A not-exactly quick trip through this crazy world we’re in, with a bit quicker comment on Thursday’s least surprising news story.
Yes, Jussie Smollett was found guilty. It’s what he wanted, right? Have you ever seen a less sympathetic defendant? And have you ever seen anything dumber than Black Lives Matter’s decision to back him to the end?
Don’t take those people to the horse track, that’s for sure. They’re worse at picking winners than the Palestinians.
And now, for the show.
1. Jason Whitlock nails it.
The estimable Jason Whitlock, who is rapidly becoming one of the most clear-eyed and reliable commentators on American life, writes about the Jussie Smollett trial that Smollett is a victim of sorts, but not in the way he presents or would accept.
Jussie Smollett destroyed his career and reputation trying to live up to a racist expectation of “blackness.” It’s the same mistake former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick made.
Popular culture’s puppet masters — academia, Big Tech’s social media apps, the executives running the TV, movie, music, and sports industries, and the political left — have established victimhood as the highest form of blackness. Attaining victim status is the primary expectation placed on American black men.
Meeting this expectation is especially important for mixed-race, wealthy celebrities. In the culture created by the left, victimhood is their rite of passage into the fraternity of blackness.
As much as I despise Smollett for the 2019 racial hoax he staged in Chicago, the alleged crime that currently has him on trial, my disdain for the culture that baited him into the act far exceeds my disgust for Smollett.
Very true. But then there’s this comment about “white privilege,” which you probably haven’t seen anywhere else and also probably has to be written by a black man for reasons obvious to anyone in tune with our stupid contemporary culture…
Tuesday night, I had dinner with two friends. We engaged in a debate about white privilege. What is it? Does it exist? Can it be fixed?
I argued that white privilege certainly exists in America and that the greatest white privilege is expectations that align with success. White people are expected to achieve academically. They’re expected to master the English language. They’re expected to have good credit. They’re expected to show up on time. They’re expected not to use the N-word. They’re expected to make an effort to avoid racist thoughts and actions. They’re expected to wed the mothers or fathers of their children.
Do all white people meet these expectations? Absolutely not. But being born into a world that expects you to adopt principles and behaviors that lead to success is a privilege that puts you far ahead of people who don’t have those expectations on them.
Black people, as a collective, don’t have those expectations on them. Popular culture, as controlled by liberals, removes virtually all expectations from black people, particularly black men. We’re expected to excel at football and basketball. And we’re expected to meet the liberal standard of blackness. Anything we do or achieve beyond that is considered a bonus.
The lack of expectations imposed on black people is the most racist act in America. It’s far more racist than Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck and back. Had George Floyd entered a world that expected him to achieve beyond the athletic field, he would have been much less likely to find himself needing to be restrained by police.
Whitlock says that expectations deficit is where the real systemic racism in America can be found, and that Smollett is a victim of it.
On that last part it might be a stretch. Jussie Smollett isn’t a victim; he’s a perpetrator. But to the extent that Smollett believed a race hoax would further his career, Whitlock is correct that the seeking of victimization is a pathology that white liberals have imposed on black people and it’s absolutely contemptible for them to have done so.
2. Don’t look now, but the GOP has found itself some brand new friends.
This has been coming for some time, but it has to be the single most terrifying development in the past 50 years if you’re a Democrat. The implications of it are absolutely stupefying.
Support from Hispanic voters is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll.
While the poll relies on an unusually small sample size of 165 Hispanic registered voters to arrive at its conclusions and has a 7.6 percentage point margin of error, it’s the latest data point in a worrying trend for Democrats. The party has come to rely on the Hispanic vote to win national and local elections and acknowledged that its underperformance among the voting block is partially to blame for 2020 defeats in key states like Texas and Florida.
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), 44 percent of Hispanics would vote for President Biden if the 2024 presidential election were held today, and 43 percent would vote for former President Trump.
The breakdown of congressional support among Hispanics finds a similar trend, with support for Democrats and the GOP tied at 37 percent each.
In keeping with most polls of Hispanic voters, the WSJ survey found greater support for Republicans and Trump among Hispanic men than among Hispanic women.
But the WSJ poll is an outlier in its conclusions on the overall support for the GOP, even accounting for the wide margin of error.
The WSJ report notes that a statistical tie among Hispanic voters would be a wild swing from the 2020 election, when Biden obtained 63 percent of the Latino vote, nearly 30 percentage points more than Trump.
Small sample sizes and lack of cultural competency in polling have long been a gripe among Hispanic political consultants, who say polls of Hispanics are often weighted toward English-speaking, wealthier Hispanic voters.
That’s an article from the Democrat organ the Hill, so it’s not surprising that reporter Rafael Bernal spends the rest of the piece trying to discredit his first three paragraphs. But there is zero question that the Democrats’ Hispanic numbers are bad and getting worse. This space explained why earlier this year.
If the Hispanic vote actually starts to split 50-50, it becomes impossible for Democrats to win national elections. It becomes impossible for Democrats to get the White House. They can forget about ever flipping Texas blue. They’re going to lose Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico. Arizona goes bright red again.
And whether the WSJ poll has true numbers or it just offers an inkling of a trend, there is no doubt we are moving in the direction of a 50-50 Hispanic vote.
So here’s something — for decades the Democrat Party has sold its soul to import an electorate it thought it could depend on to provide a demographic fait accompli. What if that turns into a gross miscalculation and their friends turn out not to be their friends? What then?
Maybe, if these guys were going to depend on a rising Hispanic vote to be their base, they should have calibrated their policy platform to actually appeal to them. Insisting that people call themselves Latinx when none of them have a clue what that is, touting transgenderism and critical race theory and cheapening hard-won American citizenship while essentially ceding control of the border to murderous drug cartels everyone hates probably wouldn’t have focus-grouped very well.
The GOP was always the Stupid Party. But in the last five years nobody is as aggressively stupid as the people taking charge of the Dems.
3. Joe Biden’s Manufactured “Oil Scarcity”
Did you catch this Reuters piece from Monday?
Oilfield services firm Halliburton (HAL.N) on Monday said the world was headed for a period of oil scarcity following years of underinvestment in fossil fuel development.
“I think that for the first time, in a long time, we will see a buyer looking for a barrel of oil, as opposed to a barrel of oil looking for a buyer,” Halliburton Chief Executive Officer Jeff Miller said at an oil and gas conference in Houston.
Right now Big Oil is sitting on more cash than ever, thanks to massive price increases this year. But not solely because of those high prices. What usually happens is that the oil and gas industry operates on high volume and low margins, because they plow practically every dime they make back into more exploration and drilling.
Why? Wells diminish in production as they operate. You’ve got to constantly open new fields.
This isn’t Peak Oil. It’s not like there’s no more oil to find. We’ve probably got more identified fossil fuel resources now than ever. But so much of it is tied up in what’s called “political risk,” and with Joe Biden and his clown car of handlers in charge, “political risk” is higher in America than in the usual tin-pot dictatorships Big Oil has traditionally found a way to function in, that the oil companies are starting to run out of places to drill.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry led a group of his colleagues in a lawsuit which forced the Biden administration to hold an oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was a gusher of a success because the oil companies are desperate to invest in something they’re allowed to.
While Biden and the Democrats are crowing about a minuscule drop in gasoline prices of late, don’t be surprised if that trend reverses and starts to climb again. And when it does, don’t forget that this is all policy-driven and easily reversible once adults are in charge.
4. The Omicronies
I’ll have to do a full column on this next week, but the South African doctors who first identified the Omicron variant are screaming at our seemingly-idiotic politicians for overreacting to it.
And one of the South Africans said something pretty damned smart, as PJ Media’s Stephen Green notes…
Could the rapid spread of the omicron variant signal “the end of COVID-19”?
That’s what the CEO of South Africa’s largest healthcare provider is hoping for since omicron is “so mild” that “we’re not seeing … significant increases in hospital admissions,” according to Summit News.
Richard Friedland, head honcho of Netcare Ltd also said, “I actually think there is a silver lining here and this may signal the end of COVID-19, with it attenuating itself to such an extent that it’s highly contagious, but doesn’t cause severe disease.”
“That’s what happened with Spanish flu,” he reminded people in a statement on Wednesday.
And something else…
https://twitter.com/NigelKellow/status/1467604020948869121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1467604020948869121%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fvodkapundit%2F2021%2F12%2F08%2Fomicron-may-signal-the-end-of-covid-19-according-to-healthcare-ceo-n1539988
But all you see in the legacy media this week is breathless reportage about the necessity of taking Yet Another Booster Shot against Omicron.
It’s a level of quackery-for-profit we haven’t seen since Hadacol was all the rage, and it has the White House attempting to force it on the American public.
What a world.
5. Better Amend the War Powers Act. Quick.
This…
President Biden said Wednesday he would not deploy U.S. troops to Ukraine to deter a possible Russian invasion, telling reporters the option was “not on the table.”
…was fine. But this…
Biden added as he departed the White House for a trip to Kansas City, Mo. that he informed Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Tuesday call between the leaders that there would be “severe consequences” if Moscow orders an attack.
…
The president added that the US would not send forces to Ukraine because the former Soviet republic is not a US treaty ally — though the US has provided Kiev with military aid and training over the past decade to counter Russia. The US and Russia are also signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which both nations pledged to honor the borders of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
“If in fact [Russia invades], we would probably also be required to reinforce our presence in NATO countries to reassure — particularly those on the eastern flank,” Biden said. “In addition to that, I made it clear that we would provide the defensive capability to the Ukrainians as well.”
…was not. If you can’t see parallels to the runup to Pearl Harbor in this stupid formulation of Biden’s you aren’t paying attention.
Joe Biden is not in any cognitive shape to prosecute a war on foreign soil, and sending American troops to Germany or anywhere else increases the possibility of just that.
Russia is flexing its muscles because Vladimir Putin smells blood from Biden’s disgraceful Afghan pullout. You almost can’t blame him. But Biden’s incompetence and, with respect to Ukraine given he and his family’s corrupt dealings there, his compromised ethical state disqualify him from making credible national security policy.
So here’s an idea. Some Republican in the House — I would suggest Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Green for maximum effect — ought to bring a bill amending the War Powers Act to force the president to submit for Congressional approval any new foreign deployment of troops overseas. No more rapid deployments leading to foreign wars without a Congressional declaration of same.
We have been out of kilter on this subject for far too long, and we are now in danger of this train of abuses putting us in position to lose a real war against a real opponent. Congressional oversight must return.
Even Democrats know this. They’ve made noises in this regard for years while Republicans were in office. And it isn’t like many of them have full confidence in Biden.
This would be an extreme test of the Democrat leadership’s control over their members in the House and Senate, and it might just offer an opportunity for Republican-led bipartisan consensus on something. If not, then it would be a complete political disaster for the Democrats even if by some miracle Biden doesn’t blunder us into a useless war with the Russians.
