Monday, June 27, 2022

More Than a Stalinist Show Trial; Beyond the January 6 committee hearings, Stalinism advances on other fronts.

That regime rejected the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and so forth, as so much “bourgeois” formality. The January 6 proceedings in Washington violate fundamental and longstanding norms of American justice. Witness the summary arrests, detention without trial, solitary confinement, denial of bail, withholding of evidence, and a lot more.  

(Updated) See also: Soviet Show Trials come to American college campuses

 Lloyd Billingsley  "As Thaddeus McCotter contends, the reproduction of a “Stalinist show trial” is now live in Washington. That invites a look at the original production of 1936-1937, from one of the keenest observers at the time. 

"The Moscow trials, and the purges that followed them, were a turning point in the history of American liberalism, for it was irrevocably polarized by the controversies to which the trials gave rise,” explains the late philosopher Sidney Hook in Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the Twentieth Century, published in 1987. As Hook recalled, “news of the trials burst like a bombshell.”

"The principal defendants were “all old Bolsheviks, Lenin’s comrades in arms, who had been glorified as heroes of the October Revolution until they fell out of favor with Stalin. Chief among the defendants was Trotsky, acknowledged by Stalin as the architect of the Petrograd insurrection that had placed the Bolsheviks in power.” 

"As Hook wondered, “had architects of the great experiment been agents of the Western secret police?” The notion was “inherently incredible,” and the charges against Trotsky, Bukharin, Radek, and others were “mind-boggling.”

"The heroes of the October Revolution, Stalin contended, had assassinated Kirov in 1934, planned the assassination of Stalin under the direction of Trotsky, and “conspired with fascist powers Germany and Japan to dismember the Soviet Union, in exchange for services rendered by the Gestapo.” They were also charged with “sabotaging five-year plans, putting nails and glass in butter, inducing erysipelas in pigs, wrecking trains” and so forth. ". . .

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Hollywood Party and other books including Bill of Writes and Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation. His journalism has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Spectator (London) and many other publications. Billingsley serves as a policy fellow with the Independent Institute.

What the Victory of Mayra Flores Portends for the Democrats

The lesson to be drawn from the shift in Hispanic voting is that the Democrats need to moderate their platform while the Republicans should preserve theirs. . . 

 The American Spectator  "The victory of Republican Mayra Flores in a historic Texas Democratic stronghold on Tuesday punctuates President Joe Biden’s problem with Hispanics. His woke agenda appears to be driving them into the arms of Republicans. Born in Mexico, Flores won the special election for the 34th Congressional District on a staunchly conservative platform of “God, family, and country” — a repudiation of Biden’s fixation on secularism, libertinism, and identity politics.

"Her victory is no doubt setting off alarm bells in Democratic circles, but it can’t come as a complete surprise to the party’s strategists. Some of the shrewder ones have been fretting recently over the party’s alienation of Hispanics.

"Liberals deluded themselves into seeing Hispanics as a permanent Democratic constituency.

"Clearly, this constituency does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and its supposed intrinsic racism and white supremacy,” wrote Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeria last December. “They are instead a patriotic, upwardly mobile, working class group with quite practical and down to earth concerns. Democrats will either learn to focus on that or they will continue to lose ground among this vital group of voters.”

"That sums up the appeal of Flores. Openly patriotic, she poured scorn on Biden’s plans to transform the country fundamentally. Hispanics, she argued, want a traditional, not woke, America.". . .

In 2020, Joe Biden was the Great White Hope for Democrats

 That was then...


Democrats praise Biden on CBS, ABC and CNN for ‘very good job:’ Doing well ‘by any metric’ except inflation (msn.com)   . . ."Throughout CNN’s “State of the Union,” Brian Deese, director of the president’s Nationwide Financial Council, instructed host Dana Bash, “We really feel superb about the place America is.”

"Bash pressed Deese about the opportunity of a recession.

"He stated that whereas there are a sequence of “international challenges” the nation is going through proper now, “there is no doubt that the US is in a greater place than every other main nation around the globe to deal with inflation with out giving up all of the financial good points we have had.' ”. . .


And our go-to source for Democrat praise:


This is now: Why the Left Will Cut Biden Loose; Victor Davis Hanson

. . .The point is not just the asymmetrical treatment that has shielded Biden’s cognitive decline, his rude outbursts, his outrageous racialist slurs, and bizarre sexual aggressiveness.

Instead, the Left now fears Biden’s terrible polls and a worse record — and the resulting damage he is doing to the Democratic Party.

In such a losing political context, Democrats will soon find no further reason to cover for Biden’s own serial abhorrent personal behavior on matters of financial probity, sex, race, and truthfulness.

No wonder they are growing desperate to find ways to cut him loose — without making Vice President Kamala Harris his successor.


Will The Republic Soon Be Only A Distant Memory?

AND Magazine   "In 27 BC Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus became Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire. The Roman Republic, plagued by violence and civil war, for years was dead. It would never return. The Romans, who had built the Republic into the dominant Mediterranean power had killed their own creation.

"We may not be far from a similar fate."


"Ultimately, a republic is built on the bedrock of respect for institutions and the rule of law. At the end of a long, bitter political campaign the backers of the losing candidate go home peacefully only because they trust the result of the election and they respect the institutions of government. They do not concede and accept the rule of a party or individual they oppose out of fear. They do this because their belief in the sanctity of the system is more powerful than their belief in a political party or any one man.
"In America, this respect for our institutions and the rule of law is rapidly eroding. We are transitioning at breakneck pace from a democratic system to one based on mob violence and the abuse of the power of the state. If we cannot reverse this trend, we too will soon find that a republic we believed immortal is a thing of the past.
"The Democratic Party, increasingly under the control of oligarchs and ideologues, made a conscious decision years ago to seek political power via a variety of extra-legal mechanisms. Believing the ends justify the means, the Democrats decided that reliance upon free and fair elections was too risky and began to employ a series of measures that would allow them to seize and exercise power without the vagaries of free and fair elections:". . . Full article here...

Dem Rep Ocasio-Cortez Says Pro-Lifers Not Welcome In Today’s Far-Left Democrat Party…

Weasel Zippers



Police in Riot Gear Arrive at Supreme Court As Crowd Grows and Is Spurred On by AOC  "Speaking through a public address system to protesters, Ocasio-Cortez called for abortion’s supporters to get “into the streets.”


Mayra Flores Says Yes, Nancy Pelosi Shoved Her Child During Photo-Op

But as Flores said, good on her daughter for standing in there like a champ. Flores herself shows that she’s not going to take things lying down, that she’s going to be vocal and she’s already not been shy about speaking out. 

 RedState  "When I first saw the video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appearing to shove the little daughter of Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX) with her elbow during a photo-op for her swearing-in, I thought perhaps it was a manipulated video or maybe the angles weren’t clear. But then I saw a video taken from C-Span that seemed to show the same thing.

"As we reported, Nancy looks at her, moves her elbow, and the child moves to her right.

"Now Mayra Flores herself is confirming it. Actor James Woods commented on the incident and Flores responded."

 

Media no longer trying to deny hostility toward Republicans

 Eric Utter  "Mainstream media bloviators have increasingly begun to state that Republicans do not deserve equal coverage alongside their Democratic counterparts. These figures often falsely claim that Republicans seek to “end our democracy” and that they routinely traffic in falsehoods. Ergo, there’s no need to be fair and balanced.

"For example, on a recent edition of MSNBC's "The ReidOut,” Joy Reid and her guest, political analyst Mathew Dowd (Bush-Cheney 2004 chief strategist turned Democrat), preposterously asserted that media outlets in general were too neutral in their reporting on the Republican Party and should instead ramp up the hostility. Reid also urged reporters to "tell voters" that the GOP was a "threat" to freedom. 

"Remarkably, Reid queried Dowd on how the media might "get out" of this ill-advised "‘both sides’ trajectory.” Dowd replied that the media should start acting like they were living in a society that wasn't free -- and treat Republicans accordingly. Like state-run mouthpieces in Russia, China, and North Korea? Great idea!

"A week prior to the Reid-Dowd fiasco, CNN primetime host Don Lemon stated that journalists no longer live in a "Walter Cronkite society” and that he should therefore be able to “state [his] truth.”

"During a recent discussion with Los Angeles Times columnist Jackie Calmes (on her piece condemning "both-siderism”), CNN host Brian Stelter also questioned whether Republicans should be given the same coverage as Democrats. ". . .