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“An American classic, an extraordinary testimony to the brokenness of the white working class but also its strengths. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read…the most important book of 2016. You cannot understand what’s happening now without first reading J.D. Vance.” -Rod Dreher, The American Conservative
You get the point. If that doesn’t make you want to read #1 New York Times bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance, then the title might. What got me to read it was a column in my local paper written by someone I tend to disagree with except for this time. He wrote that if you want to understand more about the voters that put Donald Trump in the White House, then read this book. And so I did.
I’ll have more for you about the book in my next post.
‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author on Trump voters
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 Over the last five decades, the U.S. has turned out countless kids “who are functionally uneducated, even if they’re at the top in their class at elite schools,” writes Stella Morabito, senior fellow at The Federalist.
So many are unable to think independently, lack context, and try mightily to adapt to various PC lines. All of the above must be like living in a fog, or floating in the cold depths of outer space with nothing to hold on to. It’s bound to weaken relationships, and create the loneliness epidemic we are seeing in today’s society.
They have learned through their environmental studies, non-stop identity politics, and a steady diet of hostility towards Christianity that if they want to be accepted, they must bow to the politically correct formula. After so much indoctrination and propaganda, a human being becomes highly malleable and vulnerable to a cult mindset.
Indeed, cults operate by disrupting recruits’ capacity to think independently and clearly. So it is always key to isolate their victims and to induce self-censorship of different viewpoints. Because political correctness stands in the way of free speech, it stands in the way of real conversation — and friendship.
What do we have at the end of this half-century process? Voila! Cannon fodder for violent demonstrations, untrained athletes in a foot race to societal suicide.
Read more from Ms. Morabito here.
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 Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, outlines some of the ways independence would force Californians to face reality.
Of course they’ll target the middle class. That’s what they want in Washington. That’s why they want a value-added tax.
Simply stated, you can’t have a cradle-to-grave welfare state unless the middle class is so over-taxed that they have to rely on government for healthcare, education, retirement, and just about everything else.
 But that’s an issue for another day.
Let’s keep our focus on California secession, which I support both as a matter of self-determination and as a matter of public policy.
With regards to policy, I think it will be very interesting to see how a state with huge natural advantages (coast, weather, mineral resources, agricultural land, etc) can endure bad policy.
And there’s already plenty of bad policy in the state.
A big part of the problem is that the public sector in California is wildly overcompensated. Kevin Williamson explains.
State and local government spending adds up to nearly 20 percent of California’s economic output, while thriftier states such as Texas and New Hampshire spend less than 15 percent. …California’s government, like the federal government and most other state and local governments, spends its money on salaries, benefits, pensions, and other forms of employee compensation. The numbers are contentious — for obvious political reasons — but it is estimated that something between half and 80 percent of California’s state and local spending ultimately goes to employee compensation. …The first and smaller problem is that many government workers are paid too much. …The second and larger problem with public-sector workers is that there are a whole lot of them. …When politicians talk about “investments,” we think they mean bridges and research laboratories and canals to bring water to central California. But what they are investing in is dependency. In California, that means creating a lot of full-time jobs for Democrats.
But it’s not just that there are too many bureaucrats and that they are overpaid. They also become a big burden when they retire.
Read more here.
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 At The American Conservative, Andrew Bracevich excoriates hawkish Senate Republicans who continue to avoid their oversight responsibilities of the war in Afghanistan. He cuts through the curtain of theatrics that surrounds typical hearings on the war and demands that Senators do better. He writes:
Nominally, the Senate Armed Services Committee, along with its counterpart in the House of Representatives, provides oversight of U.S. military activities. Yet recently, the committee’s unacknowledged purpose seems to be avoiding the meaningful exercise of this role, especially when it comes to scrutinizing the nation’s commitment to armed conflicts like the ongoing Afghanistan War.
Oversight implies ownership. The Congress of the United States has no desire to own a war that is the longest in U.S. history, grows longer by the day, and shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
This congressional irresponsibility was on display earlier this month, when Gen. John W. Nicholson, U.S. Army, traveled from his headquarters in Kabul to provide senators with a progress report on the Afghanistan War. Such briefings have become a fixture on Washington’s official calendar. By my count, Nicholson is the 12th American officer to be charged with running that war since it began in 2001. He will not be the last.
In his appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Nicholson came across as brisk and no-nonsense, if also stiff and humorless. Yet the proceedings in which he played a central role had the feel of a ritual that continues to be performed long after participants had lost sight of its original purpose or rationale. Like Labor Day honoring laborers. Or Christmas commemorating the birth of Christ.
General Nicholson’s role was to serve as congressional enabler, allowing members of the committee to sustain the pretense that they were doing their duty. He did this by rendering a report that permitted senators to avert their eyes from anything that might require them to critically assess the war’s conduct and prospects.
Words were exchanged, some few actually conveying information. But all participants agreed to steer clear of anything approximating a conclusion.
As if adhering to a script that had circulated in advance, senators did go through the motions of posing questions. Each in turn thanked Nicholson for his many years of service—to include four tours in Afghanistan—and asked him to pass along their warm regards to the troops. Yet each devoted his or her allotted time to sidestepping core issues.
No one pressed Nicholson as the responsible commander to say when the Afghanistan War might actually end and on what terms. No one dared to suggest that there might be something fundamentally amiss with an armed conflict that drags on inconclusively from one decade to the next. All took care to tiptoe around anything that might imply dissatisfaction with the performance of the U.S. military. On both sides of the witness table, politeness prevailed.
Read more here.
Andrew Bacevich: Why Is No Candidate Offering an Alternative to Militarized U.S. Foreign Policy?
Read more from Bracevich in his books: 
 
 
 
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The relationship J.D. Vance has with his grandmother, Mamaw, may be the most important one of all as we learn in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy
. Mamaw basically raised J.D. Mamaw was tough. She carried a gun and had a tongue that could whip you into shape. She wasn’t easy. She was hard. And you get to know what it was like to live with her when J.D. most needed stability in his life.
In one of the more touching sequences in the book J.D. tells the reader about Middletonian detachment where a disproportionate number of them were trapped in two seemingly unwinnable wars and “an economy that failed to deliver the most basic promise of the American Dream—a steady wage.” It’s here that we learn about Mamaw’s two gods as Vance tell it:
To understand the significance of this cultural detachment, you must appreciate that much of my family’s, my neighborhood’s, and my community’s identity derives from our love of country. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about Breathitt County’s mayor, its health care services, or its famous residents. But I do know this: “Bloody Breathitt” allegedly earned its name because the county filled its World War I draft quote entirely with volunteers—the only county in the entire United States to do so. Nearly a century later, and that’s the factoid about Breathitt that I remember best: It’s the truth that everyone around me ensured I knew. I once interviewed Mamaw for a class project about World War II. After seventy years filled with marriage, children, grandchildren, death, poverty, and triumph, the thing about which Mamaw was unquestionable the proudest and most excited was that she and her family did their part during World War II. We spoke for minutes about everything else; we spoke for hours about war rations, Rosie the Riveter, her dad’s wartime love letters to her mother from the Pacific, and the day “we dropped the bomb.” Mamaw always had two gods: Jesus Christ and the United States of America. I was no different, and neither was anyone else I knew.”
See parts I, II and III.
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“As president, he cut a grandiose figure. He was a braggart and a frequent liar. He was suspicious of other countries, frequently saying, ‘Foreigners are not like the folks I am used to.’ He had a reckless disregard for limits. He belittled and browbeat others to intimidate them and give him what he wanted. Historian Robert Dallek said that he ‘viewed criticism of his policies as personal attacks’ and opponents of his policies ‘as disloyal to him and the country.’
“He would bully and insult reporters, saying of one that he ‘always knew when he was around, because he could smell him.’ He told whoppers about voter fraud in his elections. But he did get things done, dominating the political scene for good and for ill.”
No, John Fund is not writing about Donald Trump. Rather, he is describing former president Lyndon B. Johnson–whom Mr. Fund depicts in NRO as “reckless, grandiose, and intimidating.”
After spending time at the LBJ library studying Johnson and his presidency, Mr. Fund notes the many similarities between LBJ and Donald Trump. Johnson, often referred to as an SOB, was also thought to be a “miserable person.”
I don’t know just how much of a “miserable person” Donald Trump is. I do know that many conservatives have decided that regardless of their personal feelings about him, he is now president and it’s important to work with him to push through policies that will help the country. Liberals in the 1960s knew what an SOB Johnson was, but they demanded that Republicans work with him to pass legislation. And legislate they did, passing the Civil Rights Act and achieving bipartisan support for the passage of Medicare.
I left my tour of the Johnson Library and its archives this month with a question. Sure, it was easy for people in both parties to hate Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It’s certainly easy for people in both parties to hate Donald Trump today. But in the 1960s, there was a sense that the legislative process and the wheels of government still had to turn. Back then, the country didn’t tolerate blind obstructionism and attempts to delegitimize the presidency.
Read more here.
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After some sharp criticism from Senator John McCain toward President Donald Trump about the president’s handling of the press, Senator Rand Paul came out hard against McCain saying, “Everything that he says about the president is colored by his own personal dispute he’s got running with President Trump, and it should be taken with a grain of salt, because John McCain’s the guy who’s advocated for war everywhere.” Fox News writes about the dust up:
Paul added that if McCain were “in charge” the country would “be in perpetual war.”
“If you look at the map, there’s probably at least six different countries where John McCain has advocated for us having boots on the ground,” said Paul, who noted that McCain supported the Iraq war.
McCain on “Meet The Press” had earlier compared Trump – with whom he’s long had myriad differences and squabbles – to a dictator.
“The first thing that dictators do is shut down the press,” McCain said. “And I’m not saying that President Trump is trying to be a dictator. I’m just saying we need to learn the lessons of history.”
But Paul said McCain’s issue with Trump is less about the First Amendment and more about the men’s views on overseas engagements.
“I think it’s more a foreign policy debate, and Trump and McCain are on opposite sides of that debate,” Paul said. “And I tend to sympathize more with the president. We don’t need to continue to have regime change throughout the world, nation-building.”
As far as McCain’s rhetoric saying Trump is trying to “shut down the press,” Paul cautioned against hyperbole.
“I don’t agree with his analysis and applying that to the president,” he said. “I haven’t seen any legislation coming forward that wants to limit the press. I see President Trump expressing his opinion, rather forceful in his own — you know, his own distinct way.”
Read more here.
Paul dismisses McCain’s criticisms of Trump: We’re ‘lucky John McCain is not in charge’
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Before President Donald Trump can begin working to find rapprochement with Russia President Vladimir Putin, GOP Senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham seem to be dead set on sabotaging the effort. Without help from his own party, Pat Buchan writes, President Trump may see any sign of a deal with Russia fading fast. Pat continues:
And the epidemic of Russophobia makes it almost impossible to pursue normal relations. Indeed, in reaction to the constant attacks on them as poodles of Putin, the White House seems to be toughening up toward Russia.
Thus we see U.S. troops headed for Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, NATO troops being sent into the Baltic States, and new tough rhetoric from the White House about Russia having to restore Crimea to Ukraine. We read of Russian spy ships off the coast, Russian planes buzzing U.S. warships in the Black Sea, Russians deploying missiles outlawed by the arms control agreement of 1987.
An Ohio-class U.S. sub just test-fired four Trident missiles, which carry thermonuclear warheads, off the Pacific coast.
Any hope of cutting a deal for a truce in east Ukraine, a lifting of sanctions, and bringing Russia back into Europe seems to be fading.
Where Russians saw hope with Trump’s election, they are now apparently yielding to disillusionment and despair.
The question arises: If not toward better relations with Russia, where are we going with this bellicosity?
Russia is not going to give up Crimea. Not only would Putin not do it, the Russian people would abandon him if he did.
What then is the end goal of this bristling Beltway hostility to Putin and Russia, and the U.S.-NATO buildup in the Baltic and Black Sea regions? Is a Cold War II with Russia now an accepted and acceptable reality?
Where are the voices among Trump’s advisers who will tell him to hold firm against the Russophobic tide and work out a deal with the Russian president?
For a second cold war with Russia, its back up against a wall, may not end quite so happily as the first.
Read more here.
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