"Corruption in a Woke World"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Corruption in a Woke World”

April 14, 2022

 

“Politics. n: The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

                                                                                                                                          The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

                                                                                                                                          Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

 

Power and money are at the heart of politics, so it is unsurprising that politics is rife with corruption. Corrupt politicians rank among the world’s oldest professions. In his 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain wrote: “There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.” Theodore Roosevelt is alleged to have once said, “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’ Humor aside, has corruption become more common? Certainly, we have moved beyond the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries’ big city political machines like Tammany Hall in New York and the Pendergast organization in Kansas City. But we live in a time and a place that venerates wealth and power.

 

President Truman famously refused a corporate board seat in 1953 – “You don’t want me. You want the office of the president, and that does not belong to me. It belongs to the American people and its not for sale.” His decision can be contrasted to the wealth accumulated by ex-presidents Bill Clinton ($80 million) and Barack Obama ($70 million). George W. Bush has an estimated net worth of $40 million. Unlike Messrs. Clinton and Obama, Mr. Bush entered the Presidency with an estimated $20 million. And then we have the greatly resisted Donald Trump who became the first individual to lose a billion dollars while President. Yet he is the one cited by an honor-challenged media as being the most corrupt.

 

Since Clinton’s and Obama’s wealth was made after they left the White House, they may not meet a common definition of corrupt: “to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.” However, both diverged from the moral standards enunciated by Mr. Truman when he left the Presidency. Clinton and Obama had no qualms in leveraging their fame (or infamy) into book contracts and speaking engagements. Mainstream media’s lack of interest in their extraordinary (and quick) wealth accumulation may be explained by the fact we live in a material age, as Madonna sang almost forty years ago: “You know we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl.” The hypocritical woke elite publicly lament income and wealth inequality, while privately celebrating their own riches behind gated compounds.

 

The word “corrupt” derives from the Latin cor (altogether) and rumpere (break). Its meaning is broader than simply selling access for dollars, which President Biden’s son Hunter has done in China, Russia and Ukraine, activities “which,” wrote Kimberly Strassel in the April 8, 2022 edition of the Wall Street Journal, “raises questions about counterintelligence and extortion, even as it puts a spotlight on how honest President Biden has been in claiming no knowledge of his son’s doings.”

 

Corruption can refer to any action that results in dishonest and immoral behavior. It can refer to an organization that has debased its raison d’être – the United Nation’s Human Rights Council comes to mind. Corruption escalates in our woke world. In his recent memoir One Damn Thing After Another, William Barr wrote about the blitzkrieg of progressive ideological thinking: “The essential factor, in my view, was the corruption of the mainstream news media beginning around the turn of the century.” False stories of Russia-collusion during the 2016 Presidential election was manifest of media corruption, and it was corruption within Congress and intelligence agencies that led to Robert Mueller’s $40 million fruitless search for corroborating evidence of Russian interference. It was the corruption of ethics that allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to sit on a story of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer for over a year, a story written up by the New York Post on October 19, 2020 and then banned on social media. It was fifteen months before mainstream news outlets acknowledged the laptop and its contents. The intelligence services have yet to admit their role in withholding information. Woke corruption is pervasive. It raises fear in corporate boardrooms; it dominates Hollywood; it proliferates in colleges and universities, which shut down debate and cancel harmful (read conservative) speech, while claiming their mission is to seek truth. 

 

This is not a blanket condemnation of all politicians, government bureaucrats and members of the woke community. Not all are corrupt and not all news sources are propagandists. But many are. Not all universities are hotbeds of progressive nihilists and not all boardrooms bow to woke ideologies. Serving the public as an elected representative is an honorable task and most who go to Washington do so to improve the lives of their constituents, but there are those who fit Ambrose Bierce’s description and who will, with the help of a compliant press, use all means to personally benefit. The decision by the jury in Grand Rapids last week to acquit Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta of conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer was an example of corruption embedded in the FBI’s “Praetorian Guard” mentality of entrapping opponents of favored politicians. 

 

The world will never be rid of corrupt politicians, moralizing news reporters, social media suppressors, sanctimonious bureaucrats, obsequious business leaders and progressive professors. While cynicism may be unhealthy, skepticism about what we read, hear and watch is not. We should read extensively, retain our moral standards and form our own conclusions, while remembering we are part of a larger community. We should be wary of politicians bearing false promises. We should remember President Reagan’s warning of the nine most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

"Will Cooler Heads Prevail?"

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Will Cooler Heads Prevail?”

January 13, 2021

 

“Traditional American democracy is ‘deliberative democracy,’ a process by which elected

representatives use reason and debate to shape public policy. Participatory democracy

tells the aggrieved: Never mind the legislature. Go to the streets to get what you want.”

                                                                                                                                Mary Anastasia O’Grady

                                                                                                                                Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                                January 11, 2021

 

Sadly, we have moved away from the concept of a legislature deliberating, and respectively (and reflectively) debating what is in the best interest of Americans. The metaphor of the squeaky wheel getting the grease is more fitting in an atmosphere where the disenchanted or ‘victims’ take to the streets. This past summer’s Antifa and BLM protests turned into destructive and lethal riots in cities across the country. Last week’s riot, which emanated from a giant Trump rally, reached a crescendo when dozens of Trump supporters (and perhaps others) stormed the U.S. Capitol.

 

Why has this happened? In August 2014, Ashley Parker, writing on the front page of the New York Times, noted: “A generation ago, here in the Senate Dining Room, Mike Mansfield, a Democrat of Montana and majority leader, and George Aiken, a Republican of Vermont, met most mornings to have breakfast together, a scene almost unimaginable in today’s polarized climate.” Now, six and a half years later, polarization has worsened into a hyper-partisanship that is probably the worse since the pre-Civil War days. It is not only politicians and extremists who face diametrical opposition, families and friends have become isolated because of political differences.

 

The question is why? The United States has never been wealthier or militarily more powerful. Soldiers have been brought home from, seemingly endless, overseas wars. More young people are in college than ever before and now women outnumber men on campuses. Poverty has declined. Employment and incomes for minorities reached record levels a year ago, and the segregation of the 1950s is a distant memory.  The nation has become energy independent for the first time since 1957, according to the Institute for Energy Independence. Government and industry, working together created a vaccine in record time. Why is there no effort to look at what has been done correctly, and then build on mutual successes, rather than focusing on grievances? Perhaps it is an excess of leisure time? Perhaps the ubiquity of the internet, social media, C-SPAN and 24-hour-news no longer allow time for reflection.

 

As partisanship intensifies, hope for reconciliation fades. Calls for unity and healing are offset by acts of retribution and division. We see it in Washington, and I see it in responses to my essays. Democrats have used identity politics, as a means to reach out to minorities and women. However, by their nature, identity politics, which serve to divide, are racist and sexist. Universities, media and big tech companies have exorcised conservative speech.

 

Amidst this maelstrom, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced their theme, one badly needed: America United. We can only hope this time unity takes traction. Every president’s inaugural has made similar requests, including President Trump’s, yet disunity continues to rise. Mr. Biden faces opposition to unity from his own party. Both Senator Chuck Schumer and House Leader Nancy Pelosi have called for the invocation of the 25^th Amendment or the impeachment of Mr. Trump. Do they believe that such actions will help unify the nation, when there is a week to Inaugural? Mr. Trump will be gone on January 20. It was his acts of self-destruction that caused Republicans to lose the Senate and that will tarnish his legacy. The small number of rioters who invaded the Capitol did more harm to Mr. Trump and the Republican Party than did four years of persistent Democrat opposition. Kimberly Strassel put it well in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal: “The pity is that Mr. Trump’s conflagration will mostly harm the Americans he went to Washington to help. They will bear the higher taxes, the higher costs of regulation, the higher unemployment, the loss of freedoms.” Is piling on in his last days the way to mollify the 74 million Americans who voted for him in November? 

 

A few readers have told me that they are so incensed by Mr. Trump’s behavior that he belongs in jail. But they were not so outraged by the behavior of the Obama Administration four years ago when agents from the FBI and the Justice Department used a phony dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and that alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 election, to harass and intimidate Mr. Trump and his incoming Administration. Most were silent during this past summer when thugs from Antifa and BLM killed people and destroyed property, including minority-owned businesses. We don’t need condescending hypocrites. We need people to take responsibility for their actions, and we need an honest accounting of events.

 

As conservatives, we must not descend into the rabbit hole of immoral equivalence. Just because Democrats behaved badly is no excuse for Republicans to up the ante. With Trump, because of the swamp that had become Washington, we willingly (and knowingly) made a pact with the Devil. In my opinion, Mr. Trump is not a bad man. He is flawed, but who amongst us is not? Conservatives pride themselves in a belief that morality is absolute, not relative. Gerard Baker, in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, wrote: “The path for a reinvigorated conservative movement is a narrow but fruitful one. It must articulate and address the legitimate grievances of Americans, while resisting the temptation to win them over with simplistic fictions.” Extreme partisanship sees the world as black or white, but grey is the dominant color.

 

Special moments bring opportunities. This is such a time. By the end of the day on January 6, with two weeks to go to inauguration, Mr. Trump was finished as a politician and his legacy was impaired if not destroyed. I write that even though Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and a distinguished civil rights lawyer, wrote of Mr. Trump’s speech to protesters: It [the speech] “was misguided and wrong but completely protected by the First Amendment.” No matter how culpable Mr. Biden may feel Mr. Trump to be for last Wednesday’s invasion of the Capitol, he should not remain silent. He should try conciliation rather than accusation. The late Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli once wrote words that speak to us today: “Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.” Mr. Biden has a unique opportunity, not to forgive Mr. Trump, but to reach out to the millions who voted for him. This will not be easy, as hatred for Mr. Trump has been a unifying factor among Democrats. But this moment will pass once Mr. Biden is inaugurated, and more pressing matters face him, and intolerance, once again, rules the way forward. 

 

Will cooler heads prevail? The odds would say no, but surprising things happen. One of the better comments I have read about that fateful afternoon of January 6 was from First Lady Melania Trump, a woman whom the media has largely ignored: “It is inspiring to see that so many have found a passion and enthusiasm in participating in an election, but we must not allow that passion to turn to violence.” Words that cool in an over-heated time.

"Resistance (At All Costs)" by Kimberley Strassel

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“Resistance (At All Costs)” by Kimberley Strassel

December 10, 2019

“Her fact-filled reporting exposes a simple but hidden truth:

The Resistance is violating the norms it claims to care so much about,

leaving a lasting and damaging mark on the country.”

                                                                                                Mollie Hemingway

                                                                                                Senior Editor, The Federalist

                                                                                                Advance Praise for Resistance

Kimberley Strassel is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and writes a weekly political column, “Potomac Watch.” This book, her second, should be read by all, especially by those who feel Mr. Trump’s behavior justifies any and all resistance: to the man, his Presidency and even to those who speak or write positively about him or his policies. Sadly, it won’t be. But, if it were, there would be a better understanding of the harm done to our democracy by “haters” and how politicized the federal bureaucracy has become. There would be a greater recognition that the real threats to the freedoms we take for granted come not from the flawed Mr. Trump but from those whose hatred knows no bounds.

Ms. Strassel defines the Resistance as “…the legions of Americans who were resolutely opposed to the election of Trump, and who remain angrily determined to remove him from office.” The full title of her book is Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters are Breaking America. She deliberately avoided using the word “critics,” as the “haters” do not believe in nuance. In their view, one cannot disapprove of the man yet approve of his policies. As Ms. Strassel wrote, haters view everything to do with Trump in “black-and-white morality. You either hate the man, or you are as bad as the man.” – Witness what is happening to Attorney General William Barr.  (From personal experience, I am sensitive to this issue. While I have been critical of Mr. Trump’s behavior, language and character, I support many of his policies – tax reform; deregulation; exposing sanctimonious, prejudiced bureaucrats; support for Israel; demanding that Europeans pay more for NATO; levying heavier sanctions on Russian oligarchs; taking the U.S. out of the toothless Paris Accord; appointing conservative judges who practice Constitutional restraint and advocate for justice, not social justice; confronting China on the stealing of our technology, etc. I believe the disruption he has brought to Washington has been good for the cleansing of the City’s soul. Nevertheless, for stating my opinions, I have been called an insensitive racist.)

The infestation of hatred reaches deep into government’s bureaucracy and affects us all. “…it should worry every American that prosecutors and law enforcement officials are willing to smear elected officials – just to hide their secrets.”. These same non-elected bureaucrats have come to understand that “there are few immediate consequences to balking congressional subpoenas…that they have the ability to keep their actions hidden in the longer term.” This attitude extends to the judiciary, with the insertion of “political animus into our judicial system [that] is undermining American belief in a blind Lady Justice.” Prejudicial

Lower courts have forced the Supreme Court to intervene more than usual. The media, too, has become part of the resistance. Ms. Strassel concludes her observations on the press with a question: “What defined the media breakdown that started in 2016 was their destruction of standards in aid of peddling a fiction – the Trump-Russia collusion narrative…The country needs a fair and balanced press; post-Trump, how does the industry ever gain that trust back?”

Mr. Trump is called a demagogue and a despot by the “haters,” a man who will destroy democracy. Yet, he has not governed by Executive Order to the extent his immediate predecessor did. He has reduced, not increased, the size of government. With his real estate holdings in Europe, Asia and South America, he has been accused of violating the Emoluments Clause, yet Forbes estimates his net worth declined by 30% during the first two years of his Presidency. In contrast, the Clinton’s net worth went from zero in 2000 to an estimated $240 million today, much of it from foreign governments’ donations to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was a New York Senator, Secretary of State and while she was running for President as the Democrat nominee in 2015-2016. Forbes estimates that the Obama’s net worth has increased thirty-fold in the three years since he left the Presidency. What would Harry Truman say?

There are those who will claim that Ms. Strassel is too prejudiced, too wrapped up in her opinions that the intelligence community of James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper used their offices to hamper the candidacy of Mr. Trump and to further their own political interests – that she is too consumed with this narrative to be an unbiased, dispassionate observer. However, the facts she offers and the perspective she provides tell a compellingly different tale.

Finally, this is a story about the risks of big government and the dangers from its octopus-like arms, which encroach on the rights of the people. In an article in last month’s National Review, Victor Davis Hanson wrote: “…by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it. So, naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives.” Ms. Strassel quotes Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) during the final days of the Kavanaugh hearings, perhaps the nadir for Trump haters (or, at least, until the impeachment hearings), as vindictiveness and hyperbole spread like wildfire through Congress: “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.”

Since this book is unlikely to be read by those targeted, it is unlikely to heal what divides us. We will go on, two halves of a bivalve, separated by a hatred that precludes reconciliation. “Haters” must learn to tolerate political differences, recognize that one can like a politician’s policies without loving the individual, and we all must acknowledge that, as Americans, we are citizens of an exceptional and special nation. Instead of letting hatred define our times, we should thank God we can call America our home.

"The Resilience of Donald J. Trump"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

 “The Resilience of Donald J. Trump”

November 20, 2019

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“The oak fought the wind and was broken; the willow bent when it must and survived.”

                                                                                    The Fires of Heaven

                                                                                    Robert Jordan (1948-2007)

                                                                                    American author

President Trump is an anomaly – an oak that has not broken. Whether one is a fan or a critic of the President, one has to admit that no previous President has been subjected to such pressure by those who simply hate the man, not for his policy choices, but for his character. Yet, to borrow a word from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, he is “antifragile;”[1] he grows stronger under pressure.

Admittedly, there are times when it is difficult, even for one who finds the Left’s tactics offensively offensive, to defend the man – his spontaneous Tweets and his derogatory comments about those who oppose him. But then I think of the heinous treatment he has received by a far-left media and politicians who have abandoned all senses of decency and respect, and I recognize that it is not Mr. Trump who is in the wrong. And I think of the task he has given himself – the draining of Washington’s swamp, a swamp filled with administrators, lobbyists, journalists and elected officials, all members of the “deep state” whose life blood depends on a secretive and expanding bureaucracy. And I remember Senator Chuck Schumer’s warning to him against taking on the intelligence establishment. He did, and he has reaped the whirlwind of their fury. Yet his continued resilience is critical to the continuance of our democratic Republic.

He is called a demagogue, a populist, an authoritarian, a man able to rally people but undeserving of the office and unable to govern. He is compared to Hitler and Stalin. TV and movie celebrities have called for his assassination. Yet, he does not break. Not only is he resilient, but his energy, despite his age, is boundless. Like Abraham Lincoln’s inspired choice of Ulysses Grant, “he fights.”

Despite these constant attacks, consider his accomplishments – think of tax reform, which lowered corporate taxes and lowered personal income taxes, but raised them for the wealthy in high-taxed states, like New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut. Consider the originalist judges he has appointed, including two to the U.S. Supreme Court. He has taken on the over-regulated state. In his first twenty-two months in office, he issued 65% fewer “significant” regulations (those with costs that consume $100 million annually) than did President Obama at the same point and 51% fewer than did President George W. Bush. And he exceeded his goal of rescinding two regulations for every new one introduced.

At the same time, he has overseen an economy that has grown significantly faster than it did under his predecessor who had the advantage of an economy first recovering from a severe recession. On October 4, CNBC reported that there have never been so many Black and Hispanics in the workforce. The jobless rate for all workers, 3.6%, is the lowest on record. He has taken the U.S. out of the worthless Iranian nuclear deal and the toothless Paris Agreement. He has called out the United Nations for their subversive views toward Israel, and he did what every President has promised to do since 1995 when the Jerusalem Embassy Act was signed by President Clinton in 1995, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He forced NATO members to increase spending for their own defense, and, as promised in his campaign, he has brought our soldiers home from wars where they served as police forces. He has directly confronted China’s stealing of our technology and highlighted the border crisis. He has met with the dictator Kim Jong-un, in an attempt to deter nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula. At home, he has fought a culture of wokeness, political correctness and identity politics that threatens our schools and universities with ignorance, a lack of diversity of opinions and renewed segregation. As well, he has addressed the issue of victimization that serves to keep the poor and less fortunate in a perpetual state of dependency and despair.

His resilience is needed, for the media and political left have invested heavily in the narrative they have sold to the American people – an illegal President, a Russian agent and a man who seeks to destroy democracy. Democrats recognize that the best defense is a good offense. They are worried of the fragility of their arguments. It is possible, if not likely, that the forthcoming Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on surveillance abuses by the DOJ and FBI, in regard to the Trump campaign and FISA Court applications in 2016, could implicate some big names, including James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, and even Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Attempting to deflect that report, as well as the investigation being conducted by John Durham into possible FBI misconduct, as it pertains to the Russian probe, has caused Democrats to go bonkers, with an impeachment without a crime and a whistle blower who will not appear. Without his resilience, Americans might never learn of the truth as to what transpired during the 2016 campaign.

In contrast to the ‘willows’ on the Left, like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden who change policies as their audiences change, Mr. Trump does not pander to the media or tell selected constituents only what they want to hear, nor does he repeat to whomever will listen what is currently popular. The “fourth estate,” Edmund Burke’s term for an independent and disinterested press that he saw as a wall against corruption and collusion within government, has foregone independence and disinterest to become advocates. In a 2018 survey conducted by Arizona State University and Texas A&M University, and quoted by Kimberley Strassel in her book Resistance, only 4.4% of mainstream journalists described themselves as leaning right. Journalists report only that which accords with their preconceived ideas. Bias, as Ms. Strassel wrote, comes from “insularity.” It is unity of opinion that binds them.

Those who resist Mr. Trump consider themselves knights errant. They see themselves as the chosen ones to remove the man seen as the epitome of evil. In seeking to destroy him, they target all those who work with him and who support him, caring nothing for the effect they have on the individual’s family. Rough politics is nothing new. Congressional sessions leading up to the Civil War were sometimes physically violent. But today’s viciousness and vindictiveness on live TV and on social media are different. It is not just Mr. Trump. Those named or nominated to serve in Mr. Trump’s Administration are railed against on national television. Their families are subjected to personal attack; their homes are picketed. Who can ever forget the insults hurled at Justice Brett Kavanaugh by lying, supercilious and vindictive Senators? The willingness to destroy an individual’s family is new and ugly. It is no wonder that turnover within the Administration has been high.

While the resistance is about stopping Mr. Trump, it is also about protecting the privileged positions of members of the “deep state,” especially those who might be exposed by the Horowitz and Durham reports. And, keep in mind, Oak trees may break, but Willows die from rot. Mr. Trump’s resilience is critical to getting the truth out, then letting the chips fall as they will. Fiat Justitia ruat caelum.

                                               

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[1] Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012