Roger Kimball

The future of the GOP is the same as the future of the Democratic party. That is because the parties are not two things, but (to compare low things with high) somewhat akin to that union described in the Catholic creed: ex patre filioque procedit: ‘it proceeds from the father and the son’, one substance, two faces (well, three, really, but we can leave that to one side). As I have had occasion to observe elsewhere, the current political disposition of the United States is not a two-party system. It is at most a one-and-a-half party system. There is a regime party, which basically calls the shots. And there is a junior, adjunct party that has different branding but sells mostly the same goods under different labels.

Tomorrow, The Committee will bundle up Joe Biden, titular president of the United States, and take him for a nice ride across the big, big ocean in a very shiny airplane. Weeee! No details have been released yet about what flavors of ice cream he will enjoy, but The Committee’s press arm has been full of stories with titles like 'Three things to watch on Biden's first foreign trip’. This is not a difficult assignment. The big boys and girls who arrange Joe’s play-dates have told all his favorite friends in the media exactly what to say. And just a couple of days ago they surprised Joe with an article in one of his favorite newspapers, the Washington Post. It was just so nice. A couple of the minders got together and wrote the article and then put Joe’s name on it.

Will January 6 go down as another 'day of infamy,' an assault against America akin in its seriousness to December 7, which commemorates Pearl Harbor? Maybe, but not for the reasons that comparison suggests. Sure, many irresponsible commentators — but here I repeat myself — and Democratic politicians compared the January 6 protest at the Capitol to December 7, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, even (thank you Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer) to the Civil War. Back in February, I noted here that there were a few differences between these two sets of events.

Well, that didn’t take long. Less than four months into the Biden-Harris deep-state maladministration and we have roaring inflation, the most disastrous jobs report in recent memory, rising unemployment, spiking gas prices, an imploding stock market, devastating cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and a janus-faced crisis on our Southern border in which tens of thousands of disease-ridden illegal migrants are huddled into cages while thousands more fan out across the fruited plain taking jobs from Americans even as they infect us with COVID. Quick work, Joe! And of course that is just the tip of the proverbial North Atlantic iceberg into which His Senileness is steering the ship of state.

Hysteria, thy name is Biden. Or maybe it’s Walensky, named for Dr Rochelle Walensky, aspiring soap opera star and newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Cons. Maybe that’s not quite right, but I am sure the acronym is CDC and I am just as sure that the politicized directive pouring out of its offices count as some sort of hoax or con game. Did you catch her performance the other day? It was extraordinary. There she was, fighting back tears, telling her captive audience that she was 'scared’, warning of 'impending doom’, a 'fourth wave’ if the entire populace of the United States did not grab their masks to cower under their socially-distanced beds until further notice. It’s amazing how surreal reality TV can be.

Just a sec. Let me check my notes. Ah, right. Hurgh. 'My message to the American people is: help is here. Hope is on the way.' 'Can I go home now?' he asked with his eyes. Joe Biden looked like he wanted to call an end to his first presidential press conference before he even got started. But he soldiered on. Having prepared for a few weeks to talk to — what, seven? Eight? — carefully selected members of the press, he was not about to give up on this chance to bask in some adulation. And boy was the adulation ever on offer. 'Was it because you were such a a nice man that you had more success than the awful Voldemort who proceeded you?' oozed one female correspondent. No that’s not a direct quote. The original was more embarrassing.

Thoughtful observers of life often comment on the richness of the English language, its huge polyglot vocabulary, its precision, it sinewy expressiveness. It is doubtless politically incorrect to say so, but English has also shown itself to be a conspicuous ally of political liberty. I have commented on this in the past, noting that 'there seems to be some deep connection between the English language and that most uncommon virtue, common sense'. Speakers of English can be plenty extravagant, it may go without saying, but there is something about English — exactly why, I do not know — that acts to tether thought to the empirical world.

As I write, jury selection for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin is about to begin in Minneapolis. You remember Derek Chauvin, right? He is the (former) policeman charged with the murder of St George Floyd, race martyr (also drug addict, woman abuser, and career criminal). Chauvin and his three colleagues disgusted civilized opinion last spring when a bystander’s video clip of Officer Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck was released. Nine minutes. Chauvin kept Floyd pinned to the ground for some nine minutes. ‘I can’t breathe,’ Floyd can be heard crying. An ambulance eventually came to whisk Floyd off to hospital. Too late. Floyd died, murdered by the brutish policeman who cruelly, gratuitously, asphyxiated him by kneeling on his neck, cutting off his air supply.

It’s hard to keep them all straight, but among the many diktats emitted by the Biden administration during its first days in office, one deserves special commendation for its brazen mendacity. I mean the ‘Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government’. The key word, as we’ve heard over and over again these last few weeks, is ‘equity’. The diktat (a more accurate term for what is happening than ‘Executive Order’) promises ‘a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all’ by ‘affirmatively advancing,’ well, ‘equity’. If you think you discern a little whiff of tautology, you’re right. You are also right if, on second sniff, you catch the acrid scent of contradiction.