Politics

Following the Capitol Hill riot of January 6, a fair number of elected leaders — mostly Democrats — and law enforcement officials expressed their belief that an armed insurrection was in the works. Hostile forces were said to ready to attack Washington intent on overthrowing the government. To forestall this, fences topped with razor wire were installed and members of the National Guard were kept on active duty. March 4 was rumored to be the date set for this uprising. No army of insurrectionists appeared on March 4 or any other date. Nor as far as anyone can tell was there ever a prospect for such an attack. On March 1, the razor wire was removed from one of the tall fences, but reinstalled on a shorter fence across the street, closer to the Capitol.

Marjorie Taylor Greene held a press conference late last week. It took place inside, meaning the Jews with the space laser must have been at red alert once again. The raison d’être for Greene’s shindig was to announce that she’d been banned from Twitter. Which raises the question: what do I have to do to get arrested in this town? I recently reactivated my own Twitter account after a blessed hiatus and I would give anything to be banished from that cesspool. How do you get hoosegowed? Apparently all you have to do is what everyone else on Twitter is doing: Greene was banned for spreading ‘COVID misinformation’.

Listening to the testy exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and St — er, Dr Anthony Fauci the other day, I couldn’t help but think both of these famous lines from Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Marmion’: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!’ ...and also this excellent ‘completion’ by J.R. Pope (‘A Word of Encouragement’): ‘But when we’ve practiced for a while, How vastly we improve our style!’ Sen. Paul began by reminding the ubiquitous doctor of Section 1001 of the US Criminal Code, which makes it a felony, carrying a prison term of up to five years, for lying to Congress.

For four years the mainstream media kept a tally of every lie President Trump ever told. Fact-checkers like the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler and CNN’s Daniel Dale centered their lives around Well Ackchyually-ing Trump at every opportunity. How times have changed! President Biden’s lies are constantly written off as either harmless gaffes or exaggerations. Even the most blatant falsehoods from Joe receive little or no criticism from the press. Instead, journalists speculate on what they think the 78-year-old probably meant to say. During the Trump administration, fact-checking hubs like Snopes and Reuters had no problem issuing black and white verdicts on the president’s statements. Suddenly there are 46 shades of gray.

I didn’t meet Davell Gardner Jr. Yet his photo — and the bubbly personality it captures — will forever remain etched in my mind. The picture shows a baby with fuzzy curls; trusting, happy eyes; a beaming, gap-toothed smile. His chubby, loaf-like baby hands remind me of my own kids’ hands, which I often can’t help kissing or blowing raspberries on. There he is, crawling on his dad’s belly, enjoying one of the last playtimes of his life. On July 12 last year, a convoy of three cars pulled up in front of a residential building on Pulaski Street, in Brooklyn. Suspecting potential gang activity, officers in an NYPD cruiser flashed their lights, and one of the cars, a Volkswagen Jetta, sped away. The cops gave chase, exactly as the gangsters had hoped they would.

Last week, Texas Democrats fled the state on a chartered plane to Washington DC, maskless with a case of Miller Lite in tow, to a chorus of whoops and cheers of our national media. As Texas attempts to pass new election integrity legislation, or to Democrats and our media writ large, ‘voting restrictions’, Texas Democrats decided to object to the Senate filibuster, by participating in a filibuster. They were doing the rounds on CNN and MSNBC, appearing on morning shows or being celebrated on them (The View). The irony of celebrating a minority party as ‘brave’ few for mucking up the legislative process was apparently completely lost on our journalistic elite.

Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable.

Porn star Brandi Love made waves at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa this weekend after the group revoked her VIP pass. Love — whose real name is Tracey Lynn Livermore — ticked off social conservatives on Twitter when she posted photos at the event with the caption, ‘It's good to be around so many young conservatives. Gives me some hope!’ https://twitter.com/brandi_love/status/1416489638592659459?s=20 Hours later, Turning Point sent Love an email notifying her that her pass had been ‘revoked’ but said she is welcome to apply for other conferences ‘in the future’. Love responded by accusing the organization of being a ‘cult’ and a ‘Trojan horse’ for organized religion.