Tagged: Joe Biden

Laying the Foundations

Apparently, the Biden administration is preparing to emulate its neo-Marxist counterpart to the north, the Trudeau dynasty, in officially recommending that Americans imbibe no more than two alcoholic drinks per week. Two observations on this exciting news. First, it is interesting, not to say portentous, that the U.S. government is suddenly going all temperate on alcohol at the same time that the uniparty...

Pandemic of Convenience?

Every likely Democratic voter in the United States who is even remotely aware of current events knows that Joe Biden is absolutely not up to the rigors of a conventional presidential campaign, either mentally or physically, and furthermore that he can no longer even be dragged uneventfully through an ordinary televised debate by the friendliest moderators, regardless of which sentient being the Republican...

Random Reflections On American Politics

The heirs of Frankfurt. — The American left’s intellectual strategists have long believed that the way to break the country’s resistance to progressivism was to forge ahead, with their vanguard fringes displayed in bright colors, in open defiance of the popular consensus, precisely because those fringes would be perceived by the “silent majority” as too much, too extreme, too immoderate and anti-American. The...

Can You Name the U.S. President?

Everyone who is even vaguely attentive to American politics, and even half-honest about the evidence of his own senses, knows that Joe Biden is no more serving as the active president of the United States — the “here” at which, as Harry Truman said, the buck stops — than I am. That is to say, everyone can see as clear as day that...

Tribes vs. Truth: Three Examples

Death counts, be not proud.– If you want to sound credible criticizing pandemic alarmists for padding the Covid death numbers and overstating the efficacy and safety of the vaccines, then it would be a good idea to stop shouting “Aha! The vaccine again!” every time an athlete, actress, or geriatric rock star happens to die. Reminder to both tribes: Dying was invented, and...

Going Down With the Ship, or Sinking It?

A U.S. president should only be truly relevant during a crisis, when someone — someone with authority over the military, for example, or even just having the sobriety and character to set the right national tone — must have the capacity and the will to make essential decisions on the fly, based on a combination of adequate information, sound principles, long-range vision, and,...

U.S. Going to Pot Literally, Too

If politicians figure out there is big money to made in something, they will legalize it — but regulate it at the same time, to ensure they have first dibs on the profits. If politicians are desperate for votes, they will lower themselves to anything to entice anyone, no matter how worthless and mentally decrepit, to support them. And so, in a perfect confluence...

Reflections on Motives

The reason bureaucrats love to produce litanies of rules designed, in substance and in spirit, to reduce everyone to generic, interchangeable minions is obvious: Bureaucracy is the definitive realm of the generic, interchangeable minion, in whose work flexibility, contextual choice, and free-thinking are not merely discouraged but absolutely counterproductive. Is it any wonder that the denizens of such a mechanized realm succumb, in...

Notes on the U.S. Midterms and Such

The clever fence-sitting, bandwagon-hopping, finger-in-the-wind, trail-sniffing businessmen of the “conservative media” who pretend to be leaders and trend-setters — perhaps best epitomized at the moment by the teenage “debate champion” Ben Shapiro — are quietly urging their Republican-friendly audience to stop making everything about Donald Trump in these months leading up to the midterm elections. Their reason for this urging, quite explicitly stated,...

Into the Shallows, aka World Update

The U.S. Congress has passed, and President Biden has signed into law, The Inflation Reduction Act. This law will bring sweeping changes to the United States economy and society, and, indirectly, to the world. None of those changes will be in any way related to inflation per se, let alone to reducing it. So why, the innocent child might reasonably ask, is it...