Politics

“I think the former president is a spent political force.” So wrote New York Times columnist Bret Stephens of Donald J. Trump this week. Trump is apparently so spent that Stephens felt the need to pen an 879-word op-ed in the nation’s putatively leading newspaper about who the master of Mar-a-Lago ate dinner with a week earlier. This followed a separate article about the infamous dinner Trump hosted with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes that Stephens wrote with his co-columnist Gail Collins, along with no fewer than seven other pieces about the dinner that have, as of this writing, blessed the former paper of record. The Times is hardly alone. The Washington Post offered its readers six articles about the dinner, while the Wall Street Journal has produced five such pieces.

Why is an alt-right pundit all of a sudden best buds with the artist formerly known as Kanye West? Many have found themselves fascinated and revolted over Ye’s strange new career as a high-profile antisemite. Those familiar with the contours of the contemporary right, including the far-right, are not surprised to see white nationalist Nick Fuentes jumping onboard the Ye train. Those unfamiliar with the openly racist online host have been shocked to learn he exists, has some kind of audience, and has formed an alliance of sorts with arguably the most famous black man in America. This all makes sense when you understand how these people think.

China erupts. What happens next?  In the last few days, growing Chinese frustration at the country’s draconian zero Covid policy has bubbled over. Just weeks after Xi Jinping set his regime on an even more authoritarian and nationalistic course at the Chinese Communist Party’s twentieth national congress, protests have erupted in cities across China. The proximate cause of this wave of anger seems to have been a fire in an apartment block in Urumqi, a city in Xinjiang. Ten died and footage appears to show lockdown measures delaying firefighters trying to save the residents’ lives. And the scale of the protests make this the most significant expression of dissent in China in years.

Well, it was quite a Thanksgiving week at Mar-a-Lago. For those just waking from their food comas, the Cliff Notes version of events is that Donald Trump hosted for dinner not just Kanye West, who of late has appeared utterly out of his mind and uttered deeply antisemitic comments, but also Nick Fuentes, a quite literal Holocaust denier who has compared Jews slaughtered by Nazis to cookies baking in an oven. I guess David Duke must have been busy. When news of the Tuesday night dinner broke, it unleashed a chorus of justified outrage. Trumpworld went into immediate damage control. First, it was claimed that Fuentes was not a participant at the dinner, then that he was but Trump didn’t know who he was.

In many countries, tricking stupid people out of money is a crime. In the United States, it’s the basis of a whole economy. Cryptocurrency is the crowning glory of this broken system. You give me a bunch of your real money, and I’ll give you some of my fake money. Fantastic! It’s like tulip mania, only instead of flowers, you get… nothing. The collapse of FTX — the second largest crypto exchange in the world — will cost millions of customers billions of dollars. Some expect it to significantly worsen the recession, though I’m not so sure. If those folks hadn’t wasted their savings on Bitcoin, they probably would have wasted it on some other scam. (Is William Duvane still selling gold?) In theory, this is bad news for the Democrats.

President Biden just said he wants to “get rid of” tens of millions of firearms owned by law-abiding Americans. Biden, of course, is not known for making sense when it comes to guns (this was true even pre-senility), but his latest rant can’t be dismissed as another glitch in the ol' gaffe machine. “The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no social redeeming values. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturer," Biden said on Thanksgiving Day. He added, "I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.” Congressman Mark Alford of Missouri called his words "sheer ignorance," and Breitbart editor Emma-Jo Morris tweeted that Biden "clearly doesn’t know what semi-auto is.

Republicans need to start questioning their political instincts. For the sake of accountability, I’ll start with myself. I want nothing more than to see the GOP investigate the artist currently known as Hunter Biden and the Big Guy right out of the gates. Which is why, and it pains me to say this... they probably shouldn’t. First, let me explain my eagerness to watch House Republicans "pounce" and seize on this probe into the corrupt First Family. After years of the president’s bogus “that has been debunked!” denials and the media’s suppression of the legitimate laptop from hell, it is high time we got some answers from the Biden family.

Top Twitter user Ron Klain is at it again. This time, the terminally online White House chief of staff tweeted out a list of talking points to bring up when your Uncle goes after Joe Biden at Thanksgiving dinner. Putting aside the fact that uncle should only be capitalized when it is being used as a proper noun, Cockburn is stunned at the daftness of the compilation. https://twitter.com/WHCOS/status/1595414110438662144 Klain claims that “gas prices are down by $1.35/gallon since June and inflation is moderating”, which while technically true, requires you to ignore the fact that gas prices were over $4.90/gallon in June. He uses the same laughable logic regarding inflation: it has "moderated" from a multiple-decade’s high of 9.1 percent in June to a still painful 7.

Just eighteen days after Kanye West vowed that he was taking a thirty-day cleanse from talking, drinking alcohol, watching porn and having sex, the disgraced rapper is back. And like his idol Donald Trump, he's even announced a 2024 presidential bid. If at first you don’t succeed, maybe don’t try again? In a video shared on YouTube this weekend, Kanye revealed far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as a new campaign staffer. "This is Milo right here, working on the campaign," the mogul said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1FQXbqRuMs&ab_channel=X17onlineVideo When the cameraman asked if that was an announcement, Kanye laughed as Milo confirmed: "I guess it is. Thanks, I accept." The cameraman then asked Kanye: "So you are running?

Typically, when media outlets project election winners, the loser comes out soon afterward to officially concede the race. Yet when decision desks announced that Arizona’s secretary of state Katie Hobbs had defeated conservative firebrand Kari Lake in the state’s hotly contested gubernatorial election, no such concession came. One week later, Lake's position remains unchanged. Even though the election was called last Monday evening, Lake’s first definitive statement didn't come until four days later. In an interview with Mail Online on Friday, she blasted the election system in Arizona's Maricopa County as “worse than in banana republics.

Under today's gathering dark clouds, a reread of Nineteen Eighty-Four shows how the otherwise prescient George Orwell was wrong to think people were going to have to be tortured into submission. Half of America (still psychologically locked down, vexed and vaxed) wouldn't have it any other way. The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is grim in a way 2022 would understand. The people of Orwell's future want to be controlled. They have come to prefer it. Freedom from choice makes them feel safe. People accept being monitored, and their media being censored. They think of it all with a sense of the inevitable — the only way to stay safe if they think of it at all. The all-seeing telescreens in their homes and the snitches and spies embedded in their lives are for the better, really.