Democracy isn’t dying
The Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, was a national disgrace, but almost more dispiriting is the way America’s two warring political tribes have responded. Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem intent on exploiting that day to retain power, while the Donald Trump wing of the GOP insists it was merely a protest march that got a little carried away.
We say this as a statement of political reality, not as a counsel of despair. Our job is to face the world as it is and try to move it in a better direction. So a year later, what have we learned?
In a speech on the anniversary of the deadly U.S. Capitol attack, President Joe Biden warned that Trump's "web of…
One lesson is that on all the available evidence January 6 was not an “insurrection,” in any meaningful sense of that word. It was not an attempted coup. The Justice Department and the House Select Committee have looked high and low for a conspiracy to overthrow the government, and maybe they will find it. So far they haven’t.
There apparently was a “war room” of motley characters at the Willard hotel and small groups of plotters who wanted to storm the barricades. But they were too disorganised to do much more than incite what became the mob that breached the Capitol.
The Justice Department says some 725 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged in the riot, linked mainly by social media and support for Donald Trump. About 70 defendants have had their cases adjudicated to date, and 31 of those will do time in prison. The rioters aren’t getting off easy.
They also didn’t come close to overturning the election. The Members fled the House chamber during the riot but soon returned to certify the electoral votes. Eight Senators and 139 House Republicans voted against certifying the electoral votes in some states, but that wasn’t close to a majority.
The true man at the margin was Mike Pence. Presiding in the Senate as Vice President, he recognised his constitutional duty as largely ceremonial in certifying the vote count. He stood up to Mr. Trump’s threats for the good of the country and perhaps at the cost of his political future.
In other words, America’s democratic institutions held up under pressure. They also held in the states in which GOP officials and legislators certified electoral votes despite Mr. Trump’s complaints. And they held in the courts as judges rejected claims of election theft that lacked enough evidence. Democrats grudgingly admit these facts but say it was a close run thing. It wasn’t. It was a near-unanimous decision against Mr. Trump’s electoral claims.
None of this absolves Mr. Trump for his behaviour. He isn’t the first candidate to question an election result; Hillary Clinton still thinks Vladimir Putin defeated her in 2016. But he was wrong to give his supporters false hope that Congress and Mr. Pence could overturn the electoral vote. He did not directly incite violence, but he did incite them to march on the Capitol.
Worse, he failed to act to stop the riot even as he watched on TV from the White House. He failed to act despite the pleading of family and allies. This was a monumental failure of character and duty. Republicans have gone mute on this dereliction as they try to stay united for the midterms. But they will face a reckoning on this with voters if Mr. Trump runs in 2024.
As for the Pelosi Democrats, the question is when will they ever let Jan. 6 go? The latest news is that the Speaker’s Select Committee may hold prime-time hearings this year, and the leaks are that they may even seek an indictment of Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress.
Really? Their constitutional power runs to impeachment, and they’ve already impeached Mr. Trump twice. As our friends at the New York Sun note, such a prosecutorial inquiry runs close to what the Constitution bars as a “bill of attainder” against a single individual. As a way of harming Mr. Trump’s future prospects, we suspect it would work about as well as both impeachments did.
We have an open mind about the Jan. 6 Select Committee, not least because an honest inquiry that laid out the facts could be helpful. But at this point it’s also hard not to see that playing up Jan. 6 has become the main Democratic election strategy for November.
One clue came recently from Marc Elias, the Democratic election lawyer and House insider. He tweeted on Dec. 20: “My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress. We may even see litigation.” Mr. Elias would rip at democracy in the name of defending it.
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None of this leaves much cause for optimism — but then we survived January 6, as well as more than a few bad Presidents. Keep your eye on the Constitution’s enduring principles and institutions, and who sustains or tears them down. That’s where self-government will live or die.
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Biggest threat to democracy comes from leftist ‘elite’
A year after the end of one of America’s more colourful presidencies, post-Trump stress disorder shows no sign of abating. The telltale symptoms of PTSD were apparent in the neurotic commentary marking the first anniversary of the Capitol Hill riots: vivid flashbacks, altered cognition, irritability and depression.
“Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss,” wrote former president Jimmy Carter in The New York Times. The democracy the US had fought so hard to achieve abroad “has become dangerously fragile at home”, he said.
“Certain dates echo throughout history,” Vice-President Kamala Harris declared. “December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021.”
Harris’s rhetorical overreach demands a reality check. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2403 Americans and destroyed 19 US Navy vessels. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 killed 2996 people, destroyed four commercial aircraft, wrecked a wing of the Pentagon and demolished the World Trade Centre. In the Capitol Hill riot, one protester was shot dead, two died of natural causes, one appears to have been crushed to death and superficial damage was sustained to the building. The inauguration of President Joe Biden and VP Harris proceeded on schedule and without further incident 15 days later.
In an address to the nation on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, President Biden accused former President…
Taken at face value, the 2020 presidential election is an advertisement for a democracy that is in rude good health, albeit a little untidy in parts. So how, without resorting to pop psychology, are we to explain the widespread conviction that the system is almost beyond repair? The sentiment appears equally strong in Australia, surfacing in chin-stroking opinion articles in the woke-leaning press and driving the subtext of the ABC’s political coverage.
In his recent book, Democracy Under Siege, Frank Furedi coins the term “demophobia” to describe the panic felt by the elite towards democracy that began long before the election of Donald Trump. Its origins can be traced back to the 18th century at least when the development of democracy was stalled by a fear of the populace as an untamed beast that could not be trusted to vote intelligently or responsibly.
Today that same nervousness is seen in fear of the populism epitomised by Trump. It is frequently cast in psychological terms, as a disease infecting the body politic. When Carter and Harris bemoan the fragile state of US democracy, they actually want less of it. They want more responsibility to be assumed by the responsible elite, the anointed ones, blessed with a superior understanding of the world who can be trusted to do the right thing.
They possess a deep-seated conviction that most humans lack the moral and intellectual resources to determine the future direction of their society and are ripe for manipulation by populist demagogues. Critics of populism invariably conclude their alarmist accounts with the warning that unless populist movements are crushed, we will witness the rise of another Hitler, says Furedi.
The portrayal of populist politics as a symptom of psychological disorder has gained momentum, reaching its apotheosis with the candidacy of Trump in 2016. From that point on, the die was cast, in the view of the elite cast, whose unrestrained anger at Trump’s election went way beyond his obvious failings as a president and was blind to his surprising strengths.
The conviction that Trump would not have been elected were it not for his ability to cast something akin to a hypnotic spell over the populace culminated with the accusation Trump had incited thousands of his own supporters to overpower the inadequate security detail and seize control of the Capitol Hill Building. The incident is routinely described, without qualification, as an insurrection.
Sarah Ferguson’s investigation for ABC’s Four Corners last year helpfully pieced together action footage that caught the criminal actions of some protesters on camera and highlighted palpable failings by officials. Had the FBI taken available intelligence more seriously, had security provisions been tighter and riot control units been deployed, the unarmed rabble rousers could have been stopped in their tracks. Yet Ferguson falls back on the conventional wisdom that that sole responsibility belonged to “an unscrupulous demagogue … defeated, disgraced and now twice-impeached”, who had incited a crowd to bring “US democracy to the brink of destruction”. The protesters were “impassioned, resentful and easily roused”, judged Ferguson, “fragile and vulnerable to a president’s lies”.
When the elites speak about strengthening democracy, their goal is to dilute it by stepping in to protect the people from themselves. Debate must be curtailed through censorship if necessary. Important decisions must be made by panels of experts, the judiciary or supra-national forums, and elected parliaments must be neutered. The displacement of democratic decision-making by experts, technocrats and social engineers has been happening for decades. Covid-19 gave renewed impetus to the politicisation of expertise, “the tendency to endow experts with a monopoly over decision-making in a variety of areas that crucially affect everyone”, says Furedi.
Covid-19 is the excuse to bypass democratic responsibility the elites had been looking for. Political leaders around the world no longer see fit to justify policy decisions on the grounds that they are merely right. No message, statement or utterance could be made without the qualification that it was based on irrefutable expert advice. As things turned out, the combined expertise of the world’s technocratic class has been no match for the cunning virus, which has outwitted them at every turn. Yet the elite’s faith in the superior morality and omnipotence of experts remains undaunted.
The question left hanging by Furedi is what happens next, now the pandemic is in its waning phase and normal democratic business can be resumed. As the pandemic moves to an endemic phase, public health restrictions become redundant and responsibility can return to individuals to manage their own affairs. Decrees on vaccinations and masks should revert to the status of public health advice. There is precious little sign that is happening.
Where we stand in the current dispute over democracy reflects our assessment of the moral standing of our fellow human beings, their potential for development and fitness to run their own affairs. At its heart, pessimism about the future of democracy is merely a polite way of heaping condescension upon ordinary people.
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UK: Tribunal sides with Catholic nurse harassed by NHS bosses for wearing cross at work
An Employment Tribunal has ruled that an NHS Trust harassed a Catholic nurse and directly discriminated against her for wearing a cross necklace at work.
The tribunal found that Nigeria-born Mary Onuoha, 61, a theatre practitioner, was victimised by Croydon Health Services NHS Trust after she formally complained of discrimination she suffered for wearing the symbol around her neck.
On one occasion, an NHS manager even interrupted surgery to harangue the nurse about her small gold cross while the patient was in theatre under general anaesthetic. The manager ignored the fact that the anaesthetist present was wearing ear-rings and a pendant.
At the same time, other members of staff were allowed to wear turbans, saris, hijabs and skull caps without fear of sanctions. Often staff also wear lanyards or bunches of keys around their necks.
The Tribunal said the Trust constructively dismissed Mrs Onuoha “without reasonable and proper cause” and that her sacking, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, was unfair and discriminatory.
Her treatment breached her human rights and created a “humiliating, hostile and threatening environment” for her, the tribunal concluded.
Mrs Onuoha said: “I don’t think I could do my job without the cross. I draw my strength from looking at the cross.
“I am so proud to be a Christian and I am proud to wear my cross. It’s part of my life, its part of me and I am happy to have it on.”
According to the Christian Legal Centre, which supported the nurse, the outcome of the case develops a wider legal principle that employers cannot discriminate against employees for reasonable manifestations of faith in the workplace.
Mrs Onuoha was forced out of her job at Croydon University Hospital in South London in the summer of 2020 following what she described as a two-year campaign waged against her by superiors and NHS bosses.
During the full hearing in October last year, the Trust argued that wearing the cross necklace was an infection risk and that it was nothing to do with her Catholic faith.
But Employment Judge Dyal and the two other members of the tribunal disagreed, saying it was clear to them that such a risk was “very low”.
The Tribunal also stated that the rejection of Mrs Onuoha’s grievance was “offensive and intimidating”.
“It failed to properly grapple with the complexity of the issues,” they said. “No real thought seems to have been given to whether it was really appropriate to discipline the claimant for doing something that in fact many others in the workforce (including more senior colleagues who worked just as closely with patients) were doing unchallenged.
“Equally, no real thought was given to the claimant’s point that others were wearing religious apparel in clinical areas and that she should be treated equally to them.”
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Anti-white-privilege protests have taken a detour into racial hiring quotas at top companies and college courses on “the Problem of Whiteness.”
The left is furious about “white privilege.” And while it’s true white people have benefited from major advantages over time, it’s a concept that is rapidly fading — especially now, as the reverse is coming true. Minorities are increasingly becoming privileged while growing numbers of white people face discrimination.
Diversity initiatives have been around for years, but over the past year and a half, innumerable companies and corporations have ramped up their efforts with the goal of “diversifying” their workforce. Tech giant Facebook, for example, has committed to half of its employees coming from “underrepresented communities” (i.e., black, Native American, and Hispanic) by 2023. Best Buy is hiring one person of color for every three new hires over the next five years. United Airlines has promised that at least half of the pilots they will train in the next decade will be women and “people of color” (currently, only 13 percent of pilots are people of color).
In May, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot suddenly declared she will only give interviews to “journalists of color” — something that would be an impeachable offense if the situation was reversed (only giving interviews to “white journalists”).
The push to promote people of color has become so pervasive that the most objective scientific institutions have seemingly become captive to woke ideology. For example, the NIH and CDC use taxpayer dollars to incentivize biomedical research labs to hire ethnic minorities because “research shows that diverse teams working together and capitalizing on innovative ideas and distinct perspectives outperform homogenous teams” — without quoting or citing any actual research.
Minorities are now even advantaged when seeking medical treatment. Last week, the New York City and state departments of health authorized life-saving antiviral treatment for COVID-19 for everyone belonging to a “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity” regardless of risk factors, but for whites, only those with risk factors are allowed it. The DOH cites its rationale as: “longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
Meanwhile, the rise of minority advantage has come with a parallel war on whiteness, especially in academia. In June, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association — “one of the world’s most respected publications in psychoanalysis” — printed a peer-reviewed paper entitled “On Having Whiteness.” The abstract of the paper describes “whiteness” as a “malignant, parasitic-like condition” requiring “effective treatment consist[ing] of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions.” It adds, “there is not yet a permanent cure.” There are real, accredited university courses that instruct anti-white racism: “Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness” (Arizona State University) and “Abolition of Whiteness” (Hunter College).
Institutionalized anti-white bigotry has escalated to genocidal rhetoric. As Bari Weiss revealed in her recent Substack piece, Yale University hosted a lecture by Dr. Aruna Khilanani this year about the “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” where the speaker revealed her fantasies to kill white people. Other than university administrators later saying the lecture was found to have “tone and content antithetical to the values of the school,” the backlash was tempered. While social media erupted and Khilanani’s Manhattan-based practice is now closed for unknown reasons, she still has her license. One can only imagine the riotous demonstrations that would have reverberated across the country had Yale hosted a talk about “The Psychopathic Problem of the Black Mind.”
The upshot is that pro-minority bias is not only permitted but socially incentivized. Employers, professors and administrators are lauded for implementing radical diversity initiatives. As minorities are preferentially hired across the board and given a host of other benefits by way of their genetic lottery, we must fundamentally reframe our discourse surrounding race relations.
While “white privilege” may still exist in some margins of society, it no longer reflects the progressive era we live in.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/08/minority-privilege-is-now-more-common-than-white-privilege/
*********************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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