Caroline Glick. E Mail To Bret. Biden Ignores America's Escalating Dope Deaths. Hanson's Unimaginables.

Caroline Glick is a clear eyed level headed Israeli op ed writer and this is a very important interview:

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In Case You Missed It: An Expert Perspective from Israel on Global 

Since President Biden took office in January 2021, the world has seen dramatic shifts in international affairs and alliances.  From the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our allies and foes alike are reassessing geopolitical security strategies that have a far greater impact than anyone could have imagined just 18 months ago.  As the Biden administration continues its desperate attempt to re-enter the dangerous Iranian nuclear deal while also re-engaging with Palestinian terrorists who incite internal chaos and threaten violence in Israel, our most important ally on the frontlines of these international conflicts finds itself, once again, on its own to navigate very treacherous waters.  What role do U.S. political divides play in Israel’s quest for survival?  How do Israelis and the Bennet/Lapid governing coalition view and handle the new state of affairs in the U.S. since the Biden/Harris administration entered office?  What new alliances might Israel develop in order to survive if U.S. policymakers fail to recognize Israel’s strategic importance to U.S. national security?  These and other questions were answered by the always brilliant and prolific Caroline Glick.

Caroline Glick is an American-born Israeli columnist, journalist, and author. She has written for Israel Hayom, The Jerusalem Post, and Maariv. She currently writes for the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). She is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, (Crown 2014) and Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad (Gefen 2008). The Israeli Solution was endorsed by leading US policymakers including Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Ted Cruz, and National Security Advisor John Bolton. Shackled Warrior was endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former CIA director James Woolsey.

Glick is the adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC, and directs the Israeli Security Project at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. She travels frequently throughout the world to brief policymakers on issues related to Israel’s strategic environment and other related topics. She lectures widely on strategic and political issues affecting global security, Israel and the Jewish people, US-Israel relations, Israel-Diaspora affairs, and Israel’s changing strategic landscape.

Ms. Glick’s writings have also been published in leading newspapers and journals including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review, the Journal of International Security Affairs, and Commentary. Glick blogs on her website www.carolineglick.com and on her Facebook author page. Most recently, Glick’s “Mideast News Hour,” a weekly podcast and video show,  has moved to the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS).  The show, which will now be part of the JNS TV lineup, features Glick’s commentary on the top headlines of the day, and interviews with top guests from across the spectrum.

Watch HereWatch Here

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An e mail I sent to Bret:

"Bret, if you are so optimistic, how can you continue to work at a fascistic newspaper that distorts truth and is part of America's problem?

Can you truthfully/objectively rebut Marc Levine's recent attack on the NYT's history?"

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Can We Still Be Optimistic About America?

By Bret Stephens

This is a season — an age, really — of American pessimism.

The pessimism comes in many flavors. There is progressive pessimism: The country is tilting toward MAGA-hatted fascism or a new version of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” There is conservative pessimism: The institutions, from primary schools to the Pentagon, are all being captured by wokeness. There is Afropessimism: Black people have always been excluded by systemic, ineradicable racism. There is the pessimism of the white middle and working classes: The country and the values they’ve known for generations are being hijacked by smug, self-dealing elites who view them with contempt.

There is also the pessimism of the middle: We are losing the institutional capacity, cultural norms and moral courage needed to strike pragmatic compromises at almost every level of society. Zero-sum is now our default setting.

These various kinds of pessimism may reach contradictory conclusions, but they are based on undeniable realities. In 2012, there were roughly 41,000 overdose deaths in the United States. Last year, the number topped 100,000. In 2012, there were 4.7 murders for every 100,000 people. Last year, the rate hit an estimated 6.9, a 47 percent increase. A decade ago, you rarely heard of carjackings. Now, they are through the roof. Shoplifting? Ditto. The nation’s mental health was in steep decline before the pandemic, with a 60 percent increase of major depressive episodes among adolescents between 2007 and 2019. Everything we know about the effects of lockdowns and school closures suggests it’s gotten much worse.

Economics tells a similar story. “Twenty-first-century America has somehow managed to produce markedly more wealth for its wealthholders even as it provided markedly less work for its workers,” observed Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute in a landmark 2017 Commentary essay. It’s in part from the loss of meaningful work — and the consequent evaporation of pride, purpose and dignity in labor — that we get the startling increase in death rates among white middle-aged Americans, often to suicide or substance abuse.

The list goes on, but you get the point. Even without the daily reminders of Carter-era inflation, this feels like another era of Carter-style malaise, complete with an unpopular president who tends to inspire more sympathy than he does confidence.

So why am I still an optimist when it comes to America? Because while we are bent, our adversaries are brittle. As we find ways to bend, they can only remain static or shatter.

This week brought two powerful reminders of the point. In Moscow, Vladimir Putin gave his customary May 9 Victory Day speech, in which he enlisted nostalgia for a partly mythical past to promote lies about a wholly mythical present, all for the sake of a war that is going badly for him.

Putin is belatedly discovering that the powers to humiliate, subvert and destroy are weaker forces than the powers to attract, inspire and build — powers free nations possess almost as a birthright. The Kremlin might yet be able to bludgeon its way to something it can call victory. But its reward will mainly be the very rubble it has created. The rest of Ukraine will find ways to flourish, ideally as a member of NATO and the European Union.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, more than 25 million people remain under strict lockdown, a real-world dystopia in which hovering drones warn residents through loudspeakers to “control your soul’s desire for freedom.” Does anyone still think that China’s handling of the pandemic — its deceits, its mediocre vaccines, a zero-Covid policy that manifestly failed and now this cruel lockdown that has brought hunger and medicine shortages to its richest city — is a model to the rest of the world?

For all its undeniable progress over 45 years, China remains a Potemkin regime obsessed with fostering aggrandizing illusions: about domestic harmony (aided by a vast system of surveillance and prison camps); about technological innovation (aided by unprecedented theft of intellectual property); about unstoppable economic growth (aided by manufactured statistics). The illusions may win status for Beijing. But they come with a heavy price: the systematic denial of truth, even to the regime itself.

Rulers who come to believe their own propaganda will inevitably miscalculate, often catastrophically. Look again at Putin, who really believed he had a competent military.

Which brings me back to the United States. Just as dictatorships advertise their strengths but hide their weaknesses — both to others and to themselves — democracies do the opposite: We obsess over our weaknesses even as we forget our formidable strengths. It is the source of our pessimism. But it is also, paradoxically, our deepest strength: In refusing to look away from our flaws, we not only acknowledge them but also begin fixing them.

We rethink. We adapt. In bending, we find new ways to grow.

We have a demonstrated record of defanging right-wing demagogues, debunking left-wing ideologues, promoting racial justice, reversing crime waves, revitalizing the political center and reinvigorating the American ideal. Our problems may be hard, but they are neither insoluble nor new.

Those without our freedoms will not be so fortunate

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American deaths from drugs has increased  during Biden's brief term in office because of his neglect of our illegal immigration but the mas media seems not to care.

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The number of people who died from drug overdoses in 2021 increased 15% compared to 2020. While the pace of the rise has slowed, the number of overdose deaths recorded in 2021 is still the highest ever seen in the U.S.  Reported in NPR

AND:

'Smoking Gun': New Whistleblower Information Shows FBI Used Terrorism Tools to Target Concerned Parents

By Leah Barkoukis

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IRGC Plot to Kill US General Foiled by Mossad

• The Mossad apprehended and interrogated Mansour Rasouli, who was leading a plot to kill an Israeli diplomat and a US general stationed in Germany.

• The Quds Force planned to carry out the assassinations via drug cartels, with the Islamic Republic reportedly willing to pay over $1 million for the targets. 

• An audio recording was released of Rasouli admitting to the plot.  Read More

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No sooner had I written about how ""we the people" can take back America I came upon this op ed by Hanson. I know what I wrote will not come to pass but some of what Hanson suggests is quite likely to occur.

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Imagine the Unimaginable

By Victor Davis Hanson 

When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous—as we’ll see over the next few months.

Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.

Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.

In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader Vladimir Putin now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war. 

A 79-year-old Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear adversary is a murderer, a war criminal, and a butcher who should be removed from power. 

After a year of politicizing the U.S. military and its self-induced catastrophe in Afghanistan, America has lost deterrence abroad. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are conniving how best to exploit this rare window of global military opportunity. 

The traditional bedrocks of the American system—a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system—are dissolving.

Gas and diesel prices are hitting historic levels. Inflation is at a 40-year high. New cars and homes are unaffordable. The necessary remedy of high interest and tight money will be almost as bad as the disease of hyperinflation.

There is no southern border.

Expect over 1 million foreign nationals to swarm this summer into the United States without audit, COVID testing, or vaccination. None will have any worry of consequences for breaking U.S. immigration law.

Police are underfunded and increasingly defunded. District attorneys deliberately release violent criminals without charges. (Literally 10,000 people witnessed a deranged man with a knife attack comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and the Los Angeles County D.A. refused to press felony charges.) Murder and assault are spiraling. Carjacking and smash-and-grab thefts are now normal big-city events.  

Crime is now mostly a political matter. Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.

Supermarket shelves are thinning, and meats are now beyond the budgets of millions of Americans. An American president—in a first—casually warns of food shortages. Baby formula has disappeared from many shelves.

Politics resembles the violent last days of the Roman Republic. An illegal leak of a possible impending Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade that would allow state voters to set their own abortion laws has created a national hysteria. 

Never has a White House tacitly approved mobs of protesters showing up at Supreme Court justices’ homes to rant and bully them into altering their votes.

There is no free speech anymore on campuses.

Merit is disappearing. Admissions, hiring, promotion, retention, grading, and advancement are predicated increasingly on mouthing the right orthodoxies or belonging to the proper racial, gender, or ethnic category. 

When the new campus commissariat finally finishes absorbing the last redoubts in science, math, engineering, medical, and professional schools, America will slide into permanent mediocrity and irreversible declining standards of living.

What happened? 

Remember all these catastrophes are self-induced. They are choices, not fate. The United States has the largest combined gas, coal, and oil deposits in the world. It possesses the know-how to build the safest pipelines and to ensure the cleanest energy development on the planet.

Inflation was a deliberate Biden choice. He kept printing trillions of dollars for short-term political advantage, incentivizing labor nonparticipation, and keeping interest rates at historical lows—at a time of pent-up global demand.

The administration wanted no border. Only that way can politicized, impoverished immigrants repay left-wing undermining of the entire legal immigration system with their fealty at the ballot box.

Once esoteric, crack-pot academic theories—“modern monetary theory,” critical legal theory, critical race theory—now dominate policymaking in the Biden Administration. 

The common denominator in all of this is ideology overruling empiricism, common sense, and pragmatism.  Ruling elites would rather be politically correct failures and unpopular than politically incorrect, successful, and popular. 

Is not that the tired story of left-wing revolutionaries from 18th-century France to early 20th-century Russia to the contemporary disasters in Cuba and Venezuela?

The American people reject the calamitous policies of 2021-2022. Yet the radical cadres surrounding a cognitively inert Joe Biden still push them through by executive orders, bureaucratic directives, and deliberate cabinet nonperformance. 

Why? The Left has no confidence either in constitutional government or common sense. 

So as the public pushes back, expect at the ground level more doxxing, cancel culture, deplatforming, ministries of disinformation, swarming the private homes of officials they target for bullying, and likely violent demonstrations in our streets this summer. 

Meanwhile, left-wing elites will do their best to ignore Supreme Court decisions, illegally cancel student debts, and likely by the fall issue more COVID lockdowns. They will still dream of packing the Court, ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding more states, and flooding the November balloting with hundreds of millions more dollars of dark money from Silicon Valley.  

When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, and face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous—as we shall see over the next few months.

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 More dispiriting news:

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