The Most Revolutionary Act

Uncensored updates on world events, economics, the environment and medicine

The Most Revolutionary Act
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About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

China keeps door firmly closed to Japanese seafood imports

Seafood for sale at a market in Zhoushan, China. Beijng's import ban has fueled an aversion to seafood in general, creating a situation it hadn't anticipated.
Seafood for sale at a market in Zhoushan, China. Beijng’s import ban has fueled an aversion to seafood in general, creating a situation it hadn’t anticipated. | Jiji

Texas Governor Removes Over 1 Million Ineligible Voters, Including Nearly 500,000 Dead People and 1000s of Non-Citizen from State’s Voter Rolls

Gateway Pundit

Governor Greg Abbott announced today that the state has successfully removed over one million ineligible voters from its voter rolls since the enactment of Senate Bill 1 in 2021.

This decisive action includes nearly 500,000 deceased individuals and thousands of noncitizens.

“Election integrity is essential to our democracy,” said Governor Abbott.

“I have signed the strongest election laws in the nation to protect the right to vote and to crackdown on illegal voting. These reforms have led to the removal of over one million ineligible people from our voter rolls in the last three years, including noncitizens, deceased voters, and people who moved to another state.

“The Secretary of State and county voter registrars have an ongoing legal requirement to review the voter rolls, remove ineligible voters, and refer any potential illegal voting to the Attorney General’s Office and local authorities for investigation and prosecution. Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting.”

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/breaking-texas-governor-greg-abbott-removes-one-million/

DNC Sues Georgia Over New Ballot Tampering Measure

Gateway Pundit

In a country where common sense should reign supreme, one would expect a unified front in favor of protecting the sanctity of our elections. Yet, the Democrats continue to stand against measures designed to ensure that our electoral process is both fair and secure.

The latest instance of this troubling trend comes from Georgia, where the state’s Election Board has taken a bold step toward safeguarding election integrity—only to be met with fierce opposition from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Party of Georgia.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Georgia Election Board voted 3-2 in favor of a new rule that mandates election workers to compare the total number of ballots cast with the total number of unique voter ID numbers in the system.

This crucial regulation aims to ensure that every vote cast is legitimate, allowing for thorough investigations into any discrepancies before election results can be certified.

Under this new rule, if any precinct shows that the number of ballots exceeds the number of unique voter IDs, counties must withhold certification of those election results until a complete investigation into potential fraud is conducted.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/you-cant-make-this-up-dnc-sues-georgia/

Telegram founder Durov’s arrest represents new level of desperation from western elites

CEO Pavel Durov says Telegram was unresponsive to Brazil's Supreme Court because the court used ...
Martin Jay

There is no such thing really as free speech. It comes at a very high price for those who want to protect and cherish it.

The arrest of Pavel Durov marks a new low point on the scumline of the side of the bath – the tub being western democracies and the line being their desperation to stay in power at the costs of controlling social media. Durov, who owns Telegram and lives in Dubai, could be in jail for months and possibly years on the trumped-up charges which the French state has conjured up simply because he refuses to allow any government to have a back door into Telegram. He has fought this tooth and nail for years with the west, in particular the U.S., playing every dirty trick in the book to get access to the platform for its own nefarious purposes – to destroy opposition figures, their strategies etc. – rather than what it is dressed up to be, identifying terrorists and international criminals.

As the UK ponders how its own state has sunk to a new totalitarian level in recent days with the arrest of its citizens who merely like a posting on a social media platform, the West has arrested this French Russian dual national genius who is charged with the crimes of those criminals active on Telegram. And so charges of terrorism and trafficking in minors, drugs and whatever else they can find on the platform will be made against him as someone abetting in the crimes. Of course, the same rules will not be levelled against Elon Musk who surely has criminals on his platform or for that matter any of the other social media platforms.

But how many of these platforms are also taking the same stand as Durov? We are led to believe that most of them aren’t but in light of his arrest we should assume that many of them have already allowed some sort of access to them for the deep state. Elon Musk likes to brag about his refusal to comply with the EU’s demands that he “moderates” who he allows onto X, adding that other social media platforms accepted the deal offered to him by Brussels: comply with our requests and we grant you some leniency on future antitrust fines. This offer, which he claims was happily accepted by other platforms is a close as you can get to the EU offering a brown envelope stuffed full of cash to a man in a pub. It’s a bribe and gives a clue as to how anti-democratic the EU is and how it operates in the shadows.

The French arrest however goes deeper in that we can assume that it was not France operating alone to nab Durov. We can assume that the FBI and CIA had probably pushed Macron to do this appalling dirty work but perhaps also Israel had a hand in it. Just recently, Netanyahu complained that data which was stolen from the government was being exchanged on Telegram and asked Durov to step in and retrieve it. He got not reply. Did Mossad have a hand in the arrest of Telegram’s boss? It seems credible given that it is hard to believe the Durov would fly into French airspace eyes wide open. Was it a kidnapping operation to get his plane and his pilot to land in Paris? French TV channel TF1 said Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Saturday 24th of August but did not state whether the plane’s ultimate destination had been France.

The details around the arrest are very sketchy, but according to Reuters, Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”.

Another question which arises from the arrest is whether it is an international effort by western countries led by the U.S. – with Israel very much part of it – to test the waters for other arrests. Pundits have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists for weeks now suggesting Elon Musk will be arrested at some point, or charged in his absence, by UK authorities for some of the more controversial posts he has made about the political situation in the UK, or even by the EU which appears to have started a legal battle with him after he refused to respond to two letters sent to him by a French European Commissioner. Perhaps even the Democrats in the U.S. might play the same card given that Musk has lost all credibility as this neutral player in U.S. politics after he has so openly supported Trump who has promised him a position in a new government if he were to enter the Oval Office. There is no such thing really as free speech. It comes at a very high price for those who want to protect and cherish it and now France will test the political landscape to see how the arrest of Durov will affect Macron’s ratings. The French president has made outstandingly poor judgment in the past in calling for parliamentary elections immediately after EU ones which gave so much power to far-right groups, so he seems to be good at falling on his own sword. He may well have factored that Durov does not have the popularity of say Assange who didn’t stir so much political anger when he was banged up for years in a filthy, dank cell in the UK on trumped up charges from the U.S.

What is especially worrying is that locking up powerful people who have huge followings on the internet is becoming a trend which people are getting used to. The war between those who want to control the perceived truth and those who hold the actual one is hotting up. Scott Ritter, Andrew Tate, Richard Medhurst all arrested within days of one another, while Musk himself shuts down Egyptian comedian Bassem Youseff who had 10m followers on X. What we are witnessing is a new level of desperation that western elites are more afraid than ever that after wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in Ukraine and starting a world war in the Middle East that voters have no confidence any more in their decision-making, as they, the public, struggle more and more to pay for groceries or even heat their houses. It’s a new milestone in the blind dogma of elites to resort to tactics which we would have scorned China or North Korea for using just a few years ago. It’s a new level of panic which we haven’t seen before.

[…]

Via https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/08/26/durov-arrest-represents-a-new-level-of-desperation-from-western-elites/

Georgia Elections Board Confirms There Was Fraud in the 2020 Election

Jim Hoft

The Board took three and a half years to get to this conclusion but they finally got here.

The reason for the delays has been corrupt members on the GEB and corrupt actors in the Republican Party leadership in the state.

Brad Raffensperger has denied and delayed every effort to get to the truth in the 2020 Election.  He then lied to President Trump and discounted what he said, lied about what he said and withheld material information on the 2020 Election in the state from the President of the United States.

Kevin Moncla who was instrumental is putting this information together thanked the GEB for acknowledging there was indeed fraud in Georgia in the 2020 Election.

[…]

Via https://joehoft.com/its-official-the-georgia-elections-board-confirms-that-there-was-fraud-in-the-2020-election/

Medical Freedom Leaders Meet with Trump

Joe Hoft

The Gateway Pundit reported on a recent private meeting between President Trump and five advocates for medical freedom and vaccines. It was a successful meeting.

The following is a takeaway from the meeting with President Trump’s response.

President Trump agreed with what the group had to say.

The women present shared the following:

We were honored to be personally invited to meet with President Trump, where we had the unique opportunity to discuss crucial medical freedom issues like vaccination choice for children, schools, and employment, access to treatment options, and why they are important to Americans.

President Trump is adamant on NO vaccine mandates.

The President asked many insightful questions and engaged deeply in our conversation.

As the evening drew to a close, one of the guests, Melissa Alfieri-Collins RN, BSN expressed her gratitude, saying, “Thank you, Mr. President, for hearing me.” He responded, “I hear you, I heard you, and tell your people I hear them.”

More good news for America.

This news comes at the same time President Trump has announced the formation of an expert panel to join forces with Robert Kennedy, Jr. in tackling the alarming rise in chronic diseases in children.

As reported earlier – In a groundbreaking announcement that has sent waves through the political and medical communities, President Donald Trump has unveiled his plan to form an expert panel in partnership with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to address the alarming rise of chronic diseases in children.

This announcement, made at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, signals a direct challenge to Big Pharma, whose unchecked influence has long been suspected of contributing to the health crisis facing the nation’s youth.

For years, Big Pharma has been raking in billions while the rates of chronic diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, and obesity, have skyrocketed among children.

During the rally, Trump praised Kennedy’s relentless dedication to advocating for the health and well-being of American families, particularly children.

“I also want to salute Bobby’s decades of work as an advocate for the health of our families and our children. Nobody’s done more,” Trump said.

“Millions and millions of Americans who want clean air, clean water, and a healthy nation have concerns about toxins in our environment and pesticides in our food. That’s why today I’m repeating my pledge to establish a panel of top experts working with Bobby to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases,” he added.

The Trump-Kennedy alliance is more than just a political partnership; it is a testament to what can be achieved when leaders put aside partisan differences to focus on the well-being of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens.

[…]

Via https://theblogginghounds.com/2024/08/26/i-hear-you-i-heard-you-and-tell-your-people-i-hear-them-president-trump-after-private-meeting-on-vaccines-and-medical-freedom/

Western Culture has Abandoned Wisdom and Replaced it with “Science” – Ignore the Advice of “Scientists” if you Want to Live Long!

by Brian Shilhavy

Being in my mid-60s now, I am entering into a phase of life that Western culture generally refers to as my “senior years.”

Outside of Western culture, especially in many Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, this is the phase of life that is equated with “wisdom,” recognizing that people who have lived on this earth the longest, have generally accumulated the most wisdom, and such people are to be respected for having reached this age.

This is also seen in the ancient writings collected together and published in the Bible, which was mainly written in Middle Eastern culture.

Consider this verse from the Law of Moses as recorded in Leviticus:

You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:32)

In Western culture, however, older people are looked upon as feeble and senile. They are considered mostly by the group they belong to in Western culture, the “seniors”, which is a group that is a goldmine for the medical scientists and their drugs.

In what is pure insanity for most other cultures around the world, American seniors are taught to “retire” around the age of 65, and take life easy, when in fact they are usually smarter and wiser in their senior years than the younger people running the world, and should just do anything BUT retire.

There is one caveat to this principle, however, and that caveat is that you have to reach your senior years without being dependent upon the pharmaceutical industry, which will do everything they can to render your life mostly meaningless as they attempt to make you a life-long consumer of their toxic products.

Seniors are seen as a burden to society, and especially to the medical system, as the drugs and surgeries that are marketed to them generally prevent them from participating in the workforce, dependent upon Government subsidies such as Medicare and social security.

Understanding this western mindset, it is easy to understand the insanity of an article that was published yesterday in The Guardian that attacked the wisdom and sound advice that came from the oldest recorded person in the world who just died at the age of 117, and commanded people to listen to scientists instead.

Never take health tips from world’s oldest people, say scientists

Scientists still trying to work out why some people live beyond 100, but agree it is best to avoid taking advice from centenarians themselves

Think about this headline and sub-headline statement for a minute.

Scientists admit that they don’t know why some people live so long, but they are very certain that they know you should not trust the advice from people who do live so long!

Here are some more excerpts from this article that better belongs on satire websites such as Babylon Bee, but is actually published as “news”.

The death of the world’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, at the age of 117 might cause many to ponder the secrets of an exceptionally long life, but scientists say it could be best to avoid taking advice on longevity from centenarians themselves.

According to the Guinness World Records website, Branyas believed her longevity stemmed from “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people”.

Does this advice to have “order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” sound like advice you should “avoid”?

I wonder if Maria’s “toxic people” she avoided included scientists and medical doctors? My guess is that she most definitely stayed away from these toxic “scientists” including medical doctors, which was a primary reason why she lived so long.

So who is this “scientific” expert who is claiming that Maria’s advice is not “scientific”?

However, Richard Faragher, a professor of biogerontology at the University of Brighton, said that in reality scientists were still trying to work out why some people lived beyond the age of 100.

Faragher said there were two main theories and they were not mutually exclusive.

The first, he said, was that some individuals were essentially just lucky. In other words, just because centenarians had certain habits, it did not mean those habits were driving their longevity – an error in logic known as “survivorship bias”.

“Merely because you have survived smoking 60 a day doesn’t mean that smoking 60 a day is good for you,” Faragher said.

The second theory, he said, was that centenarians had specific genetic features that equipped them to live a longer life – in other words they were rendered more robust as a result of their genetics.

Faragher said both theories, however, resulted in the same warning: “Never, ever take health and lifestyle tips from a centenarian.”

He added: “What you see with most centenarians most of the time – and these are generalisations – is that they don’t take much exercise. Quite often, their diets are rather unhealthy,” noting that some centenarians were also smokers. (Full article.)

I literally busted out laughing when I read this, because this “scientist” who has an impressive title, “professor of biogerontology at the University of Brighton“, claims that people older than 100 giving health advice make an error in logic known as “survivorship bias”, completely ignoring the fact that he is making one of the oldest and most common errors in logic called “appeal to authority“, which means he has no factual evidence whatsoever to the claims that he is making, and even admits it “scientists were still trying to work out why“, but wants people to believe what he says anyway, because he is a “scientist.”

By this false logic, he could also say something like: “grass is really red in color, and if you drive through a red light nothing will happen to you, because red is a natural color.”

Yep, sounds logical to me and must be true, because he is a “scientist”.

But if you believe these scientists, and act upon your belief in them, you could get yourself killed, and then you will never live long enough to be a centenarian.

These “scientists” invent their own “truths” that are based upon nothing other than their own appeal to authority, and then build opinions based on these false truths presenting them as if they are “facts.”

They believe that due to their authority and perceived “expertise” they can then dictate to others what is true, such as their definition of a “healthy diet”, which Maria probably did not follow, because modern scientists think modern processed foods are healthy, and traditional foods that have nourished populations for thousands of years are unhealthy, such as “saturated fats”.

And these scientists believe that if you eat too much of these traditional foods, such as foods high in saturated fats, like bacon, juicy hamburgers, REAL butter, etc. that in modern times are now declared “unhealthy” by the “scientists”, then you need to take a pill, a statin drug to artificially lower your cholesterol, to counterbalance the negative effects of all these ancient, natural foods, in spite of the fact that the REAL scientific literature shows that those with high cholesterol live the longest.

These scientists also declare that “smoking is bad for your health and leads to lung cancer and a short life,” and so when they find these people over 100 who have smoked most of their life, they know these centenarians must be wrong.

The fact that it might just be “cigarettes” that are linked to bad health, and not the tobacco itself, is a thought that they will not even entertain.

And yet during the years I lived in the Philippines in a very remote, rural area on a mountain, I knew many older people in their 70s and 80s who grew their own tobacco and smoked it instead of the commercially-made cigarettes, and showed no signs of lung cancer at all.

It totally changed my opinion about tobacco, the actual plant created by God, by what I was observing directly in that culture, rather than listening to “scientists”.

Sadly, Western culture has become so dumbed down, that probably 99% of the people who read this garbage that tries to pass as “journalism” on The Guardian will trust the “scientist”, and not Maria who lived to be the oldest woman in the world from her generation.

[…]

Via https://vaccineimpact.com/2024/western-culture-has-abandoned-wisdom-and-replaced-it-with-science-ignore-the-advice-of-scientists-if-you-want-to-live-long/

Collapse of the Mongol Empires

Episode 19 Collapse of the Mongol Empire

The Mongol Empire

Dr Craig Benjamin (2020)

Film Review

Although the Mongols controlled 1/6 of the world’s land are by 1300, for the most part they adopted the cultures of their conquered territories and abandoned their allegiance to the Mongol empire.

Ilkhanate (Persia)

  • Abu Sahid died in 1335 leaving no male heir
  • Aba Khan elected by the kuritai and executed one year later in popular uprising.
  • 1337-1354 after military factions installed eight regional princes as khan the khanate virtually disintegrated into independent regions run by warring military commanders.

Yuan Dynasty

  • Temur – Qubulai Khan’s grandson becomes emperor and nominal Great Khan in 1295. He depletes the treasury with ongoing war against the Chaggatai khanate and bribing Mongol officials weary of sedentary life to remain in China.
  • Kaishian – Temur’s nephew, seizes throne via military force in 1307 following Temur’s death.
  • Ayur Barwader – Temur’s son,  succeeds Kaishian as Yuan empire faces fiscal bankruptcy. First Yuan emperor to speak and write Chinese, he reinstates Confucian civil service exam.
  • Shidebala – Ayur Barwader’s brother, assumes throne in 1320.
  • Yesun Temar – Yesun Temar succeeds his brother following his Shidebala’s assassination in 1323. Becomes extremely controversial for awarding grants to a Tibetan Buddhist sect promoting tantric sex acts and human sacrifice/
  • El Temur – powerful Kitchap* commander who seizes Beijing following Yesun Temar’s death in 1328 and sponors a series of puppet emperors with short reigns ended by popular  rebellions.
  • Toghon Temur – son of a puppet emperor who assumed the throne in 1329 and , returned from exile in Mongolia take up the throne in 1333. His 35 year reign was characterized by rampant corruption and constant rebellion. The collapse of the Yuan dynasty was enabled by massive flooding along the Yellow River, population decline related to a 1353-54 plague epidemic and loss of the Grand Canal (essential to move food from agrarian southern China to the more populace north) from infrastructure decay.
  • Zhu Yunzhang – leader of Buddhist rebel group known as the Red Turban Movement captured the capitol in 1368 and drove Toghan Termur and 60,000 Mongol supporters out of China. The first Ming emperor, his dynasty would survive until 1634.

Korea

1351-1374 – King Kongmin was the first to oppose Mongol leadership and the wealth Korean families who supported them. His assassination in 1374 led to widespread peasant revolts. Following the Ming announcement they intended to occupy northeast Korea, General Taejo launched a coup installing himself as emperor in 1392. The Choson dynasty he founded survived until 1910, when Korea was annexed by Japan.

Golden Horde

The Golden Horde mongols retained power the longest because they remained semi-nomadic and resisted adopting Slavic languages and culture.

1438-1440 – Golden Horde divided into four states, the Kazan, Crimean and Astrahan  Khanates and the Great Horde.

1502 – Khan Mengli Durai of the Crimean Khanate, in alliance with the Ottoman Turk empire. conquered the Great Horde.

1552 – Under Ivan the Terrible, the Russian state conquered Khazan.

1556 – Under Ivan Terrible, the Russian state conquered Astrakhan

1783 – Crimean Khanate annexed by Catherine the Great.

The nomadic Russian Tatars (Mongols) remained semi-independent until Stalin deported them to eastern Siberia.


*The Kipchaks were nomadic pastoralists who first appeared on the Eurasian steppes in the 11th century.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/12373094/12373132

Save the Voters, Replace the Schools

Save the Voters, Replace the Schools

By Peter St Onge

It’s a modern fetish that we’re brilliant while our ancestors were idiots. After all, they didn’t have iPhones, the Internet, or Kim Kardashian.

This is also academic consensus, for what it’s worth: called the Flynn effect, the idea is people do better on puzzles so we must be smarter.

Of course, one wonders if puzzles translate into, say, understanding monetary policy or how welfare destroys families.

The Rise of Dumb Politics

Thankfully, we have a real-world test: actual political campaigns.

Back when I was a professor, I ran every inaugural address through a Flesch-Kincaid text analysis to measure the grade level. The logic is that top speechwriters know how to talk at voters’ level.

Going by grade level, it turns out we are getting dumb breathtakingly fast.

In 1900 inaugurals were written between 13th and 14th grade – modern college level. Today they’re 8th grade for Obama, 9th grade for Trump, and…7th grade for Biden.

It gets worse the further back we go: Andrew Jackson’s 1828 inaugural was written at 22nd grade – meaning, strictly speaking, two PhD’s was the median voter in 1828.

Keep in mind Jackson was a populist man-of-the-people – Washington’s inaugural was closer to 26th grade.

Also, keep in mind almost nobody in 1828 – or 1789 – had a formal education.

Jackson kicks off with “Undertaking the arduous duties that I have been appointed,” Washington starts with “Among the vicissitudes incident to life,” for Biden it’s “This is America’s day.”

So how did we get so dumb?

Easy: public schools.

Public School: Indoctrination, Not Education

The modern government school came from 1800’s Prussia, which had enough of worker riots and peasant revolts and resolved to indoctrinate kids into pro-regime obedience.

It worked a charm, turning the once unruly Germans into a government-directed army that went on to do terrible things.

Left-wing American intellectuals were fascinated by Prussia’s indoctrination and imported it to the US. They were motivated not by peasant revolts, but by the frustratingly small-government ethos of Catholics.

Progressives figured they couldn’t frog-march American Catholics into government utopia, but they could have the children.

These activists spread government schools to every state and got a major boost post-war, when competency tests were declared discriminatory, forcing companies to instead rely on formal education to discover talent.

This launched the university from a fringe toy for the 1% into a $300,000 tax on anybody hoping for a white-collar job.

Meanwhile, like all government programs, opportunists – teachers’ unions – took over, spending $878 billion per year dutifully peddling politics but neglecting the actual purpose of education, leaving American kids illiterate and innumerate.

In a video last year I mentioned how fully 23 Baltimore schools had precisely zero students proficient in math, and in Detroit, 96% of students lack proficiency in math – 95% can’t even read. But by gum, they know their demi-genders.

Take people who can’t name a state or don’t know what the Supreme Court is, wash them with decades of left-wing propaganda, stick them in a voting booth, and here we are.

Conclusion

If we’re to save our democracy, we have to save our voters – by replacing government schools with schools that actually teach instead of indoctrinate.

That could mean school choice, it could mean vouchers, it could mean homeschooling co-ops. But until we fix it, things will keep getting worse.

For more on the destruction of American education, read Murray Rothbard’s classic “Education: Free and Compulsory.”

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/save-the-voters-replace-the-schools/

How Democrats Make Republicans: RFK Should Be a Wakeup Call for the Party

Jonathan Turley

Below is my column in the New York Post on the withdrawal of Robert Kennedy, Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump. Kennedy’s speech resonated with many long-time Democrats who have found themselves estranged from the party. While Kennedy remains an independent, it is a cautionary tale that is being missed in the “joy” theme of the Democratic National Convention. The fact is that new Republicans are often not the product of ideology and association but anxiety and exclusion. Democrats make Republicans.

Here is the column:

The withdrawal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump was yet another extraordinary moment in an election that has been anything but predictable.

Only a year ago, it would have been unthinkable that a sitting president would be effectively forced off a ticket and replaced by a candidate who did not secure a single vote for president.

Now, the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of the Robert F. Kennedy has not just withdrawn from the Democratic Party but endorsed the Republican nominee.

Amidst all of the claimed “joy” of the Democratic National Convention, there is a sobering reality that is being ignored by the ecstatic press and pundits: this is how Democrats make Republicans.

There is an old expression that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.”

Irving Kristol explained the neoconservative movement was built by Democrats “mugged by reality.”

Kennedy has not become a Republican but rather joined the roughly half of Americans now identifying as independents. While this country is solidly under the hold of a duopoly of power in the two main parties, only 25% of the country identify as Democrats, and 25% as Republicans.

Kennedy’s departure from the Democrats has been mocked in the press. However, when he spoke on his withdrawal, many of us who have been lifetime members of the party identified with his remarks.

I come from a politically active liberal Democratic family in Chicago. I spent much of my life working for liberals since I first came to Washington as a Democratic House page in the 1970s. I did stints on the Hill or on campaigns with Democrats ranging from Rep. Sid Yates (Ill.) to Sen. William Proxmire (Wis.) to Mo Udall (Arz.). I even worked on the campaign and ran for delegate for RFK Jr.’s uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Then the party changed. Where once they defended free speech, Democrats have rallied behind censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views. They have sought to block dozens of Republicans from ballots, including former President Trump. To make matters worse, they have done so in the supposed name of democracy.

Those actions were raised by Kennedy in his powerful and poignant withdrawal speech. He detailed how the Democratic party moved to stop him from running against President Biden in the primary, including efforts to block him from ballots. It was an ironic moment. After harassing candidates like RFK and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the Democratic leadership then simply installed their choice at the convention in an unprecedented bait-and-switch.

There could have been a substantive primary that exposed the diminished mental state of Biden and allowed for a democratic choice on the best nominee. Instead, the Democrats prevented such choices from being made and selected a leader with all of the transparency and deliberation of a party Congress in China.

Kennedy said that the Democratic Party has virtually shoved him and other voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Kennedy observed that “I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote.”

He said that his party was the one that championed free speech, government transparency, and opposed unjust wars. “True to its name, it was the party of democracy.”

He said that the party has turned its back on all of the values that once defined it. For former Democrats like Kennedy, running on “joy” is no substitute for these profound changes in the party.

Indeed, the DNC bordered on the creepy as speaker after speaker sold the idea that, if voters could just swallow the Harris candidacy, they would immediately experience joy like some political prozac commercial.

It is not clear whether the red pill/blue pill pitch will be enough, or whether Kennedy’s endorsement will turn the critical votes in swing states.

However, the DNC showed how Democrats make Republicans. The unrelenting identity politics and claims of defending democracy (while opposing democratic choice) only reaffirmed for many that there is no longer a big tent in the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy.

There is a serious question whether John F. Kennedy would recognize or support the current Democratic Party. It now rejects many of his core, mainstream values.

His nephew highlighted the irony of how the party not only worked to block the ability of opponents to challenge President Biden but worked to “conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president.”

Even the Washington Post recently admitted that “the 81-year-old had shown signs of slipping for a long time, but his inner circle worked to conceal his decline.”

However, the Post failed to note that Vice President Kamala Harris was part of that inner circle. Indeed, she has been touting her close work with Biden in her campaign.

There is little recognition that, if true, it means that Harris, the White House, and leading Democrats lied to the public about Biden’s mental decline for their own political interests.

For Kennedy, it was all too much “and, most sadly … in the name of saving Democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it, lacking confidence in its candidate, that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth.”

 

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Via https://jonathanturley.org/2024/08/25/how-democrats-make-republicans-the-rfk-withdrawal-should-be-a-wake-up-call-for-the-party/