What a country!

Victor Davis Hanson wonders if there is the will to do what is needed. He suggests 10 Steps to Save America. It is a catalog of what has gone wrong with suggestions for a course correction. — “These are just a few of the many ways that the United States could stop the present madness—which, after all, was entirely self-created.” The section headlines:

• Cut the Debt
• Secure the Border
• Tap Natural Resources
• Oppose Discrimination
• Disrupt and Reform Higher Education
• Revive the Armed Forces
• Fix Voting
• Drain the Swamp
• Upend the Welfare State
• Restore Norms

There’s a lot of ‘misinformation’ parading around as ‘science’ to support a fantasy. Ben Bartee highlights an example: Social Engineers: Unvaxxed Get in More Traffic Accidents. — “Any opportunity to bash the unvaxxed, no matter how absurd the justification, is like catnip to the corporate media. They can’t resist.” — “If you’re uninjected, don’t be surprised if, in the near future, your insurance company justifies a premium hike on the grounds that you can’t provide proof of vaccination, and are therefore a greater liability. The American Journal of Medicine said so.” —

But that’s just a part of it. See The Feds’ ‘Misinformation’ Scam. Patrick J. Gibbs puts the Twitter brouhaha as paramount in 2022. — “Until we see reforms after such investigations, defenders of free speech should refuse to recognize any “misinformation exception” to the First Amendment.” —

And in left field there is the question Why reparations now? Mark C. Ross says “The absurdity of the concept of reparations for slavery, an institution that ended several generations ago, is beyond mind-boggling.  But there’s a blatantly cynical reason for the sudden lurch in that direction: formerly reliable Black voters are now slipping away from the Democrats.” — “The dystopic nature of our inner cities cannot be traced back to slavery.  Modern-day political machines are the culprits.  Paying women to have fatherless children; running schools that avoid imparting basic math and literacy skills while lowering the standards for achievement; suppressing police responses to avoid bad optics and litigation… all add up to imposed squalor.  And none of this can be traced back to slavery or any of its aftereffects.” — and did you know — “the British colonists brought in Scots and Irish slaves to fill the labor deficit created by the vastness of America.  These were not indentured slaves who only needed to work off the cost of their passage to achieve their freedom.  They were true chattel: property that was bought and paid for.” —

“The folks who are having the money thrown at them have no reason to complain and the folks whose money it used to be have little, if any, voice left to complain.  What a country!”