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“The Adults in the Room” are Always the Most Colossal Screwups
There was a recurring theme during the presidency of Donald Trump that went something like this: Trump’s most impetuous and destructive instincts — particularly in the realm of foreign policy — were being nobly restrained by the so-called “Adults in the Room.” Thank heavens! These impressive “adults,” a cadre of seasoned military men serving in Trump’s administration, included James Mattis (Defense Secretary), H.R. McMaster (National Security Advisor), and John Kelly (Chief of Staff). Their presence in the halls of power was supposed to be taken as a profound relief: whether you feared Trump would conspire with Vladimir Putin to collapse “the rules-based international order” — likely because you heard that phrase intoned on some Think Tank webcast — or simply believed that Trump was nuts, you could rest assured that the fate of the Republic would be protected by this crew of Serious Adults watching gamely over Trump’s shoulder. If any crazy ideas got into his head, such as withdrawing US military personnel from overseas deployments or forging a diplomatic accord with Russia, they’d spring boldly into action and put a stop to it.
In August 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s “top national-security advisers,” namely Mattis and McMaster, were “searching for a way to overcome the commander-in-chief’s reluctance to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan.” Ultimately, the two honored “adults” were successful — they finagled Trump into ordering yet another totally useless “surge” of US troops, which accomplished nothing other than additional death, destruction, waste of taxpayer money, and prolongation of a war that was fundamentally hopeless. An outcome that surprised nobody except perhaps Mattis and McMaster themselves. Still, these same “adults” were cheered once more when they maneuvered to undercut Trump’s fantasy of removing troops from Syria, another successful stymieing effort on their part. Profound gratitude was showered on this valiant assemblage of “adults” for having been “in the room” to stop Trump from doing anything reasonable.
Canceling All Things Russian ‘A Warning Sign’
A current trend to cancel all things Russian, even Tchaikovsky concerts, is a warning sign because it’s the same kind of thinking used during the totalitarian Soviet Union and can lead to more harm, according to Gary Saul Morson, a Northwestern University professor who has studied Russian literature and thought for decades.
“This should be a warning sign when you start thinking that because President [Vladimir] Putin does horrible things in Ukraine, we have to stop listening to Tchaikovsky,” Morson told NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” program on Mar. 26. “What’s going on here? How far can such thinking go?”
“To me, it’s reminiscent of exactly how the Soviets thought. They certainly divided the world into all good and all bad. And so, literally anything you did that hurt your enemy was good. And that was the basis of their morality,” said Morson. “It is what led to the horrors of Soviet behavior to killing millions of people.”
Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them.
When Hillary Clinton’s divine entitlement to the U.S. presidency began to look imperiled in 2016 — first due to the irreverent and unkempt (but surprisingly formidable) Democratic Party primary challenge from Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist Senator from Vermont — her campaign and its media allies invented and unveiled a deeply moving morality tale. A faceless horde of unnamed, uncredentialed, unmannered, violent, abusive and deeply misogynistic online Sanders supporters — dubbed with the gender-emphasizing name “Bernie Bros” even though many were women — were berating, insulting and brutalizing Hillary, her top campaign surrogates (U.S. Senators, former cabinet members, corporate executives), and especially pro-Hillary corporate journalists with a vast artillery of traumatizing words and violent tweets.
This storyline — and especially the way it cleverly inverted the David v. Goliath framework of the 2016 campaign so that it was now Hillary and her band of monied and Ivy-League-educated political and media elites who were the real victims — was irresistible to Harvard-and-Yale-trained journalists at NBC, CNN, The New York Times and Washington Post op-ed pages who really believe they are the truly marginalized peoples. This narrative scheme enabled them — the most powerful and influential media and political elites in the world, with access to the most potent platforms and megaphones — to somehow credibly lay claim to that most valued of all currencies in American political life: victimhood.
With this power matrix in place, what mattered was no longer the pain and anger of people whose towns had their industries stripped by the Clintons’ NAFTA robbery, or who worked at low-wage jobs with no benefits due to the 2008 financial crisis caused by Clintonite finance geniuses, or who were drowning in student debt with no job prospects after that crisis, or who suffered from PTSD, drug and alcohol addiction and shabby to no health care after fighting in the Clintons’ wars. Now, such ordinary people were not the victims but the perpetrators. Their anger toward elites was not valid or righteous but dangerous, abusive and toxic. The real victims were multi-millionaire hosts of MSNBC programs and U.S. Senators and New York Times columnists who were abused and brutalized by those people’s angry tweets for the crime of supporting a pioneer and avatar for marginalized people: the Wellesley-and-Yale-Law-graduate, former First Lady, Senator from New York, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
John Stuart Mill on fighting for freedom…
LA Spends Billions to House a Fraction of Homeless Population
According to watchdog group Open the Books, the city of Los Angeles dedicated $1.2 billion in 2016 to try and fight homelessness through building affordable housing units.
Since the program was approved, about 1,200 units have been completed – with some units costing taxpayers over $700,000 each, according to a city audit. One project currently underway is estimated to cost almost $837,000 per unit.
“The plan was to get the homeless people in Los Angeles into permanent housing to get them off the street and make no mistake, Los Angeles has a big problem when it comes to the homeless,” said Open The Books’ Adam Andrzejewski to The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat. “In 2016, that $1.2 billion ordinance passed. It was a bond proposal for permanent housing for the homeless. And today, there are more people that are unhoused than ever before in the city of Los Angeles.”
While the homelessness crisis continues, Andrzejewski said a “bureaucratic culture” sprung up in the city.
“In city government, there are about 750 employees dedicated to housing and community development, and the top employee in that department makes more than a White House cabinet official,” said Andrzejewski.
According to polling by The Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Business Council Institute, nearly 40% of voters in the city feel “significantly unsafe”due to homelessness in their neighborhoods.
School Nurse Suspended For Revealing Connecticut Public School Was Secretly Giving Children Puberty Blockers Behind Their Parents’ Backs
A school nurse was suspended after revealing the school worked at was secretly giving children puberty blockers behind their parents’ backs.
77-year-old Kathleen Cataford was suspended by Hartford Public Schools this week after she revealed the school secretly put an 11-year-old student on puberty blockers in a public comment on Facebook.
“Investigate the school system curriculum…CT is a very socially liberal, gender confused state,” the Facebook post read. “As a public school nurse, I have an 11yo female student on puberty blockers and a dozen identifying as non-binary, all but two keeping this as a secret from their parents with the help of teachers, SSW [social workers] and school administration.”
She continued, “Teachers and SSW are spending 37.5 hours a week influencing our children, not necessarily teaching our children what YOU think is being taught.”
Seriously.
Biden’s greatest hits…
China Reportedly Orders Mass Killing Of Pets Belonging To COVID-19 Patients
One city in China ordered the mass killing of household pets Wednesday, according to state-run media.
The Anci district in Langfang city reportedly told residents Wednesday that all pets belonging to individuals infected with COVID-19 were to be executed, according to the state-run China News Service, as translated by Business Insider. The order was then reportedly repealed by 5 p.m. local time Wednesday, but it remains unclear how many pets were killed before that happened.
Authorities initially ordered the “complete culling of indoor animals” belonging to coronavirus patients, before an official with the Langfang Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the order was reversed, according to Business Insider.
It is possible for animals to become infected with COVID-19, but the risk of transmission from them to humans is low.
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