WILL IT HAPPEN AGAIN?

Regular readers of this column know where I’ll be putting my X on November 3rd. Four years ago, however, I was wasn’t thrilled about voting for Donald Trump. His personality was repulsive. His gratuitous insults were off-putting. It didn’t bother me, however, that he called his final opponent “Crooked Hillary,” because she was crooked. During one of their debates, Hillary said it was a good thing we didn’t have Donald Trump in charge of the law in our country.

“Because you’d be in jail,” said Trump. His timing was exquisite and I was thinking, “Who is this guy?” I could have kissed him.

It bothered me, however, that he had badly trashed his fellow Republican candidates in the primaries. Most of them were decent people and didn’t deserve it. During the ensuing campaign against Crooked Hillary, I agreed with nearly everything Trump said he would do, but doubted he would follow through. Politicians all make promises… you know the rest. Meanwhile, the Democrat media — and that’s just about all of it — gave him enormous attention. Trump charged up their viewership because no one who talked like he did had ever become the nominee of a major political party.

If mainstream media knew then how much they were helping his election chances with the exposure they gave him, they never would have done it. Against all odds, he won, making fools of media pundits. Hillary lost and “charitable” contributions to the Clinton Foundation dried up immediately. Liberals were in shock. They cried openly. Me? I found myself cheering, and that surprised me. I had to sit down and think about why I was so happy. Part of it was the shock on the faces of smug mainstream media pundits. They didn’t know what to say. They never saw it coming. Neither did I actually, but I liked it.

The day after Trump won, Democrats and their media allies began plotting to reverse the election and overthrow Trump, by hook or by crook and mostly the latter. Obama was still in office, so he and his lackeys in the intelligence agencies continued what Crooked Hillary was doing — working with Russians to smear Trump. They used the Steele Dossier which was bought and paid for by the Clinton Campaign and the Democrat National Committee and tried to convince us all that Trump was a Russian asset.

Trouble is, they had no evidence. Nothing in the Steele Dossier was true, but that didn’t stop them. Trump haters in the deep state conspired to appoint a special prosecutor to dig up evidence.  There was none to dig up, but it took Robert Meuller and his huge staff two years and over $30 million before he was forced to admit it. They lied; they spied, and Trump was still standing. After Democrats won control of the House in 2018, they impeached him for a phone call he made to Ukraine about Biden family shenanigans, but he was found not guilty in the Senate.

Then, ironically, Hunter Biden left a laptop with a computer repairman in Delaware and forgot to pick it up. On it are emails indicating that both Hunter Biden and his father, Joe, were indeed involved in shenanigans with Ukraine — and elsewhere. Also on it are videos allegedly showing Hunter Biden having sex with minors. A further irony is that, four years ago, Anthony Weiner’s laptop fell into the hands of the NYPD pursuant to their investigation into Weiner exposing himself to underage girls online. Also on it were over 30,000 of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump remains in need of a personality transplant — but he has followed through on his campaign promises. I don’t have to like him, but I am going to vote for him without misgivings. Why? I’ll quote a nameless young lady whose video explaining that in less than a minute was posted on Gateway Pundit here. A partial transcript follows:

Here she is

“If you are liberal and can’t stand Trump and can’t possibly fathom why anyone would vote for him, let me fill you in.  We can’t stand you.  You’ve done everything in your power by trying to destroy this country by tearing down our police, our borders, our history, systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into thinking socialism is the answer to everything. Demonizing religion and faith and glorifying abortion, violence and thug culture.  And calling us racists… We are voting for Trump because of you!”

Maybe it sums up why you too vote for Donald Trump. If he’s reelected, I’ll enjoy watching mainstream media pundits go nuts again, but I’m afraid of what their followers will do in the streets. Meanwhile, those pundits are trying to blame Russia for the Hunter Biden laptop scandal they're trying desperately to contain. Will it work?

CURBING GOVERNMENT POWER

Has government exceeded its power with Covid shutdowns? Some have thought so from the beginning, but almost everyone cooperated for the first few weeks to “flatten the curve.” It seemed logical not to overload our hospitals and I heard no one object in my small circle, but that’s changing. 

The curve has been flattened for some time now but media hype continues unabated and, consequently, so does public fear. Mask-wearing is viewed as a public responsibility to some and an exercise in virtue-signaling for others to whom it has become a woke, fashion accessory.

Michigan Governor Whitmer

We’ve learned that not all of us are vulnerable to the virus — that only elderly persons with multiple co-morbidities need worry. We’ve also learned that the first dire predictions of millions dying in the the U.S. were way overblown. We’ve learned that the CDC has been over-counting Covid deaths by 94%. Studies are beginning to emerge indicating that shutdowns may not have curbed spread of the virus at all — but it’s becoming almost treasonous to suggest that.

Months ago, some Americans filed suit against blue-state governors for exceeding their constitutional authority and rulings on those suits are beginning to come down. In Pennsylvania, a federal judge ruled that Democrat Governor Wolf’s lockdown orders are unconstitutional. Plaintiffs include Republican state representatives, county officials, and Congressman Mike Kelly from the Pittsburgh area. The decision was issued in September and Wolf has appealed. A circuit court stay is in place and it will take more time to work this through to a final conclusion.

Meantime, in Michigan, the state supreme court ruled that Democrat Governor Whitmer exceeded her authority with Covid restrictions as well. The Michigan attorney general declared he would no longer enforce her edicts. It’s hard to determine how much her autocratic behavior around the virus contributed to the FBI-foiled plan by anarchists to kidnap her. Perhaps that will come out at trial, assuming the perpetrators don’t plea-bargain.

And what an odd bunch they are. Governor Whitmer immediately blamed President Trump for the kidnapping plot, but then a video came out of one potential plotter wearing earlobe-stretching disc earrings as he expressed his hatred for the president. Given leftist, anti-government riots perpetrated by BLM and Antifa on one hand and right-wing, anti-government actions by the likes of Terry McVeigh and Terry Nichols twenty-five years ago, it’s hard to position these plotters on the political spectrum.

WHO reverses itself on shutdowns

Just days ago, the World Health Organization reversed itself and advised world leaders to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” with the Coronavirus, and “Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” It wasn’t long ago that President Trump cancelled US support to the WHO for being in cahoots with the Chinese Communist Party. Now they’re on the same page.

It’s not just political groups rebelling against autocratic edicts by Democrat officials. In New York City, conservative Jews openly defied Democrat Mayor DiBlasios’ and Democrat Governor Cuomo’s ban on religious gatherings by dancing in the streets. Also in NYC, Brooklyn Roman Catholic Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio filed suit against the state of New York for violating his First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion. New York’s usually-timid Cardinal Timothy Dolan surprisingly backed DiMarzio’s suit.

After President Trump tested positive for the virus, mainstream media claim it’s because of his refusal to wear a mask. Some outlets imply that he got his just desserts for his reluctance. I do not believe they’re effective against spreading the virus and I resent the signs on entry doors telling me I cannot enter without a mask. Although they cost me $15 apiece, I purchased some face masks online which declare: “THIS MASK IS USELESS, AND SO IS YOURS.” Some shoppers just stare at me, while others tell me: “I love your mask.”

As I’m about to submit this column on Tuesday, I see a report by national security correspondent Jordan Schachtel that:

“[A]CDC study, which surveyed symptomatic COVID-19 patients, has found that 70.6% of respondents reported “always” wearing a mask, while an additional 14.4% say they “often” wear a mask. That means a whopping 85% of infected COVID-19 patients reported habitual mask wearing. Only 3.9% of those infected said they “never” wear a face covering.”

Last August, according to the Huffington Post, Joe Biden said: “Let’s institute a mask mandate, nationwide, starting immediately, and we will save lives.” A few days ago though, Biden said he’s not sure a president can do that, but he would mandate them on federal property. A glance at the map of federal land in the USA, you’ll see that half of California and nearly all of several western states.

SERIOUS COMIC BRILLIANCE

If I start reading a book and it doesn’t grab me twenty pages in, I put it down. I’m a slow reader and life is too short to justify finishing books that bore me. There are too many interesting ones out there and not enough time to read them.

Here in the 21st century, the same is true of YouTube videos. Just now I finished watching a 1959 interview of Ayn Rand by Mike Wallace that fascinated me. Twice I’ve tried to read one of Rand’s novels after strong recommendations by people I respect, but both times I put them down. The interview, however, was great. It grabbed me.

As with many intellectuals like Rand, I agree with some of her points and disagree with others, but she gets me thinking. I also love that YouTube provides a list of related video links in the margin. Nest to Ayn Rand were thinkers like Orson Wells, Milton Friedman, Aldous Huxley, and George Carlin. I watched a few and ran out of time while realizing there are so many fascinating YouTube videos that I won’t live long enough to watch even a small fraction of them.

I stumbled onto Ayn Rand after friend sent me an article by an anonymous thinker with the pseudonym “Sundance” whose blog is called "The Last Refuge," and sometimes the “Conservative Tree House.” At the bottom was the link to the Wallace/Rand interview. One interesting tidbit leads to another on today’s internet and I was grateful for whatever algorithm put the links there. The worldwide web analyzed my interests effectively and offered additional intellectual stimulation. That nebulous entity we was teaching me the way I tried to teach young minds for decades before the web existed.

It was most effective when I was able to take advantage of teachable moments whenever they emerged. A student would ask a penetrating question, for example, which, if I took sufficient time to answer it, might take the class on a tangent only marginally related to the curriculum I was responsible to deliver. I learned to recognize it when a critical mass of students became engaged by the question. If it intensified while I delivered the answer, and if that answer led to more earnest questions from other students waving their raised hands enthusiastically, I knew I had stumbled onto fertile ground.

At that point, my job was to exploit their curiosity by subtly steering discussion more deeply into the curriculum I was charged to teach — 20th century US History including economics, civics, the US Constitution, and current events. I miss my classroom and still think like a teacher. If a student asked a question about Ayn Rand — an intellectual who railed against government regulation — I imagined steering the conversation toward the dangers of regulatory government as identified by Ronald Reagan or Calvin Coolidge, depending on what period of 20th century history we might be covering.

In one of the paragraphs above, I classed comedian George Carlin with 20th century intellectuals though probably very few of you would think of Carlin that way. Did he belong there? I’m beginning to think so after finding so many links to his routines beneath a serious article. I’m sorry he’s not around anymore to demonstrate his intellectual prowess by making us laugh about significant topics. Unlike most comedians, he wrote his own material.

He thought of himself not so much as a comedian who wrote his own stuff, but as a writer who performed his own stuff. Repeatedly courtmartialed from the military and expelled from school, I bet he was a brilliant class clown. Watching him pace back and forth as an adult during his rapid-fire deliveries on YouTube, I realized he also was probably also ADHD — not unusual for a class clown. The ones I recall were usually quite smart.

To make people laugh the way Carlin did about a wide variety of topics, he had to know what things his audience seriously believed, and he needed a deep understanding of those things. Then he would have to think of new, unusual, and often irreverent ways to look at them. A powerful intellect is required to do that. Often I see links to one of his comedy routines on subjects I take seriously—  and he nearly always gets me laughing.

It’s only when he’s unnecessarily profane that he doesn’t. Rather than add to his comic brilliance, it detracts — and it exemplifies something I once read on a bathroom wall: “Profanity is an attempt by a weak mind to make a strong statement.” As I claimed above though, Carlin didn’t have a weak mind, but like many, he got lazy at times and let his powerful brain lapse into degeneracy. Although he’s been dead for twelve years, his comedy routines have withstood the test of time, which is, of course, further evidence of genius.

LEFT & RIGHT WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD, 2020

Newspaper publisher Mark Guerringue again sits in the left chair this week.

Producer question #1: Would it more politically beneficial to confirm a new Supreme Court Justice before the election, or between the election and inauguration day? Mark says the original sin was committed by Harry Reid in 2013 when, as Democrat Senate Majority Leader, he eliminated the filibuster. Then Mitch McConnell delayed Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2016, saying he wanted to wait until after the November election. He said there’s a lot of hypocrisy all around regarding supreme nominations, but when is it too much and voters remove the hypocrites? Mark brings up the Obamacare issue soon to come before the court that Amy Coney Barrett will be adjudicating — the constitutionality of Obamacare without the mandate. We discuss Chief Justice Roberts around that and other statements he’s made, like “no Obama judges or Trump judges” as if all judges are without political bias, which I consider ridiculous. I point out that conservatives often appoint justices who were conservative only to see them go over the left after serving for a time — yet there are none I can think of who have gone the other way. Mark applauds that and claims our country tilts left. I dispute that. We go into Barrett’s Catholicism and I point out that Kerry, Pelosi, Biden, and other Democrats are Catholics nominally, but don’t practice their religion. Coney Barrett does. She’s a conservative Catholic in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Democrats hate that. We go back into justices making decisions according to “original intent” and “precedent” with Mark pushing the latter. I’m an originalist who believes we stick to strict interpretations of wording. Mark goes back to Obamacare saying his business needs it or he wouldn’t be able to offer health insurance to his employees. We discuss pre-existing conditions and Medicare for all. I bring up demonstrations turning into riots across the country and cite George Soros millions electing district attorneys across the country for the past six years. They’re leftists who refuse to charge rioters in several cities, enabling anarchy to spread widely. I say it’s shaping up as the biggest issue in voters’ minds as they go to the polls. Mark believes the riots are rare and “not a big deal.” People aren’t concerned about it nationally. I offer evidence that they are and we argue about it at length. We discuss national reaction to Covid, which I contend is way overblown because it’s politicized.. Mark justifies it in various ways about which we again disagree.