Joe Biden and the Uses of Nihilism

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Chaos is the new, the intentional, normal. A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land. As in Lord of the Flies, when laws, rules, protocols, traditions, and customs are mocked and dismantled, primitive human nature in the raw is unleashed.

Madness now reigns in every quarter, from the iconic to the irrelevant to the fundamental. Statues of Lincoln, Douglass, and Jefferson are toppled or defaced. The rules of capitalization have been altered. We are told that 1619, not 1776, was our founding date—and this by a “civil rights” activist-journalist who had no idea of the date that the Civil War began.

Quite quickly after the revolutionary boilerplate, America began reverting to its natural Hobbesian or Thucydidean essence. If you dispute that, look at looted packages along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Try walking the nocturnal streets of Chicago or Baltimore. Visit the sidewalk homeless of San Francisco. Fly over our constipated ports. Drive into our empty new car dealerships. Pull up to our European-priced gas pumps. Shop in the emptying shelves of our Sovietizing food and discount stores. The common theme of the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, apparently, is that the entertainers must have written lyrics threatening the police, denigrating women, using the N-word . . . and be worth $100 million.

Of course, that is what the elites celebrate, as people struggle to buy food, gas, and cars. The police are under attack and being killed on the street. The public is bewildered about criminals not being punished, workers paid to stay home, and biological men commandeering women’s sports.

Abnormal is normal; normal is despised and discarded.

Friends and associates of all races and ethnicities are increasingly suspicious of each other. They are fleeing to the ancient refuge of tribal solidarity. Red states are hated, although they function, and are sought out; blue states are praised, even as they fail and residents flee. Our “leaders” are doing their best to confirm the age-old invective of our enemies that e pluribus unum simply cannot work.

Americans keep being pounded with “Vaccination! Vaccination! Vaccination!”—but never with commensurate advice on therapies, affordable drugs, and pragmatic protocols to survive COVID-19, as it often breaks through to the already thrice vaccinated.

Americans could tolerate the misinformation and the contradictions emanating from the CDC, the NIH, and NIAID. But only if the deceptions were issued with some humility and qualifiers, reminding us of our shared ignorance about the mysterious virus. Instead, pompous and insufferably sanctimonious bureaucrats sent out flurries of false knowledge, as if they were religious edicts, with implied medieval punishments for the apostates. Apologies never follow.

The public cannot fathom the border. Prior presidents hunting for cheap political gain (Republicans for more labor, Democrats for new constituents) were lax on immigration enforcement. Yet no president has ever deliberately invited in more than 2 million foreign nationals—entering illegally, impoverished, unvaccinated, untested, and without background checks. No prior president has not only violated his oath of office to enforce the laws of the United States, but simply and intentionally destroyed the law as it was written. Apply the Left’s 2019-2020 impeachment standard to Joe Biden’s first year, and he would be impeached the minute a Republican majority captured the House.

Americans sense the United States is losing all influence abroad, as allies gravitate to or appease China and Russia. The public does not lament the loss of global clout and prestige alone. Rather, the people also fear the end of the ancient American strategy of keeping foreign enemies far distant from the homeland.

As they figure out the themes of the present madness, Americans become troubled as they attempt to fathom the characteristics of the ongoing nihilism.

One, they see much of the sudden anarchy as self-induced, deliberate, agenda-driven, and as correctible as it was avoidable. In other words, the catastrophe of 2021 was no accident, but a tactic in service of a strategy.

Two, they conclude that the nihilism intentionally targets the despised middle class—those who tend to obey the rules, who pay their taxes, who don’t get arrested, who largely keep quiet—and who are standing in the way of a revolution. These Americans are underrepresented in crime, in upward mobility, and on most college campuses, but overrepresented in suicide rates and the death tolls in optional wars abroad.

For their part, the hoi polloi conclude that the more that they are libeled as “victimizers,” the more they are becoming the actual victims. Indeed, the heroic “victimized” are the ones most often flouting the law, committing violent crimes, and tearing down the institutions that in bygone days provided security and prosperity for everyone.

Three, ordinary citizens feel the law has utterly vanished. Sometimes it simply is ignored, as we see with revolving-door criminals who kill, maim, and loot with near impunity. Sometimes the law simply is asymmetrically applied. The administration correctly jails those convicted of illegally entering the Capitol and trashing the chambers of government, but it then grants de facto amnesties to the thousands who deliberately injured, torched, and looted for 120 days of riots, death, and mayhem in 2020.

Joe Biden meanders through his photo-ops indifferent to American civilization collapsing around him. His first year was the most disastrous of any presidency in history. Should that calamity continue, Biden will be known by posterity as the most inept president to have held office.

So why does he not take to the bully pulpit to deplore the current smash-and-grab, carjacking, and murder epidemic now reaching either all-time highs or levels not seen since the 1970s? Does Biden have a shred of empathy for the widow of a murdered policeman, the spouses and parents of those mowed down in Waukesha, the children shot dead in Chicago?

Joe Biden defended his policies by saying that automobile price spikes account for one-third of the spiraling consumer price index. So what? Does that mean inflation is somehow tolerable—as if citizens don’t drive cars most days of their lives?

Is Biden aware that his administration’s core inflation definition and the consumer price index itself exclude energy as well as food price increases? What the real inflation rate is no one knows—but all understand that what we see and feel every day is far worse than what we are told.

Biden has never explained to us the humiliation in Afghanistan—other than to whine that the generals failed to warn him of his own folly. Does he know why now Vladimir Putin again ponders attacking his neighbors—but did not between 2017 and 2020?

Did Biden ever consider the fast-tracking of pipelines, more fracking, a restoration of 2020 levels of oil and gas production, and more leases granted to avoid America’s continued dependence on the Russians and the Middle East? Instead, Biden begged Russia and the Saudis—both of whom he has derided—to pump more of the oil he despises, and which we have in abundance but will not use.

Did Biden once say stop the new racial tensions, or argue that Americans should worry first about the content of our character not the color of our skins? Has he ever worried about the racial cauldron he has lit and fueled? Not at all.

Instead, Biden has done his best to inflame race through his own vile racist slurs. The recent “you ain’t black,” “junkie,” “boy, “negro,” are added to his prior inflammatory repertoire of “clean African-American,” “put y’all back in chains,” and the racist Corn Pop saga.

Second, Biden demagogues race to win the support of his base of racialists. Has any president ever announced ahead of time that only those of a particular race and gender would be eligible for selection as his running mate and first Supreme Court nomination? At least Harvard keeps quiet about its racialism and does not flaunt the idea that it systematically discriminates against Asians.

So, in a vast multiracial democracy of tribal competition and tensions, Biden has done his best to turn Americans against each other—and has succeeded in a fashion that would have made his old Dixiecrat Senate mentors Robert Byrd and James O. Eastland proud.

The mystery is perhaps not that nihilism has swept through America as effectively as Omicron, but why the president and the Left unleashed it. So, what explains the madness?

First, Biden is cognitively challenged to the point of not being physically or mentally able to meet the challenges of the presidency. His handlers know it. The media knows it. And the public knows it, too.

Irony has become the Left’s enemy. After screaming that Donald Trump should be removed under the 25th Amendment, that he should take a mental competency test, and that everyone from the acting director of the FBI to Ivy League psychiatrists must scheme to prove he was nuts, they all have grown silent. The Left’s quiet reflects that they are terrified that anyone else might successfully do to a genuinely enfeebled and failed president what they themselves attempted to do to a cognizant and successful president.

Biden’s assigned task in 2020 was to put a familiar “centrist” veneer on a radical agenda. Thereby, the hard Left, with the help of COVID-19 and Silicon Valley, could push that agenda past an unsuspecting public. Upon election, Biden would not revert to old Joe from Scranton deploring the leftist tool that he had become.

The movers of the agenda are the hard Left of the Democratic Party, those who circle around Bernie Sanders, the Obamas, Elizabeth Warren, and “the squad.” The shock troops are Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the millions on the campus, and the internet mob. The more confusion, chaos, and anarchy that follows, the more of their agenda they hope to push through, if not by legislative vote, then by executive edict, court decision, or simply ignoring the law.

The third catalyst of the woke chaos are the hyper-rich—the franchise owners of the Left. These are the huge donors who nourish the think tanks, the media, the PACs, and the legal teams—the Zuckerbergs, the Soroses, the Bezoses and the rest of the Silicon Valley plutocracy.

Equally important are the hypocritical professional classes—the tech upper-echelon, the media cohorts, the corporate lawyers and CEOs, the various university professoriate and administrations, the celebrities, the professional athletes, and the bicoastal movers and shakers. On the one hand, they are assuming that Americans won’t actually vote for their neosocialist utopias, which can be enacted only by changing the rules or demography or both. And on the other hand, they are hedging that their money, influence, and power will insulate them and their own from the stampede at the border, the growing criminality in the cities, price hikes that batter the middle classes, and the tribalism and racialism they helped to greenlight.

In normal times, such hard-left agendas have no resonance. But during a plague, lockdown, riots and arson, during murder and mayhem, chaos and anarchy?

The unimaginable can become the possible.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13972&omhide=true&trk=title

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Formula One puts an end to taking the knee at races

Formula One will stop drivers taking the knee before races this season and instead focus on “action”.

The opportunity for drivers to take the knee was introduced in 2020 after Lewis Hamilton pushed for F1 to show its support for the anti-racism movement.

The sport decided to set aside time before the race for drivers to show their support, or make any gesture they wanted, as part of its “We Race As One” initiative.

The initiative was broadened for the 2021 season to allow drivers to express support on other subjects. Sebastian Vettel wore rainbow T-shirts and race boots in countries in which homosexuality is illegal.

While most drivers joined Hamilton in taking the knee, it was not universally adopted, and several remained standing during the allotted time.

Stefano Domenicali, chief executive of F1, has now said that the time set aside before a race has been removed, although the We Race As One video, in which all 20 drivers talk about inclusivity, will still be shown.

The Italian said it was time to move away from “gestures” and towards “action”. It is understood that the teams supported the change of direction.

“I think that what we said [is] we do not have to do politics,” Domenicali said in an interview with Sky Sports News. “Now it’s the matter [of moving] from gesture to action [and] now the action is the focus on the diversity of our community and this is the first step. The gesture has been important for the ones that believed it was an important gesture, because we need to respect everyone as always. But now is the time to move on and take some other action.”

Hamilton, who remains F1’s only black driver, has been a leading voice in pushing for greater equality in the sport. His Mercedes team have painted their car black for the past two seasons, though it is understood they will return to silver livery this year.

The winner of seven world championships ended his silence last week, and with it speculation that he would retire after losing out on the title last season in controversial circumstances. He has set up a commission to look at the reasons for the lack of diversity and what action can be taken to improve it.

F1 has also decided to set up its own program, introducing university scholarships, work placements, internships and apprenticeships for aspiring workers from under-represented backgrounds.

Yesterday F1 announced that it would fund engineering scholarships for under-represented groups until 2025.

Ten scholarships will be offered to students across six universities, with a placement at every F1 team available during their studies. The cost covers full tuition as well as living expenses.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/the-times-sport/formula-one-puts-an-end-to-taking-the-knee-at-races/news-story/dc10103bc3cea670b19d28f8b1be8bc0

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After GoFundMe Betrays Freedom Convoy Donors, Truckers Emerge Victorious Under New Crowdfunding Site

Last week, the website GoFundMe decided it would no longer support the Canadian Freedom Convoy, which meant $9 million in donations would never reach the Canadian truckers whose convoy transfixed freedom-lovers everywhere.

By Sunday morning, it no longer seemed to matter.

A page on the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo dedicated to the Freedom Convoy had surpassed $2.5 million in donations Sunday morning. The page said all money raised would go to the Incorporated Freedom 2022 Human Rights And Freedom Association.

The page contained a clarion call for freedom.

“To our Fellow Canadians, the time for political over reach is over. Our current government is implementing rules and mandates that are destroying the foundation of our businesses, industries and livelihoods. Canadians have been integral to the fabric of humanity in many ways that have shaped the planet,” the site read.

“We are a peaceful country that has helped protect nations across the globe from tyrannical governments who oppressed their people, and now it seems it is happening here. We are taking our fight to the doorsteps of our Federal Government and demanding that they cease all mandates against its people. Small businesses are being destroyed, homes are being destroyed and people are being mistreated and denied fundamental necessities to survive. It’s our duty as Canadians to put an end to this mandates. It is imperative that this happens because if we don’t our country will no longer be the country we have come to love. We are doing this for our future Generations and to regain our lives back,” the post continued.

The site said that donations will be used for fuel, lodgings and food to support truckers as they put pressure on Canadian leaders in Ottawa to hear the voices of the people.

“It’s a small price to pay for our freedoms. We thank you all for your Donations and know that you are helping reshape this once beautiful country back to the way it was,” the site said.

On Friday, GoFundMe decided the protest was beyond the pale and said it would no longer send donations to the purpose for which they were intended. In it’s initial statement, the company suggested any unrefunded donor money could be spread around to GoFundMe’s chosen recipients.

In the end, after a vast outcry, GoFundMe went into reverse and decided to simply refund everyone’s donations.

The Freedom Convoy descended on Ottawa last weekend after traveling across Canada. The protest was designed to draw attention to the devastating impact of vaccine mandates imposed by the Canadian government on unvaccinated truckers.

https://ijr.com/freedom-convoy-donors-truckers-new-crowdfunding-site/

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Facts come second for journalists partial to ‘worry porn’

Positive news rarely mentioned

The Wall Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins uses the term “worry porn” to describe what this column has called “catastrophist” journalism – the sensationalising of every story.

Much political reporting of the Covid-19 pandemic by the ABC and Guardian has been catastrophist, with the media outlets seldom acknowledging Australia has done better than most of the world with 120 deaths per million of population since the start of the pandemic, compared with more than 2600 per million in the US and more than 2000 in much of western Europe.

Writing in the WSJ on January 8, Jenkins ridiculed as “worry porn” the over-hyping by the US left media of the anniversary of the storming of Washington’s Capitol building by supporters of former US president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. Our own ABC treated the anniversary as if it really did mark history’s greatest threat to US democracy.

US Vice President Kamala Harris launched into rhetorical “hyper-drive”, claiming the Capitol march was worse than the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941.

In Washington last year, one law enforcement officer died of stroke the day after the protest. One protester, a female former air force veteran, was shot dead. Another died of a drug overdose and two of heart attacks. Pearl Harbour it most certainly was not.

Journalistic “worry porn” allows the media to profit from the clicks of consumers who love to read this kind of confirmation bias. In Australia, journalists, politicians and media consumers of the left seem to have a ravenous appetite for stories suggesting the federal government has bungled its pandemic response for the past two years.

According to the trade union-owned New Daily, the government’s poor performance is down to “neoliberalism”. This charge ignores the fact the Morrison government is running the largest deficits in our history, and a bit more “neoliberalism” might help differentiate the conservative side of politics.

Still, the government does give the appearance of being slow to act as circumstances change, and of repeatedly failing to learn the same lessons. For example, after more than 600 deaths in aged care in Victoria in the winter of 2020, the federally regulated sector should have been on the front foot last winter and again with booster vaccines during this summer’s Omicron wave. Yet federal Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck seems unable to anticipate anything about a sector in which 1124 residents have died with Covid since March 2020, almost half the national toll.

This column suggested in May last year that part of the issue was the overly cautious approach of the nation’s medical establishment, and particularly ATAGI (the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation). Here’s the problem: as the media and political left chant that governments should never ignore the science, how do political leaders deal with scientific advisers who can be slow and sometimes just plain self-interested?

The Australian Financial Review, in an editorial and in reporting by Aaron Patrick and Jill Margo, has done a good job fleshing out the issue – indeed a much better job than our politicians who seem flat-footed trying to explain the problems to voters.

Patrick, in a fascinating piece on January 12, analysed the role of the influential OzSAGE group that advocates extreme health measures and virus elimination. Its members are often at odds with national and state chief medical officers.

OzSAGE members Kerryn Phelps and Raina MacIntyre are prominent on the ABC, and the wider OzSAGE group clearly influences the opinions of ABC health reporter Norman Swan.

On January 11, Margo reported the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia had between October 2020 and December 2021 released “five media statements to caution the public about RATs”.

“In its promotion of PCR testing, the college was doing what was scientifically correct to control the virus in a country with a low prevalence of cases. Unfortunately it was talking down RATs which were playing an important role in other countries and could become important in Australia too,” Margo wrote.

How would critics in the media have reacted had Morrison and the premiers ignored such advice? Truth is medical and political leaders cannot know what they do not know until a situation changes. With Delta in the ascendancy throughout November and much of December there was little reason to foresee the swamping of PCR testing with the arrival of the just-discovered Omicron variant.

The AFR on January 12 editorialised “opposition to allowing the use of less sensitive RATs is another example of the medical establishment’s failure to appropriately weigh the trade-offs between health outcomes and wider societal benefits”.

This is the sort of analysis of a political problem that is missing from the national broadcaster as senior journalists there unleash their personal hatred of Morrison, and reporters simply give voice to every interest group with a complaint.

“Worry porn’’ certainly applied to much of the reporting about a hot day at Onslow in Western Australia. In much of the media, every hot day is used to bang the climate change drum.

Yet, several experts were willing to point out that the 50.7C recorded at Onslow on January 13 had been equalled on January 2, 1960, in Oodnadatta in South Australia. Temperatures over 50C had also been recorded in Wilcannia, NSW, in 1939, Oodnadatta again on January 3, 1960, and at Mardie Station in WA in 1998.

But the actual highest recorded temperature in Australia, though no longer officially recognised by the Bureau of Meteorology, was 53.1C at Cloncurry in Queensland on January 16, 1889.

Retired meteorologist William Kininmonth, who ran the BOM’s national climate centre for 12 years, refers to a graph of maximum mean temperatures back to 1887 that clearly shows “the early 1900s were hotter than recent decades”.

“Worry porn” generates consumer interest and is easier than hard-nosed reporting. It’s also much more exciting for activist reporters who want to change the world. Who wants to bother with digging out difficult facts when you can earn “likes” on social media just for writing about your fears?

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/facts-come-second-for-journalists-partial-to-worry-porn/news-story/32711ed7e98396daf415913d5a18166c

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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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