TRUMP AS USEFUL IDIOT FOR THE LEFT

Once again Donald J. Trump’s ego has stomped on his common sense, or what remains of it. We remember how his egocentric obsession with the outcome of the last presidential election caused him to favor “loyal” candidates in Georgia rather than those that might destroy the Democrat’s slim majority in the Senate. Flawed Trump candidates in purple states in the midterm elections helped shore up the Senate for the Left and mitigate the predicted “red wave” in the House. And now, his ego has shot him in the politico-legal foot.

There is no question that the Department of Justice has been weaponized against conservatives (the asymmetric application of the enforcement apparatus has been laid out in detail in prior rants, and won’t be revisited here). The current legal bludgeoning of Trump is a continuation of the banana republic-type behavior we’ve witnessed since even before the Russia Hoax. Any honest, informed citizen can see the slow-walk of the Biden scandal. The televised hearings on of January 6^th and the prosecution of Trump in NY re the Stormy Daniels debacle were examples of laughable political theater. Politically, the current indictment of Trump over the stored top secret documents in Mar-a-Lago, however, is not a laughing matter. Oh, it’s clearly disgustingly partisan, in keeping with prior Democrat behavior. But Trump, once again, has armed the opposition—and this time sacrificed himself, potentially along with the Republican Party.

In the bygone days of Secretary of State and future presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, we all recall the scandal of secret documents stored on her home server that were eventually found on Anthony Weiner’s computer. Despite the subsequent bit-bleaching of her server and electronic devices to hide the evidence, FBI Director James Comey not only incongruously declared an absence of “intent,” then went on to unilaterally proclaim intent as the measure by which prosecution should be undertaken, allowing Hillary to walk. Now we have an ex-president in legal peril who kept secret documents, as did Pence and Biden (who both returned them). Charges against Pence were dismissed. Biden is being “investigated,” and I won’t hold my breath on that outcome. But Trump, either through hubris or blinding anger from his wounded ego, decided not to defang the situation by simply returning the documents. Instead, he hid a quantity of the boxes from his lawyers, who unknowingly claimed all had been returned, and which were subsequently uncovered by authorities. On top of this political and legal malfeasance, Trump was recorded as sharing some of the content of secret files to an individual who was without appropriate security clearance and then proclaiming he had not declassified them and could no longer do so, countering his own defense that, as president, he had had the right to automatically declassify all documents in his possession. This makes a legal defense going forward challenging, at best.

There is a clear, banana republic-style double standard being used to indict Trump and further divide the nation. The remedy would be a political, rather than a legal one, i.e., a refusal by the DOJ to prosecute, consistent with prior precedent. Instead, Biden et. al. has chosen, as we might expect, to allow this unprecedented indictment of a president to move forward. The effects of this are predictable. The pro-Trump Republican base will be justifiably outraged, likely increasing Trump’s chances of winning a Republican primary. Unfortunately, I fear it will further decrease his chances of winning a national election (I’ve already expressed concerns about his ability, in the setting of TDS, to overcome even a decomposing zombie such as Biden). But I see a second, perhaps even more substantial danger to the Republican Party as a whole: As the understandable ire on the right from this political injustice grows, it is not inconceivable that it will radicalize more disgruntled voters in right wing of the party, increasing the likelihood of politically-motivated violence. This, in turn, will justify, or appear to, the Biden contention that the alt-Right and “MAGA Republicans” are the dominant “threat to democracy,” and will be used to intensify the crack down on conservative speech and potentially alienate more of the centrist and independent votes needed in a national contest.

Trump’s policies were a force for good when he served in the White House. Political and legal stupidity may end up making him a useful idiot for the Left, and cost him and his party an election. Or it may open the door to other Republican contenders. In any case, handing the noose to the hangman for your own lynching is never a great idea.

THE TRUMP RUN—CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

The prevalent wisdom is that the indictment of Donald Trump occurred at this time because the Democrats hate him and are terrified of a second go in the White House. While this is true and true, I’m not alone in maintaining that the indictment is precisely timed by the Left to assist Trump in his quest for a primary win.

The dynamics of a primary election and a national one are vastly different. With Trump’s unflagging base of somewhere ~30% of Republican voters, he undeniably has an advantage going into the primary and polls support this contention. The current indictment, with all available information, is based on flimsy charges and no likely crime, much less a felony. And this isn’t my opinion, but those of more than one attorney not associated with the case. The unequal application of the law is fodder for another rant, but the obvious injustice has triggered the expected primary poll bump for Trump. While the Left in power is abysmal when it comes to governing, this incompetence does not extend to the arena of politics. A small radical contingent would never have been able to control the educational system, the culture, and then the government by planned incremental baby steps over decades without a collective sociopolitical genius that would be admirable if it weren’t so evil. So it seemed a stretch to me that they wouldn’t see the benefit this arraignment will gift Trump in the primary run. And now with the the over-the-top “let’s throw 34 felony charges at the wall and see what sticks” announcement, it became clear that my analysis was on point: They’re not even bothering to hide the politicization.

I was a Cruz man for Trump run #1, but unhesitatingly voted Trump over Hillary, correctly perceiving at worst he was the lesser of two evils. I hadn’t expected his policies to be so spot-on, nor their implementation so successful with the political headwinds he faced and an uphill climb against an entrenched, hostile Deep State. The first businessman in a long line of career politicians in the White House proved to be the recipe our nation needed. While his outsider status gave him the clarity to oppose deep-rooted corruption, his lack of political acumen coupled with an outsized narcissism only rivaled by his predecessor did not serve him well. With his frequently boorish tweets and political gaffs (possibly the biggest resulting in the loss of a Senate majority via the midterm Georgia race when he placed perceived personal disloyalty above the Party and the country), he fanned into flames an already smoldering Trump Derangement Syndrome. TDS is not just limited to the far Left—many moderate Democrats, Independents, and even some Republicans suffer from the malady. Its most important symptom is an inability to see, remember, or acknowledge his salutary policies and the attendant favorable outcomes (recall that not a single Democrat clapped during his State of the Union address when the historically low unemployment rates in minority communities were referenced). Although not the sole reason for Trump’s loss to a failing, basement-sequestered Biden on his second run, I maintain it played a major, if not the most crucial, role. Viewing the political landscape through the eyes of a Leftist (as headache-provoking as that may be), the prospect of a DeSantis (or other) candidacy is much more concerning. Trump is a known quantity, with an already failed run (fairly or unfairly) against Biden, and national polls suggest even less across-the-board popularity than in 2020. And the Leftist media benefit in eyeballs and dollars with Trump in the picture. While the indictment will energize Trump supporters and those already committed to a non-Democrat candidate, it’s not likely to swing otherwise receptive but uncommitted voters. Hanging one’s hopes on the ongoing abysmal track record of Biden’s ongoing disastrous reign of tyranny may be a fool’s game, judging by the results of the midterm elections.

I fear that in a national election a candidate with the millstone of TDS around his neck who has lost once to a doddering fool, can lose again.

SOCIETY’S DE(I)ATH WISH

The acronym DEI (I prefer DIE as it more accurately characterizes what it’s doing to our society) ostensibly stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, but this pervasive and pernicious program is more aptly defined as Division, Entitlement, and Inequality.

The diversity it extols applies to skin color and sexual preference, not ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints. Under this rubric, Critical Race Theory has sprouted like weeds throughout the garden of color blindness that MLK had hoped and prayed for, and accounts for the astonishing lack of competence in even the upper echelons of power.. Children and adults alike are being assaulted by anti-white racism, words to the effect that minorities are kept down by white people who are inherently oppressors and repositories of “white privilege” (ironically, this has an element of truth, as the policies supported by the advocates of DEI indeed foster failure for their targeted groups, but more on that below). This toxic, immoral rhetoric has rekindled racial division that was at its nadir at the time President Obama took office. Polling data bear out the fact that blacks increasingly ascribe their failures to “get ahead” to systemic racism rather than personal agency. DEI has also more starkly divided the nation politically.

This brings us to Entitlement. In a misguided attempt to try to right historical malfeasance via a “two wrongs make a right” approach, as whiteness is demonized, blackness is extolled and given preferential treatment. Affirmative action, which may have arguably served as a useful band-aid in the waning Jim Crow years, has become a millstone around society’s neck, branding every successful black individual with the perception of lower achievement because of the reduced standards accepted for others of the same group, shamefully defined by the superficial characteristic of skin color. In a mind-boggling display of mental contortion, this bigotry of low expectations is regarded as “just,” not as the racism that it is. While one might think that rewarding reduced merit would not be a prescription for success, this destructive entitlement was yet deemed insufficient. These same supporters of affirmative action want to lower the bar with more intense virtue-signaling though reparations. In other words, paying people who have not personally suffered the pain of slavery or Jim Crow by those who never engaged in these abhorrent practices. To make the case for such an immoral policy, they double down on the “white privilege” oppressor-oppressed theme.

And finally, Inequality. To rationalize treating a minority preferentially, it’s not enough to demonize the other race. One must hold equity above equality. Disparate outcomes, a feature of existence, must be viewed as not only unacceptable, but attributable in its entirety to “systemic racism.” This allows the powers-that-be to exclude individual agency and personal accountability. Such a tack dangerously prevents policy-makers from understanding all of the variables contributing to the inequity du jour and precludes legislating in an effective manner, usually exacerbating rather than solving or ameliorating the problem. But perhaps that’s the point—a feature rather than a bug. Convincing the voter that something or someone other than than those in power is responsible for the problem and/or the failure to find a solution provides the necessary distraction to grow government and its associated welfare state even more in size and scope. The cover of widespread individual dependency enables them to double down on ineffectual or deleterious policies in a vicious circle, using equity as a club to perpetuate in the people an ever-growing comfort with, and expectation of, government entitlements. Larger government leads to more power for the elites. It also generates a multi-billion dollar swindle with DEI departments in educational institutions at all levels and through the government and corporate world, so there’s no small incentive for the DEI activists to preserve the scam. By perpetually “solving” (or more accurately, “stoking”) problems of their own making and promoting “equity by fiat” (i.e., at gunpoint), government drives the downward spiral of society we’re now seeing. But that’s inevitable when you elevate equity above equality.

In short, DEI is systemic immorality gussied up and sold as virtue—bottled extract of “lipstick on a pig”— hawked by traveling salesmen we’ve elected to positions of power. How sick will we have to get before we tar and feather them and run them out of town?

Postscript: Some of you astute readers may have noted that I excluded capitalization of the words “black” and “white” as it pertains to people, which has recently become the norm. This is intentional. I refuse to legitimize the notion of importance ascribed to skin color that undergirds the racist ideology of the Left.

IS GAVIN NEWSOM REALLY THIS STUPID?

To reiterate a famous Ronald Reagan phrase “there he goes again,” our illustrious governor is taking another crack at gun owners. His newest ploy is to limit where legally permitted concealed carry citizens can exercise their 2^nd Amendment rights. Not only is this inherently counter-intuitive, it’s flat out wrong.

The legislation he’s endorsing would ban people from carrying concealed guns into churches, public libraries, zoos, amusement parks, playgrounds, banks and all other privately owned businesses that are open to the public. Any thinking individual would question how painting vulnerable targets as gun-free zones and removing the “good guy with a gun” from it effectively increases the safety of the venue. Only an addled mind concludes that a deranged person intending to wantonly kill innocents thinks this is permissible only if the site is not labeled a “gun-free zone.”

So only a few unpalatable conclusions can be drawn from Newsom’s endorsement. The first is that he’s really just stupid. While his governance to date and the resultant effects (increasing taxes, debt, crime, and net exodus from the state) does not exclude this possibility, it still seems beyond the pale that such a cognitive vacuum could exist in a sane person. Which brings us to the second possibility: I’ve often said that ideology makes you stupid. Newsom, a far Leftist, may be suffering from the same inability to think clearly as the entire Progressive movement of which he is a part, infected with this toxic secular “religion.” This limits analysis to the simplistic idea thatguns, not people,are the problem, there are too many of them, and if you pass legislation saying you can’t use them here, the risk of mass murder has to go down. The third, and most disturbing possibility, is that Newsom just doesn’t really care about mass killings of citizens, even if the victims are children, as long as it serves to increase his and his party’s power. While this proposed new policy at best will have no effect and at worst would increase the risk of mass killings, (along with other policies promoted by him and the far Left at a more fundamental level that result in an explosion of mental health issues and drug abuse—but that’s an issue for another rant—this legislation would provide an opportunity for continued virtue signaling and bloviating on the need for more and bigger government. Cynical you say? There are many examples of the progressive leadership using this tool. Recall how they nixed Trump’s attempt to negotiate an end to the DACA issue in exchange for a relatively small sum (by Democrat standards) for a border wall. On a larger scale, note the current lack of border enforcement with its deleterious effects which can only be rationally interpreted as an attempt to increase the welfare state and hence Democrat voters. The recent modus operandi of all progressive leaders is to institute policies based on one or two favored variables, ignore the important effects of inconvenient or politically useless others, and thus intentionally or unintentionally create or exacerbate a problem. The next step is to demonize the opposition for the failure (or claim everything’s fine), double down on the policy and spending, and claim they need more power and money to make right. Ka-ching!

While I wish the man no harm, it seems to me that if Newsom were to take the gun he so hates, hold it to his brain-free zone, and pull the trigger, not only would it have zero effect, the people of California would re-elect him anyway. Such is the modern equivalent of the zombie apocalypse.

AIRING THE DIRTY LAUNDRY IN PUBLIC

Well, it’s finally over. There’s a new House Speaker after 14 votes, the longest and most contentious process in a century. And a necessary good came of it. While arguments can be made on both sides for a less powerful Speaker now at risk for removal at the whim of a single Representative, the commitments made and rule changes are long overdue.

Among the concessions Kevin McCarthy had to make for the speakership are commitments to spending limits, investigating weaponization of federal agencies, including those within the DOJ, a 72-hour requirement for bill review before being presented on the floor, and a floor vote for term limits (which I’m dubious will go anywhere). The Freedom Caucus will also have a greater committee presence (while diversity of viewpoints is a plus, the potential for paralysis will undoubtedly be elevated). Compared with Pelosi’s politically adept but corrupt reign these changes are more than a breath of fresh air; I contend they’re a first, small step to reclaiming the “democracy” the Democrats claim is so jeopardized by the MAGA crowd. True, if I were running the world, the time allotted for reviewing potential legislation would be mandatorily dictated by the size and complexity of the bill, but political corruption is dense and can only be peeled back one layer at a time.

My initial criticism of the process stemmed from the impression that, while half of the hard-liners were using it for a commitment for necessary reform, the other half seemed to have only an agenda of trying to get McCarthy to withdraw. This in the setting of no other serious candidate wanting the job (Jim Jordan included). This worked itself out, eventually, and that leads to my second criticism: When did handing the opposition political fodder and potentially poisoning the political waters for independents and more centrist Democrats with regard to the Republican Party become a good plan?

While those that follow politics and bother to analyze its ins-and-outs may recognize that the opposition to McCarthy was a necessary byproduct of the dirty business of politics in these troubled times, those negatively inclined (but not fatally so) toward the Republican Party may regard this as just another indication of their inability to govern. Don’t misunderstand me—the Republican Party has demonstrated its immense capacity for political incompetence many times over the decades, most recently and dramatically in its midterm election performance that rivals the political incompetence of the former president—but this airing of the rift within the Party publicly was ill-advised and unnecessary.

The historical rarity of a prolonged, multi-vote process of House speaker election probably reflects to a large degree the fact that dissension was usually resolved privately prior to the vote. The current public airing, especially in these extraordinarily polarized times, was yet another demonstration of political self-mutilation. Perhaps the motivation of the 20-or-so dissenters was to trumpet their bonafides, but elevating personal politics by virtue-signaling above the needs of the Party is no more attractive on the Right than on the Left.

I hope that with the new leadership and rule changes the Republicans can make some headway in correcting the dangerous listing left of the great ship we call America, but with the slim control of one house of Congress and a fractured Party (and its track record), any optimism I may have would best be labeled “guarded.”

TOXIC TRUMP

In the wake of the Red Wave that became the Red Ripple we conservatives must pause for reflection. The magnitude of the failure is as astonishing as it is disappointing. Typically, even with stronger opposition, the party out of power has decisive gains. In a time of grossly incompetent leadership, a president who suffers from early cognitive dysfunction with approval ratings in the toilet, and disastrous inflation coupled with feckless foreign policy, one could not be faulted for having assumed, abetted by historically worthless polls, a potentially unprecedented shift in the legislature was coming—only it didn’t. The question is why.

Ben Shapiro gives some insight in his analysis that the strongest candidates were put forth in the least threatened seats, and the weakest in the most contested. His mantra that the quality of the candidates matters has been borne out by the results. Still, as weak a candidate as Mehmet Oz was in PA, it boggles the mind that a radical left, mentally challenged opponent such as Fetterman could decisively beat him. The counterpoint supporting Shapiro’s contention is that in Florida, strong candidate Ron Desantis, having squeaked through to a victory in his first go-around, had a blowout in his second, and carried a purple state into red territory in record time. Ironically, the other state with the most flipped House seats (4 ) was Democrat stronghold New York, potentially preserving a slim lead for Republicans in the House.

The reasons for the electorate’s amazing and suicidal decision to soundly mitigate the shift in power cannot be ascribed to a single factor. Decades of progressive ideological grooming via control of the institutions of learning and the culture certainly play a major role. While the conservative vote in the black and Spanish-speaking communities grew, unmarried women voted 2 to 1 for Democrats, as opposed to their married counterparts who predominantly went Republican. Likely this reflects not only the aforementioned progressive indoctrination and successful vilification of conservatives, but also, in this demographic, a dependence on government in the absence of a committed life partner as well as the an increased impact of the abortion issue since the Supreme Court’s decision. The mainstream media’s mis- and disinformation campaign and censoring or deemphasizing of facts that fell outside the progressive narrative cannot be underestimated. But the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in an election that had razor thin margins in contested areas, in my opinion, was Trump. I contend that the man is politically toxic. This isn’t new, but in the past his populist message was sufficient to overcome this. Now Trump is mainly about…Trump. Yes, he has a loyal base of “always Trumpers,” possibly about 25-30% of Trump voters if the numbers still hold. But in these days of squeaky elections decided by the swing vote from the Independents and moderate Democrats (yes, they still exist but you wouldn’t believe it from listening to the mainstream media) I think the “Trump factor” is fatal. Trump Derangement Syndrome, still prevalent, is the dagger in the Republican heart.

Trump was brilliant policy-wise but has always been a disaster politically. He lost the Republicans the Senate via Georgia in the last election, and this go-around he may again, although it is now moot with the Democrats still in control of the Senate. In the most contested seats, the Republican Party chose to run Trump loyalists vocal about the illegitimacy of the Biden win. While gushing praise for Trump may play well with his loyalists as well as most nose-holding conservatives who see no viable alternatives in the other party, it’s a non-starter for many of the Independents and cross-over Democrats. Adding to this, to our detriment, for many voters personality trumps policy, and I suspect the more uniformed and misinformed the voter, the greater role this plays. Biden’s policies may be juvenile and dangerous, but for anti-Trump voters even the president’s mental stumbling and poor governance is insufficient to overcome their TDS. Trump has done nothing to mitigate this. His ego post defeat has overshadowed his connection with many of the voters who supported him in the last election: In the current race we can see a referendum against Trump-endorsed candidates chosen solely on the basis of their willingness to proclaim loyalty to Trump and decry the legitimacy of the 2020 election. His current outbursts against the biggest star of the midterm elections, Ron Desantis, follows the prior pattern of narcissism and political self-immolation.

While it can be tempting to view the country as potentially lost, it’s important to recognize the few bright spots that may be a harbinger of a new dawn. The margins of defeat remain slim, and Florida demonstrates that with a more strategic approach going forward, with more competent and electable candidates, a shift back to freedom and normalcy is possible, Almost half of the country still holds the view that morality, God and the founding values count (and without which we cannot succeed), recognize the difference between a democracy and a republic and why our Founders opted for the latter (something apparently no longer taught), and value freedom over security. More people will be won over as the social and economic circumstances continue to worsen, as they must with a continuation and potential intensification of current policies (both parties seem to interpret any win as a mandate). While we are in danger of failing from threats internal and external before this transformation can occur, and this is going to be a decades-long battle, there is no acceptable alternative but to keep fighting. Adversity can demoralize or energize. Conservatives and our anti-progressive allies should take a cue from the beleaguered Ukrainians, and move relentlessly forward to drive the progressive enemy from the borders of our republic.

And forgo nominating Trump.

Addendum:

Addendum:

Shortly after posting this I learned of another important factor contributing to the Congressional upset: Redistricting. As Mark Levin pointed out, pollster Frank Luntz (who got it wrong, like so many others) in his post=election analysis pointed out that the redistricting gerrymandered seats that favored the Democrat Party (I now recall reading about this at the time). The favorable result in New York as opposed to many other purple districts may reflect the fact that the NY judiciary prohibited this redistricting favoring the Democrats. Supporting this is the fact that voting favored the Republicans by 5 million votes (4-5%) with disproportionately worse outcomes in contested districts. So this should be added to the mix of variables that may explain the unexpected outcome.

CHINA WILL FALL

Sources citing the increasingly aggressive militarization of China and the growing threat of the Chinese Communist Party on the world stage are not exaggerating. It takes a little more digging to find the many reports out there on the other side of the coin: the economic and social disruption the country is facing. There is no question China, in its current incarnation, will fall. The big, and very real question, is whether it will happen before we destroy ourselves.

China operates, as did the former Soviet Union and present Russia, under an inherently flawed system. It has managed to temper this by borrowing from the only economic engine theoretically capable of providing sustained economic growth—capitalism—but even that has not been enough to ward off inevitable decline. Any nation that attempts to control its economy by top-down fiat ultimately fails. The marketplace is an unforgiving mistress and any distortions will ultimately correct; the more the manipulation, the greater and more catastrophic the correction down the line. It cannot be gamed in the long term. The Chinese economy has been buoyed by manipulating its currency and the real estate market and stealing intellectual property. There is government corruption at all levels, much greater than here, although we’ve been earnestly attempting to catch up in the past few decades. Such a system does not foster innovation nor attract the greatest minds from the international community. Coupled with the disastrous one-family-one-child policy that reigned for many years before its abandonment, the replacement worker population is woefully inadequate and will hasten the economic collapse of the country.

Here in the US, we’re currently doing everything we can to assure that our own system fails before China’s. Capitalism is a perfect economic system in the abstract. People voluntarily providing goods and services to one another in transactions guided by their value as determined by the marketplace. In the long term, left unregulated, it will necessarily result in boom times and bust. The bust times can be catastrophic, so governments institute policies to moderate these downturns, for humanitarian reasons. Where this invariably goes wrong is overreach. The old saying “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” holds, and leaders convince themselves that they are smarter than the marketplace, distorting the economic “climate” increasingly to promote the upside and also to insure they remain in power, ignoring or denying the terrible consequences down the line. Knowing that these consequences are usually delayed for years or decades, the more sociopathic politicos (and I suspect there are many), rather than having delusions of superior wisdom, see this convenient lag in negative consequences as a feature rather than a bug. The current, rapid socioeconomic decline in the US related to a deterioration of values and culture, and the increasingly heavy-handed manipulation of economic forces by the federal government and the Fed, have distorted the economy to such an extent that rampant inflation, recession and energy and supply chain shortages have been the result. This, on top of a staggering debt accrued immorally at the expense of future generations as well as unfunded future entitlements waiting in the wings to pounce, portend a long and painful correction. Those that think another Great Depression or collapse isn’t possible have a myopic view of economics, and of history. That being said, on the upside, we now, for the first time in history, have the not insubstantial theoretical benefit of advanced technology to soften the blow. That being said, will the resources (and computer chips) be available in the setting of such a devastating economic downturn?

So it’s a race against time. Are we capable of falling to our greatest enemy, ourselves, before the weight of the CCP’s unworkable system takes them down? There has been a late, slow but accelerating push back against the radical progressive cancer that is destroying us. Whether it’s too little too late or not no one without a crystal ball can predict, but I choose to be optimistic, because failure isn’t an option. I can reasonably predict at this point in the crisis we will not avoid years of pain from the Great Correction. To survive this, choosing wiser leaders will help, but is only the first step. We’ll all have to look inward, work to better ourselves as individuals, and recognize that our salvation won’t come from a single “hero” but from ourselves, and from God.

EQUITY IS EVIL

The people in power at the top of our government are lost, and they’ve taken about half the nation with them either actively or passively. Or perhaps it’s the other way around, the politicos simply a reflection of the people. Either way, nothing embodies the essence of the corruption as well as one word: Equity.

As the country has drifted away from spirituality to materialism, and from God to self, so it has drifted form the reverence for one of the pillars upon which this great nation was built—equality. Equity, its dark counterpoint, fits nicely into the new, secular “religion.” If someone has more, or “too much,” why shouldn’t we take it and redistribute it to the less fortunate? After all, some people were born with less physical strength or beauty, some with less intelligence, some in more dire economic and social circumstances. A compassionate society provides. To accomplish this, we can simply look at outcomes and flatten them out by fiat.

To implement the false charity of others’ money known as equity, the “more just” outcomes must be mandated at gunpoint, something which governments, unfettered, are never loathe to do. Then virtuous justifications need to be manufactured to support the legal theft. In the US, for instance, relics of the past are dredged up such as slavery and systemic racism to foment white guilt and justify ultimately detrimental policies such as affirmative action, the concept of reparations, and a dramatic expansion of the general welfare state. The ideal of color-blindness promulgated by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and nearly a reality in 2000, had to be discarded in favor of intersectionality, victimhood, and division fomented by reverse racism (never mind our mothers’ admonition that “two wrongs don’t make a right”). The reincarnation of racial division from this cynical approach under the euphemistic, pseudo-intellectual name “Critical Race Theory” has dire consequences that go beyond those of dividing the nation and reinventing segregation. The myopic acceptance of unitary and spurious causes for the existence of inequity by policymakers, such as systemic racism, have led them down a blind alley that insulates them from the actual causes and precludes effective solutions. No surprise then that there’s been socioeconomic deterioration for these disadvantaged groups extending over decades, despite spending trillions.

And it doesn’t end there: By flattening out inequity by force, you inevitably end up with more mediocrity and a lower standard of living—for all but those in power and favored by the powerful. Innovators are less predisposed to risk time and effort to invent, start new businesses, or employ more workers. The best minds beyond our borders are less inclined to emigrate here, where the land of opportunity is now the land of equity. In short, the very things that have made this place extraordinary, the most exceptional nation in history, will be gone. So to sell the idea of equity in place of equality one must paint the country as anything but exceptional. And what better way to do this than to convince its citizens that it is racist, misogynistic, and imperialistic?

In short, to vanquish equality with the fetid whip of equity we must steal assets at gunpoint, perpetuate socioeconomic disparities through lies and ignorance while doubling down on policies that contribute to these disparities, foment racial division, and jettison the very principles that made the country the most free and prosperous in all of human history.

It’s difficult to conclude that equity is anything but evil. And those that promote it are evil or committing evil, intentionally or unwittingly. We are all equal in the eyes of God. But do you doubt that if He had intended there to be equity in this life He could not have created us all with the same inherent capabilities? Equality, color-blindness, and charity, are the path to the spiritual health—one that leads to material wealth as its byproduct. The road to equity only leads to darkness and despair.

I GUESS I’M MAGA

It seems quite few of my family members and I agree on little when it comes to the state of affairs and its causes. Fortunately, while we can rarely discuss social, cultural and political issues, we’ve not become disenfranchised, still share a bond of love, and certainly don’t see one anther as evil. Still, it seems they must regard me as sociopolitically deluded as I see them. In the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid one of them posted on Facebook yet another anti-Trump diatribe, a satirical piece from The Shovel that laments:

We are certainly no fans of Donald Trump – let’s make that clear from the outset. But yesterday’s raid by the FBI on the home of a former president sets a dangerous precedent.

A precedent which now means that anyone who evades taxes, attempts to undermine an election, sexually assaults women, manipulates the value of their assets, uses state resources to enrich themselves or aids and abets the overthrow of a democratically elected government will be subject to investigation.

Is that the world we want to live in? Where anyone accused of insurrection can be subject to questioning from law enforcement officers?

It’s a slippery slope. Before we know it, regular citizens accused of defrauding the government, concealing evidence, manipulating financial documents, tampering with witnesses or perverting the course of justice will also be held to account.

Because Trump’s so evil, they’ve decided that Biden (his history of plagiarism and shady business dealings notwithstanding) and team are the lesser evils. So be it. Personally, while I agreed with the sentiment of making America great again, and having recognized the increasingly large rent in the fabric of our great country’s values, I was never a Trumper. Partly because I ally myself with values and policies rather than people, who are all imperfect and likely to disappoint. But also because I found him often undiplomatic to the point of boorishness, and a slave to his gargantuan ego. Having said that, his policies as a rule were spot-on and he achieved more in 4 years against unprecedented political headwinds than most of his predecessors. It was reflected in a booming economy, laudable unemployment statistics for all (especially minorities), no new wars, and a breakthrough in Middle Eastern diplomacy (the Abraham Accords) by abandoning the long-failed traditional approach, to name only some accomplishments. This was dangerous to the entrenched powers, demonstrating that a businessman could be more successful at policy than those who had never held a job outside of government and trying to regulate things they could barely understand, their many academic degrees notwithstanding. There is emerging evidence that fear within the deep-state bureaucracy of exposure of buried scandals and illegalities to the light of day may be playing at least as large a role in Trump resistance, but that’s beyond the scope of this rant.

So when the demonization of the Right that has been so successful for the Left as a marketing tool to shield them from the poor results of decades of failed policy intensified with our Commander-in-Chief defining “MAGA Republicans” as fascists and a threat to democracy, I had to do some introspection. I already knew I was racist, misogynist, and a member of “the Deplorables,” having voted for Trump not once, but twice. And now I was learning that I might be a fascist, anti-democracy threat to the nation as well. I didn’t support the trespass at the Capitol on 1/6, and I denounce the violence of the few of the few trespassers out of the much larger group of peaceful protesters out that day. Still, the characterization of “insurrection” rang obviously political, coming from those who supported the much more widespread and damaging violent protests of 2020. And I do mean supported—our vice (love the term, in this case) president even went so far as to encourage bailing out violent offenders. And I understood the mindset of the peaceful protesters, with clear and still mounting evidence of election fraud (that the Left denies), especially in the setting of pre-election media-suppressed evidence of Biden’s corruption via Ukrainian and Chinese business deals undertaken by son Hunter. Still, it remains a fact that a lot of smoke pointing to surgical election fraud is insufficient to illegitimize an election unless proven in a court of law. But those currently throwing stones in this regard reside in a glass house: It must not be forgotten how the Democrat-activist media was all over Trump as being an “illegitimate” president while they aggressively pursued various fake leads such as the Russia Hoax to try and legitimize the fantasy.

Anyway, after introspection, I had to decide if I was really a “MAGA Republican,” with all the attached negative baggage that it implies. Before, I’d just considered myself a constitutional conservative. To release myself from the bondage of being an anti-democracy fascist, a national security threat, and a racist, I know from Biden’s own words that I had to be “someone he could work with.” So I had to analyze his beliefs and actions to see if I could “work” with him.

Joe Biden believes that the planet is doomed by Climate Change, that diversity of color and sexual preference is preferable to merit and competence, that equity trumps equality, and that subjectivity trumps reality. I was getting off to a bad start: I didn’t agree with any of these things. But to improve, one must open one’s mind to foreign ideas. So I decided to examine his accomplishments.

One of the first things he did was close the Keystone pipeline and throttle our fossil fuel energy supply, hampering our energy independence. He limited leases, discouraged investors, and, not understanding supply and demand (or ignoring it), blamed the oil companies, and then Putin, for the rising prices. The result of his policies, abetted by Europe’s absurd reliance on oil from a Communist dictator, will be starvation, hypothermia, and death for millions in the most vulnerable areas in the world. But Green trumps death.

He than decided it would favor his legacy to abruptly withdraw completely from Afghanistan, against the recommendations of his military advisors. He assured the people there would not be a chaotic, bloody scene like our withdrawal from Vietnam. Not understanding international affairs (Robert Gates, an Obama former defense secretary, stated Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”), there was a chaotic, bloody scene like our withdrawal from Vietnam. People fell from landing gear wells, soldiers died, and the fascist Taliban whom we and allies fought for years at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars was entrusted with running the nation. Millions of Afghani women (not to mention the native LBGTQ+ community) were subjected to political slavery and death, rather than leaving a contingent of 20,000 troops to support the current rulers. But legacy trumps morality.

Next, with the economy and the American people suffering under the boot of crushing inflation not seen for decades, Biden resorted to the only tools he understood, never having worked outside of government: distraction and spending. He blamed COVID, Putin, Trump, Climate Change…and MAGA Republicans. He then doggedly pursued spending after spending bill, trillions of imaginary dollars through printing and borrowing, all the while insisting these inflationary practices were really disinflationary (the most recent bill was actually labeled as an Anti-Inflation Act!). While reality might beg to differ, redistributing wealth we don’t have (our grandchildren can’t not vote for Biden nor complain) to people likely to keep the current party in power is a smart political move. In that vein he’s just signed an illegal (even characterized as such by none other than Nancy Pelosi) executive order to erase college tuition debt by immorally taking money from those that either never went to college or paid their own way (but votes don’t come cheap). Power trumps fiscal responsibility and morality.

With the international scene deteriorating, and not understanding international affairs, he reacted too slowly and with characteristic weakness as Putin under cover of vague nuclear threats amassed troops around Ukraine, by employing sanctions that ultimately strengthened the ruble, and by a policy of late, incremental arming that has assured a long, expensive, but not necessarily successful war. But at least he’s working to prevent a nuclear Iran by trying to bargain with the Ayatollahs. Appeasement trumps deterrence.

Perhaps we can look to Biden, the champion of the downtrodden to offset all this. He purports to be a friend of the “most vulnerable,” the IPOCs, the rainbow LBGTQ+ coalition (except in Afghanistan). He’s “anti-racist.” He encourages the teaching of CRT in our schools underscoring the victimhood of people of color, the “white privilege” of the oppressors, and favors affirmative action (the soft bigotry of low expectations), social policies that encourage fatherlessness, forced attendance for the more indigent at public schools (when the Teacher’s Union allows them to be open) rather than more effective private institutions, and racial quotas that are the antithesis of our Constitutional mandates. He sees freedom as being able to choose your gender over reality (at the point of a government gun, when appropriate), and supports mutilation of children to achieve this if necessary (after their parents get them home from their drag queen event). Equity and subjectivity trump reality.

Throughout the unfolding debacle, he’s studiously avoided (along with his border czar, Harris) looking at the border crisis. Early on, he halted the “Trump border wall,” already commissioned, and stopped Trump’s hold-in-Mexico policy. As the country became inundated with millions of illegal immigrants he tried to quietly move them throughout the country. Untold numbers of criminals (and COVID-infected individuals) accompanied the hordes of people entering to better themselves economically at the expense of those patiently waiting, and with them came hundreds of thousands of ODs from smuggled fentanyl, prospering drug cartels, and women raped and sold into slavery through human trafficking. Only the cynical among us could possibly believe this is continuing because the political calculus is for future votes and continued Democrat party power.

So, if I’m willing to work with a corrupt and immoral man who’s facilitating the enslavement and deaths of millions, the spiritual debasement of our children, and the worsening economic status of almost everyone, especially the most indigent, I too can be anti-racist, non-fascist, and no longer a danger to the greatest country in the history of the world? [Sigh] I guess I’m…MAGA. It’s a difficult transition, I admit. The term carries with it the heavy Trump baggage. But I’ll adjust. Besides, by comparison the Biden baggage renders it featherweight. And the alternative is just too painful.

BIG GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE

When I started this blog back in 2009 as a practicing clinician, it was with the intent to dissect the healthcare industry, of which I was a part, riddled with flaws as well as fraud and waste, to determine where the problems lied. As was evident to me, and confirmed by my research, no facet of the system, from doctors, patients, government, insurers, medico-legal system, or the interface with Big Pharma, were untouched by issues. But what I came to understand a bit late was how the the lack of transparency in the system and its shielding of itself from market forces contributed in a major and arguably predominant way.

What always made Medicine less straightforward than say, business and commerce, is the fact that access to good medical care is essential to health and even life itself. To leave patient care to the harsh ministrations of the marketplace seems, on its surface, to be at best callous, and at worst, naive. But I’ve begun to rethink this. First of all, despite the flaws and waste in the private sector of the capitalist system, when left to its own devices it is self-correcting. True, a lot of damage can occur in the short run, but in the end the marketplace chooses winners and losers who rise and fall based on their abilities to provide goods and services effectively and affordably. Most of the problems (frequently attributed by the uninitiated to “capitalism” itself) relate to often well-intentioned or power-driven government policies that attempt to reward or punish certain players due to a political agenda, foisted by people who think they are smarter and more noble than the rest of us and the marketplace, and distort it to the point that it ultimately fails and/or corrects with more disastrous consequences than if it had been left alone. That’s not to say that injustices and fraud should not be regulated; that is precisely the government’s role. It’s simply that it has grown enormously beyond this with resultant microregulation and injection of the welfare state from the top down into every level of endeavor.

So we’re left with with an over-regulated mess of a chimeric healthcare Gordian knot. Even within the professional component, we have too few doctors, misaligned numbers of specialists based on financial incentives that are distorted and shielded from variables of need, expertise, and risk, and costs so variable from hospital to hospital as to seem arbitrary. Within this morass are buried true inputs reflective of the economic marketplace. For instance, some of the higher costs of academic and tertiary medical centers reflect research, clinical studies and relative costs of caring for the indigent and uninsured. But it now seems clear to me we won’t even begin to deal with the problem until we expose the healthcare system more openly to the sunlight of the marketplace. Before we even go down that rabbit hole, however, we need to lay to rest the counterargument of government healthcare, often referred to as “single payer.”

I’ve already addressed the dangers of placing bureaucrats, elected or otherwise, in the position of distorting the marketplace based on personal agendas, well-intentioned or not. Some use Medicare as an example of good government stewardship. However, this is actually a partnership between government and the private sector, and while it has had successes, frankly it is going broke. In this country, the VA system is a purer example of government-run healthcare and is fraught with problems. And now we have a concrete example of the failure of a decades old purely government-administered system: the NHS, or National Health Service in Great Britain. A report from the Daily Signal outlines some of the the issues:

• Only 63 percent of British patients are being treated within 18 weeks; the British government’s target was 92 percent.
• Accident and Emergency Care: Only 72 percent of British patients seeking emergency care are seen within four hours.
• Primary Care Appointments: Only 55 percent of British patients are getting “face to face” appointments; pre-pandemic, it was 80 percent.

England’s branch of the NHS has an estimated shortage of 12,000 hospital doctors and 50,000 nurses and midwives and a third of British General Practitioners are considering leaving medical practice within the next five years. And low pay plagues the nursing profession. 543,000 British patients have had to wait more than four hours to receive accident and emergency care; 2,300 British patients have had to wait more than amonth to start cancer treatment; and 407,00 British patients have failed to get MRI examinations or colonoscopies within six weeks.

This is not unexpected. Government-run entities are inherently inefficient because they are not motivated by profit and are not self-correcting. And if a program is cost-effective and performs below budget, the incentive is to spend more the next go-around so as to not have budget cuts. Studies of effectiveness/cost-effectiveness, if done, can take years, and once a program is established is often continued ad infinitum. Abolishing programs and agencies, even for incompetence or fraud, is even more difficult in the government than the private sector (although microregulaton through HR law in the private center is closing the gap).

My conclusion is that the most efficient use of top-down government within the healthcare industry would be a partnership with the private sector through subsidies or tax incentives for both R&D and medical necessity/homeland security (i.e., repatriating essential medical manufacturing), and for orphan drugs and rare illnesses that have little assistance from the marketplace. On the other hand, returning funds to more state and local governments and communities to care for the indigent would lead to more targeted and efficient disbursement of care to need and make it easier to monitor for waste and fraud. In addition, the opaque remuneration system for hospitals and healthcare providers must be overtly addressed.

Is it safe to entrust healthcare to the harsh mistress of the marketplace? While emergency care is just that, and there is no time to go “shopping,” this is not true of elective healthcare. In 2020 $4.12 trillion ($3.7 in 2018) was spent on healthcare. In 2017, the cost of all Emergency Department visits was $33.7 billion. While the average cost of treating common primary care treatable conditions at a hospital ED is 12 times higher than visiting a physician office ($167) and 10 times higher than traveling to an urgent care center ($193) to treat those same conditions a significant amount of non-emergent care filters through the ED. Surprisingly, I was unable to find the percentage of total healthcare expenditures in the US for all emergency versus elective care and don’t know if this has been reliably studied. It appears obvious that if we placed the patient back in the loop instead of relying almost exclusively on third party payers, the collective wisdom of the masses would have a significantly positive effect on both affordability, cost-effectiveness, and quality of care, simply by allowing the patient to choose where and to whom to go for treatment and services. In other words, injecting a larger dose of the marketplace into the elective side of the healthcare equation and sidelining the government bureaucrat seems to me to be a no-brainer. And the validity of such an approach is testable on a smaller scale (i.e., the state level) before widespread adoption. With an anticipated reduction in revenue for hospitals and healthcare providers, one might reasonably argue that institutions burdened with a higher number of indigent and uninsured as wells as those with additional research and educational obligations would be most negatively impacted by such a change. To that I’d answer that without the costs buried within in our current complex and relatively opaque billing paradigm we would know with greater certainty where to apply government subsidies.

As in all areas of human endeavor, especially those dominated by government intervention, many of the ills of the healthcare system can be cured with a dose of marketplace sunlight.