Roger Kimball

Back in the summer of 2015, all the cleverest people made fun of Donald Trump for obsessing about China. One of them even made a video compilation of the candidate saying 'China' over and over again on the hustings. Ha ha ha. It seems distinctly less funny now. There is a reason that the novel coronavirus is popularly denominated the Wuhan flu or CCP virus. As Bill Gertz observed in How China's Communist Party Made the World Sick, 'the world does not need to prove that the communist regime in Beijing was responsible for the escape of the coronavirus from a lab' in order to cast a jaundiced eye upon its many malefactions.

‘A republic, if you can keep it.’ That was Ben Franklin’s famous response when asked, as the Constitutional Convention ended in 1787, what sort of government the delegates had crafted. Time was, I thought Franklin's answer droll. But on July 4, 2020, I wonder. A republic depends on the rule of law. The rule of law has been having a hard time of it lately. So: can we keep it? I have never been tempted to equate the equality celebrated by the Declaration of Independence with egalitarianism. The philosopher Harvey Mansfield was obviously correct, I believe, when he spoke of the 'self-evident half-truth that all men are created equal.' Differences in talent, disposition, family situation, and plain dumb luck inevitably result in differences in achievement.

Midway through Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, there occurs this exchange between two characters: ‘“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”’ The process of civilizational bankruptcy takes a similar course. Casual, seemingly isolated attacks on the fabric of civilization feel at first like so many harmless insect bites. A speaker is shouted down. A statue is vandalized or removed. A college course once deemed essential is rebaptized as offensive: first it is pilloried, then it is canceled. People start quoting Tocqueville’s warning that in a democracy, as large inequalities dissolve, small inequalities are magnified, growing both rancid and rancorous.

So now they have come for Teddy Roosevelt. The large bronze statue of TR on horseback, flanked by a black man and an American Indian, will be removed from the spot it has graced since 1940 in front of New York’s Museum of Natural History. Why? According to Warren Wilhelm Jr — known to some as Bill de Blasio — the statue is being moved (to where no one yet knows) ‘because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.’ Does it? I don’t think so. I think both flanking figures exude strength and dignity. I also think they stand in solidarity with the jovially commanding figure of Roosevelt.

Is Kayleigh McEnany the best Press Secretary in history? I think she may be. True, it’s early days. She was elevated to the position only in April and presided over her first briefing just a few weeks ago on May 1. But so far her tenure has been glorious. Despite having attended both Georgetown and Harvard, where she took a law degree, she remains quick-witted, forthright and occupies a cant-free zone that suffuses the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with a spirit of patriotic candor that is as welcome as it is rare in the self-involved purlieus of the so-called mainstream media. She is also, I think it important to observe, distinctly dishy, another advantage.

You have to hand it to the New York Times. They certainly know how to spin a story. Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr answered some questions about the ongoing criminal investigation into the so-called 'Russian collusion’ inquiry conducted by Robert Mueller and other people in the FBI and the Obama administration. He did not expect, he said, 'based on the information I have today,' that either President Obama or Vice President Biden would be the subject of a criminal investigation. 'Our concern over potential criminality,' he continued, 'is focused on others.’ Perhaps that acknowledgment would be grounds for sighs of relief from Martha’s Vineyard and wherever Joe Biden’s basement is.

Have we reached peak Cuomo? I think that the climacteric came when the media was aflutter with rumors that the governor of New York wore nipple rings. Alas, it turned out to be only a rumor, or so we have been assured. There are two questions that continue to bedevil Cuomo watchers. The first is whether his handling of the Wuhan Flu is the absolute worst of any governor or only among the worst. The second question is how, given how appalling his leadership has been, he has managed to float along with such high approval ratings (some say 80 percent). As to the first, we have a veritable litany of failure, much of it deadly.

Just moments ago, the news came in that Department of, um, Justice has dropped its — 'um' again — Gen. Michael Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser. 'The Government has determined,' the Court filing read, 'pursuant to the Principles of Federal Prosecution and based on an extensive review and careful consideration of the circumstances, that continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice.' You think? It’s being blared about the internet that now, finally, at last, the 30-year military veteran has got justice. Not yet he hasn’t.

Among other things, the case of Gen. Michael Flynn reminds us of the old adage that things are always worse than you think. Right from the beginning of the attempted coup some of us took to calling 'the Russian Collusion Delusion', it was clear that the hounding of President Trump and various aides and supporters was shaping up to be the greatest scandal in American political history. In September 2018, I wrote here that it had become 'abundantly clear that [both Flynn and George Papadopoulos] both were set up by the FBI as part of a deliberate attempt to delegitimize Trump’s presidency'. I didn’t know the half of it. Yes, we knew that Flynn had been bankrupted and pressured to plead guilty to a bogus charge of lying to the FBI.

I think it was Sir Charles Dilke who warned against ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’. I live in a small, fairly isolated neighborhood of about 100 houses on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. Most of my neighbors seem to be trying out for the part of Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death. Our neighborhood association issues frequent, increasingly shrill bulletins. Most appeal to the authority of the CDC, warning us and our children to stay at home, wear a mask and, should we dare to venture out, to keep at least six feet apart from one another. We are forbidden from congregating in public spaces. We are discouraged from socializing with friends inside.

Back on March 12, I noted in this space that one of the most potent effects of our latest Chinese import would be as a weapon of political propaganda — a new club, that is to say, which the Dems would wield to beat President Trump. It has taken a while for the Hephaestus of the Left to fashion the appropriate weapon. Back at the end of January, there was a brief moment where a stiletto was thought to be the weapon of choice. Trump suspended air travel from China of January 31: stab him with the charge of xenophobia, slice him with slur of racism, carve him up with the charge of overreacting. Towards the end of February, however, there was a sudden shift in sentiment. There were hardly any cases, even fewer fatalities, but the public-health tea kettles were screaming panic.

Anyone who doubts that Barack Obama has a sense of humor should take a look of his endorsement of Joe Biden to be president of the United States. Really, it’s a masterly performance, and delivered, mirabile dictu, with a straight face. Try it yourself. Grab a mirror. Assume your best 'I’m-being-serious-and-sincere' expression. Then say out loud that Joe Biden would bring 'leadership guided by knowledge and experience, honesty and humility, empathy and grace' to the Capital. https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/1250088269502709762?s=21 How’d you do? Crack a smile? Of course you did.