“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!”
Those are the words that Donald Trump declared on social media last weekend. Note his words about tax-increases: “In any event, Republicans should probably not do it.”
This is how The Financial Times of London reported the President’s words:
“Donald Trump has proposed raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, in a breach of Republican Party orthodoxy that he hopes might pay for broader tax breaks being debated in Congress.”
The Washington Post reported:
“President Donald Trump instructed congressional Republicans this week to raise taxes on the wealthiest earners as part of his ‘big, beautiful bill,’ rattling his party’s brittle consensus on economic issues and muddling the GOP’s path toward enacting his campaign promises.”
Both reports were followed by exotic exegeses of what Trump might have meant by these already misquoted words, which (quite naturally) already excluded Trump’s belief that Ross Perot had cost the elder Bush the election and downplayed or excluded his explicitly-stated opinion that “Republicans should probably not do it”. The Post report finished with an anonymous source declaring that a top rate of tax 39.6 per cent (which Trump had not proposed in his media message) was a Kamala Harris proposal.
The New York Times similarly reported on a forthcoming fund-raising dinner that Trump was hosting:
“Three people who would become members of Mr. Trump’s administration also gave handsome sums…Before they were appointed to their posts, Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, gave almost $2 million; Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, donated nearly $9 million; and Linda McMahon, the education secretary, gave more than $20 million….M. Trump has changed his position (on bitcoin) as his family seeks to make a profit off cryptocurrencies.”
There you have it in one: why from Romania to Reno, from Berlin to Boston, ordinary people no longer trust the mainstream media. A simple statement from Trump on the problems of increasing taxes (which he opposed) was duly turned on its head to mean the opposite, while a fund-raiser for Republicans who supported Trump was turned into an opportunity to make allegations about Trump’s family’s profiteering from the President’s decision-making. This modest harvest was over twenty-four hours, and from three “respectable” newspapers. These are very small examples of the school of journalism that five years ago routinely called the often-lethal eruptions of anti-Trump violence across the US as “largely peaceful”. Reductively, this was true: journalistically, it was an utter lie. If something was largely peaceful, then it was also violent.
Readers of Brussels Signal can report similar examples in their own newspapers of how “liberal” pro-EU journalists seem incapable of writing on issues in which they have an emotional stake without revealing what their own positions are. This merely reflects the intolerance – or rather, venomous kindness – of the client-classes within all EU states, including the UK, who live by the motto – submit to my definition of tolerance or else. The French word for such zealous zombies is “bien-pensant” while the Germans say “gutmenschentum”. The baffled English language, unable to concoct a term for it, goes word-shopping in France, as if this phenomenon were an exotic form of ballet or cuisine.
The lack of an indigenous term to describe the condition has not in the least prevented the zealous zombies of British police from creating the venomously kind concept of “the non-criminal hate crime”. This can be put permanently on people’s police records and then become available to any future employers. The zealous zombies of the German intelligence agency, the BfV, even contemplated outlawing the libertarian AfD party, because it did not submit to the BfV’s definition of “tolerance”, which of course made it “far-right”, and therefore a form of National Socialism.
The issue here is not the regional details of the many kinds of venomous kindness that have infected most western-style democracies, including North America and Australasia, but the ubiquity and resilience of the contagion. It is seemingly immune to the vaccines of logic or evidence and so is incapable of dealing with any contemporary dissent without recourse to comparisons with imperialism, the Third Reich, Italian fascism or American slavery, though all of these were ended or defeated by the forces of democracy. The most recent form of evil, and one that still exists, that of the omnipotent communist state, is seldom cited by the forces of venomous kindness as a warning of the dangers ahead.
That is not a coincidence. The template of this proto-totalitarianism was shaped by leftists in the 1960s. Aware that economically, communism had failed everywhere, they nonetheless hankered for the millennium that Marx had promised. Their mental virus spread through universities and – perhaps most importantly – teacher-training colleges, especially those for primary-school teachers. In addition to the three Rs – reading, riting and rithmetic – primary-school teachers became vectors of secular rectitude. As well as children being socialised around the norms of their various cultures, they were imbued with the doctrines of political egalitarianism. That this term was intrinsically meaningless was irrelevant. Abstract religion exists independently of logic and evidence. Indeed, rather like an anaerobic plant on the inner slopes of a volcano, it prospers without what is usually essential for intellectual life.
That this does not seem to have been a centrally-organised conspiracy is irrelevant. As Christianity faltered – and Islam clearly did not – the attractions of a secular paradise in this life became increasingly irresistible. Moreover, there was an elixir that made all possible: it was called equality, and its beauty lay in that it was both indefinable and morally irrefutable. Only a fascist, or a Nazi, or a racist, or – somewhat later – a misogynist or an Islamophobe – would either reject the elixir of equality or try to impose a scientific definition on it. So, this elixir was both an enabler and a goal, a virtuous circle that was both armour-plated and morally unassailable. Better still, not merely could everyone become a believer, but they could also be ordained into the governing priesthood! The laity were the clergy, while the clergy were the laity.
Thus authorised, why should reporters not become the new gospellers, using the theological terminology that they had been indoctrinated into since childhood, thereafter refined at secondary school, before becoming doctoral theses at college? In this moral order, patriotism was a perverted disorder, while identity was simply fascism rebranded. In the US especially, this rapidly evolved into new extremes, embodied in “critical race theory”, which then became the basis for a form of political madness called “diversity, inclusion and equity.” In essence, this was a resurrection of Mao’s Cultural Revolution that began (not coincidentally) in 1966. The latter led to utterly murderous chaos. President Biden’s embrace of DEI five years ago naturally allowed ten million illegal immigrants into the US, gravely damaged the US military and furthered the mercenary ambitions of the charlatans of Black Lives Matter.
That the political triumph of venomous kindness was halted by the re-election of Donald Trump last year has not disempowered its many votaries in the media. The existential beauty of their position is that, like all zombies, they genuinely believe they are free and behaving virtuously. Moreover, kindred believers toil in the vineyards of the EU, have been faithfully treading the grapes of compliance into the wine of unarmed equality. But always in life, sooner or later, reality will intrude, like Coleridge’s visitor from Porlock disturbing his visions of Xanadu. In Europe case, the reality is not remotely poetical but existential, whatever its liberal votaries might want.
That venomous reality is simply conveyed by the Greek letter π: Putin and Immigration.
Kamala Harris: so phoney, so dumb, all hidden by media lies