Politics

I come neither to bury Kamala nor to praise her. Commentary on her vice presidency is polarized. Harris’s well-known praise chorus is completely deranged. True, she is the first woman to become vice president, and only the second “person of color,” to use a term in vogue. These are historic achievements to those who understand history through the thick lens of demographic taxonomy. True, also, Harris has over the last year shown a near-total lack of the political skill generally needed to make a serious run at the presidency. She has been given large projects and failed to advance the administration’s goals. She has not improved as a speaker and comes across as indifferent, haughty and detached. Her approval ratings lag even those of her feckless boss.

The idea that what happened at the Capitol of January 6 was an “insurrection” was always a ridiculous and malevolent exaggeration. The passage of time has exposed that politically motivated lie and sent the rats scurrying for alternative explanations. Right on cue, we find a hobbyhorse leftist taking to the pages of the Washington Post — Jeff Bezos’s onshore publicity organ for the Democratic Party — to warn us against calling the protest at the Capitol an “insurrection.” The memo to Scribes and Pharisees has gone out. It’s no longer an “insurrection.” It’s been rebaptized a “sinister” act of “vigilantism.

The Ghislaine Maxwell trial resumed today with the defense’s presentation of its case, beginning with a procedural loss for the Maxwell team. The judge rejected the defense’s unusual request to allow some of their witnesses to testify anonymously. Maxwell’s attorneys claimed three witnesses feared they “might get a lot of unwanted attention.” Judge Alison J. Nathan ruled that because the defense did not claim the witnesses were victims or sexual assault survivors, no special exemptions applied to the general rule that witnesses in federal court must be publicly identified.

Biden needs to learn to live with the virus The writer Matthew Walther caused something of a stir yesterday with a piece in the Atlantic about attitudes towards the coronavirus in the rural corner of Michigan he calls home. “Outside the world inhabited by the professional and managerial classes in major metropolitan areas,” he writes, “many if not most, Americans are leading their lives as if Covid is over, and they have been for a long while.” Anyone who doesn’t live in or near a big, blue city — or any city-dwellers brave enough to don their safari jackets and venture out into rural America — will recognize Walther’s description.

Last night was Liz Cheney’s breakout moment. As Cheney read the various text messages from various Fox News luminaries and Donald Trump Jr. to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she milked the moment, lingering over memorable phrases such as "he’s got to condemn this shit ASAP." And yet Sonny boy's plea was ignored. The old man reveled in the feculent mayhem. Once seen as a neoconservative ogress, Cheney has now achieved full redemption, morphing into the darling of the mainstream media for her refusal to dismiss the mob on January 6 as a bunch of tourists who had accidentally strayed into the Capitol. This is Cheney’s High Noon.

Just in time for the holidays, lawmakers will soon approve another increase to the country’s debt limit, perhaps by as much as $2.5 trillion. And like so many of us this time of year, Uncle Sam will continue running up his credit card, spending money on things he can’t afford and often doesn’t really need. That said, there’s little doubt that the coming debt ceiling hike is a necessary (if self-serving) gift from our nation’s capital. After all, legislators from both parties have already authorized trillions in spending, knowing full well the country’s dismal fiscal situation.

Conservatives are taking a lot of heat these days regarding masculinity. David French in a recent piece at The Atlantic criticized Josh Hammer, David Azerrad, and Donald Trump, among others, for promoting what French labels a false view of manliness — namely, one that is unafraid to speak unpopular truths regardless of the consequences. It is a farcical “Trumpist toughness” that “treat[s] Twitter as their Omaha Beach.” Washington Post columnist Christine Emba, meanwhile, recently mocked Republican Senator Josh Hawley for being a “champion of masculine virtue” but failing “to engage more deeply on the level of policy and ideas.

Finding fault takes finesse. Oh, anybody can complain. We are a nation of complainers, carping at everything from breakfast vittles to late-night TV. We complain about our politicians, our prognosticators and our pop stars. But these complaints run like water down a windowpane in the same old channels to the same wet destination. Finding fault — finding new faults in a familiar subject — is much harder. It takes talent. It takes a critic. I am well aware that these days a lot of Americans complain that we are too divided. The nation bristles with parti pris. We revile the exponents of political views opposed to our own. We sneer at their provincialism, their pissant pettiness and their lack of civility, for which they should rightly be crushed.

A Washington Post opinion writer believes that President Biden is receiving worse treatment from the media than Trump did. It is a laughable theory, so naturally the media loves it. Dana Milbank’s piece is headlined, “The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here’s proof.” Using a data analytics unit, called forge.ai, the writer claims he was able to confirm his sneaking suspicion: journalists are being meaner to the “empathizer-in-chief”, as the Hill once dubbed Biden, than they are to “The Monster Who Feeds on Fear”, as the New York Times once dubbed Trump.