U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia on May 14, 2019. [State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain]
BLM Signs Gone Missing
What happened to all the BLM signs displayed so proudly on lawns, in windows, and even on autos? Replaced with a blue and yellow Ukraine flag, which is the overhauled version of congratulatory woke virtual signaling.
Roger Kimball has noticed that even those flags are now starting to disappear. Why? Simple economic self-interest, he writes in American Greatness.
People—the ones not part of the government or its auxiliaries, anyway—understand that the sanctions “against Russia” are just as much sanctions against us. Ordinary people look at the price of gasoline and heating oil and think, “Why should I be paying for this?”
Billions in Aid = Higher Taxes
People are starting to figure out that there is a connection between sending billions upon billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and Biden’s demand for higher taxes.
How exactly, people wonder, is defending Ukraine and poking a major nuclear power in the eye in our national self-interest?
A $31 Trillion Incontinent Spending Spree
Observing that it is a “not irrelevant data point,” Mr. Kimball reports that the federal debt of the United States is now north of $31 trillion.
Even if you don’t know that, your children, their children, and their children’s children will learn about the significance of that albatross, fixed around their necks by irresponsible politicians, in ways too mournful to contemplate.
Pragmatic Questions
Strategic Petroleum Reserves: How dangerous is it that Joe Biden has siphoned off a large percentage of our strategic petroleum reserve in order to make a little dent in the runaway gas prices brought about by his incontinent spending spree? Is anyone sure the military won’t need it?
Shipped Military Hardware to Ukraine: Not just the Abrams tanks, but all those high-tech missiles, drones, and other kinetic material? What, Kimball wonders, has this done to our country’s own stockpiles?
Responsible news outlets—outlets, I mean, other than the New York Times, CNN, and kindred media middens—are warning that our own stores of Stingers, HAWK air defense systems, Patriot missile systems, HIMARS, Guided Multiple Launch Rockets System, etc., are dangerously depleted.
Russia Learning from Her Defeats: Despite the press’s trumped-up views that the walls are closing in on Putin, his army is near collapsing, and Russians are nearing revolt, nothing seems to change.
The Russian army certainly had many early setbacks, much to the shock of naïve Russian war planners (and also, it must be said, to the surprise of equally naïve Western observers). But that was early on. Russia has learned or at least half-learned from its defeats.
Who Is Benefitting: In a devastating series of artillery bombardments, Russian strength is smashing civilians as well as military infrastructure, which writes Mr. Kimball, “brings us to the humanitarism side of the battle.”
A recent tally of Ukrainian casualties put the number of deaths at about 140,000. Who knows how many others are seriously maimed or wounded? That’s out of a population of about 40 million.
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