their politics and hostility to America.

Read it.

A neighborhood patrol organization in Crown Heights, a central neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, posted shocking footage on X showing a masked man attempting to snatch a child from his father while they were walking down the street.

“At approximately 3:30 p.m., this deeply concerning incident took place in the heart of Crown Heights. We are working hand in hand with the @NYPD71pct in identifying the perpetrator. Kudos to the father for his quick action,” Crown Heights Shomrim wrote on X.

Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, member of Community Board 9 in Crown Heights, NY, wrote on X, “This video is shocking. A perpetrator grabbed a Chasidic child who was walking with his father today at approximately 3:30 p.m. on Kingston near Lefferts Ave.”

Defense News.

By 2030, the U.S. could have approximately 2.1 million unfilled manufacturing jobs. Not only are these lost opportunities for American workers, but this magnitude of unfilled manufacturing jobs could negatively impact the U.S. economy, costing us more than $1 trillion by the end of the decade.

Part of that cost will be realized in reduced production capacity, limited adoption of new, more efficient technologies and overall slower pace of development and innovation. Beyond the economic implications, our nation’s unfilled defense manufacturing jobs have significant national security implications for our country.

Naval Gazing.

American naval captains, like their British forebears, command a great deal of authority. In the US Navy, a captain is wholly and entirely responsible for maintaining the safety of their vessel, its crew, and accomplishing the missions that they are assigned. They have sole command of all aspects of their ship’s operation, from watch rotations to weapons employment. This tradition of sole command is so inculcated into Anglo-American naval traditions that it is difficult for us to imagine any other way of running a navy ship. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), however, offers an alternative system. Instead of being commanded by individuals, as US and UK naval vessels are, PLAN vessels have a dual command system, where a captain and a political officer assume joint responsibility for major decisions. In their report, Party on the Bridge: Political Commissars in the Chinese Navy, Jeff Benson and Zi Yang look at this very different system of commanding a naval vessel, examine its strengths and weaknesses and highlight how it may lead to misunderstandings when US and Chinese naval units encounter each other at sea.

All Communist countries do this. The Soviet Union was famous for stationing commisars behind their tropps with machine guns to ensure nobody tried to retreat.

For a hint of how well this works, read the Honor Harrington series by David Weber, available from Baen Books,  Amazon, and wherever fine literature is sold. (Or watch the behavior of sampolit Putin in The Hunt for Red October).

The Foundry.

Billionaires favored Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s election over President-elect Donald Trump, according to Forbes’ analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

Eighty-three billionaires threw verbal or financial support behind Harris, while 53 backed Trump, according to Forbes. Trump’s victory on election night came despite a massive financial disadvantage, with his campaign raising $388 million as of Oct. 16, compared to the nearly $1 billion the Harris campaign had collected.

A coalition of Harris’ wealthy backers wrote a letter in September explaining their support for her.

A pointed reminder that Democrats remain the Party of the Rich.

Read it.

An essential mission for many educators throughout the country is the indoctrination of their students. The newest arrival on the propaganda front is Israel. In August, one of the topics of a United Teachers of Los Angeles meeting was “How to be a teacher & an organizer. . . and NOT get fired.”

Read it.

This is like demonstrations against democracy in Pyongyang.

Watch it.

Compounded by the fact that nobody in the modern world uses the term ‘capitalism’ correctly, even worse than ‘fascism’. (Yeah, this guy is a Marxist, but listen to him. It will tell you a lot about the Kamala Bros.) (No, I have no idea what ‘cuck theory’ means.) (I love the concept of Eat The Rich movies….)

Read it.

FEMA is supposedly constituted to provide help to Americans in the event of disaster, natural or man-made. They are funded and their personnel are paid by taxpayer dollars, which one would think that fact alone should ensure that said help would be provided without condition or qualification.

Unless, of course, a disaster victim has a Trump sign on their house. It seems that a FEMA supervisor in charge of the recovery workers in Lake Placid, Florida, ordered them as a “best practice” to skip houses with Trump signs, per a Daily Wire exclusive.

UPDATE: FEMA Official Removed After ‘Avoid Trump Houses’ Message Leaks, DeSantis Orders Investigation

The American Mind.

In his 1941 classic of political science, The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham claimed that the need for managerial skill and technological competence had made the inherited forms of capitalism and democracy utterly unsuited to the challenges of his time. Ruling would belong not to capitalist entrepreneurs or elected politicians but to skilled managers. For only the managers had the sufficient training—that is, the training necessary to produce, mobilize, and deploy human and nonhuman resources to achieve victory in war and prosperity in peace.

Events and ideas since Burnham have made much of his book appear dated. The owner-entrepreneur has returned: just as Henry Ford took the automobile to mass production, Elon Musk has done the same for space rockets, while at the same time revolutionizing the electric car and social media. Moreover, thanks to the work of Friedrich Hayek and our experience of Communism, nobody today has the faith that managers have the ability to plan the nation’s or the world’s economy, or even conduct a business efficiently, without being subject to prices that float more or less freely according to supply and demand.

Nonetheless, the managers are still with us, and returning to Burnham can help us understand their aspirations and limitations. Returning to Burnham will also help us understand the present form of political conflict that is occurring in almost every democracy, between one faction that represents the credentialed professional-managerial class and the other that seeks to constrain, chasten, or, even in its more delusional moments, dissolve that class.

Read it.

Just before Tuesday’s presidential election, the Biden-Harris administration quietly waived mandatory terrorism sanctions on the embattled Palestinian government—even as it determined that the government’s leaders are paying imprisoned terrorists and fomenting violence in breach of U.S. law.

The State Department, in a non-public notice to Congress, determined that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are not complying with agreements to curb terrorism against Israel and end the “pay-to-slay” program, which rewards imprisoned terrorists for committing acts of violence.

Those violations should trigger American sanctions, barring members of the Palestinian government from obtaining U.S. visas. The Biden-Harris administration nonetheless used its executive power to waive the sanctions.

Quilette.

On election day, I caught the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Sitting across from me, an elderly woman wore a T-shirt with the image of Trump pumping his fist in the air with the words “fight, fight.” A small “I Voted” sticker was pressed onto her lapel.

She sat with an easy confidence. There were no disapproving glances from other passengers. There was no tension. No conflict. It struck me that in 2024 it was now perfectly acceptable to express support for Trump in a deep blue (Democratically held) city. As I travelled to my destination I wondered: If one could support Trump this openly in New York City, what might support look like in the rest of the country?

Read it.

China’s air force announced it is about to unveil its newest stealth jet fighter, the J-35, which U.S. officials say was built with the help of stolen American military technology.

…

Documents disclosed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden a decade ago revealed that the J-20 was built with stolen American technology used in the F-35.

The documents revealed that Chinese military hackers stole more than 50 terabytes of data from U.S. government and defense contractor networks, data that included details of the F-35 stealth radar and engine secrets, as well as details of the F-35’s AN/AAS-37 electro-optical distributed aperture system.

Engine schematics included details on the methods used by the turbine to cool gases, along with leading- and trailing-edge engine treatments and engine heat reduction data, all key elements of stealth design.

The technology was incorporated into the J-20.

Newsbusters.

It was not official that Donald Trump would win the presidential election during The Daily Show’s live taping on Tuesday night on Comedy Central, but the writing was on the wall as the assembled cast struggled to deal the news as the guy with the bleep button got a workout.

First there was Troy Iwata, who was playing the role of a reporter at Trump’s headquarters and who was also dressed in a garbage bag, “The mood here is also very tense, Jon. People are really sick of all the positive signs and just want to find out the results so they can start the insurrection.”

Host Jon Stewart acted confused, “Wait, Trump seems to be doing well.”

Read it.

Google searches for “Move to Canada” surged overnight, almost in parallel with Trump’s rising election odds, as the historic election swung key battleground states in his favor. Internet searches related to leaving the country continued climbing in the early morning hours, predominantly from liberal-leaning states.

Most of the “Move to Canada” searches on Google came from states like Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Oregon.

The Register.

Japan’s wooden satellite has been launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a mission to prove that wood can be a viable material for use in space.

Trust the Japanese to make a satellite out of wood.

LignoSat is a 10 cm cubesat made mainly of wood and solar panels and a smattering of electronics to record how the satellite holds up during its six months in orbit. Data collected will include temperature, the expansion and contraction of the wood as the spacecraft orbits, geomagnetism, and hardware performance onboard. One hope is that the use of wood will reduce the impact of space radiation on electronics.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Gothamist.

The American publish eduction system continues to degenerate, especially in Blue States.

Don’t send your kid to a government school. It can only end badly.

Read it.

Of all the trends on Tuesday night that stand out, one of the most remarkable ones is the shift in the black vote to the right. The shift was especially pronounced with black men.

Trump appears to have made significant inroads with black Americans, at least according to some of the preliminary exit-polling data. Several state exit polls show the former president picking up a much larger percentage of the black vote than he did in either 2020 or 2016.

Early exit polls released by CNN and Fox News showed Trump winning about 20% of black men in North Carolina and Georgia, and getting double digits among black voters in general. According to Politico, that’s a significant shift from 2020, “when Trump won 11% of black voters in Georgia and just 7% in North Carolina.”

Read it.

The potential return of former President Trump to the White House appears to have sparked rage among far-left activists on Tuesday night. With Trump currently leading the electoral count at 214 votes to Harris’s 179, reports are surfacing from Seattle that show Antifa activists have mobilized.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Presumably as opposed to the home-grown People of Color gangs that already exist….

ZMan: “Courtrooms are now lotteries due to ideology, which is the definition of corruption.”

ZMan is delightfully dyspeptic today.

If you were to ask an American to name a corrupt country, he would most likely pick one from what we used to call the third world. To a great degree, this is how we now define the term “third world”. It simply means corrupt. First world countries have transparency and the rule of law, while third world countries are opaque, and the rules are not always clear to the citizens of those countries. These days it is not unusual to hear Russia or China called third world, for example.

This is one of those legacy ideas from the 20th century that evolved with the times rather than following the Cold War into the history books. As a result, our rulers tend not to think much about the corruption in American society. It is just assumed, as it was in the Cold War, that Western countries are largely free of corruption, mostly due to the honesty of Americans, while the rest of the world is riddled with corruption. It is a form of the old good guy – bad guy view of the world.

The thing is you can quite easily make the case that America is one of the most corrupt countries in the world now. Today is election day and most Americans assume the vote counts will be corrupted with fake votes generated by the people who support things like mail in voting, drop boxes and ballot harvesting. In popular government, voting is the key to its integrity, but in the world’s greatest democracy, most people assume the vote is as corrupt as anything that happens in the third world.

The countries that holds elections, even the ones we still call third world, require voters to cast their vote in person and show that they are a citizen. The burden of proof is on the voter to show they are entitled to vote. In America, this basic safeguard has been corrupted through many schemes like mail-in voting, drop boxes and bans on voters showing their government identification. Anyone who questions the integrity of the vote must prove their case all the way to the Supreme Court.

 

Read it.

At the Paris Olympic Games, an Algerian boxer made headlines after violently beating one competitor, Italian Angela Carini, and going on to win the women’s welterweight gold medal, amid strong suspicions about ‘her’ real sex. Evidence now released from a medical file proves us, and others right: Imane Khelif is indeed a biological male.

The investigation was conducted by journalist Djaffer Ait Aoudia for Le Correspondant. It indicates that Khelif was allowed to compete for ideological reasons, despite medical evidence and notions of sporting fairness.

The investigative journalist was able to obtain a copy of Imane Khelif’s medical records from two hospitals: the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital in Paris and the Mohamed Lamine Debaghine hospital in Algiers, where the athlete is monitored by renowned endocrinology specialists.

Read it.

The far-right political influencer James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, has reportedly assembled a group of election personnel and monitors in the US to secretly film voting and ballot counting procedures on election day.

To The Guardian, there is no right but the far-right.

According to documents given by a whistleblower to the New York Times, the people involved would use hidden cameras “to record and then publicise video to support their claims of fraud and irregularities” at polling locations.

Such transparency is of course anathema to the Left.

Read it.

Henley & Partners, a firm that advises the wealthy on international migration, says that the total number of inquiries by affluent Americans to move abroad surged 500% in the first ten months of 2024 compared with the same period of 2020. Most inquiries are by folks who fear political and social unrest regardless of who wins next Tuesday.

“The primary driver for US citizens looking outside the country is political uncertainty,” Basil Mohr-Elzeki, managing director at Henley & Partners, told Bloomberg.

Basil said clients are spending up to 10% of their net worth on residency and citizenship programs, some of which can cost millions of dollars. More than 40 countries, including the US, have these residency-by-investment programs, also called “golden visas.”

Artur Saraiva, Henley & Partners’ co-founder, explained that “a lot of Americans at the moment” are speaking with us about second passports or long-term residencies abroad as the US presidential election cycle ends in just days.

He noted that surging demand for dual citizenship comes from clients across the political spectrum, including registered Democrats and Republicans, with many fearing socio-economic turmoil regardless of who wins.

Go Where You’re Treated Best.

Read it.

Win or lose, fans of the Philly Eagles go out into the street and smash things. Whoever wins on Election Day, leftists will smash things. The election only determines whether they smash up the country from the inside or the outside. Forget all the theory and all the empty policy promises.

It’s not about equity, democracy, free college, funding terrorists, defunding the police, breaking the glass ceiling, or any of the other suits the naked emperors and empresses wear. When the champagne corks and pills have been popped, the desire underneath is to destroy it all.

Mediocre elites created leftism by sublimating their narcissistic drive to destroy everything superior to them into the revolutionary politics of a purported underclass. But the elites are the oppressed underclass they’ve been waiting for. They fight for their own right to seize power.

And they don’t stop fighting once they get it.

Read it.

common criticism of modern progressive activism – the movement that has come to be called woke – is that it is religious. What is meant by this is that progressives have an all-encompassing worldview which purports to have explanatory power, and direct application, across all domains of life, from politics to art to personal relationships. At the risk of over-simplification, the keystone of this belief system is that social and political relations should be understood primarily in terms of power dynamics, and that there is a powerful class of oppressive and controlling persons, the proverbial straight white Christian men, who must be resisted by the rest, a ragtag rebel coalition of oppressed minorities and their allies.

Not everyone accepts the characterisation of wokeism as akin to religious belief, for various reasons. It seems to me a useful if not perfect way of understanding how left-wing politics has developed in the last decade or so. But regardless of how persuasive we find that framing, there is one important respect in which wokeism, for want of a better word, is quite unlike religion, or at least quite unlike Christianity, which remains the background religious noise in the countries where identity politics is most strongly embedded.

The vital difference is that progressive morality has no consistently defined content, and no clear pathway to reconciliation and restoration. US vice-presidential candidate JD Vance noted this in his recent interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan. He put it this way: “What most world religions have, but the woke stuff doesn’t have, is forgiveness….it has the excommunication part, but it doesn’t have the redemption part.”

Read it.

Americans are. American politicians aren’t.

Read it.

Just another New Yawk minute.

Read it.

Elections have become not merely choices of policy change but referenda on the full-scale, top-to-bottom destruction of America’s form of government and way of life.

Democratic Party candidates in the 2024 election have proposed policies that would radically, and irrevocably, alter America’s constitutional order. Liberal candidates have endorsed plans that would fundamentally transform all three branches of government, assure permanent left-wing power, and effect the domination of American politics by a polarized ideological minority.

Power Line.

The Democrats are pushing all the chips into the middle of the table. With Kamala Harris calling us Nazis and fascists, and Joe Biden calling us garbage, they aren’t planning any sort of unity-fest if they win. While Donald Trump is laying out a positive vision for his second term, one that will benefit all Americans who aren’t financially tied to the status quo, the Democrats are preparing to go scorched earth.

After all, if you are in power and your country is infected with Nazis, fascists and garbage people, what should they expect? We will see a crackdown the likes of which our country has never experienced, with near-total control over the means of communication and lawfare that, this time, won’t only be directed at figures like Trump and Steve Bannon, who was just released from a federal prison. I think the Democrats plan on casting a much wider net to punish “Nazis” and “fascists,” with no one to protest except us garbage people, whom they intend to silence, one way or another. If the Democrats can get to 51%, they will try to cement themselves in power for a long time to come.

So which vision is going to come true? The positive, or the dystopian? Many Trump supporters are feeling exultant, as the tide has been running, if only weakly, in his direction. The RealClearPolitics average betting odds now stand at 64%/35% in Trump’s favor. But if the polls are a guide, Trump’s momentum has slowed somewhat. The most recent surveys have him tied in Michigan, either tied, down one or up three in North Carolina, tied or up one in Wisconsin, tied (twice) or up three in Pennsylvania, and so on. The polls are telling us the election is too close to call, and I don’t think there is any reason to believe they are–all!–somehow undercounting Republican voters. That certainly isn’t what happened in 2022.