Random Thoughts (8): Pardon My Color Revolution

One

It’s been a long time since I had as much fun as I did yesterday. From about 11:58 AM, when J.D. Vance took the oath of office, to 9:00 PM or so when I called it a night to the sounds of wailing and gnashing of teeth on CNN, it was just awesome.

I have had a gut feeling that started with Butler last summer. That feeling grew in August with Kamala’s attempt at “Joy” and “Brat Summer.” It grew even stronger during Jimmy “Malaise Forever” Carter’s funeral.

It was stronger still during Trump’s inaugural address, when he said, “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation. One that increases its wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons… launching astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on planet Mars.”

Then

when Trump pardoned the J6 protesters, with pictures of them being released from jail, it hit me.

We’re in a color revolution. No more apologies for being American. In a world of growing darkness, we will be the shining light of the West. To paraphrase that great philosopher Reginald Martinez Jackson, we will once again be the straw that stirs the global drink.

I hereby call it the Orange Man Revolution.

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Biden, Scandals, and His Place in History: A First Look

I was going to write a post a few days ago regarding the historical legacy of the Biden administration, but I had a sense that the scoundrel wasn’t quite done yet and so I held off.

With the news this morning that Biden has pardoned Milley, Fauci, and the J6 Committee members I’m glad I did.

That old villain Lenin once said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Well, four years is a bit more than a few weeks, but in one very important respect this has been one of the most consequential administrations in American history.

That one respect I am speaking of is scandal.

We’ve had presidential scandals in the past: presidents obstructing justice over flings with interns, presidents obstructing justice over second-rate burglaries, presidents selling arms to Iran in order to run guns to the Contras. Note those are just the ones we know about. I would argue that the way Carter treated the country as his moral possession was an underappreciated scandal.

However, all of those scandals (that we know of) constitute the JV team compared to the record of the Biden years. With Scranton Joe and friends we are talking about historical, shaking faith in the Constitutional system to the core, type stuff. Things that you find only in a Third World country or maybe a Mel Brooks movie.

I’m going to take a historian’s view and list five scandals that not only constitute things that are hard to square with the notion of a republic governed by laws and beholden to a free people with inalienable rights, butt that will have damaged our political norms for decades to come. This record of scandal should follow Biden, and those who enabled him, through history.

These are not the abusive actions of some faceless bureaucrat in the CIA, or subterranean troll toiling away in the bowls of the EPA, but rather deliberate and active conspiracies at the highest levels of the Biden administration and government. The enormity of the scandals lies not just with Biden, but with all of those in the DC establishment who enabled him and who will remain when Joe leaves town.

You can add other scandals such as fiscal insolvency, immigration and the hollowing out of the military. However, those scandals, while possibly dramatic in their future outcomes, are more policy blunders with effects as-yet unrealized. Don’t think so? We’ll see. But several thousand years of empirical evidence shows that it’s hard to predict things, especially the future. We’ll just have to keep playing the game and find out about those.

The Cover-Up of Biden’s Physical and Mental Disabilities

The fact that Biden was in mental decline has been obvious for years, even during the 2020 Election. That decline seemed to accelerate once he took office, and the alarming nature of his various missteps was rivaled only by the political establishment’s closing of ranks in telling us to ignore our lying eyes. Even when Biden’s disastrous debate performance last June finally allowed the story to break cover, they still tried to cover it up.

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The Conspiracy of the Trump Prosecutions

Yet another thing here in the dying days of the Biden administration.

There has been a lot of ink spilled over the past few years regarding the Biden administration’s unprecedented lawfare campaign against Trump. However, we need to remember that it wasn’t just the Biden administration launching these attacks, but Democrats throughout the country

There was Alvin Bragg’s prosecution in Manhattan. There was Fani Willis’s prosecution in Fulton County. Bragg’s case secured some convictions, but it is doubtful those will survive on appeal. Willis’s case has largely collapsed over ethics.

Before we sweep those cases into the dustbin of history, we need to take another look at what the Democrats have been doing over the past two years. Specifically, the active coordination between the Biden administration and the local prosecutions of Trump constituted a larger conspiracy against one of key foundations of a republic governed by law.

The fact that the various prosecutions were historic is well-trodden ground, but we need to remind ourselves that we are dealing with the unprecedented prosecutions of not only a former president but the man who was running to unseat an incumbent of the same party as the local and federal prosecutors. When you attempt things like what the Democrats were doing, your case had better be clean and tight.

Those local cases were anything but clean and tight.

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The Lawless Actions of Lloyd Austin

As the Biden administration closes up shop, the scandals keep coming. The following, regarding Lloyd Austin, might seem like small potatoes but that’s only in comparison to all of the rest, and speaks to a larger pattern of mismanagement and lawlessness.

Anybody remember this from last year?

“Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was released from the hospital on Monday, the Pentagon announced, two weeks after he was admitted for complications from prostate-cancer surgery. Doctors treating Austin, whose absence went undisclosed by the Pentagon for nearly a week, assured that the Defense Secretary was expected to make a full recovery but would work remotely ‘for a period of time’…

…. Austin entered Walter Reed National Military Hospital on New Year’s Day but failed to notify the White House of his hospitalization until January 4. During his absence, Austin transferred authority to Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, who was then in Puerto Rico on vacation and unaware of her boss’s health problems.”

There are two scandals here. The first is that Austin never informed the White House that he was out of action and had transferred authority to his deputy. That’s a major no-no in any organization, but especially with the Secretary of Defense given his place in the presidential succession, his possession of nuclear codes, and the fact that the various US combat commands report directly to him.

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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

One of the many benefits of growing older is that when people tell you a self-serving lie about the past, you can call them on it by reminding them that you lived through that part of history.

A case in point was the recent death and state funeral for Jimmy Carter. I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, especially when their coffin is still settling into the earth, but I’m the type of a guy at a funeral who would raise their hand during the eulogy and ask for equal time.

Carter was a man who while given a state funeral for his public life as president, was largely eulogized for his post-presidential life. The man was a disaster as a president and not just because of the condition of the country after he left office. The man did not understand at a fundamental level the job he held. Instead of being the chief executive and leader of a great republic and nation, he thought his job was to act as a puritanical scold. Instead of seeing his office as a public trust of leadership, he saw the moral authority of the office as a private possession.

While I wish the current occupant of the White House a long and healthy life, the past week reminds us that some day Joe Biden will also be given a state funeral, and that more than likely his many faults (let alone his evil) will be interred with his bones.

I was also reminded this week of the final days of the Clinton presidency, when outgoing Clinton White House staff engaged in “damage, theft, vandalism and pranks” designed to troll the incoming Bush administration.

Given the vandalism the outgoing Biden administration has been doing during its final days, those acts of 24 years ago seem almost cute.

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