President Trump on Tuesday gave a one-hour speech to a joint session of Congress. There was some cucking about Black History Month, a licensed occasion for the ramping-up of anti-white rhetoric—if your gonads were as dimensionally impressive as we were led to believe, Mr. President, you would have issued an Executive Order renaming February as "Hate Whitey Month"—and condemning "hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms," with special reference to the recent vandalizing of Jewish cemeteries. (Fiddlesticks to that. Saying "hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms" is just conceding rhetorical ground to the enemy. Spokes-critters at the Southern Poverty Law Center and other Goodwhite propaganda outlets have made the word "hate" toxic by using it indiscriminately to refer to any position contradicting CultMarx dogma. Most "hate crimes" turn out to be hoaxes—as has proved to be the case here).
But there was some good stuff on the National Question. Most resounding quote:
Free nations are the best vehicle for expressing the will of the people, and America respects the right of all nations to chart their own path. My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.In 1939, Orwell wrote “we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is once again, and we should thank the President for thus showing us his intelligence.
Just those three frank sentences reminded me why I voted for this guy, and shall vote for him again.
And there was this:
We strongly support NATO, an alliance forged through the bonds of two world wars, that dethroned fascism … [Applause] … and a Cold War and defeated communism.Those were indeed noble deeds, bravely done. But the dethroning of fascism took place 72 years ago; the defeat of communism, at least of Soviet communism, was accomplished 26 years ago. Why is NATO still around?
If the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious, the second duty is to question what goes unquestioned. The President, to his credit, wants our NATO partners to do more to finance the alliance. That's good; but why does the alliance even exist? Who's the enemy?
We're supposed to think it's Russia, but I can't figure out why. I keep asking, and Radio Derb listeners have been energetic in offering explanations, but nothing seems right.
I'm getting the feeling, in fact, that the current wave of Russophobia has been manufactured out of whole cloth as a stick to beat the Trump administration with. No, wait a minute … sticks aren't made out of cloth … oh, you know what I mean.
I got a chuckle from Steve Sailer's blog posting a video of Charles (Bell Curve) Murray being shouted down at Middlebury College. The demonstrators were chanting: "Racist, sexist, anti-gay—Charles Murray, go away!"
One of Steve's commenters asked why they were accusing Murray of being anti-gay, when he'd come out in favor of same-sex marriage at CPAC four years ago. A different commenter replied to that: "Because it rhymes with 'go away.'"
I think that nicely encapsulates the vacuity of Social Justice Warrior reasoning. Perhaps it also applies to the Russophobia panic.
Why are we all supposed to be against Russia? Because it rhymes with … I don't know … "Prussia"? "Flusher"? "Gonna crush ya"?
Latest target of the Russophobes: Attorney General Jeff Sessions. At confirmation hearings for the Attorney General job in January, Minnesota Senator Al Franken asked Sessions what he would do if evidence came out that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign had communicated with the Russian government in the course of the campaign. Sessions replied that he didn't know of such things, and that "I didn't have communications with the Russians.” [Live coverage of Sessions confirmation hearing,By Jonathan Easley and Lydia Wheeler, The Hill, Jamuary 10, 2017]
Wednesday this week, however, the Washington Post reported that Sessions had spoken to the Russian ambassador twice during the campaign. [Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose, By Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller March 1, 2017]
That unleashed a storm of pointing and sputtering among the anti-Trump legions. They just can't understand how Trump got elected when they are so obviously Good People and Trump is so plainly a Bad Person. As always in psychological crises of this sort, magical thinking takes over. There were secret conspiracies, invisible forces, poisonous vapors. The malevolent agency in this case was…Russia! Because it rhymes with "fussier"…or something.
Being obliged to exchange occasional pleasantries with the Russian ambassador is surely an occupational hazard for United States Senators. Probably Jeff Sessions, replying to Franken, assumed that such hallway encounters didn't rise to the level of "communicating with the Russian government" in the context of campaign shenanigans. And I think his assumption was a fair one.
The opposition is making hay with it none the less. Sessions has recused himself from Justice Department investigations into Russian interference in the election.
I'd say he's done himself a favor there, saved himself wasting a lot of time that he could much more profitably devote to reversing the anti-cop, anti-white, Open-Borders mindset that settled in at the Justice Department under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.
Meanwhile, here's a modest proposal for the President. Sir, why not stick a big fat finger in the eye of the Russophobes with an Executive Order announcing that from henceforth, the Russian ambassador will be an honored guest at all cabinet meetings.
Does anyone think that would make one iota of difference to our national security and prosperity?
I don't.
What it would do is drive the Opposition Party over the edge from their present merely unbalanced state into screeching, grass-eating, poop-throwing, running-through-the-park-naked insanity.
Which would be great fun to watch.
John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He’s had two books published by VDARE.com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and From the Dissident Right II: Essays 2013. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
