{"id":65838,"date":"2021-03-15T17:30:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T23:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65838"},"modified":"2021-03-15T17:32:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T23:32:35","slug":"65838","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65838","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

For US, Gradual Ruin Is About to Become Sudden<\/a><\/p>\n

Roger Kimball Commentary<\/em><\/div>\n
I am not a particular fan of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s novel \u201cThe Sun Also Rises.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
But there is one exchange between two of the characters, Bill Gorton and Mike Campbell, that has stuck with me.<\/div>\n
\u201cHow did you go bankrupt?\u201d Bill asked.<\/div>\n
\u201cTwo ways,\u201d Mike said. \u201cGradually and then suddenly.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
That passage has been running through my head a lot recently.<\/div>\n
I thought of it last week when I learned that Dr. Seuss Enterprises had decided to\u00a0stop selling six books<\/a>\u00a0by the famous children\u2019s author because\u2014according to the bureaucrats at the concession\u2014they depict various ethnic groups in ways that are \u201churtful and wrong.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I thought of it again last week when Disney decided that some of its most popular shows did not pass muster with the woke wardens of political correctness and\u00a0restricted access<\/a>\u00a0to Dumbo, Peter Pan, and other children\u2019s classics because they, too, were \u201cracially insensitive.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Closer to home, Amazon, the self-described\u00a0world\u2019s largest bookstore<\/a>, joined the censors by delisting a book I published a few years ago at Encounter,\u00a0\u201cWhen Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment<\/a><\/u>.\u201d<\/div>\n
The book is a thoughtful and scholarly analysis of the psychological costs of treating gender dysphoria with drugs and surgery, but Amazon suddenly and without any explanation dropped the book because, they said, they no longer \u201csell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.\u201d<\/div>\n
Mr. Anderson\u2019s book does no such thing, but no matter. Amazon is in this respect like the Lord: man proposeth, Amazon disposeth,<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
These little cultural markers\u2014and there are plenty more where they came from\u2014suggested to me that we were about at an end of the gradual phase of cultural decay and were about to embark on the sudden part of the journey.<\/div>\n

Elections<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Then there is the more serious stuff: the nearly $2 trillion so-called \u201cCovid relief\u201d package that all-but-guarantees a spike in inflation but shovels much, much\u00a0more money to teachers\u2019 unions and favored racial groups than to people who have suffered from the government lockdowns during the CCP virus pandemic.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There is the passage in the house of H.R. 1, the so-called \u201cFor the People\u201d bill, which would effectively assure that were was never another fair election in this country.<\/div>\n
It would do this by all-but-obliterating voter ID requirements\u2014you need an ID to board a plane but not cast a vote\u2014mandating same-day voter registration and at least two weeks of early voting, and by requiring states to provide unsupervised drop boxes to receive completed ballots.<\/div>\n
In other words, H.R. 1 would\u00a0centralize presidential elections<\/a>, taking responsibility for oversight away from the states, where the Constitution placed it, and arrogating it to the clutches of the federal government and its sprawling bureaucracy.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
If, as seems almost certain, H.R. 1 becomes the law of the land, it would be the final nail in the coffin of electoral integrity.<\/div>\n
The widespread irregularities (that\u2019s polysyllabic periphrasis for \u201cfraud\u201d) that attended the 2020 election would be codified into law assuring that, for as long as anyone could envision, 2016 would have to be counted as the last free, fair, and open presidential election.<\/div>\n
It used to be that American was the land of the free and home of the brave. A robust culture of free speech was every American\u2019s birthright.<\/div>\n
We had free and fair elections, unlike the banana republics we were always called upon to bail out or police.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We also had borders, and even politicians eager to increase immigration understood the difference between entering the country legally and opening the floodgates to the hordes massing on our Southern border.<\/div>\n
That\u2019s all behind us now, or at least those traditions appear to be on life support\u2014no, the patient was on life support, but someone came to euthanize him and pulled the plug.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The signs and portents are many and they are not encouraging.<\/div>\n
Perhaps the most disturbing episode last week was\u00a0Joe Biden<\/a>\u2019s alarming performance when he announced the elevation of two women to the status of combat generals.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Biden went on to underscore the \u201cintensity of purpose\u201d with which his administration would be pursuing \u201cbody armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating their hairstyle requirements.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
This was not from a Saturday Night Live skit: it was the President of the United States\u00a0live in front of the cameras<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I say \u201clive\u201d but I really mean \u201cnot prerecorded.\u201d\u00a0 Joe Biden is \u201clive\u201d only in the sense that he cannot legally be interred.<\/div>\n
He went on to demonstrate that sad contingency when he strained, unsuccessfully, to remember the name of his Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, who was standing right behind him, or the building where Austin worked, the Pentagon.<\/div>\n

\u2018Ruin in a Nation\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Adam Smith once remarked to a disconsolate correspondent that there\u2019s a \u201cdeal of ruin in a nation.\u201d I quoted that remark to a friend some years ago when America was reeling from the twin assaults of the financial meltdown and the ministrations of Barack Obama.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially this nation,\u201d my friend replied, and I had to agree.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
For a moment, during Donald Trump\u2019s tenure, it seemed as though we\u2019d returned to the sunlit uplands. Leave aside his partisan successes, the judges and tax cuts, for example.<\/div>\n
Concentrate instead on what he did to secure the borders, to upgrade the military, to make America energy independent.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It\u2019s only mid-March 2021.\u00a0 In just six weeks, and with 60-odd executive orders behind him, Joe Biden has largely unravelled all that and more.<\/div>\n
This is the reality: Joe Biden has set us on a collision course with tyranny at home and armed conflict abroad.<\/div>\n
He has denominated his political opponents \u201cdomestic terrorists\u201d and directed the FBI to harass and arrest them. He has done everything in his considerable power to surrender the country to the woke mob.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is not standing still.\u00a0 Look for a kinetic clash with Russia, China, or Iran soon. It\u2019s coming to a theater near you by the end of this summer, and I do not mean a movie theater.<\/div>\n
Expect the velocity of our declivity to increase\u2014the gauge is set to move from \u201cgradually\u201d to \u201csuddenly\u201d now, and there will be plenty of shock and awe when it does.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Is this alarmist? Maybe, but that is appropriate when the situation is alarming.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Expect also to hear many people quoting the poet Delmore Schwartz: \u201cEven paranoids have enemies.\u201d<\/div>\n
It\u2019s going to be a wild ride.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For US, Gradual Ruin Is About to Become Sudden Roger Kimball Commentary I am not a particular fan of Ernest Hemingway\u2019s novel \u201cThe Sun Also Rises.\u201d\u00a0 But there is one exchange between two of the characters, Bill Gorton and Mike Campbell, that has stuck with me. \u201cHow did you go bankrupt?\u201d Bill asked. \u201cTwo ways,\u201d … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-o-the-day","category-enemies-foreign-domestic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65838"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65841,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65838\/revisions\/65841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}