J.D. Vance is right, ‘we’re not having enough children’ and plummeting fertility is a ‘civilizational crisis’

“There aren’t enough babies being born in our country… This is a civilizational crisis, and if we’re not willing to spend resources to solve it, we’re not serious about the very real problems that we face.”

That was Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in 2021 before he was elected in 2022, speaking at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Future of American Political Economy Conference in Alexandria, Virginia, addressing declining fertility rates all around the world that threaten population and economic collapse.

He’s right.

First on the numbers, the amount of newborns is definitely declining, the latest birth rate numbers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows, to 1.61 live births per woman in 2023.

That’s even lower than it was in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, when it was 1.63 babies per woman, according to CDC data, as the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Europe all continue experiencing significant declines.

The drop in fertility has been a long term trend, from 3.6 babies per woman in 1960 to 1.61 babies per woman now in 2023 after birth control was approved by the FDA in 1960, and combined with women going to college, entering the labor force and deferring child-rearing or foregoing it altogether.

Why is this a problem?

If women have fewer than two babies each, the population has to decline, fewer than one and it collapses, and if they have no babies, within a very short generation the human race will go extinct. It’s that simple.

In the meantime, the collapse of institutions is easy enough to witness, with labor shortages for schools, health care, postal workers and so forth as the Baby Boomer retirement wave continues.

And it’s breaking the budget with comparatively fewer taxpayers, with the explosion of the U.S. national debt, now $34.99 trillion. Since 1963 through 2022, the percent growth of revenues has averaged 6.9 percent a year to its present level of $4.65 trillion, according to data compiled by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In the meantime, mandatory spending including net interest owed on the national debt has grown an average 8.87 percent a year to its current level of $4.64 trillion.

And discretionary spending has grown an average 5.5 percent a year to its current level of $1.735 trillion.

In fact, since 2011, discretionary spending has only grown 1.99 percent a year.

Meanwhile, since 2011, mandatory spending grew an average 7.7 percent a year.

And revenues grew an average 7.26 percent.

In fact, the entire discretionary budget of $1.736 trillion for 2023 could be eliminated right now — eliminating every department, agency and firing every federal employee including the military — and the budget would still not be balanced as the debt grew by $1.855 trillion in 2023.

In the meantime, Social Security will grow from $1.346 trillion to $2.37 trillion in 2033 amid the Baby Boomer retirement wave, a 76 percent increase.

Medicare will grow from $821 billion to $1.84 trillion, a 124 percent increase.

Medicaid will grow from $608 billion to $928 billion, a 52 percent increase.

These are the drivers of the budget, accounting for 52 percent of all federal spending by 2033. Once interest and other mandatory spending is accounted for, mandatory spending will account 77.8 percent of all federal spending, up from its current level of 72.7 percent.

The reason is simple, as the percentage of the working age population over the age of 65 continues to rapidly increase — since 1960, when the FDA approved birth control, it has gone from 16 percent of the population to 26 percent of the population and rising — and with it the $34.5 trillion U.S. national debt, data from the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury shows.

At the same time, as the growth rate of the working age population participating in the civilian labor force has dramatically slowed down thanks to plummeting fertility, so has nominal economic growth, Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis data shows.

There are two simultaneous outcomes that emerge. First, as the population rapidly ages, so too do Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid expenditures that seniors depend on explode.

In the meantime, thanks to slower growth, revenues will continue not to keep pace with expenditures. Revenues will increase from $4.6 trillion in 2023 to $7.4 trillion, a $2.5 trillion or 51 percent increase over ten years. But expenditures will grow even faster, with outlays growing from $6.37 trillion in 2022 to $9.9 trillion by 2033, a $3.7 trillion or a 55.4 percent increase over the next decade.

The White House Office of Management and Budget projects the national debt to skyrocket to more than $50 trillion by 2033, but that’s low-balling it. The debt has grown by about 8 percent a year since 1980 once recessions and wars are factored. At that rate, it should be about $65 trillion to $70 trillion by 2033 and $100 trillion by 2037 or so, well north of 200 percent debt to GDP.

The reason is because there are comparatively fewer taxpayers versus those receiving benefits as the structural deficit widens due to the drop in fertility.

But that’s enough to make your eyes bleed. Imagine it more simply: If a village has 100 people, 50 men and 50 women, and they only have one child per couple, the next generation will only have 50 people, and 25 the generation after that, who will need to take care of 150 older villagers. It’s unsustainable, and is precisely the trajectory we are headed for.

The saying goes, when you less of something, you tax it, and when you want more of something, you subsidize it.

Towards that end, Vance in 2021 supported a proposal by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would dramatically expand the child tax credit to $6,000 per child under the age of 13 for single parents, and $12,000 per child under the age of 13 for married couples.

Vance said of Hawley’s proposal at the time, “Lot of ideas out there for how to directly help parents instead of giving them only one option. This is a good one.”

That works out to $78,000 of tax credits for single parents and $156,000 for married parents over the first 13 years of the child’s life, a double incentive not only to have children, but to go further and get married.

And on the Charlie Kirk podcast in 2021, Vance further summarized his thoughts that incentives should be used to encourage family formation, stating, “So, you talk about tax policy, let's tax the things that are bad and not tax the things that are good… If you are making $100,000, $400,000 a year and you've got three kids, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you are making the same amount of money and you don't have any kids. It's that simple.”

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, former President Donald Trump also expressed support for what he is calling “baby bucks,” stating, “We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom! I want a baby boom! You men are so lucky out there — you are so lucky, men.”

Another approach might be to simply front-load the tax credits into the child’s earlier, pre-school years, for example, $40,000 per baby, with $20,000 upfront and $4,000 a year for each of the following five years. The idea would be to foster a baby boom. Additional consideration could be given to incentivizing marriage, say, an additional $10,000 upfront for married couples having new children.

That could reduce the overall cost, although it would still be costly, $450 billion for every 10 million new babies, assuming equal amounts of single and married households. But that’d still be cheaper than the Hawley proposal, which might come out to $1.17 trillion for every 10 million new babies. It also might be more effective, if by front-loading the credits it results in immediate attempts at child-rearing.

Either approach would ultimately pay for itself, since individuals who work ultimately end up paying in excess of either $50,000 or $117,000 in taxes over their careers. And what we get in return is a growing, more robust generation of Americans.

Currently, about 3.7 million babies a year are born. But with incentives, that can be increased quickly.

It would be inflationary, for certain, as it was in the postwar baby boom. But so are labor shortages that contribute to supply shortages. Overall, a declining population could be deflationary long term, which has its own set of problems as was seen during the Great Depression. And rather than other proposals for universal basic income so that people can work less to pursue hobbies, by focusing on boosting family formation, the goal is to build the next generation of doctors, engineers, plumbers, farmers and so forth. We need not sacrifice our society’s emphasis on education.

To have a sustainable, highly educated country and economy, we need a sustainably growing population that is not dependent on foreign immigration. And as the average age of immigrants continues increasing — the median age of immigrants in 2022 was 47 — at best it is a temporary offset but ultimately contributes to the aging population.

Other alternatives including banning birth control and defunding colleges and universities might be a political lead balloon, not be successfully implemented and destroy the political party that adopted those policies.

It’s all about incentives. And the consequences for not getting the mix of incentives right appears to have dire consequences. In short, if we want to continue to be a growing, prosperous country, it’s time to get busy!

https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/j-d-vance-is-right-were-not-having-enough-children-and-plummeting-fertility-is-a-civilizational-crisis/

********************************************************

In Brief

* Trump maintains narrow polling lead over Harris: It’s officially the morning after, and Kamala Harris is still Kamala Harris. That’s the finding of the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which shows Donald Trump at 48.9 and Harris at 46.2. That’s nearly a two-point lead for Trump, which is a marked contrast from the final polls before the 2020 election, which had Trump trailing Joe Biden by 3-4 points. Put another way: It’s essentially the difference between a narrow electoral loss for Trump and a landslide victory for Trump. It’s also important to note that Harris polling better than Biden isn’t news. She was already polling better than Biden in multiple polls before she announced her candidacy a week ago. Late last week, Rasmussen, which is historically among the most accurate pollsters, had Trump ahead of Harris 50-43, while a Wall Street Journal poll had the two candidates essentially within the margin of error. But even that poll raised the red flags, noting, “Harris faces significant headwinds. Her tenure as vice president is closely tied to a Biden administration record that includes a chaotic southern border, rising prices and protracted wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.”

* Google accused of omitting Trump assassination attempt in search results: Google is allegedly suppressing search results for the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. When searching Google for “assassination attempt on,” the field would autocomplete a number of famous figures like Ronald Reagan, Bob Marley, or Gerald Ford. But Google tellingly failed to produce Trump among the names listed. This has led to backlash on social media, with the tech giant being accused of engaging in election interference. Republican Senator Roger Marshall (KS) promised that he will “be making an official inquiry into Google this week.” Meanwhile, a spokesman from Google claimed that no “manual action was taken on these predictions.” Rather, the algorithm uses “protections” to prevent Autocomplete from producing things “associated with political violence.” The spokesman added, “We’re working on improvements to ensure our systems are more up to date. Of course, Autocomplete is just a tool to help people save time, and they can still search for anything they want to.”

* California gig workers win: The California Supreme Court just handed a big win to gig workers and a blow to Big Labor. The issue was the passage of Prop 22 back in 2020, which allowed individuals like Lyft and Uber drivers to maintain their worker status as independent contractors rather than being forced to be full employees of these companies. Democrats and Big Labor fought to have Prop 22 overturned, claiming that it was unconstitutional. As independent contractors for Lyft or Uber, these companies would not be required to provide benefits as they would if they were employees. Democrats claimed that this hurt these workers. However, independent contractors noted that forcing them to become employees hurt their freedom to work at their own pace and on their own schedule. The court agreed, issuing a unanimous ruling upholding Prop 22. This ruling has national implications, as Kamala Harris and congressional Democrats want to eliminate independent contract work within the gig industry nationwide by forcing gig workers to be recognized as employees.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/108848-monday-below-the-fold-2024-07-29

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

The Deceived vs. the Indoctrinated

The American public has been subjected to massive propaganda efforts by both our government and our media for years. It’s important to understand the impact this has on the current presidential campaign.

That starts with understanding the difference between deception and indoctrination.

Those who have been merely deceived may be surprised when the deception is exposed. They may even be angry. But they will change their positions when confronted with facts that contradict them.

The indoctrinated will not.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “indoctrinated” as “accepting a set of beliefs without question, refusing to consider any others.” For the indoctrinated, those beliefs become part of their identity; they will not let go of them, even when faced with contrary evidence or explicit falsehoods.

Millions of Americans have been propagandized to believe that former President Donald Trump is “literally Hitler” and “a threat to our democracy”; that he will “destroy this country” or “start World War III.” You can provide all the proof to the contrary you want; it will not change their minds.

I’ve had conversations with friends and loved ones who profess to be terrified about the possible perils of another Trump presidency. In those, I point out just some of the actual conduct of the Biden administration:

— Imprisoning Americans and depriving them of their constitutional rights to due process

— Collaborating with Big Tech companies to censor truthful information about the 2020 elections, the origins of COVID-19, the United States’ role in funding gain-of-function research at the international virology laboratory in Wuhan, China, the efficacy of drugs like ivermectin in treating COVID-19, and the illness and deaths caused by the mRNA vaccines that were forced upon Americans

— Fabricating allegations of Trump’s “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 election, lying to a federal court to obtain illegal surveillance warrants and spending upwards of $35 million to “investigate” allegations they already knew were false

— Calling sexually explicit and criminal content on Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation,” and keeping it from the American public when they knew it was truthful, in order to impact the 2020 presidential election

— Prosecuting Trump for possession of allegedly classified documents but refusing to prosecute President Joe Biden for the same conduct

— Weaponizing the legal system against the administration’s political opponents

— Actively preventing the enactment and enforcement of laws that protect election integrity (for example, requiring identification and proof of citizenship before voting)

— Botching the withdrawal from Afghanistan and leaving thousands of American citizens and Afghani allies behind, as well as billions of dollars in military material and ammunition left for the Taliban

— Two major wars and $175 billion in taxpayer dollars given to Ukraine;

— Allowing approximately 10 million migrants to cross the border illegally in the past three and a half years, flying and busing them all over the country, housing them and given them monthly stipends, all at taxpayer expense

— Choking off our own energy production, sending the costs of fuel — and thus, everything else — skyrocketing, and creating the worst inflation we’ve had in more than 40 years

What reaction do I get? Blink … blink … “But Donald Trump …”

That’s indoctrination.

I’ve heard other attempted explanations. “Well,” the argument goes, “maybe people don’t care because these events primarily affect those with whom they disagree politically.”

But if that were true, they would be irate when confronted with the negative impact on populations they do purport to care about. For example, the illegal importation of millions of migrants has diverted resources away from America’s poor, our homeless, veterans and those dealing with substance abuse and mental illness. The presence of millions of illegal immigrants also inflates housing costs and depresses the job prospects for America’s working poor, including Blacks and single parents. And inflation affects everyone.

It doesn’t matter.

More compelling proof can be found in Democrat voters’ reactions to the events of the past three weeks that uniquely affected them:

First, Biden’s disastrous performance at the first presidential debate on June 27 exposed the ugly reality that their own party and the press had been lying about the president’s declining mental faculties for years. Had Democrat voters known about Biden’s condition in 2020, they could have chosen a different candidate.

It doesn’t matter.

Second, despite Biden’s adamant insistence that he was staying in the race, the Democratic Party forced him out in a de facto palace coup, had him issue a bland statement on X/Twitter and kept him in seclusion for almost a week.

It doesn’t matter.

Third, they just unilaterally substituted a new presidential candidate — Vice President Kamala Harris — without any participation by the party’s voters at all.

And by the way, this is the third time the Democratic Party has played fast and loose with internal electoral processes to install a candidate over the wishes of their voters, who wanted Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 and favored a different vice presidential running mate in 2020.

With few notable exceptions (Black Lives Matter and some donors), none of this seems to matter to Democrat voters.

Harris is already out on the stump, and we’re being treated to glowing press coverage featuring cheering crowds, and puff pieces promoting the many “firsts” associated with her impending victory: the first woman president, the first Indian American president, the first Jamaican American president, the first African American president. (OK, Jamaica is not in Africa, but that doesn’t matter, either.)

Republicans need to understand that they are dealing with a population in which a substantial number are completely unreachable, even by the most unassailable arguments. To reach the rest, the focus of Trump’s campaign must be not on irrelevancies like Harris’ former love life or her lack of children, but on her lack of qualifications, her incompetence and the disastrous policies she favors.

The proof of that — at least for those who aren’t indoctrinated — is ample.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/108801-the-deceived-vs-the-indoctrinated-2024-07-25

*************************************************

Trump Calls Tech Support

This weekend, a former Manhattan real estate developer and one-time crypto critic will be in Nashville to speak at Bitcoin 2024, the world’s largest bitcoin conference.

As Forbes reports, “Trump will give a 30-minute keynote address Saturday during the conference’s final day, in a speech that will likely attempt to court voters and capitalize on support he has already received from key cryptocurrency figures like the Winklevoss twins” of early Facebook fame.

Times have certainly changed.

Indeed, it would’ve been hard to imagine, just 10 years ago, that a 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee would be beating the hip, cool, trendy party of Barack Obama at its own technology game. But here we are.

“A sea change is underway in the tech industry,” write Robert Bellafiore and Jon Askonas at City Journal. “It is increasingly not just permitted, but downright fashionable, for technologists to reside on the political right. Moments after the Trump assassination attempt, Elon Musk ‘fully endorse[d]’ the former president. In the following days, venture capitalist and PayPal alumnus David Sacks spoke at the Republican National Convention, leading venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced their support for Trump, and Trump tapped former venture capitalist J.D. Vance as his running mate. A new Trump super PAC enjoys the backing of Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, the Winklevoss twins … and Musk himself.”

We might also consider a recent comment from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, he of the infamous infusion of nearly half a billion Zuckerbucks into the 2020 election to help get out the vote in the Democrat-controlled urban areas of the narrowly decided swing states. Perhaps, having seen the error in his ways; and perhaps, having seen the electoral writing on the wall; and perhaps, wanting to hedge his bets should a Republican-controlled Congress in 2025 seek to do away with the Section 230 protections that allow social media sites like Facebook to censor conservative speech while enjoying the legal protections of platforms as opposed to publishers — perhaps, given all these factors, Zuck thought it might be wise to send a shoutout to the assassination-dodging, fist-pumping former and perhaps future president.

“Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” said an admiring Zuckerberg recently, adding, “On some level as an American, it’s like hard to not get kind of emotional about that spirit and that fight, and I think that that’s why a lot of people like the guy.”

According to Trump’s brief Bitcoin 2024 speaker bio, he “announced his support for the American Bitcoin industry in May 2024, advocating for financial freedom and the growth of the U.S. Bitcoin industry on the global stage.” That seems to be the message, then: One party regulates and thereby oppresses innovation and entrepreneurship, while the other party deregulates and thereby encourages the same.

But it’s not just financial freedom; it’s also freedom of speech. The Left’s sordid history of suppression has always irked us, and it likely turns off technologists, too. Big Tech’s dirty work on behalf of the Democrats reached its zenith in the election-rigging censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. But things began to turn in 2022, when Elon Musk purchased Twitter and thereby established a free-speech beachhead on social media.

Today, even the history-rewriting, Harris-protecting, Trump-hating shills at Axios are sounding the Trump-Tech alarm:

A significant chunk of the tech industry’s money and power is lining up behind former President Trump. … Silicon Valley was once solidly Democratic, with just a handful of Republican outliers. Now its red camp is growing and throwing around its weight. … Venture capital billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each will make donations to Trump’s re-election effort [and] are following hot on the heels of Elon Musk’s announcement that he would endorse Trump and form a PAC to aid his campaign.

Not to be lost in all this is the Trump campaign’s other tech proponent. While he’s most noted for his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance is not only the first Millennial to appear on a major party’s presidential ticket; the retired Marine and Yale Law grad is also the second venture capitalist to do so, Mitt Romney having been the first.

As Bellafiore and Jon Askonas write: “Republican megadonor and Vance mentor Peter Thiel, of PayPal and Palantir, has long been the exception proving the rule of tech’s alignment with liberalism. Not anymore. The nascent ‘tech bros for Trump’ movement demands an explanation.”

That explanation involves the tech industry doing what it should’ve done long ago: protect its own interests as a growing industry. They continue:

The Trump-Vance ticket has shown a far greater openness to new technologies. Trump can tout a track record of cutting regulations. He has promised to “Make America First in AI” by, among other things, creating “industry-led” agencies to oversee AI development. He will speak at a major Bitcoin conference later this month. For his part, Vance hails from the venture capital scene, reported owning six figures’ worth of Bitcoin in his public financial filings, and has taken a strong public stance in favor of open-source AI.

If Donald Trump retakes the White House, it’ll be in large part because he patiently went to work in the past four years growing the Republican base — whether they be blacks or Hispanics or blue-collar workers or safety-conscious suburban moms.

As for Big Tech’s longtime dalliance with the Democrat Party, perhaps they’ve finally been mugged by reality.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/108815-trump-calls-tech-support-2024-07-26

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

The Shadow Primary: Biden Ends Campaign, Installs Harris As Party Nominee With NO Votes To ‘Save Our Democracy’

It's so offensive when Democrats slander Republicans as a threat to democracy. They are a threat to the Left, no more

President Joe Biden delivered a rare Oval Office address on July 24 withdrawing from the 2024 presidential campaign and leaving the Democratic Party nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has already endorsed and who appears to have secured enough support among the party’s convention delegates when they meet next month. Biden said, “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.” So, in order to “sav[e] our democracy,” and to unite the country, Biden said it was necessary to unite his party, many of whom were calling for him to be replaced as a candidate — without voters having any role whatsoever in the decision. This was a speech Biden could have delivered last year, before 14.6 million Americans voted for him in the 2024 Democratic Party primaries — who are now disenfranchised. In fact, about 35 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to stay in the race in the latest AP-NORC poll taken July 11 to July 15. Biden could have cleared the way for an open seat, but he said he wanted to run for re-election and, importantly, Democrats wanted to avoid a divisive primary that would have lowered their chances of winning the general election. So, how to remove Biden but without a primary full of in-fighting? Skip it and then, if necessary, anoint the replacement when there is little to no time to mount a credible challenge the presumptive nominee. This was a shadow primary. How democratic.

“[T]he sacred cause of this country is larger than any one of us. Those of us who cher[ish] that cause cherish it so much. The cause of American democracy itself. We must unite to protect it. In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor… So, I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation.”

That was President Joe Biden, delivering a rare Oval Office address on July 24 withdrawing from the 2024 presidential campaign and leaving the Democratic Party nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has already endorsed and who appears to have secured enough support among the party’s convention delegates when they meet next month.

Biden added, “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”

So, in order to “sav[e] our democracy,” and to unite the country, Biden said it was necessary to unite his party, many of whom were calling for him to be replaced as a candidate — without voters having any role whatsoever in the decision.

This was a speech Biden could have delivered last year, before 14.6 million Americans voted for him in the 2024 Democratic Party primaries — who are now disenfranchised. In fact, about 35 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to stay in the race in the latest AP-NORC poll taken July 11 to July 15. Biden could have cleared the way for an open seat, but he said he wanted to run for re-election and, importantly, Democrats wanted to avoid a divisive primary that would have lowered their chances of winning the general election.

So, how to remove Biden but without a primary full of in-fighting? Skip it and then, if necessary, anoint the replacement when there is little to no time to mount a credible challenge the presumptive nominee.

This was a shadow primary. How democratic.

https://dailytorch.com/2024/07/the-shadow-primary-biden-ends-campaign-installs-harris-as-party-nominee-with-no-votes-to-save-our-democracy/

**************************************************

Minor parties can save the West

‘Blame Farage for the Tory wipe-out!’ Or so went the rather limp voices in the UK, grasping for excuses following the massacre of globalist politics led by Rishi Sunak.

The desire for sensible conservative and libertarian-minded policy is on the rise, as is the renewal of cultural affection and nostalgia for decades past which appear to us now as the last flush of sunset chased over the edge of Parliament by the long night of left-wing rule.

So, why didn’t the conservatives win? Why isn’t the UK preparing for an age of economic liberalism and spiritual restoration? Why is Keir Starmer – the most radical socialist in a hundred years – strutting around Westminster preening his flock of Marxists?

Don’t blame Nigel Farage.

Blame the soggy wet Tories who valued their power above the needs of the people.

Blame the seat-warmers at the top in ‘safe seats’ who preyed on the long and grand history of the party as security against their reckless and activist politicking.

Blame a sad chain of leaders who refused to carry out Brexit because they, and their ministers, were miffed about spending five minutes standing in line to have their passports stamped instead of fighting to protect British waters from EU trawlers.

Blame the voters who stayed home, happy to watch democracy crumble while billions around the world pray that one day they may have the opportunity to vote.

And blame the voters who did show up, but lacked the courage to vote for principle and instead chose the faux safety of establishment.

If conservatives are to take one lesson from the activist Left, it’s this … we have to fight, as they do. Passionately. Relentlessly. Without fear.

Social media is full of people – nameless people – insisting that democracy is an illusion. Their message? That your vote means nothing. So don’t bother. Stay home. Keep quiet. Separate into whispering groups at the corners of the soon-to-be censored digital realm. There is no future in this approach. Certainly not with both parties cracking down on social media.

Disparaging the vote is usually an expression of despair.

Allow me to assure you of this… Your vote does count. Your vote has power. Provided it is used.

Just as a thousand people in the street can frighten a Parliament, 20 million people at the ballet box can flip a government.

Had UK conservatives voted for Reform, Nigel Farage would have the Opposition. He may even have the government. But they did not. They stayed home. The vote was split not by minor parties, but by a lack of courage.

The disparity between voting share, as raised by Reform to the fury of the Left, is valid. There is something wrong with a political system where the Liberal Democrats can win 3.5 million votes and take home 72 seats, while Reform UK wins 4 million votes but only holds 5 seats. No question, Farage has a point.

There is a similar problem where the disparity of population is such that the towering cities of our nation, where half the residents are new to this country and still finding their feet, hold policy power over the regional areas – the generational farms, growers of our food, and custodians of the natural landscape. Those who have never sown a field should not dictate the tax on a bag of wheat.

Democracy has always been a balancing act to make sure the brutal force of the majority does not overwhelm the rights of the individual and that the cities do not cannibalise the regions with their misguided virtue.

Keeping these scales balanced means the system must be reviewed. It is a review conducted when the public suspects something has gone wrong.

That said, it is interesting that the British press is full of conservatives lusting after Australia’s preferential voting. They assume, wrongly, that preferences would have saved the Tories – or boosted Reform. Neither is true – doubly so in an optional voting system where the most politically radical and enthusiastic show up to vote, which is disproportionately populated by the Left and sectarian groups who deem it a spiritual requirement rather than a democratic calling. It is a behaviour that has entrenched identity politics to the detriment of the wider community.

Australia knows from experience that preferential voting was implemented by the major parties – the uniparty – for its protection. It is a system that seeks to guarantee the supremacy of the establishment, no matter how poorly they perform or viciously they ignore their principles. Unless voters show courage…

While Nigel Farage may not have won as many seats as he would have liked, he did win seats. First-past-the-post makes it easier for minor parties to tip the balance of power and scare the heck out of conservative movements that abuse their legacy.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/minor-parties-can-save-the-west/

***************************************************

What to expect in this weekend’s Venezuelan elections

Venezuelans will gear up to vote in what has devolved into an unfair and unfree presidential election Sunday — one that nonetheless offers its citzens the best chance in a decade to get rid of the twenty-five-year-old Chavista regime that brought the oil-rich nation to its knees.

Nicolás Maduro, the man who, among other things, caused a forty-two-place drop in Venezuela’s Press Freedom Index in ten years, will be facing Edmundo González. González, a little known diplomat who served in Algeria and Argentina, became the opposition’s unitary candidate after the government banned María Corina Machado from running. Though “inabilitated,” as Venezuelans put it, this election continues to be a Maduro versus Machado match.

Were the election to lead to Maduro’s exit, the biggest political and economic crisis in the Western Hemisphere — which caused the departure of close to 8 million citizens — would be at the beginning of its end. If not, expect the same story to continue, including the expanding — and Maduro-weaponized — migration crisis, which is affecting countries from Chile to the United States.

Three of the best trusted pollsters in Venezuela show González leading by around twenty to thirty percentage points. If democracy was a reality, the results would surprise no one. The question is: to what extent is Maduro prepared to cheat?

Over the last year, the Venezuelan autocrat has imprisoned half of Machado’s inner circle, used his security forces to harass opposition leaders, tinkered with the voter rolls and disenfranchised millions of its citizens residing outside of the country. On Friday, a flight carrying several former national leaders who were on their way to Venezuela to participate as electoral observers was prevented from taking off from Panama.

“Copa [Airlines] plane carrying [former Panamanian] president [Mireya] Moscoso and other former presidents heading to Venezuela has not been allowed to take off from [Panama’s] Tocumen while they remain on board, due to the blockade of Venezuelan airspace,” said José Raúl Mulino, the Panamanian president. Later that day, nine Spanish deputies were retained and then deported after landing in the Venezuelan port city of La Guaira.

So who’ll be observing? Democracy-loving Chinese officials, the do-nothing UN and a barebones Carter Center mission that will not even check how the votes are counted.

Though Venezuelans still have some hope left, the odds benefit Maduro. He controls the institutions, has survived international sanctions and has ample experience in quashing popular discontent. Yet it would also be foolish to completely rule out a potential transition. For the first time in decades, the opposition is firmly united behind a savvy popular leader with a clear objective. Chavismo, meanwhile, seems mired in divisions.

Maria Corina Machado, one of the most outspoken opponents of chavismo, won the opposition primaries by a 93 percent landslide in October. She toured the country and turned the Venezuelan people from a disillusioned mass into an energized and well-oiled political movement.

Machado’s charisma has been well documented, but her political prowess is also worth noting. She effectively united a fractious opposition, and when Maduro banned her from running, she outmaneuvered the regime into accepting González’s nomination.

For years, Chavismo has kept power thanks to limitless oil money and a stubborn base of supporters. Today, they have neither: Venezuela’s economic collapse eroded their support and sanctions made it harder for them to keep their cronies happy. The swift and ruthless purge of key power players earlier this year showed there’s simply not enough money to keep all leaders happy.

The 2024 election offered Maduro’s best bet to solve the problem. His regime wagered it could “win” an election against an atomized opposition and a disillusioned citizenry, allowing countries to remove sanctions and let the flood of money solve all the internal disagreements within the regime. Yet that clearly hasn’t happened.

One wing of Chavismo seems to be willing to do anything to stay in power, as they have little prospects in a post-Maduro Venezuela. Another wing seems committed to keep power, but are more open to negotiate a settlement if that includes some guarantees and impunity for them. The election is putting this coalition to the ultimate test.

So, what can observers expect? The opposition will get more votes, that we know. What we don’t know is how Maduro, the electoral council and the military react to the electoral defeat.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/what-to-expect-in-this-weekends-venezuelan-elections/

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

Huge applause for Netanyahu's speech to Congress

“In the heart of the Middle East, standing in Iran’s way, is one proud, pro-American democracy—my country, the state of Israel!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting Washington amid the Israel-Hamas war, spoke these words Wednesday to enthusiastic applause during an address to a joint meeting of Congress that some Democrats boycotted.

Several Democrats chose not to attend as an act of protest against Israel and its war with Hamas.

Hamas has rejected every proposal for a cease-fire that allows for the release of hostages held by the terrorist group.

“I want to thank you for giving me the proud honor of addressing this citadel of democracy for the fourth time,” Netanyahu told lawmakers.

Netanyahu thus became the foreign leader who has spoken to Congress more than any other in history. Israel’s prime minister previously had been tied with Winston Churchill, the celebrated British prime minister, with three appearances before Congress.

Netanyahu began by accusing Iran and its allies of aggression and “barbarism” against Israel, Western allies, and other Arab nations.

“America and Israel must stand together,” he said to a standing ovation, “because when we stand together, something very simple happens: We win, they lose.”

After praising the actions of the Israeli military for rescuing over 130 hostages, Netanyahu introduced Noa Argamani, one of four hostages rescued in a daring special forces operation. He also welcomed the families of American hostages still in captivity.

“When I met with [these families] again, I promised them this: I will not rest until all of their loved ones are home,” he said.

Netanyahu praised President Joe Biden for “tireless” support of Israel and promised that America’s stance with Israel during her “darkest hour” will “never be forgotten.”

Other celebrated guests included four soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, a paratrooper officer who emigrated from Ethiopia, an injured tank commander, an infantryman who lost a leg fighting Hamas, and a sergeant named Ashraf who serves with one of Israel’s Muslim defensive units. Netanyahu celebrated their spirit, unity, and dedication:

“Like Ashraf, the Muslim soldiers of the IDF fought alongside their Jewish, Bedouin, Christian, and other comrades in arms with tremendous bravery,” Netanyahu said, over applause.

Netanyahu reaffirmed the post-World War II, post-Holocaust promise of “Never Again,” saying that “after Oct. 7, ‘Never Again’ is now!”

The Israeli prime minister heaped scorn on those protesting in favor of Hamas on college campuses and elsewhere, contending that those who support the brutal rapes and murders of parents and children “should be ashamed of themselves.”

“They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians,” Netanyahu said. “Between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas.”

He then outlined a report from U.S. intelligence citing Iranian funding for anti-Israel protests in the United States. “They want to disrupt America,” he said.

“These protesters burn American flags, even on the Fourth of July—and I wish to salute the fraternity brothers of the University of North Carolina who protected the American flag against these anti-Israel protesters.”

Amid the standing ovation and cheers that followed, many lawmakers in the audience began to chant “USA! USA!”

“For all we know, Iran could be funding the anti-Israel protests going on right outside this building—not that many, but they’re there, and throughout the city,” Netanyahu said. “Well, I have a message for these protesters: When the tyrants of Tehran, who hang gays from cranes and murder women for not covering their hair, are praising and promoting and funding you, you have officially become Iran’s useful idiots.”

“Some of these protesters—it’s amazing, absolutely amazing,” he quipped, “some of these protesters hold up signs proclaiming ‘Gays for Gaza.’ They might as well hold up signs saying ‘Chickens for KFC’!”

Netanyahu called out protesters who chanted the ethnic-cleansing slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!” but don’t “have a clue which river or sea they’re talking about.”

“They not only get an ‘F’ in geography, but an ‘F’ in history,” he said.

Netanyahu reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to securing a historic home for the Jewish people, dating back 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying: “It’s always been our home. It will always be our home.”

He didn’t slam only the anti-Israel protesters on American university campuses, but also their administrators. He said that Harvard, UPenn, and his own alma mater, MIT, “couldn’t bring themselves to condemn the calls for the genocide of Jews.”

Antisemitism is the world’s oldest hatred. For centuries, the massacre of Jews was always preceded by wild accusations. We were accused of everything from poisoning wells to spreading plagues to using the blood of slaughtered children to bake Passover matzos. These preposterous antisemitic lies led to persecution, mass murder, and ultimately to history’s worst genocide, the Holocaust.

Just as malicious lies were leveled for centuries at the Jewish people, malicious lies are now being leveled at the Jewish state. The outrageous slanders that painted Israel as racist and genocidal are meant to delegitimize Israel, to demonize the Jewish state, and to demonize Jews everywhere.

No wonder we’ve witnessed an appalling rise of antisemitism in America and around the world. My friends, whenever and wherever we see the scourge of antisemitism, we must unequivocally condemn it and resolutely fight it without exception.

Netanyahu rebuffed the International Criminal Court’s claim that Israel has starved civilians in Gaza, citing 500,000 tons of food that has been shipped in.

“If there are Palestinians in Gaza who aren’t getting enough food, it’s not because Israel is blocking it,” he said, “it’s because Hamas is stealing it.”

The prime minister warned that bowing to calls for a cease-fire “before the war was won” would allow Hamas to continue perpetrating additional acts of terror against Israel and civilians in Gaza. He reaffirmed that he would never allow a premature conclusion.

Netanyahu cited the analysis of Col. John Spencer, military historian and professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Spencer’s investigation into urban warfare throughout history concluded that Israel had taken more steps to prevent civilian casualties (beyond those required by international law) than any other nation in history.

Netanyahu argued that Israeli soldiers “should not be condemned for how they’re conducting the war in Gaza, but commended for it.”

He warned that the threat of Islamist terrorism from Iran and its proxies is not limited to Israel but looms over the entire Middle East, Western powers, and the United States. He cited assassination attempts, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and open calls for war with the U.S.

“My friends, if you remember one thing from this speech, remember this,” Netanyahu said. “Our enemies are your enemies, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory. That victory is in sight.”

He added:

This war could be over tomorrow if Hamas surrendered and released all of the hostages. But if they don’t, Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’ military capabilities, end its rule in Gaza, and bring all of our hostages home. That is what victory means, and we’ll settle for nothing less.

Netanyahu called on America to “give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster,” echoing Churchill’s calls for U.S. aid during World War II. He also painted a picture of a civilian-run, demilitarized Gaza Strip similar to Japan and Germany after the Allies’ victory in 1945.

And he thanked former President Donald Trump for his staunch support of Israel and Jerusalem as the nation’s capital, and for brokering the Abraham Accords—calling on that peace agreement to be the bedrock of an “Abraham Alliance” among Israel and friendly Arab nations in the Middle East.

Netanyahu concluded by praising the alliance between the United States and Israel, vowing:

Israel will always be your loyal friend and your steadfast partner. On behalf of the people of Israel, I came here today to say: Thank you, America!

Thank you for your solidarity, thank you for standing with Israel in our hour of need. Together, we shall defend our common civilization. Together, we shall secure a brilliant future for both our nations.

May God bless Israel, may God bless America, and may God bless the great alliance between Israel and America forever.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/netanyahu-almost-drowned-standing-ovations-congress/

************************************************

A very unfit president

Doctors who watched Joe Biden 's address to the nation tonight have revealed the subtle clues about the president's health. They warned his lack of blinking may suggest a neurological issue. His dry mouth and stiff hands implies cognitive decline. They also highlighted his generous application of makeup - likely to mask his pale skin

Virginia neurologist Dr W Chris Winter picked up on the 81-year-old's low blink rate.

He said the president blinked fewer than 10 times per minute on average, well below the average of 15 to 20 that most people experience. 'Low blink rate can be a sign of Parkinson's Disease... an earlier sign of the disease,' Dr Winter added.

Many medical experts have previously suggested Biden's apparent cognitive decline could be due to his suffering from an early form of the condition, especially after it emerged a Parkinson's doctor regularly visited the White House during Biden's tenure.

Dr Ernst von Schwarz, a cardiologist in California, said Biden's 'dry mouth, fixed stare, very little... hand movements and gestures... could be signs of cognitive decline' caused by his age, or 'a neurodegenerative condition' such as dementia.

Despite having nearly four days of practice, the president flubbed several lines and at times spoke so quietly that white noise could be heard during the broadcast. Dr Winter said a low voice was another warning sign of Parkinson's.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13669575/Doctors-reveal-hidden-warning-signs-Biden-health-address.html

************************************************

On Economics, Kamala Harris Skews Left of Bernie Sanders

We don’t have much from Kamala on either the economy or the Federal Reserve, but what we do have says she’d be substantially to the left of Biden.

On the Fed, Kamala was one of just 13 senators (including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts) to vote against Jerome Powell’s nomination as chairman because he’s not inflationary enough. As vice president, she mostly just pushed the Fed to focus on diversity.

On the broader economy, Harris mostly toed Biden’s line as vice president, so we have to go pre-Biden. As senator, Kamala was rated by the nonpartisan GovTrack as the most liberal U.S. senator—to the left of Warren or self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders.

Kamala scored a 7% from the National Rifle Association and a 4% from Club for Growth, meaning she’s a gun-grabbing tax hiker. The New York Times described her as a “pragmatic moderate,” which means she’s a raging communist.

In the Senate, Kamala pushed left-wing causes from affirmative action to sanctuary cities to a $10 trillion climate change plan.

She voted against Trump’s tax cuts. And she voted against the Trump administration’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a rewrite of the North American Free Trade Agreement, because it didn’t “confront climate change.” The one thing she has liked is the forever wars.

We’re in the biggest presidential succession crisis since at least 1968. We don’t even know if Biden is of sound mind. So maybe Kamala will be president tomorrow. Or maybe donors will dismiss her out of the race altogether.

What we can say is that everybody currently on the radar on the Dems’ side would be as bad or worse than Biden. There are still centrists in the Democrat orbit, such as Joe Manchin, John Fetterman, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But with left-wing donors in charge, though, none of them are in the running.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/23/kamalas-economics-left-of-bernie/

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

Democrats’ diversity dogma means Kamala Harris is the only way forward

The Democrats face an exquisite diversity, equity and inclusion dilemma of their own making. They will have to pick a woman of colour, Kamala Harris, as their presidential candidate 2.0.

With DEI ingrained in their political DNA, even as great swathes of America are having second thoughts about diversity dogma, the Democrats can’t risk choosing anyone else to face off against Donald Trump in November – even if another candidate was more likely to win. That’s why, if Democrats stick to their DEI religion, their convention next month must be a coronation, not an open contest.

Back in February, when it was clear to many that Joe Biden was too infirm to be President, let alone up for another four years in the White House, New York Times journalist Ross Douthat was way ahead of the pack: “If (Biden) drops out and doesn’t endorse his own number two, he’d be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal – ageing white president knifes first woman-of-colour veep – and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama.”

Having been dragged out of the race, Biden has done what all good DEI Democrats do: endorse a person as the next US commander-in-chief in large part because she ticked the two top boxes on the identitarian checklist.

This is not some wacky partisan myth. Biden was open about his reasons for picking Harris as his VP. “If I’m elected president … I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, pick a woman to be vice-president,” he said in March 2020. Biden told a room full of black journalists in August 2019 that he would prefer as his running mate someone “of colour and/or a different gender”.

The dilemma for the Democrats – and their progressive boosters in the media – is doubly exquisite. Having been exposed as liars about Biden’s competence to run for a second term, they will now likely be complicit in a second big lie – that Harris, if chosen as the new candidate, was picked because she is the most competent Democrat to lead the next administration.

Harris is a Californian liberal, most comfortable campaigning on abortion rights and rallying black, young and progressive voters. How well will she resonate with voters in rust-belt swing states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio where cost-of-living struggles feature ahead of progressive shibboleths? Especi­ally with Trump’s running mate JD Vance hailing from Ohio.

On paper, Harris has notched up an inspiring list of firsts. Even as a diversity pick, one might reasonably have expected her to pick up requisite experience and skills along the way. Not so much. Even some on Harris’s own side of politics have remarked on how underwhelming she has been as Biden’s understudy. The failure at the southern border is her biggest legacy as VP.

But in Democrat-land, Harris remains the perfect DEI pick for president.

Even if Harris proves herself as president, it won’t put to bed concerns that DEI has led us down a merry path where good people who lack DEI credentials are overlooked and discriminated against.

There is a growing backlash against DEI for two reasons. Sidelining merit is a dumb idea, no matter how fine the intentions behind giving the less competent a leg up. Once upon a time, at least, DEI advocates argued that if you define merit broadly enough, you could meet quotas without worrying whether the pool of available DEI candidates with the requisite skills was big enough. Not now. Quotas and targets are all-consuming.

DEI is patently bad for those it aims to help, too. Witness questions being asked about the role gender played in Biden’s 2022 appointment of Kimberly Cheatle as head of the Secret Service. Appointed by Biden in 2022, Cheatle is ultimately responsible for one of the biggest failures in the history of the American secret service, when a 20-year-old man tried to assassinate Trump, leaving one man dead and others, along with the former president, injured.

Prominent conservatives are calling Cheatle a “DEI hire”. “Somebody really dropped the ball,” Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, said. “You’ve got basically a DEI initiative person who heads up our Secret Service. This is what happens when you don’t put the best players in.”

There are questions, too, as to whether a female Secret Service agent on stage with Trump was the right pick to protect the former president.

Meghan McCain, daughter of former senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain, pointed to a video spreading across social media from Trump’s Pennsylvania rally where the female agent appears to fumble with her gun.

“You need to be taller than the candidate to protect them with your body,” McCain said on X. “Why do they have these short women – one who can’t holster a gun apparently – guarding Trump? This is embarrassing and dangerous.”

Questions about the role DEI played in this catastrophic fiasco should depend on the circumstances. No wet-behind-the-ears rookie, Cheatle has been with the Secret Service for a couple of decades. But when DEI takes centre stage, as the Democrats have ensured, it’s open season to question the competency of anyone who ticks DEI’s favoured identity boxes. It may not be fair but it is inevitable. Worse, it’s logical, even if the DEI faithful struggle to see reason.

Take, as another example, Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who, by the way, told us last year that “80 is the new 40” when asked about her boss’s competence to lead.

Was Jean-Pierre appointed because she’s a gun press secretary – or because putting another black woman out front for the Biden administration would boost the President’s DEI cred?

The Democrats’ entanglement with DEI is happening at a time when the diversity project is unravelling elsewhere. There are now almost daily reports that companies and other institutions are done with DEI.

Last month it was Tractor Supply, a rural retailer that sells animal feed and workwear. The company announced it’s getting rid of DEI jobs. Last week came reports of Microsoft laying off staff in charge of DEI initiatives. Goldman Sachs has tweaked its admissions policies for something called its Possibilities Summit. Previously for black college kids only, now whites are welcome. How about that?

This growing anti-DEI push received help from the highest place when the US Supreme Court last year pointed out the bleeding obvious – that permanently entrenching positive discrimination was unfair. Though that case concerned university admission policies, the logic that unravels DEI applies everywhere. Except, it seems, in progressive quarters where DEI remains a religious sacrament.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/democrats-diversity-dogma-means-kamala-harris-is-the-only-way-forward/news-story/7325923a7e420536e5f0f0472cf1eed1

**********************************************************

What irony: Democrats open new line of attack on Trump: his age

Hypocrisy comes so easily to the Left

In a twist, President Biden’s exit from the race now makes Donald Trump the oldest man ever to win his party’s nomination.

The irony isn’t lost on Democrats, who after aggressively playing down concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity are seeking to flip the script on their GOP opponent.

“The American people are rightly concerned that the Republican Party has nominated Donald Trump, a 78-year-old convicted criminal,” said James Singer, a spokesman for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

Age has been heavy on the minds of voters in a race that was, until Sunday, between the two oldest presidential candidates in history -- shattering the record they set when they ran against each other four years ago.

Biden, 81, was to be the oldest presidential candidate if he was on the ballot this year. But with his withdrawal, 78-year old Trump is now positioned to top the record set by Biden in 2020, when he won the Democratic nomination at the age of 77.

“Donald Trump is now officially the oldest presidential nominee of a major political party in American history. Meanwhile. Vice President Harris is doing her thing,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), 53, wrote on X.

With the rise of Harris, 59, the expected Democratic nominee, and Sen. JD Vance, 39, recently selected as Trump’s running mate, the spotlight has now shifted to Trump’s age as many voters have yearned for alternatives to gerontocracy in Washington.

“It’s not about age, it’s about competence, and Kamala Harris has proven to be just as incompetent and ineffective as Joe Biden,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Leavitt pointed to Harris’s handling of immigration policy under the Biden administration.

Biden stepped aside after failing to quell Democratic concerns about his age, fitness for office and ability to win in November. His age was central to the Trump campaign’s attacks against the octogenarian president.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/with-harris-running-democrats-open-new-line-of-attack-on-trump-his-age/news-story/e2892c9079f7ca2456da2595955b2715

******************************************************

Secret Service director resigns amid anger over Trump shooting

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday amid bipartisan outrage over her agency’s failure to stop a 20-year-old gunman from opening fire on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally.

Cheatle’s departure came after a blistering congressional hearing in which she offered minimal new information about the July 13 assassination attempt in western Pennsylvania, which marked the Secret Service’s most stunning failure since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.

The director vowed to get to the bottom of what she acknowledged was a colossal security lapse, but politicians on both sides of the aisle said her assurances didn’t inspire confidence and urged her to step down.

Cheatle in an internal email told employees she was resigning “with a heavy heart,” saying she didn’t want calls for her to quit to become a distraction. “The scrutiny over the last week has been intense and will continue to remain as our operational tempo increases,” she wrote. “However, this incident does not define us.”

Cheatle’s hearing performance “was awful. It was all secret and no service,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee who had joined Republicans in calling for her resignation. “She answered none of the questions that the American people have.”

The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), said “there will be more accountability to come.” “The Secret Service has a no-fail mission yet it failed historically on Director Cheatle’s watch,” he said.

Ronald Rowe, the agency’s deputy director and a 24-year-veteran of the service, will serve as its acting head, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. Rowe previously led the Secret Service’s legislative affairs and held a top role in the office of protective operations, a division that oversees the work most commonly associated with the agency.

A number of investigations are under way into how Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at least six rounds from the roof of the American Glass Research building roughly 400 feet away from where Trump spoke, killing one spectator, critically injuring two others and leaving Trump with a graze wound to the ear. A Secret Service sniper team shot back, killing Crooks, whose motive remains a mystery.

Cheatle in her testimony acknowledged that Crooks had been identified as suspicious more than an hour before the shooting. Pressed by politicians, she said that Secret Service agents had received several notifications of a person acting suspiciously.

The director declined to elaborate on those communications. She also declined to say how Crooks got on the roof, or whether authorities sought to approach him after he was initially identified as suspicious. In one exchange, she suggested that the security team with Trump before he went on stage didn’t know that the former president was facing an active threat.

Her resignation marks an abrupt and unhappy end to a Secret Service career three decades in the making.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/secret-service-director-resigns-amid-anger-over-trump-shooting/news-story/edb47283e8a377ef8f2b4cf9bf1e705b

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

God bless America: Aftermath of an attempted assassination

Qanta Ahmed (who is a Muslim)

Seated on the South Lawn of the White House on 15 September 2020, we couldn’t help but stand as President Trump arrived on the Balcony, leading the three Middle East leaders into the afternoon sun. We were about to witness the signing of the Abraham Accords bringing Israel into peace with Bahrain and UAE that day, and soon after, Morocco and Sudan. I was seated towards the edge of the 600-strong crowd, surrounded by donors sporting Presidential Seal cufflinks, tribute to their deep pockets and deeper still networks.

Next to me Batsheva, doting aunt of a Jared Kushner senior White House staffer, began reciting a soft prayer. Hearing the Hebrew, I enquired about the prayer. She was incanting the Jewish Bracha (blessing) uttered when one sees a king. I wanted to join in. Following her lead phonetically, we prayed together, one an American Jewish woman, one an American Muslim woman, both understanding our President to be our leader.

In the years since that moment of hope and light, President Trump has faced first ridicule, then derision, then dehumanisation and censure; silenced on mainstream and social media, bound in a litany of legal cases, convicted in my city of New York and finally today, targeted for assassination.

As an American and a Muslim, I pray for the full recovery of our former and likely future President and his family. I pray for my nation, the United States, a generous home to me for over 30 years. And as a Muslim I am bound to follow the example of our Prophet as we are reminded in the Islamic Hadith (Sahih Muslim 1828) to pray to our Maker for whomever is given charge of our nation beseeching of our Creator, ‘Whoever is given charge over my nation and he is gentle with them, be gentle with him.’ In other words one prays that the Almighty ‘might treat the ruler as he reigns’. (I remembered this prayer when King Charles III was crowned and wrote about that in this column).

Tonight, I remember the other part of this prayer.

‘Oh Allah, whoever is given charge over my nation and he is harsh with them, be harsh with him.’

There has been harshness within our nation. There has been harshness directed at our great nation’s former president.

We are collectively responsible as a nation for this appalling moment, led astray by a recklessly vitriolic far-left which has co-opted the remnants of the Democratic party. Today, the generous and hopeful America I first moved to in 1992 is unrecognisable.

Consumed by narcissism, extreme left woke neo-orthodoxy and an obscene marriage (maybe not only of convenience but also perhaps of infatuation) with virulent Islamism, the Democratic party that President Bill Clinton once led has been largely devoured.

In the void remaining, President Trump and his supporters have relentlessly been ridiculed, ostracised, dehumanised and demonised. This Frankenstein left calls Trump Hitler even as they celebrate, sanction and refuse to condemn breathtakingly virulent dehumanisation of America’s Jews since 7 October unleashing an astonishing licence for public hate speech, hate crimes and acts of hate towards America’s Jews. All of this has contributed to these highly combustible moments we must now face as virulent antiSemitism flows in our colleges, schools and campuses in the guise of anti-Zionism while espousing blatant allegiance with US designated Foreign Domestic Terrorist Organisations including Hamas and Hezbollah.

Today’s events were not possible without extreme speech.

Extreme rhetoric in our nation has led to this moment. Islamist jihadist ideology I have examined for decades reveals the power of extreme speech and how it dehumanises, how it diminishes integrative complexity, how it devolves into us versus them, good versus evil, and binary constructs until – having successfully laid the groundwork in the previous absolute dehumanisation of ‘the other’ – there remains only the elimination of the other.

Who knew? While I was busy studying radicalisation in the foothills of the Hindu Kush in North-West Pakistan, or in the lands of Yazidism and the valleys of the Zagros in Iraqi Kurdistan, big-budget radicalisation was unfurling right under my nose here in America’s most moneyed zip codes.

America the Beautiful is approaching almost a decade of intense domestic political tribalism, poisonous identity politics and, thanks to Covid, a deeply frayed social fabric. Indeed, such a fraying of the social fabric characterises the aftermath of all pandemics, as the brilliant counterterrorism intellectual Brian Michael Jenkins clearly delineates in his work Plagues and Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics. This frayed fabric tends to persist – spoiler alert – not for decades but centuries in the wake of global plagues.

Extreme speech with its binary simplicity feeds a ravenous news cycle straining to capture an ever-diminishing attention span targeted by massive bot-farms financed by national and international malignant actors. The result: fraught with tension, suspicion, alienation and frightening hate, Americans are separated gaping chasm by gaping chasm.

As the prayer in the Hadith reminds us, our leaders at this moment will indeed be judged harshly by our Maker for our leaders have treated all of us harshly. They have manipulated us with extreme speech, silenced debate, and censured the target of their hatred, President Trump, who has been throughout captive like a moth to a flame in an incandescent crucible of their animus.

This harshness is exemplified by a government which shows compassion only to a rarefied elite, yet denies it to the everyman upon whom it only rains scorn; a compassion cultivating the rabid anti-Semite at the expense of the disempowered American Jewish citizen. When we cannot protect the most vulnerable minorities in our nation – the Jewish people – it must be said – we may not be able to protect our most empowered citizens, our former and future president.

Language, Foucault has argued, furnishes the building blocks of a particular reality. Language is the battlefield across which power struggles are waged. And it is to language we must now turn.

America’s origins were inscribed in some of the finest language to define a democracy. We must now turn to our founding documents and tenets: one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Melania Trump in her letter after the assassination attempt wrote that our ‘gentle nation is frayed’. Be gentle with my nation. God Bless America. God have mercy on us all.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/god-bless-america/

*******************************************************

World politics: Worth a chuckle and a tear

Judith Sloan

I tried to lose interest in UK politics but when you have been following events in that country for literally decades, it’s hard to withdraw. To say that the Tories in that country were a disappointment is to understate the point – completely pathetic, I say.

I was neither surprised nor particularly disappointed when the Tories were slaughtered at the recent early election brought on by Rishi Sunak, who acted like the turkey voting for an early Christmas.

To be sure, Labour’s Keir Starmer didn’t actually get a mountain of votes, proportionately speaking, but with first-past-the-post voting, he now has a commanding majority in the House of Commons. There is not one Tory-held seat left in London.

(By the way, I’m no fan of first-past-the post voting, although it’s very easy to understand. How is it defensible that the LibDems could get over 70 seats when it polled proportionately less than Reform which secured only five seats? The best option is voluntary preferential. Voters can mark just one candidate but if there are other candidates that they don’t mind, they can mark them 2, 3 etc. I’m also OK with compulsory voting because that takes the extent of turnout out of the equation.)

Of course, by the time Sunak received the baton, it was too late to rescue his party from its dire position. Years of bossy left-leaning dictates coupled with a complete failure to control immigration, both legal and illegal, had well and truly put paid to the Tories’ electoral prospects.

It’s hard to pin the blame on just one person but I’m sticking my pin in Boris. He was the man who had campaigned for Brexit; he was the man who had won a landslide electoral victory by capturing all those Red Wall seats that had never been held by the Tories; he was the man who blew it all up.

His love affair with the green hoax led to a series of bizarre decisions that alienated many ordinary voters. To see him prancing around the Cop climate conference in Glasgow with the equally appalling Cop Minister, Alok Sharma (who has been rewarded by being made a member of the House of Lords) was a dismal sight. (I blame Boris for convincing ScoMo to commit the Coalition to Net Zero 2050, a strategic political mistake if there ever was one.)

All that crap about electric vehicles and phasing out of petrol/diesel ones; about replacing perfectly adequate gas boilers with noisy and inadequate heat pumps; about subsidising extremely expensive offshore windmills; and about eating less meat and cycling or walking everywhere. The list goes on.

Let’s face it, most adults have had a gutful of being told what to do by their parents. They don’t appreciate having another version of their parents bossing them around and imposing additional costs on them.

Of course, the obvious point here is that the Keir Starmer government will be even worse on this score. He hardly had time to get his feet under the desk when Ed Miliband, new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero – pause for groan here – cancelled new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

Mind you, the Tories had dragged their feet on this, going for years without approving any new projects before finally relenting towards the end of their term. Miliband has also approved some massive solar factory on England’s green and pleasant land.

But when voters have had enough of an incumbent government, their main concern is to boot it out rather than carefully analyse the alternative. In due course, the British public may become equally appalled by the Labour government that has clear bossy tendencies, possibly even worse than the Tories. For example, Starmer has already pulled forward the date of exit for internal combustion cars to 2030. But this realisation will take a little while to emerge.

It is interesting to take a look at what has happened over the ditch – not our ditch, their ditch (the Channel) – after the snap parliamentary election called by President Macron. If single-round/first-past-the-post voting is bad, the French two-round system is even worse. Having secured the most votes in the first round, the conservative Marine Le Pen – hatefully called ‘far right’ by her enemies and the press – was dudded when the ragtag team of left-wing parties ganged up to work the system to their advantage.

Of course, playing electoral games doesn’t alter the opinions of the very large number of French voters who want to see the borders controlled and common sense policies introduced, particularly on climate.

In the meantime, the left is likely to engage in a fight to the death for electoral spoils given that not everyone can be a winner. These sorts of coalitions have a habit of falling apart, often over quite minor issues. At this stage, no decision has been reached about who should be the prime minister, with Macron’s man offering up his resignation and Macron refusing to accept it. In other words, things are not going well, even from the start.

What is perhaps even more concerning is the suite of policies that the left regard as non-negotiable: a reduction in the retirement age; a massive lift in the minimum wage; more public servants; and price freezes on food, energy and transport. And these are just the main ones.

Given that France has not run a budget surplus since 1973, when I still wore my hair in pigtails, this list of demands is absurd. The current budget deficit France is running – well above 5 per cent of GDP – is in clear violation of the EU fiscal rules, which is really saying something given Macron’s love affair with the EU.

It will be a case of being alert to the political and economic instability likely to overcome France in the coming months and years. As Henry Ergas has pointed out, it’s likely to be a return to the volatility of the de Gaulle years and the possible end of the Sixth Republic.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/world-politics/

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************

Rise of the new Republican Party under Donald Trump

The writer below seems unaware that the 10% tariff idea is perfectly orthodox economics. Economists accept that there are some reasons not to have pure free trade and their preferred tariff in that case is precisely what Trump says. He is a graduate in economics, after all

I give more background on Trump's tariff ideas below:

http://jonjayray.com/trumpism.html

Trump says he will put a tariff of 10 per cent on all imports into the US. If he did that it would hurt the American economy, raise prices for all American families and damage the less well off more than the affluent. Trump is the leading candidate for president and his most repeated and earnest commitments deserve to be taken seriously. Biden is also a tariff protectionist. Yet it’s likely Trump looks on the universal 10 per cent tariff as merely the first play in a negotiation. This approach is maddening and destabilising and yet it’s not as inherently incoherent as it first looks. The integrating idea is Trump’s vision of nationalism.

Trump also said this week that he thought Taiwan should pay the US for security protection, that the US gets nothing from Taiwan and has no inherent reason to protect Taiwan. Trump’s overall theme, taken up strongly by Vance, is that allies are free-riding on the US. Inconveniently, that’s substantially true. And it includes Australia.

In truth, Taiwan, as an exemplary democracy, deserves support. Further, it would be disastrous for the US position in Asia, for the whole of Asia, if China conquers Taiwan and can project its military power across Japan to the south and all the way east to Hawaii.

The US interests are enormous. John Bolton, president Trump’s national security adviser, wrote in his White House memoir that there was always a strong chance Trump would sell Taiwan out in exchange for a deal with China’s Xi Jinping.

Yet here again, Trump is unpredictable on both the upside and the downside. The Chinese understand, and have certainly been told, that if they take actions that humiliate Trump and make him and his administration look weak and beaten, or even credibly threaten such action, then all bets are off.

The pro-Trump case among hawks is that America will be stronger under Trump than under any possible Democrat. A Trump Republican administration will spend more on defence than any Democrat would. The economy will be more robust. America’s enemies will be more worried about what Trump might do if they push him too far.

Not only that, Trump has helped create the situation in which the whole US political class is critical of China and sees the Chinese Communist Party as America’s adversary. It’s one thing to do a trade deal with China. It’s another thing altogether to cede Taiwan to China.

More concerning than anything, Vance has said he doesn’t care what happens in Ukraine. Trump has opposed US aid to Ukraine and his foreign policy surrogates talk of the Europeans financing Ukraine’s military resistance to Russia. Trump also, rather bizarrely, has claimed he’ll end the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day, in the time between his presumed election in November and inauguration in January.

That’s completely unbelievable. What Trump plainly has in mind, and it’s probably what Biden in fact has in mind as well, is freezing the conflict and getting a ceasefire, which becomes a peace agreement. This would be bitter for the Ukrainians for they would have lost Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine forever. However, if they were given real security guarantees, such as EU and NATO membership, they could feel that they’d preserved their nation.

Trump’s first term, before he disputed the election result, is mostly reassuring on substance. The economy did well. America was strong. No ally was abandoned or betrayed. And no one much messed with America.

But Trump had conventional Republicans in the key cabinet positions. That’s less likely to be the case this time. The first evidence for that is the selection of Vance as vice-president. In 2016 Trump chose Mike Pence, a sober, responsible, reliable established Republican governor.

Yet it’s also fair to say that Vance has about as much experience going into the vice-presidential candidacy as Barack Obama had when he ran for president.

Many conservatives across the Anglosphere have become national security conservatives, putting the need for a manufacturing base and for control of key supply chains above the efficiencies that free trade and just-in-time supply chains offer. Vance is a bit beyond that. Initially he was highly sceptical of Trump, but now he has embraced Trump as someone who works for his type of community.

On the other hand, Trump’s tax policies were very sympathetic to Wall Street interests that Vance is inclined to denounce. Vance wants to inherit the MAGA movement, so he’s very unlikely ever to defy Trump. Unfortunately, part of the price of getting inside the Trump tent, for Vance at least, has been to buy into the toxic fiction that the 2020 election was unlawfully stolen from Trump.

Yet speaking at the RNC, Vance stressed that sometimes he persuaded his colleagues and sometimes they persuaded him. He communicated openness to change. The Trump-Vance ticket at one level therefore offers a great deal of uncertainty.

But in reality most presidential tickets are like this to some extent. In 2020 Biden ran as a centrist yet has governed as an increasingly left-wing progressive. Trump-Vance may be no more fundamentally unpredictable than Biden was.

Trump won’t want America to be pushed around and he won’t want it humiliated by having its closest allies attacked. All presidencies, and all foreign policy, are transactional to some extent. With Trump this will be naked, perhaps extreme.

The Trump campaign has not produced any ads from Biden’s woeful performance in the TV debate three weeks ago because they actually don’t want to push Biden out of the race. But if the Democrats get their act together and find a better candidate, the US could be at a fundamental fork in the road: progressive liberalism versus national conservatism, as starkly delineated as any time in history. Perhaps this is the most important election after all.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/rise-of-the-new-republican-party-under-donald-trump/news-story/03a1291bfdb030beedbc69d3b772e555

***********************************************************

Hillbilly elegist a considered voice for outsider America

Vance is a populist but populists can make importat points. And when an ill-effect is the result of good intentions, it is still right to point out the ill-efffect

Everyone’s talking about Vance this week. That’s quite a feat given the major dramas concern a senile old Democrat refusing to step aside for a younger, competent candidate, and an assassination attempt against Donald Trump so close that a tilt of his head would have left him dead. A Secret Service failure of such mammoth proportions understandably raises questions about recklessness, at the very least.

Those going crazy about Vance, one way or another, see another Trumpian-styled saviour or another Trumpian devil. It’s cartoonish. Vance is more complicated than that. His policy positions from Ukraine to globalisation and the role of government most certainly deserve scrutiny. He’s not a neat fit for Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or even Trump.

His critics don’t like his lack of political experience. What they don’t address is this: what have the vast numbers of long-in-the-tooth experienced politicians done for American politics in recent decades? Except in many instances to ensure their disconnect from their own country?

The 39-year-old cleanskin gave an electrifying address at the Republican National Convention on Thursday. His pitch to the American heartland was authentic, compelling. “When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico,” Vance said.

When he was in high school, Vance noted, Biden backed a China trade deal and the US invasion of Iraq.

“And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan and other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” he told the packed stadium in Milwaukee.

Watched by millions more outside that stadium, Vance beseeched Americans to be “united in our love for this country and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas”.

Trumpism was never about Trump. It’s not about his chosen running mate, either. It’s about people left behind by elites on both sides of the political divide. That said, it won’t hurt that Vance is smart, handsome and young – the first millennial to feature at the top of the Republican ticket – and he hails from the downtrodden de-industrialised American heartland. That’s why so many are going back to his memoir.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was a wild success when it was published in June 2016 just months before Trump won the November ballot.

Back then Vance wasn’t a politician. He was a guy in his early 30s who worked in finance and penned a gritty, gut-wrenching memoir about growing up in a de-industrialised part of America. Vance was among the millions of American outsiders cast adrift by an elite culture, left behind by Wall Street and ignored by Washington.

He grew up poor in the midwest rust-belt of Middletown, Ohio, and spent summers with his mother’s family, a ragamuffin crowd of Kentucky hillbillies. There is an alcoholic father somewhere, and a revolving door of deadbeat men who hooked up with his drug-addicted mother.

And a smoking, cursing, loving grandmother – his Mamaw – who extracted him from a destiny where kids leave school early and end up jobless and hopeless. Where teenage pregnancies are rife, along with broken homes, crime, addiction and violence. Against all odds, Vance joined the military, served in Iraq and went to Yale law school.

During Trump’s election campaign in 2016, everyone was interested in the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy. A New York Times review in August that year praised Vance for advancing an important conversation about the causes of dysfunction among America’s white underclass.

“Mr Vance has inadvertently provided a civilised reference guide for an uncivilised election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans,” wrote Jennifer Senior from The Atlantic.

Vance ticked the top four boxes on the checklist of modern privilege, wrote Senior. He was white, male, straight, Protestant. But she pointed out that those boxes told you very little about Vance – and indeed many like him: “His people – hillbillies, rednecks, white trash, choose your epithet (or term of affection, depending on your point of view) – didn’t step off the Mayflower and become part of America’s ascendant class.”

“Poverty is the family tradition,” wrote Vance. White privilege was always a poor choice of words for Vance, and people like him who grew up in rust-belt towns and rural parts of America where blue-collar industries were dying. His life gave him authority to describe a broader social decay within a hillbilly culture where “learned helplessness” had taken root. His story about a substratum of American society untethered from personal responsibility resonated with its frankness.

Peak wokeness was just around the corner. The day before Netflix released Ron Howard’s movie version of Hillbilly Elegy featuring Glenn Close and Amy Adams, staff at Penguin were having a big cry – as in literally crying their eyes out during a staff meeting where they complained that their employer was publishing Jordan Peterson’s Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

In many ways, Trump picking Vance as his running mate makes perfect sense. Though Trump is not mentioned in the book, or the movie, Vance’s bootstrap story of survival and success explains why millions of Americans, left behind by globalisation and other elite obsessions, sided with a wealthy insider who campaigned for the working class as a shameless outsider.

Trump used three words during the 2016 campaign that resonated the most: “Drain the swamp.”

In the years since, Biden and the Democrats have done little to settle that sentiment. Neither has the other side, hence Trump’s takeover of the GOP.

It’s true that Vance described Trump as “unfit for office” in a column he penned for The New York Times in August 2016. But to understand why Vance is on the Trump ticket, one needs to move beyond an excitable media reaching into the past for “gotcha” moments. What matters is not that Vance has changed his mind about Trump. What matters more is the other stuff that Vance said that the media isn’t reporting.

Writing two months after Hillbilly Elegy was published, Vance recalled his grandma – Mamaw – reminiscing with pride about World War II.

“We did it,” she beamed when speaking to Vance some 50 years later. “We freed the whole world from tyranny.”

Yet when her grandson enlisted weeks after the US invaded Iraq, she called Vance a “grade A-idiot”. Though proud of serving his country, Vance wrote that “war is about more than service and sacrifice – it’s about winning”.

While tyranny was defeated in Europe many decades ago, “Americans today look at a Middle East that is humiliatingly worse off than when we found it,” he wrote.

Vance understood that the human cost of that humiliation fell hardest on Republican strongholds. The military is filled with men and women from the south, from rural communities, with whites making up a disproportionate number of those killed or injured in action. Add in the failure of Department of Veterans Affairs to care for those who returned.

“The Republicans never addressed the anger of their own voters,” wrote Vance.

But Trump did, Vance said in that New York Times column, some seven years before the man from Ohio entered congress. Trump spoke to those furious with a political elite that sent their children “to fight and bleed and die in Iraq”.

There is a lasting scepticism among many Americans towards spilling blood and treasure on foreign soil with no hope of winning.

This week, Meet the Press host Kristin Welker tried to ping Vance for something else he said years ago. As Trump took the mantle from Barack Obama, Vance wrote nice things about the former president. The NBC host thought she’d found a skeleton in Vance’s closet. It was amateurish stuff.

“The president’s example offered something no other public figure could: hope,” Vance wrote in The New York Times in January 2017.

“I wanted so desperately to have what he had – a happy marriage and beautiful, thriving children. But I thought that those things belonged to people unlike me, to those who came from money and intact nuclear families. For the rest of us, past was destiny.”

“On Jan. 20, (2017) the political side of my brain will breathe a sigh of relief at Mr Obama’s departure. I will hope for better policy from the new administration … But the child who so desperately wanted an American dream, with a happy family at its core will feel something different. For at a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I’ll miss him, and the example he set.”

Vance told the NBC host that he stood by his comments, that admiring a good husband, a good father, has nothing to do with politics.

Once you read Hillbilly Elegy, and go beyond clickbaity headlines about Vance, his meteoric rise to become Trump’s running mate is not hard to understand and admire.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/republican-national-convention-hillbilly-elegist-a-considered-voice-for-outsider-america/news-story/1d829171bcfdfb2c8f271bd3ba6b916b

*******************************************

Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************