Nothing Is Inevitable, You Know

I’m sensing people are beginning to get this, which I expected  It’s been nearly six months since a presidential election which was a pretty jarring experience for half of the country, and that’s enough time for the shock of an improbable, if not implausible, result – a president of the United States, nothing in whose background indicates excellence, who is physically and mentally incapable of governing – to wear off.

Following the election there was a pervasive malaise among not just Trump voters but also the nonpolitical. There was a sense that things were hopeless and all was lost.

But that appears to be lifting a little, from what I can see.

It’s not that anything is getting better. To the contrary, it’s fairly obvious everything is getting worse. And it will get worse. Probably much worse. I’ve said this is a post-Republic stage in American history, and it is.

But that isn’t an altogether bad thing. Everything getting worse is a necessary prelude to getting anything fixed. The post-Republic is necessarily not as good as the Republic. But re-establishing the Republic is possible, even likely, and the pain of the post-Republic makes re-establishment preferable to those who suffer.

There are presidential approval polls out there showing Joe Biden in the high 50’s, or even into the low 60’s. Nobody ought to believe those polls. They’re trash.

But as Fox News contributor Liz Peek notes, even within those cooked polls is a lot of worthwhile data…

Liberal news outlets are reporting with smug satisfaction that President Joe Biden is earning rave reviews. A recent headline from NBC News is typical: “Polls show Biden reaping solid approval ratings with popular policies.”

They want us to believe that Biden’s progressive juggernaut is wildly popular, and that the president’s obvious inadequacies are a figment of right-wing imagination. They want us to think that common-sense Americans are OK with having our schools closed and our borders open, that we are on board with declaring our country racist and allowing riots to wreck our cities. They want us to believe that Biden is way more successful – already – than President Trump ever was.

It is not true. None of it.

For instance, Gallup’s most recent “Satisfaction with the United States” survey shows that 32% of the nation is “satisfied” with the way things are going, while 67% is dissatisfied. At this date in Trump’s presidency, the reading was almost exactly the same: 32% satisfied, 66% dissatisfied. And by the way, that figure reached 45% in February of last year, under Trump, a score not once recorded during President Obama’s eight years in office.

That’s one indicator that the country is not entirely copacetic with current events. But, let’s look at those polls. It is true that Biden’s top-line poll numbers look all right.

One of the polls cited by NBC is by Quinnipiac, which shows 48% of respondents approving of the president’s job performance while 42% disapprove.

But a deeper dive shows only 34% of the sample “strongly approve” of Biden while 36% “strongly disapprove.” Among all-important Independents, 27% approve “strongly” while 38% disapprove “strongly.”

Those tallies suggest support for the president is lukewarm. Lukewarm doesn’t get people to the voting booth, especially in off-year elections.

Meanwhile, the trends of these ratings are not favorable. The “strongly disapprove” category among registered voters has grown steadily from 32% in February to 38% last week while the number “strongly approving” dropped from 38% to 35%.

Moreover, since he was inaugurated, Quinnipiac reports that Biden’s ratings on honesty and leadership have fallen, and the number of voters who think (rightly) that the president is dividing the country has jumped.

Peek is correct that the direction of those numbers is downward, and it’s likely it’ll remain that way. There are no current events which hold much promise for the Biden administration or the American Left as it seeks to consolidate control of the country.

Take for example the confirmation that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes rather than as the result of anything which happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6. This destroys the factual basis of the entire “capitol riot” narrative; that an unruly, armed and deadly mob breached the U.S. Capitol and wreaked havoc, killing five people in the melee.

No element of this is true. Four of the five people who died at the Capitol on Jan. 6, or who died shortly after being there that day, are now confirmed to have expired naturally. The one who didn’t was Ashli Babbitt, who was shot dead by an unnamed Capitol Policeman who has now been cleared. She was unarmed, a decorated Air Force veteran, and she was shot while climbing through a broken window. In other words, trespassing.

Think about the steps taken as a result of the “insurrection” narrative over the past three-plus months, and then think about the facts as they stand now. And then think about whether the current narrative is likely to survive in the public’s mind.

Then take the fast-collapsing narrative about mask mandates and vaccines.

More than 50 percent of the American adult public has now been vaccinated against COVID-19. About a third of the public, most of whom appear to be Republicans, are refusing to take the vaccine. Whether that resistance continues or ultimately breaks down is irrelevant. It’s only a matter of time before there is herd immunity (if there isn’t already) against COVID and it fades away in the public conscience.

And yet the public health bureaucrats who have wielded an unprecedented amount of power over the American people in the past year are still demanding people wear masks.

The most prominent of those, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was in front of a House committee last week and found himself absolutely eviscerated by Rep. Jim Jordan. Video of that exchange, in which Jordan demands Fauci provide a metric according to which the American people might return to normal life and civil liberties, has gone viral. Things went so badly for Fauci, who was unable to give Jordan anything remotely near an answer, that he was hustled out to the Sunday news shows and announced there might be a change in Centers for Disease Control guidance on masks for those who have been vaccinated.

That corresponds with the growing circulation of a suppressed Stanford study showing what objective observers have known all along – that masks are useless against COVID-19 and do more harm than good.

It’s highly likely the mask-wearing will subside among the public, something which is already happening on the streets and elsewhere as people decide they’ve had enough – and begin asking the obvious question “what was the point of taking the vaccine and having it make me feel like hell for two days afterward if I still have to wear that mask?”

This isn’t going to play well for the Faucis of the world, or for the politicians protecting them. This is the kind of thing which erodes public confidence in leadership. Particularly when a Ron DeSantis is out there telling people that “if you’re immune, act immune.”

Take also the “woke corporate” controversy, particularly in the wake of the Georgia election law. Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola and Major League Baseball all offered stupid gestures and petulant rhetoric after the reform measures designed to protect against election fraud were signed by that state’s governor Brian Kemp. But to what effect? MLB moved its all-star game from mostly-black Atlanta to lily-white Denver and infuriated a huge swath of its fan base, and the league’s TV ratings are dismal. Delta earned itself a rhetorical smack across the nose by the Georgia House, in the form of a bill receiving a majority vote which would eliminate its tax breaks on jet fuel. And there is a growing boycott afoot against Coke products which has obviously terrified the company’s top management; Coke is now calling for “common ground.”

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And Kemp and the Georgia legislature never moved from support of that bill.

There are election reform bills moving in legislatures across the country. There is no indication in most cases that “woke” corporate threats has dissuaded any of those legislators from moving them forward. All the caterwauling has done is identify to traditional Americans and Trump voters who not to buy products from.

And then there is the NCAA and the transgender issue. In South Dakota and Arkansas Republican legislatures passed bills protecting girls’ sports from incursions by biological males, only to see otherwise-conservative Republican governors veto them for fear the NCAA, which has taken a staunch pro-trans stance and made lots of threats on behalf of that position, would punish their states. That was followed by a pair of executive orders in South Dakota banning “transwomen” from girls’ sports, and a legislative override of the veto in Arkansas.

But that isn’t ending this controversy. If anything it’s a colossal blunder by the NCAA to take this stance, because it’s brought two things to the forefront.

First, it’s now obvious what the problem is for Kristi Noem and Asa Hutchinson. They’re out on a limb by themselves and realize how easy it is for the NCAA to punish them. Which makes the solution obvious as well – solidarity. GOP governors and legislatures simply need to stand together, perhaps after agreeing on a common purpose at a summit of some sort, and pass legislation en masse to protect girls’ sports. When more than half of the country shuts that door, the NCAA has no leg to stand on.

Because second, if the NCAA refuses to back down at that point, those governors and legislatures have the ability to take the next step and stand up an alternative to the NCAA, putting the state universities they control into it.

Red states, and particularly taxpayer-funded institutions controlled by GOP governors and legislators, are the backbone of college athletics in this country. If the red schools split from the NCAA it will collapse. There are more reasons than the trans issue why that might be a good thing for many big-time college athletic programs.

There is a major shift coming in American culture and business, and politics will be downstream from that. So many of the institutions the Left has captured are in a state of abject failure that they won’t stand. Disruption is coming.

The question you have to ask yourself is what side you choose to be on.

Will you continue to tolerate what’s being offered to you by people who it’s increasingly obvious don’t have your interests at heart? Or will you turn your back on them and find something else?

More and more people are turning away. Which is why nothing is inevitable. Don’t be cowed into accepting anything.

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