Worth Reading for January 11, 2022
JDQB likes the Commentary podcast on Bad Prosecutors, which echoes pieces of the main article.
He is also pretty shocked by the extraordinary partisanship of Merrick Garland as Attorney General, which he suspects might be a form of payback to the conservatives for their refusal to vote on his nomination to the Supreme Court so many years ago. See the December 9 Wall St. Journal article.
Finally, he does not know whether to laugh or cry at the Elizabeth Warren OpEd piece declaring that the Supreme Court now “threatens the foundation of our nation” and hence must be destroyed by packing it with enough compliant justices to overcome the current 6-3 split. This is a variation on an expression that famously helped to end the Vietnam War. When the Pentagon announced that it was necessary to destroy certain villages to save them, their credibility began a steep decline and a loss of confidence in the military increased greatly. Sen. Warren may meet a similar fate.
On the subject of the Pelosi-run hearings into the events of January 6, Matt Taibbi has written a brilliant piece (also narrated) with a sharp and acerbic pen to condemn the authoritarian designs of the left and critique the more comic authoritarian instincts of Mr Trump, while noting the actual authoritarian success of Mr. Cheney. It is a wild ride with something for every silo. One especially good sentence, for example: News writing has become a pre-fab profession, like assembling IKEA furniture. All you need is an Allen wrench and a list of the latest clichés. “Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election” has replaced “Trump’s efforts to coordinate with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “Trump’s false claims of fraud” has replaced “Trump’s false claims of ‘fake news.’” Part of the significance of January 6th is that it updated popular propaganda stock, which had grown stale.
And then: All those things Trump is rumored to be, Dick Cheney actually is. That’s why it’s so significant that he appeared on the floor of the House yesterday to be slobbered over by the Adam Schiffs and Nancy Pelosis of the world. Dick Cheney did more to destroy democracy in ten minutes of his Vice Presidency than Donald Trump did in four years.
WDM also found some gems in the pig trough of writing about January 6. One is Sohrab Ahmari’s thesis that January 6 occurred because Trump was not radical enough: like his predecessors from Andrew Jackson to William Jennings Bryan, he spoke to the real suffering of the ordinary citizen but had no program that would work.
Even when she publishes just before our deadline, Heather Macdonald can never be ignored, as this article on the double-standard applied to “1/6” proves. WDM likes it as the best of both accuracy and diatribe.
WDM also could not resist some worthwhile bits on the pandemic, as the relatively harmless Omicron variant seems on the verge of inspiring panic and authoritarian responses.
Bobby Jindal wrote simply about what is wrong with vaccine mandates as a political strategy. The Economist sees a welcome turning point, that public health officials are beginning to “favour [sic] social well-being over individual illness.”
The Washington Post joins in, taking issue with stringent measures to stop the spread of omicron, writing that “At this point, for those fully vaccinated, getting omicron appears to be comparable to catching the flu. We don’t force people with the flu to isolate for five days.” Or, WDM adds, to wear masks indiscriminately.
The guidance of the Food and Drug Administration, made mandatory in several Blue states, to ration Covid therapies based on race has achieved near-universal condemnation from the liberal press. To borrow one quote, “We don’t have a lot of happy examples of countries that have used race as a medical criterion.”
To wrap up this topic, the Chesapeake Observer does not carry advertising, and we definitely do not endorse products, but the first part of this online advertisement is just too good to miss.
Finally, WDM found a valuable reading list on new conservative thought. If you persevere through its length, errors, insults and gutter language, this article in The New Republic provides a very useful survey of intelligent and influential young conservative thinkers, including some surprising names and backgrounds. Anyone TNR dislikes that much becomes a must-read, and WDM is sure copies are being framed by those mentioned in it.