The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Tom Steyer: ‘Hey, What This Party Needs Is Its Own Lunatic Billionaire Candidate’

Posted on | July 8, 2019 | Comments Off on Tom Steyer: ‘Hey, What This Party Needs Is Its Own Lunatic Billionaire Candidate’

 

The Impeachment Drum Major throws his baton in the ring:

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is planning to launch his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, a report said Sunday.
The 62-year-old Steyer — who toyed with the idea of running in the past — held a private conference call lat week to tell people close to him that he was planning to run, according to Politico.
“He’s definitely focused on the [fact that the] economy is not as good as people are making it out to be,” a source told the newspaper.
“I think his heart’s in the right place. If he’s doing this, he’s got a reason behind it — He’s a very intelligent man.”
Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, founded the environmental advocacy nonprofit NextGen America.
He also founded a group, and spent millions, seeking to gain support for the impeachment of President Trump.

“Run All the Candidates,” as the professor keeps saying, and I’m not quite sure what Steyer thinks he’ll accomplish, except to teach Americans the meaning of words like “monomaniacal” and “idée fixe.” For years, Steyer has been pouring money into the coffers of organizations promoting homosexuality, environmentalism and open borders. So if you’re a Mexican lesbian concerned about global warming, Tom’s your guy. More recently, of course, Steyer’s been Patient Zero of the Trump Derangement Syndrome pandemic, spending vast sums to air TV ads demanding the president’s impeachment. What made him decide now that he needs to join the nearly two dozen Democratic candidates? Is it because there’s not enough zany Trump-haters on the debate stage?

Oh, but California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who advocated using nuclear weapons to disarm American gun owners, is dropping out of the race.

So, yeah, I guess they need more crazies on stage now.



 

Category: Democrats

Anti-American Women Win World Championship of Anti-American Sport

Posted on | July 8, 2019 | Comments Off on Anti-American Women Win World Championship of Anti-American Sport

 

If you don’t want to Make America Great Again, why should Americans cheer for you? If you are an American opposed to the freely elected government of your own country, our First Amendment protects your right as a citizen to engage in protest, but those who support the government cannot be required to endorse your protest.

How many celebrity athletes expressed Tea Party sentiments while Obama was president? Can anyone recall sports teams refusing to go to the White House after winning a championship during the Obama years? Perhaps you can think of a right-wing analog of Megan Rapinoe, but searching my memory, I don’t recall any Democrat president ever being openly insulted the way the U.S. women’s World Cup team has insulted President Trump. And if Rapinoe and her teammates imagine that soccer will become more popular because they have made their sport symbolic of an anti-American protest movement, my guess is that they will be learn otherwise. There has been a lot of noise about the disparity of income between men and women in professional soccer, but the fact is that in most of the world, this is a sport played primarily by men. Only in the United States, where real men play real football, is soccer regarded as a coed sport. One reason the U.S. women are so dominant in international competition is that in soccer-crazy countries like Brazil and Argentina, the sport is still regarded as too rough for girls to play. (And if you’ve seen how Brazilians and Argentines play the game, you understand why they routinely stomp the crap out of the U.S. men’s team.)

Honestly, I am pro-soccer. I think America is a big enough country that we can afford to have some of our best athletes pursue soccer without much loss to our dominance of other professional sports. Can you imagine what the U.S. men’s World Cup team would be like if soccer attracted the kind of athletes who compete in the NBA and NFL? We can afford to spare a few would-be linebackers or point guards to strenghten our soccer program, but that’s not going to happen if soccer cannot escape its unfortunate reputation as an un-American sport, and the protests by Rapinoe & Co. are making that reputation worse, not better.

Also — and I hate to point this out, but somebody’s got to do it — would it be possible to allow some heterosexual players on the U.S. women’s team, just for the sake of “diversity” and “inclusion”?



 

Category: Sports

Rule 5 Sunday: Cynthia Kirchner

Posted on | July 7, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Actress, model, and grad student at NYU, Cynthia Kirchner appeared in Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Entourage, as well as several independent films and TV series. She’s best known as a lingerie model for Guess, Intimissimi, and Victoria’s Secret. Here she is advising guys on buying lingerie for the wife or girlfriend.

Striking in red.

Ninety Miles From Tyranny kicks off with Hot Pick of the Late Night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box #671, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. At Animal Magnetism, it’s Rule Five Pesky Physics Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon. Also, Bacon Time serves up Rule 5 The Deep wet T-shirt action.

EBL’s herd this week includes Sydney Powell, Canada Day, Stephanie Grisham, Betsy Ross, Amelia Earhart RIP, US/UK Womens’ Soccer Rule 5, Occasional Cortex, Vintage Hollywood 4th Of July, Midsommar & Florence Pugh, Abigail Adams & Laura Linney, National Bikini Day, National Fried Chicken Day, and Christie Brinkley.

A View From The Beach has Maria Meinke, World Wide Angler, Celeb-rating the Fourth of July, Red, White, Blue Fish, Your Annual July 4th Scolding, Happy Fourth of July!, DNA Ties Philistines to the Greeks, 15 Year Old Beats Venus, Things to Consider BEFORE You Sell, “Something on Your Mind” and Just Another Palm Sunday.

Proof Positive’s Vintage Babes of the Week are Patriots. At Dustbury, it’s Marianne Williamson and Kirsten Vangsness.

Thanks to everyone for the luscious linkagery!


Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop
Shop Sex & Sensuality Gifts

Category: Rule 5

Munchausen Mom Wendy Napoles and the ‘Princess by Proxy’ Syndrome

Posted on | July 7, 2019 | 2 Comments

Wendy Napoles (left) and her drag-queen son Desmond.

Last December, after it was reported that 11-year-old Desmond Napoles had performed in drag at a Brooklyn gay bar where adult men threw money at the child, I referenced the “emerging awareness” by which the Supreme Court had justified its ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). If it is true, as the court majority implied, that homosexuality enjoys a quasi-sacred “civil rights” status protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, we must expect certain consequences, and while no one in 2003 predicted American bacha bazi, certainly in hindsight this seems a plausible result of Justice Kennedy’s “emerging awareness” doctrine.

This is unspeakably wicked, especially since Desmond’s mother Wendy has so enthusiastically encouraged her son’s perverse effeminacy. Like other mothers who have deliberately feminized their boys, Wendy Napoles seems to be engaged in a form of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, whereby parents (or other caretakers) seek attention for themselves by inducing medical problems in their children or others in their care. By pretending to rescue the victim from a fictitious disease, the parent (typically a mother) gains sympathy for herself. In the case of children like Jazz Jennings, whose mothers insist that their sons manifested “female” traits as mere toddlers, it seems as if raising their children to be transgender is a way for bored middle-class women to win the competition for having the Most Special Snowflake Child™ in school. Pay close attention to these stories, and you’ll notice certain patterns. The mother is the dominant influence, and the father is merely a background figure in the narrative — a passenger, as it were, in a family journey with his wife driving the vehicle. These mothers seem inordinately proud of their feminized sons, and eager to congratulate themselves on being excellent parents. So understanding! So progressive! So courageous!

 

Once you know what to look for, it’s easy to point out evidence that the mothers of such children are mentally ill:

The mother of Child Drag Queen Desmond Napoles is appalled that a convicted pedophile finds her son sexy and sexualized his performances.
Tom O’Carroll, convicted in the UK in 2006 for distributing child pornography, and former chairman of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) referred to Desmond in a blog post written last month as a “pretty young boy” and “sexy kid.”
“We do not approve of his statements & have written to wordpressdotcom several times but they have yet to remove it. It is highly inappropriate to speak of minors in this manner, said Wendy Napoles in a statement on Instagram. “What Tom O’Carroll has said is out of our control & we do not know him or associate with him or any other pedophiles or sex offenders.”
She then went on to criticize conservative media saying, “The Conservative press is currently accusing us of purposely attracting pedophiles & accusing the LGBTQ community of supporting this.”

How is a pedophile’s reaction to a pre-teen drag queen the fault of conservatives? This is some bizarre projection on the part of Wendy Napoles, whose attack on conservatives is obviously a tactic intended to rally support among her “progressive” allies and “the LGBTQ community,” even though some members of that community are appalled by the way she promotes her feminized son as a kind of bizarre trophy. As for Tom O’Carroll’s reaction, is it really any surprise that a notorious pedophile would be an enthusiastic fan of a child being celebrated as a public symbol of prepubescent homosexual identity?

Whatever else you may think of Desmond Napoles, it is obvious that his mother has always acted as the cheering audience for his performances and is now playing the role of stage mother, basking in the reflected “glory” (such as it is) of her son’s status as LGBT celebrity.

In January, after Desmond’s appearances on nation TV (and his much-criticized performance in a gay bar) had drawn public scrutiny, author Karen Kataline called Child Protective Services to report the Napoles family, and wrote a column explaining why:

During the height of “Toddlers and Tiaras” and the Jon Benet Ramsey story, I wrote a book about my own experience in child beauty pageants, and growing up as a “Princess by Proxy,” a term coined by Dr. Martina Cartwright in the foreword to the book.
I was put on the stage at the age of 3, but I didn’t understand my true feelings about that or how similar experiences affected my development until I was well into my 30s. By then, I had clinical experience as well, so I used my story of a “stage mother on steroids” who lived through me as a case study to offer my professional analysis of how the early sexualization of children damages their development. I hoped the book would be a cautionary tale as I saw a growing social trend with disturbingly similar pathology. . . .
The problem that screams out for education and intervention is bigger than the case of Desmond Napoles. Suddenly, we have numerous “drag kids”, including a 10-year-old boy from Canada who was photographed with a naked adult drag queen. There is a nationwide program called “Drag Queen Story Hour,” which sends adult drag queens to read stories to children ages 2 to 8 at public libraries around the country. To think all these stories aren’t related would be childishly naive.
We are being told to believe that children as young as 4 can “identify” as gay. Desmond’s parents claim that they recognized their son was gay at the age of 2. In fact, Desmond’s father admonishes himself for not knowing this five minutes after he was born. “He’s sitting there with a little smile on his face, posing for the camera… We should have known right then, but we didn’t,” he said.
When a parent lives through a child to that extent, the child in effect ceases to exist. The parent is unable to set proper boundaries to protect the child, because he can’t see any boundaries at all. It may appear that the parent is deeply involved and concerned about the child but in actuality, this is a form of neglect.
Some parents who believe they have recognized their child’s gender identity have even given them “cross gender hormones” to distort or retard their natural sexual development.
Advocates for these extreme measures have also pushed the idea of “gender fluidity.” If gender is so fluid, why are parents changing it or locking it in for young children with irreversible procedures? Is gender fluidity only for adults, and not for children? The term itself seeks to normalize gender dysphoria but if gender is fluid at all, one would think it would be in childhood when the psyche is most impressionable. The flurry of drag queen stories are targeted at those children. . . .

You can read the rest. Indeed, this disturbing phenomenon very much resembles the Toddlers & Tiaras trend that most adults found horrifying. Or for that matter, Dance Moms, with that awful Abby Lee Miller bullying girls to the point of tears. Making children a mere instrument of parental ambition should always bother us. Parents want their children to grow up to be happy and successful, and different parents have different ideas of what constitutes happiness and success, but turning your son into a juvenile celebrity drag queen? No, that’s crazy. It’s sick.

What causes the “stage mother” problem in child beauty pageants? Martina Cartwright examined the phenomenon:

The answer lies in a condition known as “Achievement by Proxy Distortion.” (ABPD). Benign ABP occurs when the adult’s pride and satisfaction are achieved when supporting the child’s development and abilities. In benign ABP, coaches, parents and other involved adults actively cheer on the child and provide emotional support and reasonable financial assistance. The parents are aware of the child’s limitations and would allow the child to stop the activity if the child became disinterested, injured or exploited.
The pathogenic form of ABPD is a phenomenon by which the social and/or financial gains of the child’s achievements become the adults’ primary goals. ABPD is often associated with child athletes, however, I believe some pageant parents exhibit a unique form of ABPD I call “Princess by Proxy.” (PBP).

Just as with Desmond’s mother, who insists that this whole drag-queen thing is his own idea, so also do mothers of child beauty pageant contestants claim that it’s their daughters, and not themselves, whose ambitions are on display. The parent is so emotionally invested in the child’s performance that they are unable to distinguish between their own needs and those of the child, so that a sort of psychological projection occurs, where the parent ascribes to the child emotions that the parent feels: “She loves it!” And if a girl is told from the time she is 3 how much she “loves” beauty pageants, she is likely to internalize her mother’s enthusiasm. It’s like children raised by Scientologists, who never think to question the lunatic teachings of L. Ron Hubbard.

Of course, New York’s Child Protective Services agency did not intervene in the case of Desmond Napoles. How could they? In a state where the “gay rights” agenda is considered sacred, no one can prevent parents from deliberately encouraging their children to be homosexual. Indeed, parents in New York would be more likely to be investigated if they tried to discourage their children from being gay. This, you see, is all a predictable consequence of the Lawrence v. Texas decision and its core doctrine of “emerging awareness.” Once it was decided that sodomy was a constitutionally protected right, it was only a matter of time before this was extended into childhood, and no one is permitted to object.



 

Category: Gays

Violence Against Women Update

Posted on | July 7, 2019 | 1 Comment

Accused rapist Temar Bishop.

CNN and MSNBC haven’t mentioned this hate crime for some reason:

A black parolee arrested for raping and bashing a white woman on the roof of his Bronx apartment building allegedly told a witness that she “deserved” the brutal attack because of slavery, according to court papers.
“She was a white girl. She deserved it because us minorities have been through slavery,” Temar Bishop, 23, allegedly said to someone who witnessed the bloodied 20-year-old woman after the assaults, according to a criminal complaint.
“This is what they used to do to us. This is what they did to us during slavery. They used to beat us and whip us.”
Temar Bishop, 23, was arrested by authorities [June 14] in Virginia on a slew of charges connected to the early morning June 1 assault, which officials have deemed a hate crime, according to authorities.
The 20-year-old met Bishop — who was on parole after serving just over a year behind bars for robbery — around 5 a.m. and joined him on the rooftop of the public housing building on Alexander Avenue near East 137th Street in Mott Haven, police said.
Bishop allegedly punched her repeatedly before raping her, then continued his assault — kicking and punching her in the head and body until she fell unconscious, cops said.
He then fled, but returned with the unnamed witness — who saw the woman “laying on the roof landing with blood covering her face” — and then allegedly made the remarks about slavery, court documents say.
The woman was treated at an area hospital for several injuries, including a broken nose and broken teeth. She was also “vomiting blood,” the complaint states.
Police sources previously told The Post a Special Victims Division investigator described the attack as “one of the worst he’s ever seen.”
Bishop was charged with two counts of predatory sexual assault, attempted murder, rape, two counts of assault, sexual abuse, assault and a hate crime.

Why should Democrats wait to vote for reparations in the primaries, when they can just enact their own personal reparations program? All they have to do is go to the Bronx at 5 a.m. and . . .



 

Category: Violence Against Women

Fertility Clinic Funhouse

Posted on | July 7, 2019 | Comments Off on Fertility Clinic Funhouse

 

People who trust science to solve their fertility problems put their faith in the expertise of medical professionals. What could possibly go wrong? Lots, it turns out. There was Dr. Norman Barwin, the Canadian fertility doctor who was recently reprimanded “for inseminating at least 11 women with his own sperm and giving the wrong sperm to dozens more women beginning in the 1970s.” There was Dr. Jan Karbaat, the Dutch fertility doctor who “secretly used his own sperm to inseminate patients without their consent and father 49 children.” And there was Dr. Donald Cline, the Indiana fertility doctor who fathered at least 50 children by secretly inseminating patients with his own sperm.

Then there was the case of the Ohio lesbian couple, Jennifer Cramblett and Amanda Zinkon, who chose a blue-eyed blond-haired sperm donor (No. 380) for their IVF procedure. Instead, the clinic accidently used a black sperm donor (No. 330 — oops!), so they sued the clinic.

Being an enthusiastic proponent of the old-fashioned method of procreation, I’m not much impressed with the high-tech approach. Why put yourself at the mercy of scientific “experts” in a laboratory to accomplish what two teenagers can usually do in the backseat of a Buick with no more medical assistance than a four-pack of wine coolers?

Now comes the latest sad tale of fertility-clinic misadventures:

A Queens couple that tried for years to get pregnant suffered the mother of all mix-ups once they finally succeeded — giving birth to someone else’s babies, thanks to a bungling Los Angeles fertility clinic, a stunning new lawsuit claims.
Married in 2012, the Asian husband and wife — identified in court papers only as Y.Z. and A.P. — turned to CHA Fertility Center, when their countless attempts, both natural and with artificial insemination, failed.
Run by Dr. Joshua Berger and co-owner Simon Hong, the clinic boasts that it’s a “mecca of reproductive medicine” that has “fulfilled the dreams of tens of thousands of aspiring parents from Southern California and beyond in over 22 countries.”
With hope in mind, the Flushing couple made the trip West in January 2018 to meet with Berger and Hong, and eventually underwent a months-long regimen of medicines, vitamins, tests and procedures that yielded eight embryos.
In all, they spent $100,000 on facility, specialist and doctors fees, medication, lab expenses and travel costs, the couple claimed.
In July 2018, A.P. attempted to have an embryo implanted at the Los Angeles facility, but it didn’t work, the couple said in its Brooklyn federal court lawsuit.
A month later, they were ready to try again, and CHA thawed two of the couple’s female embryos for another attempt.
By September, A.P. was pregnant.
The two “were ecstatic to learn that after years of trying to conceive, they had success and were pregnant with twins,” according to court papers.
But subsequent sonograms showed something wasn’t right.
Ultrasound technicians kept telling the couple that A.P. was carrying twin boys, prompting the “confused” pair called CHA to find out why.
The doctor and clinic owner “assured [A.P. and Y.Z.] that they were having girls and that nothing was wrong.”
On March 30, 2019, A.P. went to a New York hospital. The next day, she gave birth via a cesarean section.
Both babies were boys — and neither shared Y.Z. and A.P.’s Asian ethnicity, the couple charges.
CHA personnel, including Hong, flew to New York to conduct genetic tests that confirmed the newborns weren’t genetically related to Y.Z. and A.P.
“The testing also confirmed that the two male babies were not genetically related to each other,” the couple alleges.
Y.Z. and A.P. were then forced to give custody of each infant to their respective biological parents, who were also clients of CHA.

But sure, trust science. The “experts” know what they’re doing, right?



 

Category: Science

FMJRA 2.0: Sweet Emotion

Posted on | July 6, 2019 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Sweet Emotion

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Cheryl Ann Tweedy
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Happy Fourth of July, You Fascists!
The Universal Spectator
Dark Brightness
A View From The Beach
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Even Better Than The Real Thing
A View From The Beach
EBL

‘Godless Commies!’
Dark Brightness
Nebraska Energy Observer

Democrats May Be Better Off Leaving Their Faith Unstated
Dark Brightness
EBL

LGBT Ideology as Pathological Narcissism
EBL

Portland Antifa Terrorist Has Previously Been Arrested for Similar Crime
EBL

Is Barrett Brown Back on the Junk?
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.01.19
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

The Red Pill Never Lies
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

Friends Decry the Slut-Shaming of Mackenzie Lueck: ‘It’s Just Not Fair!’
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.02.19
Proof Positive
EBL

Was Ayoola Ajayi a Scammer?
Dark Brightness
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.03.19
Proof Positive
EBL

Ask And Ye Shall Receive
357 Magnum
EBL

Why Hilllary’s 2016 Overconfidence Bothered Me
EBL

Kathryn Narcisi (a/k/a ‘KC Hill’) Wins Injunction in Bogus Defamation Case
EBL

The Four Most Important Words About Fireworks: ‘Light Fuse, Get Away’
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.05.19 (Afternoon Edition)
Proof Positive
EBL

Police Find Body of Mackenzie Lueck; Suspect’s Family Worries About Fair Trial
EBL

Friday Fiction: 100 Word Challenge
EBL

In The Mailbox: 07.05.19 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Top linkers for the week ending July 5:

  1.  EBL (22)
  2.  Proof Positive (6)

Honorable mention to Dark Brightness and A View From The Beach.

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Try Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial
Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans
Audible Romance Free Trial

Category: FMJRA Award

Which Gringos Are to Blame for the Ongoing Disaster in Central America?

Posted on | July 6, 2019 | 2 Comments

Honduran Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati (left) with Hillary Clinton (right) in 2010.

For decades, liberals have blamed the United States for everything wrong in Latin America. Now that we have an immigration crisis caused by bogus “refugees” making phony asylum claims, this “Blame the Gringo” game is being played with a vengeance. Left-wing journalist Alex Rubinstein noted on Twitter that “a US-backed coup 10yrs ago fueled the migrant crisis with skyrocketing poverty & repression by death squad.”

 

Oh, wait — 10 years ago, you say? Having paid little attention to U.S. policy in Honduras, this business of a U.S.-backed coup was news to me, so I started researching. An article by Vassar College professor Joseph Nevins, “How US policy in Honduras set the stage for today’s migration,” takes us back to the late 19th century, when American investors began developing banana plantations in Honduras. It was from the relationship between such investors and government officials that the phrase “banana republic” emerged to describe the typical Latin American “strong man” regime, where the sponsorship of U.S. businesses was crucial to suppressing radical opponents who appealed to anti-gringo sentiment.

During the Cold War, Communists sought to exploit this situation, which led to the Castro regime in Cuba and the Sandinista regime in Nicauragua, to say nothing of the various attempted Communist takeovers in other countries (e.g., Grenada). As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s impossible for anyone under 40 to understand what the Cold War was like, and the compromises and calculations necessary to defeating Soviet-backed aggression were always difficult. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, finding the right path in a post-Cold War environment has been a muddle in Latin America (as everywhere else). Looking at Bush’s misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what a botch the Obama administration made of Middle East policy (the 2011 “Arab Spring,” Benghazi, the mess in Syria, etc.), one feels a certain nostalgia for the stark moral clarity of Cold War-era policy.

The situation in Honduras took at bad turn about 10 years ago. Manuel Zelaya was elected president in 2006 as a liberal reformer, but in office began forming alliances with the Castro regime in Cuba and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. When he proposed a referendum to change the Constitution in Honduras, the military resisted. Zelaya was overthrown and sent into exile, and the Obama administration shrugged:

The 2009 coup, more than any other development, explains the increase in Honduran migration across the southern U.S. border in the last few years. The Obama administration has played an important role in these developments. Although it officially decried Zelaya’s ouster, it equivocated on whether or not it constituted a coup, which would have required the U.S. to stop sending most aid to the country.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in particular, sent conflicting messages, and worked to ensure that Zelaya did not return to power. This was contrary to the wishes of the Organization of American States, the leading hemispheric political forum composed of the 35 member-countries of the Americas, including the Caribbean. Several months after the coup, Clinton supported a highly questionable election aimed at legitimating the post-coup government.
Strong military ties between the U.S. and Honduras persist: Several hundred U.S. troops are stationed at Soto Cano Air Base, formerly Palmerola, in the name of fighting the drug war and providing humanitarian aid.
Since the coup, writes historian Dana Frank, “a series of corrupt administrations has unleashed open criminal control of Honduras, from top to bottom of the government.”

You see how the “Blame the Gringo” game is played. No matter what goes wrong in Latin America — where corrupt governments and widespread poverty are the norm — the U.S. always gets the blame, and it doesn’t matter whether a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House.

There is no magic formula that can cure the problems of Honduras. A rhetoric of “democracy” and “human rights” serves only to foster the delusion that there is something we, as Americans, can do to solve problems we did not actually cause, but for which we are unfairly blamed. Describing the ouster of Zendaya as a “U.S.-backed coup,” for example, is misleading, making it seem as if Obama did this through a CIA plot. As much as I hate to give any credit to Obama or Hillary Clinton, they were confronted with a difficult situation in Honduras and accepting the post-coup government as legitimate was probably the best thing to do. From a 2016 article in the Guardian:

Clinton [as Secretary of State in 2009] pushed for new elections, rather than the return of Zelaya, whom she considered a leftist troublemaker in the mould of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. . . .
In the hardback edition of her autobiography Hard Choices, Clinton wrote that the head of the Honduran congress, Roberto Micheletti, and the country’s supreme court “claimed to be protecting Honduran democracy against Zelaya’s unlawful power grab and warned that he wanted to become another Chavez or Castro.
“Certainly the region did not need another dictator, and many knew Zelaya well enough to believe the charges against him.” . . .
Clinton has claimed that calling the military coup a military coup would have increased the suffering of ordinary Hondurans as it would have triggered the suspension of US aid.
In the weeks following the coup, Zelaya made three attempts to re-enter the country, which Clinton described as reckless. She has said that her focus at the time was on electing a new leader in order to ensure an orderly transition.
In her memoir, she wrote: “In the subsequent days I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere … We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Leaked emails from Clinton’s private server which were published by WikiLeaks show that during this period, the US pushed the OAS to support new elections and sideline Zelaya.

Liberals who praised Hillary’s qualifications to be president, and who automatically condemn as “racist” any criticism of the Obama administration, cannot have their cake and eat it, too. If it is true that Hillary opposed Zendaya’s restoration because of concerns that he might follow the path of Chavez in Venezuela, she deserves either credit for her wisdom or blame for her folly, but you can’t have it both ways. Personally, as a conservative, I’m inclined to say she did the right thing, and however bad things are in Hondura now, they would be much worse if Zendaya had gone in the direction of Chavez. But this still involves us in the “Blame the Gringo” game where U.S. policy is presumed to be the determining factor in the fate of Latin America, which has the effect of absolving the people of countries like Hondura of any blame for their own problems, treating them like irresponsible children who constantly need the assistance and supervision of a benevolent Uncle Sam.

Furthermore, conservatives have to resist the temptation of embracing liberals’ quasi-religious belief in “democracy” as a universal panacea that can cure all the problems of all people at all times. Given the recent results of “democracy” in, say, San Francisco or Chicago, do Americans really wish to impose such a system everywhere? Representative government works best where there is a large middle class and widespread economic prosperity; trying to force-feed “democracy” to the ignorant peasantry of Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t work out so well, and American conservatives ought to be hesitant to condemn “right-wing” elements in Latin America or other places who resist any “democracy” that would mean allowing radicals and revolutionaries to turn their countries into Marxist-Leninist hellholes. The rise of populist right-wingers like Viktor Orban in Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil suggests that it is possible for democracy to produce effective antidotes to leftism in countries where the social, economic and cultural conditions are favorable. We ought not despair for the possibility that such leaders might yet emerge in countries like Honduras, so that real democracy — the rule of law — can restore order, ending the migration crisis.

Finally, however, conservatives must reject the “Blame the Gringo” game every time we are invited to play it. While wise U.S. policy is beneficial to Latin America, it is insulting to the more intelligent and responsible citizens of those countries to depict them as helpless children, permanently dependent on our paternalistic assistance. While I would never pretend to be an expert on Honduras, the general case in such countries is that the responsible middle-class element of society must deal with the inevitable consequences of “democracy” where the majority of voters are poor and ignorant, and thus susceptible to left-wing demagoguery and the politics of envy. But you could say the same of Baltimore, Detroit or St. Louis. We have our own urban “banana republics” to deal with, and we cannot solve their problems by importing millions of impoverished “refugees” from Central America.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! You’ll find some fascinating discussion in the comments, and I hope you don’t mind if I remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

Category: Honduras, Immigration
« go back — keep looking »