THE MORAL SUPERIORITY OF PROGRESSIVE HOTHOUSE PLANTS

 

Beware of The Deadly Progressive Touch

Reflections on leftists being eaten alive by their own ideologues.

May 1, 2024 by Victor Davis Hanson 

Recently, viral videos have highlighted the furor—and narcissism—of progressive elites when they rarely face the consequences of their own actions.

The most hilarious video was the defiant DA of New York’s Monroe County, dripping with elite condescension. She felt she had the right to go 20 mph over the speed limit, ignore a patrol car signaling her to pull over, and then in her garage dress down police officers for daring to treat her like she was a mere citizen.

Another was the Emory professor screaming (“I am a professor!”) when handcuffed and hauled off her campus by Georgia law enforcement. She exited whining to cameras that she had only “lightly” hit a policeman on the head (“I impulsively hit him on the head very lightly to get his attention and they grabbed me.”). And then there was the Bakersfield fiery leftist who bragged to the City Council about murdering them in their homes, only to flicker and weep in court when facing felony indictments.

Progressive hothouse plants assume their supposed moral superiority exempts them from living by the rules in the manner of others. But sometimes it is not just the police who anger them, but the very Frankensteinian monsters they created who do not cooperate with their degreed and elected enablers.

In California, an epidemic of crime, from theft to assault, has struck liberal politicians in the last few months, including most recently Adam Schiff, the leftwing mayors of San Jose—Matt Mahon—and Los Angeles—Karen Bass, and even the unhinged district attorney of Oakland Pamela Price. Critical legal theory, no-bail, and defund the police apparently offer no protection.

Sen. Chuck Schumer thought it a neat trick in 2020 to assemble a pro-abortion throng outside the Supreme Court doors, and threaten Justices Kavanagh and Gorsuch by name. He grandstanded that they would not know what would soon “hit” them as they reaped the “whirlwind”. Now a pro-Hamas whirlwind hit his own home, in the fashion leftists not long also did with impunity to Supreme Court Justices’ homes—then to the sudden silence of the otherwise loud Schumer.

Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky kindly invited his own law students to his home for dinner—only to have his hospitality hijacked by pro-Hamas activist students that commandeered a microphone to spout their drivel, leading to a scuffle with his wife. The cry-bully mob offered no exemption to the dean—who in antisemitic fashion was portrayed on campus posters as a veritable IDF vampire. They also seemed indifferent to (or emboldened by?) the fact that Chemerinsky in the past has often offered advice about how to get around statutes prohibiting race-based hiring by not explicitly mentioning the operative agenda of diversity. And of course, in the past he had encouraged more campus protests to combat “racism”.

Most college presidents, many hired under DEI pressures, are now being eaten alive by their own ideologues, shocked that pro-Hamas activists are at heart fascistic and anti-Semitic and, well yes, spout “hate speech”.

So terrified college presidents talk tough, virtue signaling to alumni and donors by issuing “deadlines”, and promising“consequences” —but otherwise usually ending up negotiating and extending or making new deadlines to their campus occupiers. So the pro-Hamas crowd takes over their campuses, and often forces all students either to finish the semester remotely or to have their graduation ceremonies cancelled or abbreviated. And all to the applause of Hamas in Gaza and delight of the mullahs in Iran.

The left in the last 30 years absorbed America’s main institutions and hallmarks. And now from Disney and Anheuser-Busch to the Ivy League to CNN and blue-state big cities, it has more or less destroyed their brands and reputations.

The progressive touch eventually turns everything to dross.

TRUMP VS THE LILLIPUTIANS

 

The Travesties of the Trump Trials

Tragically for the country, to stop this left-wing madness, the Trump travesties may not be the end, but the beginning of precisely what the Founders feared.

by Victor Davis Hanson  April 29/24

Do not believe the White House/mainstream media-concocted narrative that the four criminal court cases—prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis—were not in part coordinated, synchronized, and timed to reach their courtroom psychodramatic finales right during the 2024 campaign season. These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal efforts to emasculate him.

These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal efforts to emasculate him.

Three, most of the indictments either had no prior precedent in criminal law or will likely never be used again, at least against anyone left-wing. Moreover, many of the writs relied on manipulation of statutes of limitations.

Neither Bragg nor any other local prosecutor had previously transformed a supposedly local affidavit misdemeanor into a supposed federal campaign finance violation, a gambit so preposterous that it had been passed on by federal attorneys.

Letitia James was the first New York Attorney General to indict a state resident for the supposed crime of overvaluing real estate to obtain a loan, which was paid back timely and in full, to the profit of lending institutions. No bank, after auditing Trump’s assets and viability to pay back loans, was unhappy to loan to him. But all were quite happy to profit from the hefty interest—and would likely be happy to loan to him again.

James sought to make Trump a criminal without ever finding a crime, much less a victim. Nor, until the checkered and unethical career of Fani Willis, had any local prosecutor ever indicted an ex-president for a supposedly improper phone call questioning whether all the state’s votes had been fully counted.

Alvin Bragg’s case was nonexistent given the statute of limitations on supposed misdemeanors committed over six years prior—until Bragg transmogrified the accusations of minor crimes into felonies and, with them, extensions granted supposedly due to the COVID lockdowns.

In Carroll’s case, her unsubstantiated accusations of a sexual assault were also well past the statute of limitations until a left-wing New York legislator and unapologetic Trump hater passed a special law—a veritable bill of attainder aimed at Trump—waiving the statute of limitations for a year in cases of accusations of long-past sexual assault in the state of New York.

Four, all the indictments and suits took place in either blue cities, counties, or states. And most of the jury pools in or near New York, Atlanta, or Miami were or will be heavily Democrat. So far, the New York judges who have overseen Trump’s civil and criminal trials—Justices Engoron, Kaplan, and Merchan—were all liberals, appointed by Democrat or liberal politicians, and some have donated to Democrat causes. They were not shy about expressing disdain for defendant Trump. No changes in venues were ever allowed.

Five, all the prosecutors, Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis, are likewise either Democrats or associated with liberal causes. In the case of Bragg, James, and Willis, all three ran for office and raised money on promises and boasts of getting Donald Trump. And all three have now set the precedent that local and state prosecutors can warp the law and use it to go after an ex-president and leading presidential candidate of the opposite party for naked political purposes.

Six, all these cases were equally applicable to high-profile Democrat politicos. E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit was the most laughable of all the court dramas, but its outline and protocols just as easily could have applied to Tara Reade. She came forward to accuse candidate Biden of having sexually assaulted her years earlier—roughly about the same period’s as Carroll’s fluid timelines. Her story is about as believable or unbelievable as Carroll’s. But the difference was that whereas the media canonized the delusional and self-contradictory Carroll as a useful anti-Trump tool, it demonized Reade as a crazy loon and liar—and a potential impediment to Biden’s 2019-20 primary campaign.

Bragg had to torture the law to fabricate a federal campaign finance indictment against Trump. But Hillary Clinton clearly violated federal campaign statutes—and was variously fined—when she tried to hide her “opposition research” payments to Christopher Steele as “legal expenses.” In truth, Steele was hired and paid to concoct a fake anti-Trump dossier and likely should have been barred from working for a presidential campaign given he was not a U.S. citizen.

In the case of Smith, simultaneously with his case against Trump, his twin special prosecutor, Robert Hur, found that Joe Biden had unlawfully removed classified files for much longer than Trump (30 years plus), in a much less secure location (his rickety garage), and without a president’s authority to declassify his documents. Moreover, he had disclosed their contents to his ghostwriter, who destroyed evidence under subpoena by Hur. Yet unlike Trump, Biden was not charged, given that Hur claimed that Biden, in his opinion, was so old and amnesiac that he might win sympathy rather than a conviction from a jury.

Willis indicted Trump for supposedly trying to pressure officials to “find” missing Trump ballots, thus supposedly violating “racketeering” statutes, as he oversaw an attempt to find troves of ballots he thought had been cast for him. Of course, in the same state, Stacy Abrams, after losing the gubernatorial race of 2018, claimed she had actually won, despite losing by over 50,000 votes. She sued to overturn the election and then made a celebrity-political career touring the nation, falsely claiming she was the real governor and her victorious opponent was an illegitimate governor.

For that matter, in 2016, left-wing organizations, celebrities, and thousands of political operatives sought to overturn the Trump victory by appealing to the electors to renounce their states’ popular vote tallies and thus become “faithless electors.” In sum, there was a true conspiracy, or, better, a “racketeering” scheme, to use Willis’s parlance, to coordinate various groups to overturn the constitutional duties of electors to throw the election to Hillary Clinton. Clinton, along with the likes of ex-president Jimmy Carter and soon-to-be House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries, would continue to deny that Trump was the legitimately elected president.

In sum, the number of suits against and indictments against Trump grew in correlation to his political fortunes. They were designed in the election year 2024 to do what Democrat voters likely cannot. They are ridiculous and sui generis, and will never be used against anyone other than Trump. They have done more damage to democracy, the rule of law, and equal justice to the law than all of the antics that Trump is accused of.

Moreover, they will set in motion a dangerous tit-for-tat cycle of weaponization that threatens the very constitutional order of the United States.

If Trump is elected to restore the rule of equal justice, will a Republican special counsel revisit Robert Hur’s work and find ex-President Biden quite capable of standing trial for the crimes Hur has already investigated and confirmed?

Will then a new Republican-appointed FBI director order a SWAT-like raid, with Fox News forewarned and Newsmax reporters on the scene, to descend into the Biden beach house?

Will county and state prosecutors in Utah, Montana, and Oklahoma feel that to stop this cycle of illegality, they must charge the Biden family members by bootstrapping local indictments onto federal crimes?

Will conservative women in the future come forward in Arkansas, Idaho, and Alabama to claim that in their past, they now suddenly remember that decades ago a prominent Democrat candidate harassed them? Will their right-wing lawyers cherry-pick the proper red-state judge?

Will conservative district attorneys find ways to indict Joe Biden on the various imaginative bookkeeping and “loan repayments” used to disguise the fact his corrupt family received well over $20 million from illiberal foreign interests, much if not all of it camouflaged to avoid income taxes?

Will some South Carolina legislator get a bill of attainder passed in the legislature, ending the statute of limitations for a year for all those in 2016 who sought to undermine the electors and flip them to Hillary Clinton?

In August or September, will a right-wing state prosecutor and a conservative judge find that Joe Biden’s creative bookkeeping warrants a $450 million fine, payable before appeal?

And will Republican officials and judges in purple states move to get Biden’s name off the ballot?

Such scenarios are endless and, given the current precedents, could all be justified as desperate deterrent measures to shock the left into ceasing their efforts to sabotage our constitutional system and rule of law.

A final note. There is a divine order of balance in the world, one known variously by particular civilizations as kismet, nemesis, karma, or what goes around, comes around payback. We’ve already seen such forces at work: Sen. Schumer at the head of a mob at the doors of the Supreme Court, calling out threats to justices by name, only now finding pro-Hamas thugs circling his own home. Or Democrats during the Trump years straining to find ways to invoke the 25th Amendment, now humiliated into claiming a non-compos-mentis Joe Biden is “sharp as a knife.”

Tragically for the country, to stop this left-wing madness, the Trump travesties may not be the end, but the beginning of precisely what the Founders feared.

A NATION OF MORONS LED BY A CADRE OF PSYCHOPATHS

 Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

“The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.” — Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38 “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”

“After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans.”   - Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empre, Chapter 71 "Four Causes of Decay and Destruction."

 

When talking about the decline of empires, you are really deliberating about a process, not an event. The Roman Empire did not fall on a specific day due to a specific cause. It collapsed in stages over hundreds of years due to numerous reasons, each triggering events which compounded upon each other and ultimately led to the final collapse.

We are resting on the laurels of being the sole superpower, as our empire built on debt is slowly and systematically crumbling. He cited three reasons for the fall of the Roman Republic that resonated in 2007 regarding the American Empire (formerly a republic):

There has been a decline in moral values and political civility at home. Examples include the devaluation of life, greater self-centerdness by individuals and increased partisanship and ideological divides in Congress.

We now have an overextended military around the world. While the US military is unmatched as to its capabilities, it is under stress and stretched very thin.

There is fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. Our debt ratios are set to increase dramatically when the baby boomers retire.

In 2007 the annual deficit was $160 billion. In 2020 and 2021 it only took 20 days to accumulate $160 billion. The national debt in 2000 was $5.6 trillion. In 2007 it was $9 trillion. Today it stands at $34 trillion. Interest on the national debt now approaches $1 Trillion.

Well, the debt to GDP ratio has doubled from 62% in 2007 to 124% today. U.S. unfunded liabilities total $188 trillion. Personal debts total $25 trillion, with $1.8 trillion of student loan debt and $1.3 trillion of credit card debt. 

The decline in moral values and political incivility has reached civil war instigating levels of degradation, deviancy, and treasonous political activity. Not in our wildest dreams did we envision the grooming and trafficking of children, drag queen story hour for toddlers, pushing children to be mutilated and propagandized into believing they are the opposite sex, promoting deviancy, and having this degenerate behavior jammed down our throats by the government, corporations, and the media.

The fabric of our society is being torn to shreds and the left elitists encourage lawlessness, looting and murder, and the persecution of normal white Americans. The devaluation of our lives was never more evident than during the covid plandemic, where the annual flu was weaponized to lockdown the world, create havoc and chaos, institute totalitarian measures to abscond with our liberties and freedoms, destroy the lives of vaxx dissenters, and ultimately destroy the lives of millions who obeyed and were injected with the untested, gene altering, spike producing, Big Pharma enriching concoction.

In 2007, the Neo-cons had us fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan to enrich the military industrial complex, based on false WMD. Little did he know that twenty years after invading Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban, we would conduct a disastrous retreat and hand the country back to the Taliban, with a gift of about $10 billion in military hardware.

The defense budget in 2007, while fighting two wars, was $700 billion. Today the budget approaches $900 billion when we are supposedly not at war with anyone. With the Deep State firmly in control of both political parties, the arms dealers will always be swimming in your tax dollars, whether they are shipping their murderous wares to Zelensky, Israel, Taiwan, or any other country fighting our current mortal enemies – Russia, China, Syria, and Iran.

Winning wars to protect America has never been the goal. War is big business. The ruling class has no issue using a few hundred thousand poor patriotic useless eaters as cannon fodder in Iraq and Afghanistan to further enrich themselves. But it is much easier to create chaos and war in other countries and let their poor suckers die for a forlorn false cause, while providing weapons to both sides. 

We killed Ghaddafi and left Libya a smoking chaotic ruin, with Islamic terrorists running rampant. Obama created ISIS so we had a reason to destroy Syria and Assad. Russia obliterated ISIS and has successfully kept Assad in power, infuriating the neocons and provoking the next move on the global chessboard. All the Ukrainian Flag waving dolts who believe everything the regime media regurgitates, as instructed by their masters, are clueless as to why Biden and his neocon handlers are pushing us towards a direct conflict with Russia. Obama, Clinton, Victoria Nuland, John Brennan, McCain, Graham, and a slew of other Deep State lackeys overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine in 2014, because he was friendly towards Russia, initiating a domino effect in the Ukraine which has left us at the doorstep of World War III. 

The Roman economy was basically a rapine economy. Like all slave-owning societies, Rome had no middle class, a debased currency, and no export production – it lived by conquests, slave trade, and plundering the conquered provinces. Such economies can exist only as long as they expand; when the expansion ends, downfall is inevitable. See any resemblance to the American economy? When the Fed stops printing, it all comes crashing down. By the third century their currency was worthless, and a barter economy sprung to life.

Just as the Romans became fat and happy, enjoying the fruits of efforts, innovation and sacrifices put forth by prior generations, Americans have grown to believe they are the richest, freest, and most powerful nation on earth. They believe it is their privilege to rule the world. Just as the Romans hired mercenary armies to fight their wars because it was beneath their citizens to defend their vast empire, the U.S. used paid mercenaries (Blackwater) in Iraq and Afghanistan to fight their wars. Now we just outsource the dying to Ukrainians, Libyans, Syrians, and Somalis, while providing them the weapons, technology, and logistics to wage endless war on our behalf.

Tens of billions in weapons being handed to the most corrupt nation on earth – Ukraine – is simply insane. Biden acts like a Roman emperor dictator (with dementia) during the final stages of Rome’s collapse, while the feckless politicians in the House & Senate sit idly by, cheering on our descent into national bankruptcy.

Everything trends towards disorder, chaos, and ultimately collapse. Pleasure without pain, glory without sacrifice, indolence without work, degeneracy disguised as creativity, and treason portrayed as politics, led to a slow spiraling disintegration of their society and culture over the course of centuries. These exact same characteristics are rearing their ugly head in the late stages of the American Empire decline. 

“You have not tasted servitude. There is no land beyond us and even the sea is no safe refuge when we are threatened by the Roman fleet. We are the last people on earth, and the last to be free: our very remoteness in a land known only to rumor has protected us up till this day. Today the furthest bounds of Britain lie open—and everything unknown is given an inflated worth. But now there is no people beyond us, nothing but tides and rocks and, more deadly than these, the Romans. It is no use trying to escape their arrogance by submission or good behavior. They have pillaged the world: when the land has nothing left for men who ravage everything, they scour the sea. If an enemy is rich, they are greedy, if he is poor, they crave glory. Neither East nor West can sate their appetite. They are the only people on earth to covet wealth and poverty with equal craving. They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of ’empire’. They make a desolation and call it ‘peace” ― Tacitus

It’s as if Tacitus lived among us today. His description fits perfectly in describing the psychopaths controlling the U.S. Empire, along with most of the western world, as they rape, pillage, plunder, and desolate foreign lands in the name of freedom and call it peace keeping. The U.S. Empire is willing to fight Putin until the last Ukrainian is dead on the battlefield. How noble. 

It took the Roman Empire about 1,000 years to fall. The British Empire fell in approximately 300 years. The United States has been around for 234 as a nation, but only an empire since 1946, a mere 77 years. Has the advancement of technology, speed of communications, monetary manipulations, and level of military firepower coalesced into accelerating the demise of empires? 

In case you haven’t noticed, our culture has descended into the gutter. The perversion of normalcy into glorifying pedophiles, drag queens, transgender freaks, drug addict felons, race hustlers, and organizations promoting lawlessness, looting, and killing, while persecuting and prosecuting normal, hard-working, civilized white people has left the country on the brink of chaos.

Multiple generations have now been socially indoctrinated by government schools to obey, emote, believe, and fear whatever (Covid) and whoever (Putin) they are commanded to fear. 

We are a nation of morons led by a cadre of psychopaths. Children are encouraged by their parents and doctors to cut off their breasts and penises due to peer pressure and deviants controlling the schools and media. Groomers make toddlers watch transgender freaks perform sex acts on stage. Library books for 8-year-olds describe anal sex, masturbation, and other perverted acts.

Statues portraying our history are torn down by mobs, while what passes for art and architecture today is perverted, frivolous and inconsequential. There are no masterpieces of literature created in our rotting society. 

There are no Godfathers or Casablancas being produced. There are no novelists writing masterpieces on par with Steinbeck or Hemingway. But we do have Cardi B belting out her best-selling song WAP (acronym for Wet-Ass Pussy) and Sports Illustrated with transgender and obese swimsuit models. Based on TV commercials, 90% of Americans are either black, in an interracial relationship, gay, or transgender. We are an un-serious society. Anyone observing America and most of the western world in an impartial manner would have to conclude we are already living in a new Dark Age of ignorance, superstition, and degradation, even before the final collapse of empire. 

IN THE ARENA

 

clic on pic to enlarge

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States

JOKE

 

NEW FORMS OF ORGANISATION

 

The point of my post is that governments at all levels are based on wrong organisational models.

They fail to take into account that the focus of everyone’s life is actually the economy. That is to say: the production of goods and services. 

If one looks around one would hard pressed to say that our infrastructure is organised toward an economic end. In contrast, industrial parks are organised toward an economic end.

 

At all government levels, we are using organisational models that are geared toward satisfying the electorate’s personal emotional needs. Satisfying personal needs varies considerably between election cycles. So, in fact, we effectively end up with no consistent or effective organisational models.

Furthermore, the current societal objective of “social justice” (embraced by liberals and socialists who constitute 2/3 of the electorate) cannot even be defined.

 

What I see in various societies around the world that have had their cultures collapse is that they are concentrating their efforts toward forming new towns and cities on the industrial park model. They seem to come in two models: Eco-parks and Gated parks.

The Eco-parks are completely self contained with their own energy and waste disposal systems and, sometimes housing. The Gated parks have their own security systems added.

 

What these two styles of parks share is the focusing of their energy on economic output. Further, everyone within the system has to be productive. Obvious exceptions duly noted (i.e. children and the handicapped).

Social behaviour is what you would expect of anyone in a conventional workplace. If you do not work or misbehave you are out.

Cultural differences are subsumed by effective economic production models. Societal advancements (promotions) are based on economic effectiveness (job performance).

None of the above are surprising to anyone who is employed. What may be considered radical is that what you do forms the very core of one's identity. All other considerations are peripheral. 

 

I fear we will not even begin to modify our organisational models until we go broke.

Among the various models of civic governance it is obvious (to me, at least) that the western model of liberal democracy is not working very well. 

In fact, it is failing.

One only has to look at San Francisco and, increasingly, Vancouver to see that there are no liberal-democratic solutions to western urban decay.

For those who can afford it, there are gated communities but I feel that these are only stop gap measures. 

But the idea of gated communities is still appealing and needs to be more comprehensively thought through.

For the last few months I have been visiting various industrial parks throughout southeast Asia. 

Call me lowbrow but the architecture and overall aesthetic (not to mention the orderliness and cleanliness) I found very appealing.

So the short story is that, integrating the industrial park model with schools and water treatment, etc. could provide a different governance model (i.e corporate management model) 

from our present political models of city, town, village democratic governance.

The picture below shows that an industrial park model can be aesthetically pleasing.

 

Sumitomo Industrial Park, Vietnam   click on image to enlarge

The problem with democracy is that 50% of the voters (as a simple matter of fact) are of below average intelligence and that fact is reflected in who they elect. Add to that those who are immature and uneducated and you have defined the electorate.

And then you have the clever grifters who run for office and you can see the problem. The grifters bribe the rubes with their own money while skimming the public treasury through various schemes.

Together, this unholy alliance gained access to the public treasury and have looted the country. Now the whole democratic edifice is beginning to crumble. 

The You Tube link is a short vid by Sumitomo. Note that most of their business in in south east Asia.

 

Note: it has not escaped my attention that almost all of the furniture I have purchased these past few years is made in Vietnam.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvUmZd7rM0E

EQUITY ON THE BATTLEFIELD

 

War By Affirmative Action?

In the American Left’s vision of contemporary war, the West brings too many advantages in science, technology, and wealth.

by Victor Dais Hanson  April 22/24

Why does Biden play Iranian poker with American and Israeli lives?

Answer? He envisions war sort of like affirmative action, in which the less accomplished belligerent is allowed all sorts of concessions for the sake of equity.

Israeli and American military capability, and particularly their missile defenses, are seen as unfair, almost like high achievers’ top SAT scores that are seen as unearned and used to privilege some over others and therefore must be countered or dropped.

Given Iran’s and its surrogates’ incompetence, the administration, then, must extend the theocracy some allowances “to level the playing field.” Biden does not believe in an equality of opportunity in war, when an aggressor does its best to attack or indeed destroy a defender, who in turn does its own best to retaliate and achieve victory.

Instead, the Biden administration sees war leading to equality of result as something to be waged “proportionally,” especially when the power attacked is stronger and Western while the attacking aggressor is weaker and non-Western. The method, then, is to restrain the western power and give repeated chances for the non-western aggressors to catch up.

As a result, the Biden administration’s strategic attitude toward Iran ignores Iranian intent and agendas. So it does not respond fully to its acts of aggression and thereby almost rewards the incompetence of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis without consideration of their murderous aims.

Americans are thus baffled that Biden has not responded to some 170 or more attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East by Iranian-backed terrorists in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. But in his calculus, Americans “can take the hit” due to their superior defenses—appeasement that only assures more hits

Thus, other than a few apparently acceptable wounded or dead, there is no need for disproportionate responses to reestablish deterrence and end such opportunistic attacks. Such calculus in the Biden team’s mind would be “over the top,” perhaps “unfair,” or even “medieval.” And yet, it certainly would stop all such aggression quickly and warn aggressors not to touch a single American.

After the successful but mostly demonstrative Israel April 19 retaliatory strike against the Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan, Biden cautioned Israel “to take the win” and apparently not to rub in the fact of Iranian incompetence, much less stage a follow-up and much greater response.

But what if instead, Biden had warned the Iranians that Israel was not through. Rather, he would tell the Iranians that the restrained Israeli response was a one-off warning and demonstration to Iran that 1) Israel had the ability to strike and destroy the very protective shield of the nuclear installations at nearby Natanz, and thus Natanz itself and plants like it; 2) that unlike the 320 missile/drone Iranian attack on Israel, even Israel’s tiny response was entirely successful; 3) and that in any future Iranian-envisioned nuclear attack on Israel, Iran’s rockets would likely either fail at launch or in the air (half did so on April, 13), with the remnant having a 99 percent surety of being shot down, while earning a 100 percent surety of a devastating Israel counter-attack with the same sort of weapons that Iran claims it will shortly use.

Would such a warning have been more likely to end the current tit-for-tat, “de-escalatory escalation” than the Biden administration’s advice to Israel to “take the win”–in an endless cycle of supposedly managed violence as Iran and its terrorists seek to get it right and respond commensurately?

Similarly, recently, third-party communications with Iran were disclosed about its earlier April 13 attack on Israel. Apparently, the Turkish third-party emissaries claimed that “Iran informed us in advance of what would happen. Possible developments also came up during the meeting with (Secretary of State Antony) Blinken, and they (the U.S.) conveyed to Iran through us that this reaction must be within certain limits.”

Translated, that meant that apparently launching over 320 cruise, ballistic missiles and drones were acceptable Iranian responses as long as they did not kill too many Jews?

So what did Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan actually define as damage “within certain limits?” Something like the relatively small number of dead and wounded Americans who have fallen victim to Iranian-backed terrorist attacks from the Red Sea to Iraq and Jordan?

“Within certain limits” for Iran certainly could not mean the huge number of lethal projectiles Iran sent into Israel that were intended by Iran to kill thousands, but apparently only how many Israelis were killed by them?

So again, what would have been beyond “certain limits” for team Biden? One dead Israeli for each launched rocket, missile, or drone? 320 Jews or so in total? Did Biden and Blinken assume that some 300 or so projectiles would be mostly shot down or blown up, and thus they played poker with Israeli lives and assumed that the attack would probably fail?

But what might have happened had instead Biden transmitted to Iran the following warning:

“Given your record of unleashing terror and death throughout the Middle East, I warn you not to send a single rocket into Israel. If you do, we will ensure that none get through, but we will not ensure that there will be any limits on what will likely be a devastating Israel response to your homeland.”

Would Iran have then sent the 320 missiles?

When Israel went into Gaza to end the medieval violence perpetrated by the Hamas cowardly terrorists, it had already been the target of some 7,000 Hamas rockets aimed at its civilian centers and bases. Did Biden see that failed Hamas effort to kill thousands of additional Jews as a legitimate cause for Israel to go into Gaza and destroy the rocket-launching Hamas?

Or instead, did Biden consider Israel’s unique ability to conduct war—again, sort of like having high SAT scores and a straight A average as proof of unwarranted privilege in admissions—as a disproportionate (and likely “unfair”) advantage over Hamas that thus should be ignored or discounted rather than admired? But had Hamas killed 1,000 Jews with its 7,000 rockets, would Biden have given Israel the green light to respond fully? Or would it have taken only 500 deaths? Or was the magic number 250 killed?

What would have happened had Biden not specified certain restraints on the IDF but instead, on October 21, transmitted the following message to Hamas: “You began this war with inhuman slaughter on October 7 and massive rocket attacks on Israeli cities, and Israel will now end the war with your destruction.”

Six months later, would the Middle East now be safer without Hamas?

In mid-October 2023, a failed Islamic jihad rocket hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital, prompting the blood libel that it was Israelis who supposedly were responsible and had killed hospital patients. An upset Joe Biden was asked about the identification of the perpetrator.

He answered with a joke, but a jest nevertheless quite revealing: “And I’m not suggesting that Hamas deliberately did it either. It’s that old thing; gotta learn how to shoot straight.” Aside from the embarrassing fact that Biden seemed more wary about wrongly blaming the murderous Hamas for the Islamic Jihad rocket than his ally Israel, did he really mean that the global condemnation of Israel for the act of Islamic jihad—and the predicament it put Biden in—would have simply vanished had only Islamic Jihad shot “straight”?

And further translated, did Biden logically mean—if only the Islamic Jihad rocket had not fallen short on Gazans but instead had reached its intended target of civilians inside Israel, then there would have been no controversies, no melodramas, given the stronger power Israel could more easily have “taken the hit?”

Note that Biden did not really express much anger that Islamic Jihad was shooting rockets to kill Jewish civilians. He was only lamenting that its incompetence had led to a blood libel, which required embarrassing explanations from Biden himself.

Biden, note, said something somewhat similar about a possible Putin invasion of Ukraine. He had predicted the U.S. response on whether it was a “minor” offensive or not. In other words, the American response was not predicated on the violation of national borders by an aggressor against an independent nation, but how effectively the aggressor attacked.

In the American Left’s vision of contemporary war, the West brings too many advantages in science, technology, and wealth, especially when fighting in the skies and not in the messy suburbs of Mosul, Fallujah, or Gaza City.

The result is disproportionate. Accordingly, it does not matter that Hamas only stopped butchering, raping, and mutilating Israelis at about 1,200 deaths because of an impending IDF arrival or killed few despite 7,000 rocket launches into Israel, when their rocketeers had sought to kill tens of thousands of Israelis.

Instead, by their very failures at the art of war, Iran and its surrogates are constructed as victims, not aggressors, at the moment when either their targets do not suffer too many causalities or their own losses vastly exceed those whom they sought to slaughter.

Third-party managed proportionality, accompanied by the banality of “both sides are at fault,” is not morality but pretentious amorality—as well as a sure prescription for endless war.

Or, in other words, what is unfolding now in the Middle East.