[Excerpted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively through VDARE.com]

Of the sixteen persons nominated for a cabinet position, as listed in the January 23rd issue of The Economist [After the chaos of the Trump era, what can Joe Biden hope to achieve?] nine have now been confirmed by the U.S. Senate and have assumed office. So we are better than halfway through the confirmation process.

You can’t help but notice the diversity. Not one of them—not one of the sixteen—is a non-Hispanic white Protestant heterosexual male. To put that another way: Not one of the sixteen comes from the same slice of the diversity pie as did every single one of our nation’s Founding Fathers.

(Am I still allowed to say “Founding Fathers“? “Founding persons,” whatever.)

That is the working definition of the word “diversity” in our benighted age: no non-Hispanic white Protestant heterosexual males! That’s true diversity!

Only one of the sixteen is a white male Protestant: Peter Buttigieg, the Transportation Secretary; and as an Episcopalian, his Protestantism is borderline. I used to be an Episcopalian, and I recall that bit in the liturgy where we prayed for the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Confessionwise I count eight Roman Catholics, four Jews, two Protestants, one Hindu, and one unknown. By sex they break down as ten guys and six gals. Cutting by race and ethnicity: ten white, three black or blackish, three Hispanic. By sexual preference: fourteen apparently heterosexual, one homosexual, one unknown.

Concerning the confirmation process itself: There is a customary understanding—a sensible one, I think—that a new President is entitled to his cabinet picks, and that the Senators should practice forbearance in challenging them, with due allowance for a bit of televised grandstanding on particular issues. Given that, and the present balance of parties in the Senate, these confirmation hearings are somewhat of a formality.

They can be instructive, though. Instruction this week came from Merrick Garland, picked by Biden—or whoever pulls Biden’s strings—to head the Justice Department.

Justice in the U.S.A. is in serious trouble. It has been politicized. Our Ruling Class has been seized by an ideology: the one loosely called “Wokeness,” although as a longtime fan of Professor Paul Gottfried, I prefer “Cultural Marxism.” This ideology has many facets, but its most central characteristics are 1) deep hostility to the founding stock of the U.S.A.—as illustrated by the statistics I just gave you on Biden’s cabinet picks—and 2) fierce intolerance of all dissent.

In the matter of justice, the effect of that ideology has been to give us a two-tiered system, a shameful double standard. Anarchist mobs who burned, looted, and murdered their way through our cities last year have been smiled on by the courts. The motley protestors who entered the Capitol on January 6th, by contrast, are being hunted down and crushed like bugs: no bail, no celebrity support, no GoFundMe pages, no allowance for personal circumstances.

Sample quote from my new journalistic heroine, Miranda Devine:

As for Portland, Oregon, charges were dropped for 90 percent of rioters arrested in September’s anti-cop violence. One 23-year-old charged with attempted murder, arson, possession of a destructive device, and rioting was released on a $1,000 bond.

Seattle was as bad. Mayor Jenny Durkan lauded the lawlessness that would lead to the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson in July as a “summer of love.”

These were the deadly protests Biden benignly described as “peaceful” and [Kamala] Harris said are “not going to stop … and they should not.”

Yet after a few hours of madness one day in January, every Trump supporter in the country is to be treated as if they flew a plane into the World Trade Center. They all are under suspicion for what Biden said last week was “the greatest threat … in America: domestic terror.”

[ There shouldn’t be a double standard for law & order: Devine , New York Post, February 21, 2021]

Plainly—it could not be more plain—there is one system of justice for persons who hold approved opinions, another for dissidents.

Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence has of course always allowed intent as a factor in the dispensing of justice: an unintended homicide is treated differently from an intended one.

But that principle has now been distorted to:

• If I burn down your store because of some grudge I bear, not towards you but towards society in general, I will not be punished so long as my grudge is a good fit for the Ruling Ideology.

But:

• If I enter some federal building unarmed with the vague intention of disrupting a parliamentary procedure—even if uniformed security personnel let me in—and then I put my feet up on a legislator’s desk, I shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, so long as my intention, or any of my personal connections, are at odds with Regime Ideology.

This gross and obvious double standard is Third World jurisprudence. It’s how things are done in Congo, Uzbekistan, China, or Guatemala.

No American jurist with any respect for our nation’s history or constitution should tolerate it.

Earlier: Biden’s Treasonous Immigration Bill Opportunity For GOP Leader To Say Two Words “Immigration Moratorium”

Thursday this week the Biden administration brought forth a bill on immigration. It comes in two versions, one for the Senate and one for the House, although the texts are well-nigh identical. Both versions are 353 pages long. [READ: Text of Biden-supported immigration bill, CNN, February 18, 2021]

My boss Peter Brimelow sent me the House version. I obediently settled down to read the thing.

By page 17 I was deep in the weeds.

SECTION 1102. ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS OF LAWFUL PROSPECTIVE IMMIGRANTS.

Subsection (a) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 5 of title II of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1255 et seq.), as amended by Section 1101, is further amended by inserting after Section 245B the following:

“SECTION 245C. ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS OF LAWFUL PROSPECTIVE IMMIGRANTS.

Subsection (a) REQUIREMENTS.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary may adjust the status of a lawful prospective immigrant to that of a lawful permanent resident if the lawful prospective immigrant —

Paragraph (1) subject to subsection (b), satisfies the eligibility requirements set forth in section 245G(b), including all criminal and national security background checks and the payment of all applicable fees;

Paragraph (2) submits an application pursuant to the procedures under section 245G(b)(1);

Paragraph (3) has been a lawful prospective immigrant for not less than 5 years …

At about this point, I lost the will to live. In my defense, I’ll wager that I had already read more of the bill than any of the congresscritters who’ll be called upon to vote on it.

I resolved to do the best I could from secondary sources—that is to say, by poaching from the commentary of other pundits more fluent in Congressperanto than I am.

My shame in this case was assuaged by seeing, as one of the first things these more knowledgeable commentators all said, that the bill stands no chance of becoming law.

Why is that? Well, here you have a conflict of strategies.

The Holy Grail for Open Borders lobbyists—which is to say, all of the well-funded business and ethnic lobbies—has always been “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” That’s understood to mean a bait-and-switch model, a retread of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 law giving both sides what they want: mass Amnesty to please the lobbies, firm controls on employment and border security as boob-bait for the Bubbas. Once the law’s enacted, the Amnesty rolls ahead but the firm controls melt away quietly under judicial action and Executive Branch inaction.

That’s “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” It was tried with Arlen Specter’s 2006 bill, again with the McCain-Kennedy bill in 2007, and yet again with the Gang of Eight bill in 2013.

All these efforts failed; but hope springs eternal in the Open-Borders breast. With majorities in both houses, Biden’s people—how naturally we say “Biden’s people,” as if the President were just a holographic image, which he might as well be—figured it was time for another try at “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

It actually isn’t, though. With the Covid pandemic, caravans of thousands assembling in Central America, and doubts about Mexico’s continuing fortitude in preventing those caravans crossing Mexican territory, a lot of Democratic congresscritters are getting spooked.

Here was Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat, talking this week to Politico.com:

Our party should be concerned. If we go off the rails, it’s going to be bad for us. Biden is going to be dealing with a minority in Congress if he continues down some of these paths.

‘Recipe for disaster’: Dem fears mount over immigration overhaul, by Sabrina Rodriguez and Marc Caputo, February 19, 2021

What to do, then? The lobbyists have to be appeased. And it would be really, really nice to have a big fat tranche of new Democrat voters in place before November 2024.

And I should say before proceeding that while I’ve been flinging around the time-honored expression “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” with gay abandon, this week’s bill is not actually a good fit for that term, as I have defined it. Most to this point: There does not seem to be any boob-bait for the Bubbas. Where are they, those clear promises to secure the border, punish employers of illegal aliens, and the rest?

The optimistic assumption must be that the Congressional drones who drafted this bill know that we know how bogus those promises were in past efforts at “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” and decided that it wasn’t worth their time to go on lying.

I call this the optimistic assumption because it does at least signal a slight increase in honesty.

[Excerpted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively through VDARE.com]

Reading my New York Post, I caught this little news item from the nearby metropolis: A 72-year-old guy just getting off a subway train in Midtown was knocked to the ground by an assailant unknown to him:

The suspect, described as a man in his 20s and about 5-foot-10 inches tall, was wearing a green jacket with the words “Anti Social” written on it.

Elderly straphanger attacked in Midtown subway station By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, Larry Celona, Tina Moore and Amanda Woods, NY Post, February 11, 2021

The perp was of course black. As you have heard said several hundred times over the past thirty years, including a couple of times from me: “If it was a white guy they would have told us.”

In the art of rhetoric there are terms relating to omission—saying something by pointedly and deliberately not saying it.

I’m not sure precisely which term of rhetorical art applies here. I don’t think it’s apophasis: for that, you have to mention the fact that you won’t mention something. That’s a favorite of Donald Trump’s:

Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me “old,” when I would never call him “short and fat”?

Trump sarcastically responds to Kim Jong Un insults, CNN, November 13, 2017

Strategic Silence—conveying information to the listener by omitting a key fact, as opposed to saying aloud that you’re not going to mention it—must be some other rhetorical figure, not apophasis. I leave it to your own researches.

Here I’m just going to observe that our elite Media have taken it to a new level. They tell us things by being silent about them, knowing that we know the significance of their silence.

The Officer Sicknick case comes under this heading. I passed comment last week on the strange media silence about cause of death.

This was the Capitol Hill cop who, we were told in a January 10th New York times headline, was killed by a Trump supporter—smacked on the head with a fire extinguisher, according to the story.

He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob, By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Tracey Tully, January 8, 2021

Revolver.News just posted a fine report on the Sicknick case, concentrating on the complete lack of information we’ve been getting—i.e. the silence.

Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen says the DOJ will “spare no resources” in getting to the bottom of what happened to Sicknick. Yet well over a month after his death, precisely zero information has been disclosed by the DOJ, the FBI, the US Capitol Police, the DC medical examiner, the hospital that cared for him, or the treating physicians.

MAGA Blood Libel: Why Are They Hiding The Medical Report? , February 9, 2021

Now we hear that Officer Sicknick’s remains have been cremated. So, no more autopsy. May we have the medical examiner’s report, since it must now be final?

No, apparently, we may not. Why not?

Because it would contradict the story about Sicknick having been killed by Trump supporters,

Prosecutors now concede they have no evidence this happened, and no-one is under investigation. [Investigators struggle to build murder case in death of US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, CNN, February 2, 2021]

But the Ruling Class like this story. It works for them.

Strategic Silence has also been deployed in the Ashli Babbitt case, the shooting of the unarmed young white woman by a black Capitol Hill cop. Early this week we were told that

The shooting of the Capitol rioter, Ashli Babbitt, remains under investigation by the DC Metropolitan Police, the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, and civil rights prosecutors, a routine process for shootings involving the Capitol Police. A final decision hasn’t been made, the people familiar with the probe told CNN.

Justice Department officials could make a final decision in the coming days.

A spokesperson for DC’s Metropolitan Police Department said in an email to CNN that “it is irresponsible to make an investigatory assumption or to jump to any conclusion without completing the thorough investigation.”

Investigators recommend no charges for US Capitol Police officer accused of killing pro-Trump rioter during insurrection, sources say By Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz and Paul LeBlanc, CNN, February 2, 2021

Cop shoots lady at close range, all on video. How long does a “thorough investigation” take?

Just long enough until everyone’s forgotten about it, I guess.

The lesson here: The media arm of our Ruling Class golem are Masters Of Silence—of informative silence.

What sticks in my throat here is their arrogance. The message to us here in every case is:

We’re not going to give out any information. We’re going to stay silent until it’s Old News and faded into the cosmic microwave background.

Yes, this is informative all by itself: The fact of our silence tells you what the truth is.

You can figure it out. But we don’t care.

[Excerpted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively through VDARE.com]

A leading candidate for the title Truer Words Were Never Said is surely T.S. Eliot’s observation that,

… human kind
Cannot bear very much reality

Burnt Norton, 1936

If you want a set, that quote pairs off nicely with science fiction writer and occasional LSD user Philip K. Dick’s observation in a speech he gave in 1978 that:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

“How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later”

There is of course a great deal more than that to be said about the nature of reality—a very great deal more. This is one of the oldest topics in philosophy, overlapping with theology, psychology, physics, and other disciplines.

Neuroscience, for example. There’s a mental condition called anosognosia that I mentioned in a column here at VDARE once.

Anosognosia is a condition in which the patient is suffering some severe neurological impairment but does not know it. [Anosognosia, Healthline.com, February 27, 2019] The impairment is strictly neurological, in the higher processing regions of the brain. You might, for example, be suffering from paralysis of a limb, yet be unaware of it.

There are even some extreme cases recorded in which the sufferer is blind but does not know it! The eyes and optic nerves have normal function, but the brain centers that process visual stimulus are not working. To compensate, the brain makes up a visual field, trying to use cues from memory and the other senses.

It doesn’t work very well. You keep falling over things, but you can’t understand why.

Western society seems to have fallen into something like a social anosognosia. Our collective senses are gathering information OK, more than ever before in history in fact. But our collective brain is failing to process it, and compensates by making stuff up.

These things all came to mind when I read this February 2nd column by the notoriously Woke New York Times technology correspondent Kevin Roose [Tweet him]”How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis.”

Steve Sailer and Gregory Hood have tossed and gored the column here at VDARE, but it’s such a big fat target I can’t resist adding my two pennyworth.

Roose locates the reality crisis in two areas: “extremist groups and conspiracy theory movements.”

The only people he actually names as being an “extremist group” are the Proud Boys. His other references are to unnamed “white supremacist groups” and “far-right militias.”

Ctrl-F “Black Lives Matter” … no hits. Ctrl-F “antifa” … no hits.

In the other area of his reality crisis, “conspiracy theory movements,” Roose includes believers in the QAnon theory, people skeptical of Joe Biden’s election victory, and those who think Covid-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab. Roose actually uses the word “baseless” to describe the beliefs of both latter groups.

The QAnon theory sounds loopy to me, although no loopier than the stuff a lot of harmless, productive, otherwise-sane folk carry around in their heads.

The other two points, election tampering and a lab origin for Covid, are well within the scope of possibility, not at all “baseless.” Much stranger things have turned out to be the case. If Roose had said “improbable,” I might have passed it without comment, but “baseless”? This is highly slanted journalism, even by the dismal standards of the New York Times.

Roose tells us that he called around some “experts” to get ideas about how we might restore a proper respect for reality. Who were they, these “experts”? He doesn’t supply a full roster, but names a few names.

• William Braniff, a counterterrorism expert at the University of Maryland.
• Joan Donovan, a Harvard scholar of Media, Politics and Public Policy.
• Renée DiResta, a disinformation researcher at Stanford.
• Micah Clark at Moonshot CVE, a counterextremism firm in London.
• Christian Picciolini, a former skinhead now running an organization aimed at pulling extremists out of hate groups.

I confess I haven’t had time to do my due diligence and look up these people’s professional output, but the job titles don’t inspire confidence.

“Disinformation researcher”? Uh-huh. Anyone who pays attention knows that the word “disinformation” has at this point been bled dry of all honest significance. It’s just a Woke word, a CultMarx word for any true facts the Ruling Class want suppressed.

Several of the experts, Roose tells us, said the Biden administration should assemble a task force to tackle the reality crisis. This task force would be led by a Reality Czar.

Roose allows that this sounds, quote, “a little dystopian.” Ya think?

Join the VDARE.com Book Club!

My just-posted discussion with John Derbyshire for the VDARE Book Club can be thought of as the completion of a cycle. If we weren’t both mistaken, John Derbyshire coined the term “Dissident Right” and was using it in 2012—which today seems like ancient history. Now, the term has re-emerged as a separation from the “Alt Right” of 2015-2017. We end where we began, as graduates of the historic American Conservative Movement who have realized that changing demographics, cultural degeneracy, and a hostile elite are destroying the things conservatives are supposed to “conserve.” Conservatism Inc. isn’t doing anything about it, so that leaves us.

However, how can we do it? Both John and I are skeptical of the prospects for separation from the United States. The only way the “System” may be brought to a halt is through some external disaster.

Of course, even to contemplate something like that, something akin to the Russian military defeat in the Russo-Japanese war might be required, which is horrifying because it will mean Americans paying for the mistakes of their rulers.

If we’re lucky, John said in the discussion, it will be something more akin to the largely bloodless Suez Crisis that finally brought home to the United Kingdom that was no longer an imperial power.

John suggests that we are on the brink of hard tyranny, something akin to what the Polish and Hungarian peoples faced in the 1960s. (I agree with him.) Looking to the way those nations survived and overcame a hostile regime may be useful for Americans today.

I’ve argued explicitly that the historic American nation is essentially a stateless people, devoid of representation in the Regime that rules over them, discriminates against them, and tries to replace them.

In a global context, the exploding Third World population, especially in Africa, means that immigration issues will surge in importance, even if elites would rather bury the discussion.

John and I discussed these issues and more yesterday. Of course, the point is not just to explain the world, but to change it. There will be hard times ahead. However, this should be seen as a challenge to become and a crucible that will strengthen us. There is hope and reason for faith in victory—not least because of all the readers and supporters who make VDARE.com possible.

Enjoy the discussion (the first 20 minutes of which is posted below) and we look forward to your feedback. If you haven’t already, join the Book Club and get involved.

James Kirkpatrick [Email him |Tweet him @VDAREJamesK] is a Beltway veteran and a refugee from Conservatism Inc. His latest book is Conservatism Inc.: The Battle for the American Right. Read VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow‘s Preface here.