Cut to the News Weekend - April 11, 2021
Published: Sun, 04/11/21
Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Friday's Virtual Happy Hour. That was very enjoyable. Your questions and comments were thought-provoking and gave me some food for pondering. Our next event is planned for Thursday, April 22 @ 5:00 PM Eastern. Look forward to it!
Here are a few good reads. If you don't have time tonight, please add them to your reading list. They are good think pieces. Sorry, the CTTN Weekend issue has been sporadic, coming out late in the day. I am a working Mom, with two obstinate teenage kids, a "white male" husband (LOL), two dogs, two cats, and a parrot! You know what that means. :-)
The 10 Radical New Rules That Are Changing America . . . There are 10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.1) Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air. Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much. 2) Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden took an oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But he has willfully rendered federal immigration laws null and void. 3) Racialism is now acceptable. We are defined first by our ethnicity or religion, and only secondarily — if at all — by an American commonality. The explicit exclusion of whites from college dorms, safe spaces and federal aid programs is now noncontroversial. It is unspoken payback for perceived past sins, or a type of “good” racism. 4) The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. The newcomer, unlike the host, is not stained by the sins of America’s founding and history. Most citizens currently must follow quarantine rules and social distancing, stay out of school and obey all the laws. Yet those entering the United States illegally need not follow such apparently superfluous COVID-19 rules. Their children should be immediately schooled without worry of quarantine. Immigrants need not worry about their illegal entry or residence in America. 5) Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. They cannot be asked to provide an ID to vote. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, See the other five radical new rules in Fox News
Comparing the COVID-19 vaccines . . . Three vaccines are authorized for use in the United States and another two are coming soon. Here is a closer look at what we know so far: Which vaccines are approved already? The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been available to Americans since December. A vaccine developed by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson company, was authorized in late February. AstraZeneca, working in collaboration with Oxford University, is expected to request authorization from the FDA for their vaccine within a few weeks. USA Today
Science, Politics, and COVID: Will Truth Prevail? . . . The COVID pandemic has been a tragedy, no doubt. But it has exposed profound issues in America that threaten the principles of freedom and order that we Americans often take for granted. The unprecedented exertion of power by the government since last March is shocking —issuing unilateral decrees, ordering the closure of businesses, churches, and schools, restricting personal movement, mandating behavior, and suspending indefinitely basic freedoms. Second, I was and remain stunned—almost frightened—at the acquiescence of the American people to such destructive, arbitrary, and wholly unscientific rules, restrictions, and mandates. The pandemic also brought to the forefront things we have known existed and have tolerated for years: media bias, the decline of academic freedom on campuses, the heavy hand of Big Tech, and—now more obviously than ever—the politicization of science. Ultimately, the freedom of Americans to seek and state what they believe to be the truth is at risk. Imprimis - Hillsdale College
The Resegregation of America . . . It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore a growing, insidious ethos overtaking America’s most powerful institutions. Individual merit and reasoned debate are out. “Lived experience” and the hierarchy of group grievance are now what matter most. Even truth is considered meaningless. Narratives are everything. The concept of fundamental human equality, derived from ideas at the heart of America’s founding and famously rearticulated by civil rights champion Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream” speech, is now being replaced by the enforced “equity” of the woke. The end result, ironically, is the resegregation of America. This new woke ideology, building on critical race theory, not only rejects the concept that people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, it increasingly also embraces actual governmental race-based discrimination. The evidence of this shift is everywhere. Heritage
America’s elites want a racial apocalypse . . . The narrative of racial conflict peddled by politicians, Big Business and progressives threatens social peace.Jamil Ford still recalls the disorders of late May. ‘It was like Baghdad’, he recalls, even as jurors listen to the arguments during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer accused of killing George Floyd. ‘I constantly think about it. The past history does not go away’, the African-American architect recalls, noting with trepidation possible National Guard deployments. ‘The mental part is still there.’ The woke may be winning in cyberspace and the corporate suite, but economic factors may prove more decisive in the long run. By 2032, minorities will constitute the majority of the American working class. They did better in terms of income under President Trump than previous administrations from both parties. This was one reason for the shocking move of Latin voters, devastated by the lockdowns, to Trump last year. It’s time to ditch the West Side Story of repressed urban minorities. The suburbs, not the cities, now dominate the non-white experience in America. In the 50 largest US metropolitan areas, 44 per cent of residents live in racially and ethnically diverse suburbs, ranging from 20 to 60 per cent non-white. Even after the death of George Floyd and the subsequent unrest, most minorities still seek out ‘the American dream’, notes a recent study, but many lack the conviction that they can realise it. by Joel Kotkin. Spiked
The whitewashing of Black Lives Matter . . . The Deep State has done its best to portray Black Lives Matter as a moderate movement. Wikipedia describes BLM as "a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people." Wikipedia says its loose structure has contributed to confusion in the press. The confusion is convenient because it allows BLM to disavow any comments by its members the public finds offensive. Wikipedia claims BLM, "protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. All branches of the Deep State assert that BLM is a respectable non-violent movement. BLM leaders were invited to the White House by President Obama. Nearly 300 major U.S. corporations have pledge literally hundreds of millions of dollars to BLM and other "racial justice" causes. How could BLM be anything other than a respectable mainstream movement?It does not require a great deal of investigation to discover that BLM is not the respectable organization the media portrays. BLM was founded in 2013 by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. Cullors stated, “Myself and Alicia [Garza] in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” American Thinker
What is an 'assault weapon'? . . . The term "assault weapon" or "assault rifle" has been predominantly wielded by those seeking more stringent firearm laws in the U.S. and refers to a class of firearms that possesses certain characteristic features. The components in question make a gun look military-style and have little effect on the overall mechanics of the firearm itself. "The central reason these firearms are misunderstood is political." "Though the semiautomatic design used in today’s pistols, rifles and shotguns was invented in the late-nineteenth century and was popularly sold to consumers in America and Europe in the early twentieth century, the modern sporting rifle has been called a 'weapon of war' by those who want to ban them." The NSSF claims that "AR-15-style rifles are NOT 'assault weapons' or 'assault rifles.' An assault rifle is fully automatic, a machine gun. Automatic firearms have been severely restricted from civilian ownership since 1934." "Radical anti-gunners have no problem twisting words to suit their agenda. This is no more apparent than when they made up the term ‘assault weapon’ decades ago — a term which has no true definition," GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt told the Washington Examiner. "Millions of honest Americans own AR-15s for self- and home defense, making this rifle a very commonly owned firearm. It can be said that the AR-15 is truly America’s rifle.” Washington Examiner
Dear Comrades: A tale of the Soviet past & American present . . . Similarities between the Russian film "Dear Comrades!"and what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 are purely coincidental. It was the KGB, not the FBI that arrested people based on the photos of the crowd. It was the caring Communist officials, not the caring Democrat officials, who were scrambling to escape through the back door. It was the Soviet Politburo members, not the members of the U.S. Congress who summoned thousands of armed troops to protect them from the people. It was the KGB snipers, not Nancy Pelosi's bodyguards who were shooting at the crowd. It was the local Soviet authorities, not the Washington Mayor that declared a draconian curfew. And it was the Soviet and not the American media that embargoed all the truth about the events. After all, "Dear Comrades!" is about the Soviet state's response to a spontaneous strike of factory workers in a Russian city in 1962. The people were shot at, the survivors were arrested by the KGB, and the rest of the city inhabitants had to sign non-disclosure papers stating that none of the above had ever happened. The blood-stained square was promptly covered with new asphalt and in the evening the authorities organized a massive celebration with happy music and dancing on top of the freshly disguised blood puddles. This has never happened in America, of course. Not yet. People's Cube
I wanted to introduce you to People's Cube, which is a brain child of Oleg Atbashian, a fellow Russian emigre to America from the USSR, who knows how the socialism/communism story ends. Although I don't know Oleg personally, I admire his work because it is so 'relatable' (as my kids like to say) to anyone who live behind the 'Iron Curtain' and also to those who paid attention to history. And it is evident, that our Cut to the News and White House Dossier readers have! Folks like Oleg, who have experienced the unfreedom and total government control of socialism, are desperately trying to warn our fellow Americans that this totalitarian socialism thing is no good. We must fight it with all we've got!
You Mean Everything to Me by Mark Wilkinson.
Such a lovely song for a special dinner, lunch or just a brief 10 minute catch up with your loved one. H/T to CTTN reader, TL for finding this gem.
Have a wonderful week, everyone. And Do Not Fret! (Psalm 37),
Rebekah