Also Stomped On: Never Trumpers, #MeToo, the Media and more

When the Christine Ford saga finally ended with the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a lot of truth had distilled out, along with the evaporation of prior pretensions and misconceptions.  Here are the Kavanaugh Casualties.

The Left

The hearing confirmed that the traditional JFK/Hubert Humphrey Democrat party, as once envisioned by a Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, or Jim Webb, is long kaput.

In its place is being birthed a hard-left progressive movement that absorbs the ideologies and methodologies of its base and that now incorporates all sorts, from Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist hipsters to Black Lives Matters, Antifa, and Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Any means is deemed permissible to enact visions of social justice, given legislative and executive power is lost for now — and as if proverbially ordinary Americans who watched the televised circus might applaud the performers.

The applause is the sound of one hand clapping.

Inevitably as China becomes more powerful and influential in international relations, Beijing will fundamentally change the international system created by the United States and the Cold War.

The key question for international politics is what kind of world does China seek to create by 2049 — the centenary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Will China sustain the present liberal system or forge another anchored on its ambitions, culture, and desires? Millennia of Chinese history strongly suggests the latter.

In this essay, we illuminate China’s model of global governance and touch upon its derivative economic and political features. Conceiving of what type of world China will create is significant for three reasons.

First, it is critical for the United States to understand so that the full scope of China’s strategic ambitions and direction may be understood.

Second, U.S. decision-makers should expect that the world China would like to create by 2049 will be fundamentally different. The economic order will be a curious mix of hyper-capitalism and neomercantilism. The political order will be authoritarian.

Third, understanding China’s ambition and grand strategic objectives allows the United States to develop policies and undertake measures to thwart them.

Never have I felt more ashamed of my sex than in the last two weeks watching hysterical harridans trashing tradition, decorum, and common decency.

The Kavanaugh confirmation circus has brought out the worst of womankind -- woman who forced themselves, writhing with hatred and ignorance, into our living rooms and smart devices uninvited and without consent.

I've never felt so assaulted in my life than after watching the fiendish, frenzied temper tantrums of a thousand deranged females during what is supposed to be tedious, uneventful Senate procedure to seat a Supreme Court justice.

These screeching gorgons have bigger problems than Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. Their performance during this uproarious time has called into serious question their fitness to even participate in any serious matter of state.

It embarrasses me deeply that these shrieking shrews identify as "women" and are allowed to speak for all of us without question. The only women in America whose existence is continually and relentlessly denied are conservative women.

The population of the Russian Federation is falling by 700 people a day, or more than a quarter of a million a year (Narzur.ru, September 23).

The decline stems from a combination of rising death rates, changes in the age structure of the population (resulting in fewer women in the prime child-bearing cohort but more elderly), dramatically falling immigration rates, and ever greater shortages of medicines and even medical facilities.

And of course, alcoholism off the world scale.  At the very least, international health officials say, alcohol in its various forms remains “the main cause of death” in Russia today. (Thinktanks.by, October 3).

Ever more Russian analysts are describing the current demographic situation as a disaster for the future, one that may make it increasingly difficult for that country to field a sizeable military or generate economic growth.  Here are the stats showing how Russia is literally dying.

A spate of unusual reports in Hong Kong and overseas Chinese-language media lend credence to the idea that, while Xi Jinping remains China’s undisputed paramount, his authority seems diminished.

A moratorium of sorts appears to have been called on the relentless personality cult constructed around Xi, while signs have emerged that China’s economic policymaking apparatus has been hamstrung by disagreements between Xi and his top economic policymaker over how to handle a deepening trade war with the United States.

Stories about political troubles befalling Xi could be exaggerated. Xi recently completed a 10-day trip to Africa and the Middle East; it is unlikely he would have left the country for so long if his position were in imminent danger.

Further,  the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is unlikely to move against Xi after a massive reshuffle of its command-and-control apparatus in late 2015 and early 2016 that saw Xi install protégés in most of the PLA’s senior roles. (China Brief, October 20, 2017).

Nonetheless, while Xi’s status as top leader likely remains unchallenged, his authority—including his ability to make decisions on major political, economic and foreign-policy issues—seems impaired in recent weeks.   The primary cause of this impairment is US President Donald Trump.

[The Soviet Colonial Empire was the 20th century worldwide expansion of the 19th century Russian Colonial Empire. My friend of many years Paul Goble here shows how the murder of three Russian investigative journalists spotlights Putin’s attempt to create Russian colonies in Africa –JW.]

The Kremlin has seemingly taken another step to cover up the murders of three Russian journalists who were killed at the end of July in the Central African Republic (CAR), while investigating Moscow’s dispatch of weapons there.

Moscow has far more to hide in the CAR and is prepared to act quickly and harshly to make sure those secrets stay hidden. All along, the Russian government has vociferously denied any involvement in the widely publicized murders of the three journalists, Orkhan Dzhemal, Aleksandr Rastorguev and Kirill Radchenko.

Russia has announced it had opened its own “investigation” into the deadly incident. At the same time, however, officials and Russian analysts have gone out of their way to deny that Russians in the CAR were in any way responsible for the reporters’ deaths or that Moscow was acting covertly to undermine what stability there is in that country or anywhere else in sub-Saharan Africa (see EDM, September 4).

The truth seems to be the opposite.

Now we know for sure.  The answer is No. There is not a single decent person among the Democrats in Congress.

Because not one Democrat has had the fortitude to stand up and admit that what they are doing to Judge Brett Kavanaugh is obscene and grossly indecent.

We must therefore admit that there is not one of them with the moral sense to know that destroying a man for politics is wrong.  It's not only wrong, but depraved.  Not one Democrat member of the Senate, not one in the House.  Those on the Judiciary Committee are just the most depraved and venal of the lot.

The very worst aspect of all this is that the Democrats in Congress all surely know that Kavanaugh is innocent of Blasey Ford's ridiculous accusation.  They know, and they do not care.

Cory Booker now admits it publicly – saying “It no longer matters if Kavanaugh is innocent or guilty.”  They are beyond shame, beyond decency, beyond morals.

I am not a crier. My husband jokes about my “six-second cry” when I finally shed some tears.

But as I watched Brett Kavanaugh’s opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, I cried—and for more than six seconds.

I wept for him, for his crushed wife seated behind him, for his young daughters, and for his friends. I cried for our country. It was an emotional release of sympathy, frustration and rage.

I wasn’t alone. The shared tears and collective fury are galvanizing women voters, but not in the way Democrats initially calculated. The Democrats’ insistence that due process and a presumption of innocence don’t apply to men (particularly conservative white men) is a terrifying prospect for the husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers we love.

The Left still doesn’t understand that we don’t hate men like they do.