The Problem With All The Background Checks And Red Flag Laws

I don't really have a dog in the whole Second Amendment fight; I don't own a gun and never have. I did some target shooting in my Boy Scout days and had an M1 issued to me in the ROTC, and that's about it. What bothers me about the current dispute in the wake of the Uvalde and Highland Park shootings is that existing laws and controls seem to have been observed only in the breach. For instance,

The mayor of Uvalde, Texas, visibly frustrated with the constantly changing information released about what happened the day 19 children and two teachers were gunned down, lashed out Tuesday, telling residents at a city council meeting he's tired of being kept in the dark about what evidence has been uncovered.

. . . McLaughlin sharply criticized the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and its leader, Col. Steven McCraw. The Texas Rangers, a DPS agency, are leading the investigation into the shooting and McLaughlin told residents he was upset that he and other city officials have never been briefed on how the investigation is going. He went on to say he thinks McCraw is making misleading statements to help distance the actions of the state troopers and Texas Rangers who responded to the shooting.

"There is compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we've learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre," McCraw told the Texas Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans in Austin.

"Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject," he continued. "The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."

Exactly what happened at the incident is still unclear, especially given the finger-pointing among the actors, but it's hard to avoid thinking that bungling at all levels of law enforcement made the incident far worse than it could have been. The story continues,

In addition, [school police chief] Arredondo initially said that the responding officers needed more firepower and equipment to breach the doors. For example, at 11:40 a.m., Arredondo called the Uvalde Police Department's dispatch by phone shortly after the gunman fired at officers and requested further assistance and a radio, according to a DPS transcript.

"We don't have enough firepower right now, it's all pistol and he has an AR-15," Arredondo said, according to a DPS transcript.

However, two of the first officers to arrive to the scene had rifles, according to McCraw.

In the first minutes of their response, an officer also said a Halligan, a firefighting tool that is used for forcible entry, was on scene, according to the timeline. However, the tool wasn't brought into the school until an hour after officers arrived and was never used, the timeline said.

The short version of the story is that law enforcement had ample resources to minimize the effect of the disaster but for whatever reason lacked the will to use them.

So far, as relates to the Highland Park shooting, it's hard to avoid thinking an equivalent breakdown of controls that were already in place was a big part of the problem:

We’ve learned in the last couple of days that the alleged killer was yet another one of those “known wolves” that police were powerless to do anything about. What stands out in this case is what the parents may have done to enable their son.

Even more troubling is the killer’s history with police and likely mental illness — and the lengths the father apparently went to both to protect and to arm his son.

Ari Hoffman reported for the Post Millennial that the killer was “able to purchase firearms despite having been flagged as a ‘clear and present danger’ by police in 2019.”

Illinois police said in a statement Tuesday that the flag was a result of threats he made against his own family. He would have been 18 or 19 years old at the time, a legal adult.

Police took the young man’s knife collection away but then returned them after the father claimed they were his own.

Except that what's emerged is that the shooter lived with his mother and the knives were kept at his mother's home. And three months laterr, the father sponsored the shooter for a firearms identification card, which he needed to buy a weapon while he was under 21. In other words, existing laws and controls could, and should, have kept the shooter from buying a gun.

Thus I think Bp Barron's statement in response to the Highland Park shooting misses at least some of the point:

Now, look, I understand very well the complexities surrounding the issue of mass violence. I grasp the arguments on the many sides of the gun control question. But I just don't understand how a 21-year-old can legally purchase a firearm capable of such mass carnage.

The shooter's father, even after his son made direct threats against his family, continued to enable him by allowing his knife collection to be returned and even sponsored his permit to buy the weapon he used in the shooting. Bp Barron then endorses the appeal that four US bishops made in June to pass the gun control legislation that had come before the US Congress. What good are red flag laws if the red flags get lost in the shuffle, as happened in Illinois?

It seems to me that something beyond that is needed. There needs to be a call for some higher level of conscientiousness overall, in families, in government, in law enforcement. The problem is less that we need new laws than that people, like fathers or like some police, simply aren't doing their jobs, and right now, there's an overall sense in the community that this is OK. That's an area where bishops could be especially effective if they were to urge greater conscientiousness on the rest of us.

Looking At One Set Of Biden's July 4 Remarks

As far as I can tell, President Biden gave at least two formal speeches on Monday to celebrate July 4. One of them, that's had more publicity, said America has "come up short" and "feels like it is going backward." It refers indirectly to the Highland Park shooting. So far, though, I haven't found a full text on line.

A second, which does have a text at the White House site, differs considerably from these remarks and doesn't contain the specific phrases that have been shown in video clips and quoted in reporting. I simply don't know if this is one speech with the delivered text heavily revised, or two different speeches. However, I'm going to discuss the text in the link at the White House site. If anyone can clarify what's what here, I'll greatly appreciate it.

What intrigues me about the text is that I think it does reflect Biden's mind sufficiently that he must be a principal originator. I very much doubt that he wrote any of it out in longhand on a yellow legal pad a la Nixon, but he must at least have dictated it to a stenographer in some way -- it carries too much of his personal style, which is glib and obtuse.

Another thing that strikes me is that its specifics, once he gets beyond brief general introductory bloviation, are exclusively about COVID:

This year, the Fourth of July is a day of special celebration, for we are emerging from the darkness of years; a year of pandemic and isolation; a year of pain, fear, and heartbreaking loss.

Just think back to where this nation was a year ago. Think back to where you were a year ago. And think about how far we’ve come.

From silent streets — (applause) — from silent streets to crowded parade routes lined with people waving American flags; from empty stadiums and arenas to fans back to their seats cheering together again; from families pressing hands against a window to grandparents hugging their grandchildren once again.

This is simply odd. Nobody, at this point, is thinking about COVID. Remaining mask mandates are ignored and unenforced, let alone social distancing. Attempts to revive them, like those in California, have fallen flat and been quickly withdrawn. Vaccine mandates have fallen intro desuetude. New issues have come up: inflation, crime, gun violence, and immigration top the list, while others like Ukraine and abortion are still more important than COVID -- but Biden speaks only of COVID.

It sounds like he wishes it were still 2020, when it was "dark" -- but this was not just 2020, it was the "darkness of years". I've got to think that's a reference to Trump. But then there was the light:

So, today, while the virus hasn’t been vanquished, we know this: It no longer controls our lives. It no longer paralyzes our nation. And it’s within our power to make sure it never does again. And for that, we can thank the scientists and researchers, the educators, and all the other frontline and essential workers, like many of you here today — (applause) —

who became the light to see us through the darkness.

This must only be a reference to Dr Fauci, of all people, who personifies Science, bringer of light, who chased away the Trump. I think this mischaracterizes the whole history of COVID and the official public health response to it, which the political establishment fully endorsed throughout. The pandemic consisted of about five peaks between early 2020 and mid 2022 that in fact were progressively more severe and which made a mockery of the official remedies that were proposed, starting with "fifteen days to flatten the curve" through extended lockdowns through social distancing, mask mandates, church closures, and vaccines, none of which proved effective.

The only thing that ended the pandemic was the historic pattern by which viruses become more contagious as they weaken, until by mid-2022, everyone was infected with a mild strain. Dr Fauci by then had become an irrelevant figure who'd overstayed his 15 minutes of fame by a considerable period. (The owner of a store I visit told me that late this spring, he'd finally caught the 'rona. He said he had about 40 minutes of muscle aches, but his wife made him stay away from the store for a full two weeks of quarantine. Luckily, his staff held the fort.)

On July 3, the New York Post ran a story about Biden on July 4, 2021, Remember Biden’s ‘summer of freedom’ and victory over COVID? No wonder his credibility’s shot:

Last July 4, President Joe Biden proclaimed victory over COVID: “Thanks to our heroic vaccine effort, we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus. We can live our lives. We are closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” A few weeks later, Biden promised that people who got vaccinated would not get COVID.

Since last July 4, COVID has killed more than 400,000 Americans. More than 55 million have been diagnosed with the virus, and there have probably been tens of millions of unconfirmed or unreported cases.

Biden has been more successful decimating freedom than ending the pandemic. The wreckage of his COVID promises explains much of the collapse of Biden’s credibility and approval ratings.

. . . On Aug. 5, CDC chief Rochelle Walensky formally confessed: “What [COVID vaccines] can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.” Prior to that admission, the Biden administration even refused to disclose the number of “breakthrough” infections that had occurred among White House staff.

On Aug. 11, the Mayo Clinic revealed that the efficacy of the Pfizer COVID vaccine had fallen to 42% — a stunning collapse after early boasts of 95% effectiveness in safeguarding people against infection. Biden responded to the failures by repudiating his 2020 promise not to make vaccines mandatory.

. . . Following the “summer of freedom,” Biden promised in December “a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated” and declared that “almost everyone who has died from COVID-19 in the past many months has been unvaccinated.” Wrong again. Two months earlier, the CDC ceased publishing data showing soaring deaths among the fully vaxxed because the data “might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective,” The New York Times revealed early this year.

Even though almost two-thirds of the US population was fully vaccinated, COVID cases exploded late last year and soon exceeded a million new cases a day. The CDC later admitted that almost half the COVID deaths in early 2022 were among the fully vaxxed.

Why on earth does the guy want to revisit COVID at this stage? It says something that he apparently thinks this is the only positive thing he can point to. Yet again, these are issues of character and competence, not dementia.

The Problem In A Nutshell: 2020 Didn't Work

Based on a Harvard-Harris poll taken last week, Donald Trump remains the most popular political figure in the US. What does this explain? Well, I would say just about everything, starting with the January 6 committee, which has occasionally been called Impeachment 3.0.

Although its stated purpose, insofar as it has one, has been to demonstrate that the January 6 demonstrations at the US Capitol were actually a planned, armed insurrection, it seems to me that its existence at all reveals a deep insecurity among the rulers that the 2020 presidential election was in fact not legitimate. We can certainly argue that any post-election audits of the votes have so far indicated there wasn't fraud widespread enough to have affected the outcome.

On the other hand, the subsequent unpopularity of the winner and the continuing general sense that something's wrong has made the certified outcomes irrelevant. Thus the continued attempts to prove that 2020 skeptics are crazies in buffalo hats or something. Let's recall that while Republicans were unsatisfied with Obama, there was never an equivalent sense throughout his eight years in office that the election had somehow been stolen, or that either John McCain or Mitt Romney retained the popularity Trump still has among the electorate.

For instance, in a July 2014 CNN poll conducted two years into Obama's second term, if the choice were between Obama and Romney, Romney would win, but if it were Hillary Clinton versus Romney, Romney would lose. For now, there's no equivalent threat to Trump from any potential third party, and that seems to have some people upset.

And speaking of Romney, we have remarks from him about Trump from just yesterday:

Sen. Mitt Romney says the nation suffers a "malady of denial, deceit, and distrust," and former President Donald Trump would make things much worse.

"A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable," Romney, a senator from Utah and former GOP presidential nominee, wrote in a July 4 essay in The Atlantic.

There are several points worth noting here. His repeated metaphors of malady and incurable sickness harken back to the 2020 COVID panic and suggest it was somehow Trump's doing -- Trump is out of office, yet he's clearly still the problem. He's the problem because, as Romney also implies, nobody's taking 2020 seriously, that's part of the whole denial, deceit, and distrust business.

Late last week we had Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the Jaunary 6 committee, which seems to have been about as effective as porn star Stormy Daniels's allegation that she had sex with Trump because she "felt trapped"; the allegation that Trump gets two scoops of ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, while everyone else around the table gets just one; or indeed the allegation that he pressured Ukraine President Zelensky to investigate Biden. The public so far has tuned these out as they've come up. Indeed, maybe there should have been such an investigation, huh?

But let's look at another puzzling development: what on earth is Gavin Newsom doing running an attack ad against Ron DeSantis in Florida? It's anybody's guess; it looks like Newsom, having handily defeated a recall attempt last year, has frightened away any serious Republican contenders in this year's regular election for California governor and is off doing whatever, since he isn't running in Florida. Here's one take:

It is indeed a case of Newsom waging culture war on DeSantis’s home turf, the “free state of Florida,” by claiming the mantle of freedom for the progressive policy agenda. And its intended audience is very much not DeSantis or Republicans or even Floridians. Its intended audience is Democratic voters nationwide who feel demoralized by a leadership vacuum that’s metastasized into a crisis.

Newsom is making his pitch to those voters in [the Florida TV] spot. “I’m a proud, unapologetic liberal. Not only will I not back down, I’ll take the fight to the right’s new culture-war golden boy in his own state.”

The problem is that whatever the DeSantis spin, Trump still leads him in 2024 polling despite the January 6 committee hearings. So as of now, Newsom is campaigning against a runner-up, and if he were to try to take on Trump himself, it would be risible. Why is he doing this? The opinion piece continues,

I don’t think he can win a national election. But a Democratic presidential primary? I wouldn’t count him out.

Whatever else one might say about Newsom, he’s a polished messenger. His prime competition for the 2024 nomination if Biden doesn’t run is [not Kamala Harris}.

“She seems completely useless. No one involved in this administration should be in the running,” said one Democratic donor to the New York Post about the prospect of Harris 2024. A Dem staffer on the Hill told the paper that she’s a bad administrator too, which explains the heavy turnover among her staff. Quote: “I just don’t think people are seeing her as a serous contender. If she weren’t the vice president she wouldn’t even [be] ON the list.”

The writer, Allahpundit, a confirmed never Trumper, concludes,

DeSantis versus Newsom is the only plausible option America has for a 2024 election that’s energetic and entertaining rather than dispiriting and frightening. Here’s hoping!

But wait a moment. The whole 2020 campaign was rigged: it was basically set up as Biden versus a bunch of losers preprogrammed to award him the Democrat nomination. Then Biden was spun as some sort of moderate, sane, adult not-Trump who'd "bring America back" and "build back better", which turned out to be a complete fabrication enabled by the media and the commentariat, and the country has been going through a morning after ever since.

I think that in effect, Newsom is aiming at a 2020 replay, in which he convinces the lizard people early on that he's the logical choice, he wins the Democrat primaries in a rigged charade a la Biden 2020, and then he goes on to win the general in a "steal" also a la 2020, which may not be actual in terms of vote count, but in terms of manipulated opinion and general mendacity achieves the same result.

Newsom has been closely associated with the Pelosi family and other Democrat power players like the Pritzgers, and it seems possible that, with Biden faltering badly, he could present himself as an equivalent "sane", "adult", or "moderate" alternative to either Trump or DeSantis in 2024. But as of now, Newsom is nowhere on CNN's Top 20 list above, while DeSantis is just behind Hillary Clinton. And it's worth recognizing that Newsom versus anyone else would be a campaign that would effectively be a rerun of 2020 and an attempt to repair its current perceived illegitimacy, even though it was a theoretical success.

The problem, in other words, is that Trump won't go away, and even if he doesn't run, 2024 right now looks like it will be waged on the issues he raised in 2016 and 2020. And people right now miss him.

Is Hunter His Dad's Chief Adviser?

Over the weekend, I've kept thinking about David Axelrod's recent remarks, "I mean this is the lot that Biden finds himself in. There is this sense that things are kind of out of control and he’s not in command."

My view continues to be that it isn't a medical condition that's the problem; the problem is that the big guy is dumb as a rock, an airhead, and lazy on top of it, and he's been able to power glide through things up to now, more or less. The clip above reflects this -- he starts off with a self-satisfied smirk and an offhand wave, and then he glibly says, "Hi, everyone! Thanks for doin' this. . . Thanks!" At that point, he really seems to believe that was all he needed to do, and he begins to fumble when it dawns on him that there was more he was expected to say.

Note that he's aware of his environment -- he knows he's at a political function, although he clearly doesn't think he needs to know which one it is (is this Cleveland or St Louis?). He then turns to his handlers, knowing they're handlers, and simply asks them what to do. He isn't hallucinating or talking to people who aren't there. This isn't dementia. This is just a guy who's walked around the house naked all his life and knows everyone else is used to it and just deals with it.

The problem for the rest of us is that at least some of the adults in the room are beginning to see what's going in, viz, there's no there there. Thus Axelrod's note that things are out of control, although every indication is that Axelrod and Obama were fully aware of who Joe Biden was from the start. He's trying to feign innocence here, but it's not going to work.

In the same news cycle, we have Hunter Biden’s laptop had contacts for Google execs, US officials for China policy in the New York Post:

Hunter Biden’s hard drive contained an enviable lineup of contacts for top US officials tasked with overseeing the US-China relationship, and at least 10 senior Google executives — raising new questions about the extent to which Joe Biden’s well-connected son could have leveraged his connections for personal profit, The Post has learned.

. . . As for the Google braintrust, one former exec there told The Post that Hunter Biden sought the tech giant’s cash for Chinese ventures, and that several of the company’s bigwigs wound up working for the Obama-Biden administration

The Post then dialed the phone numbers listed for the contacts, and they seem to have reached either answering machines for the individuals, or some actually picked up the phone.

As for Google, Kenneth Davies, who worked with the $1.7 trillion company’s philanthropic and venture capital arms between 2008 and 2012, said he remembered Hunter Biden coming to the company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to pitch Googlers on investments abroad. Davies was one of the 10 Google executives found in the laptop.

“He was pitching some crazy things like some Chinese stuff. … We kind of looked at it and I kinda scoffed at it,” Davies, 42, told The Post. “He certainly did not know what he was talking about as it relates to energy. It was very much ‘I am Hunter Biden — look at the last name. Rosemont Seneca. We are brokering deals.’ He certainly did not have subject matter expertise about what he was trying to pitch.”

Rosemont Seneca was an investment firm founded in June 2019 by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz, the ketchup fortune heir and stepson of John Kerry. Eric Schwerin was later named its president. The fund aggressively pursued deals in Russia, Romania, Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

It's worth noting that in Hunter's timeline, June 2019 would be soon after his marriage to Melissa Cohen at the end of his long cocaine binge that started the prior year. That must have been quite a meeting -- but he was able to call a meeting, and Google executives did show up. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to do the same.

The contacts on his phone list represent figures with whom he and his father had been dealing over a ten-year period almost from the start of Joe's term as vice president in 2009. Many went on to get posts in the Obama-Biden administration, and as the June 2019 Google meeting indicates, the Bidens continued to deal with them after Joe left the vice presidency and was ramping up his campaign for 2020.

For me, this raises the question not just of who's calling the shots for Joe -- David Axelrod pretends he doesn't know -- but whether the actual chief adviser is Hunter. I've already said it could well be Hunter, and I've referred to other material from the laptop, like a recordinig of a phone conversation:

"He'll talk about anything that I want him to, that he believes in," Biden said in reference to his father, Joe Biden, in the Dec. 3, 2018, recording. "If I say it's important to me, then he will work a way in which to make it a part of his platform. My dad respects me more than he respects anyone in the world, and I know that to be certain, so it’s not going to be about whether it affects his politics.”

And this brings me back to that strange compound in the Malibu hills with a Secret Service rental next to Hunter's heavily guarded residence, both of which adjoin a luxury rehab facility across a private street. How often do Hunter and his Dad converse? What's the deal with that whole thing? Is Hunter allowed out at all, or just with a couple of minders, or what? Is it no hookers at all, or just approved ones? How does he get his drugs?

At some point, this has to come out, and it sounds like even the lizard people are starting to get fed up.

California Tries To Reboot Indoor Masking, Fails

In the New York Times this past Monday:

Less than a month after instituting a mask mandate for most indoor settings, health officials for Alameda County, the San Francisco Bay Area’s second-most populous county, lifted the order, citing improving conditions in a news release.

Mask requirements were reinstated earlier this month for restaurants, bars and offices and other places, in response to increased hospitalizations and new coronavirus cases across the county, which had exceeded last summer’s Delta variant wave.

The order was lifted Saturday after Alameda County, home to Oakland and 1.6 million people in the eastern Bay Area, moved from high risk to moderate risk for community transmission on Thursday, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

Los Angeles County, which must have been humiliated to be beaten to the punch by Alameda up north, had nevertheless threatened to do the same:

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Mandatory indoor mask-wearing could return to Los Angeles County in a matter of weeks, possibly by the end of June, absent a downturn in the rate of new COVID-19 cases and virus-related hospitalizations, the county's public health director said Thursday.

Los Angeles County is currently listed in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "medium" virus-activity category, based on its cumulative seven-day rate of new cases. But the county will move into the "high" category if its average daily rate of new COVID-related hospital admissions rises above 10 per 100,000 residents, or if the percentage of staffed hospital beds occupied by COVID-positive patients tops 10%.

. . . She applauded the step taken by Alameda County in Northern California, where an indoor mask mandate will take effect again on Friday. And she pointed to a pair of recent studies that suggested mask-wearing has a notable impact on reducing spread of the virus.

However, we managed to make it through June without the mandate being reimposed down here. A San Francisco news site, SFGATE, points out:

In early June, during an uptick in COVID-19 cases, Alameda County was the only Bay Area county to bring back an indoor mask mandate.

At the time, county Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss said, “Putting our masks back on gives us the best opportunity to limit the impact of a prolonged wave on our communities.”

But regional case data provides no discernible evidence that the rule, which was lifted June 25, succeeded at that goal.

. . . San Francisco and Santa Clara had higher case rates than Alameda County throughout the current surge, including pre-mask mandate. Once the mandate was introduced, the three counties all followed the same trend line, casting doubt on whether the mask mandate did anything to curb transmission at the community level.

It contacted Dr Moss for commeent, who replied,

“We believe the recent mask order contributed to the improvements we are now observing with COVID-19 in Alameda County,” Moss said in a statement. “Conditions are more stable now than at the time the Order was put in place.”

I think this points out that by and large, the world is done with COVID, and attempts to reboot the panic aren't going to work, even in the bluest of blue cities. The red light-green light approach is annoying and disruptive, and it erodes health officials' credibility. But it's indicative of where we are that President Biden is clearly on board with finding a new pandemic:

But we don’t just need more money for vaccines for children, eventually; we need more money to plan for the second pandemic.

There’s going to be another pandemic. We have to think ahead. And that’s not something the last outfit did very well. That’s something we’ve been doing fairly well. That’s why we need the money.

He can't wait.

But What's The End State?

Yesterday, President Biden gave a press conference at the end of the NATO summit in Madrid where he outlined the Western position on the Ukraine war. There was quite a bit of preening and bloviation, but he did announce a few details of where things might be headed:

Secretary Austin just brought together more than 50 countries — more than 50 countries — pledging new commitments, and this is a global effort to support Ukraine: nearly 140,000 anti-tank systems, more than 600 tanks, nearly 500 artillery systems, more than 600,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, as well as advanced multiple launch rocket systems, anti-ship systems, and air defense systems.

And again, the United States is leading the way. We provided Ukraine with nearly $7 billion in security assistance since I took office. In the next few days, we intend to announce more than $800 million more, including a new advanced Western air defense system for Ukraine, more artillery and ammunition, counter-battery radars, additional ammunition for the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system we’ve already given Ukraine and more HIMARS coming from other countries as well.

But in response to a question later in the press conference, there was little concrete:

But my second question is: G7 leaders this week pledged to support Ukraine, quote, “for as long as it takes.” And I’m wondering if you would explain what that means to the American people — “for as long as it takes.” Does it mean indefinite support from the United States for Ukraine? Or will there come a time when you have to say to President Zelenskyy that the United States cannot support his country any longer? Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes.

I see a big difference between the high-level conduct of the Western powers in the Ukraine conflict and equivalent conferences during and after World War II. Take the 1943 Casablanca Conference, whose major figures appear at the top of this post.

The conference produced a unified statement of purpose, the Casablanca Declaration. It announced to the world that the Allies would accept nothing less than the "unconditional surrender" of the Axis powers. Roosevelt had borrowed the term from US Army General Ulysses S. Grant (known as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant), who had communicated that stance to the Confederate States Army commander during the American Civil War. So Roosevelt stated at the concluding press conference on 24 January that the Allies were demanding "unconditional surrender" from the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese.

In a February 12, 1943 radio address, Roosevelt explained what he meant by unconditional surrender: "we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution upon their guilty, barbaric leaders".

Biden's remarks, on the other hand, say simply that we're going to spend a lot of money for "as long as it takes". As long as it takes for what? Roosevelt articulated a clear war aim that was accomplished by August 1945 and followed by near-immediate demobilization. Subsequent conferences at Yalta and Potsdam articulated a relatively clear end state for the disposition of German territory and spheres of influence in postwar Europe.

Right now we're still lacking a war aim -- cease fire in place? Russian retreat to 2014 borders? The 1991 borders? Some other disposition? It's fairly plain that none of the previous Minsk agreements that tried to establish a stable separation of Ukraine and Belarus from Russia worked, so a war aim that tries to reestablish any of those won't solve the underlying problem. An unspoken war aim for the Allies in World War II was an end state that rendered Germany and Japan militarily innocuous, and this was effectively achieved in Yalta and Potsdam, especially with the partition of Germany.

We're seeing nothing like this so far with Ukraine, even though a realistic solution to the problem will almost certainly require an equivalent partition of Russia according to new spheres of influence that prevents Russia from building alliances of former constituent states big enough to move against others.

One problem is that President Biden is at best bought, with his domestic and foreign policy positions essentially discrete and controlled by separate factions in thrall to separate puppeteers. Thus his social policies are dominated by the transsexual lobby, his energy policies dominated by extreme environmentalists, and his foreign and military policies are dominated by -- whom?

I recently read that one major factor dominating the Russian agenda, such as it is, is a rapidly declining birth rate. A weakening Russia is clearly a destabilizing factor. I'm in favor of any policy that aims for world stability by rendering Russia militarily innocuous, but it has to be done in a way that restores stability, and this will require a level of both transparency and foresight that we saw in figures like Roosevelt and Churchill but have yet to see now. At minimum, someone needs to bring China and potentially Japan into the discussion with incentives to create a stable postwar balance of power.

And that goes for the Republican front runners for 2024, who need to start articulating the sort of coherent policy goals for Ukraine and Russia that we aren't yet hearing from anyone.

Why Is Everyone So Upset?

In the Washington Examiner yesterday:

Also distressing to hear were Hutchinson’s accounts of Trump’s repeated fits of rage, including dining table contents overturned and ketchup dishes thrown violently across the room. The worst by far, though, was that people immediately returning from being with Trump in the presidential vehicle told of the president trying to grab the wheel of the car to force it to be driven to the Capitol and then violently reaching for the neck of Secret Service agent Bobby Engel, who headed the president’s protective detail.

Hutchinson’s testimony confirmed a damning portrayal of Trump as unstable, unmoored, and absolutely heedless of his sworn duty to effectuate a peaceful transition of presidential power. Considering the entirety of her testimony, it is unsurprising that Hutchinson said she heard serious discussions of Cabinet members invoking the 25th Amendment that would have at least temporarily evicted Trump from office.

Trump is a disgrace. Republicans have far better options to lead the party in 2024. No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again.

David French -- recall that he mulled running against Trump in the 2016 primaries but wussed out at the last minute -- had this to say about the Hutchinson testimony:

Yes, Trump urged the mob to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol, but he also said they should “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard. That caveat was likely enough to spare him from prosecution.

That was yesterday’s analysis. Today’s is different. Because of a courageous woman named Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Mark Meadows.

Earlier this afternoon she gave the most extraordinary congressional testimony I’ve ever seen. She testified that the president was so committed to walking to the Capitol with his own supporters that he allegedly tried to grab the wheel of his Secret Service vehicle. She painted the picture of a president utterly out of control, a man so committed to preserving his own power that he approved of the riot and believed that Mike Pence deserved to face mob justice.

The big thing that strikes me here is that, as I've been saying, we're in the morning after phase of the 2020 moral panic. The problem is that David French and the Washington Examiner are still in 2016. Trump is out of office and 2022 is two years away, but the never Trumpers are relitigating the guy's fitness for office as though his actual term in the White House never took place -- and their problem is that so far, the polls suggest he's a contender in the next presidential election.

In fact, the consensus in the wake of the Dobbs decision is that, by nominating three justices who didn't prove to be squishes, Trump was the guy who solved Roe. So days later, the never Trumpers have decided he's unfit for office? Didn't he just accomplish what even the never Trumpers themselves thought might never be done? I've got to think the context here is important.

In fact, the anger from the sidelines tells me something about the nervousness among the gentry class ever since 2016. Across the spectrum, the respectable "conservative" commentariat, from George Will and David Brooks to John Podheretz and David French, sensed the rising power of the uncredentialed plebs who voted Trump into office despite their best efforts and now threaten to do it again.

I think it was the foreshocks of Dobbs that drove the great uncertainties that led to the 2020 media-driven dual panic over COVID and BLM, even though Dobbs will have little actual impact on who opts for abortion, especially in the blue states where complaints about the decision are strongest.

Another symptom in the news is the accelerating speculation about who'll run for president in 2024. So far, just in the past several days, we have Gavin Newsom taking out ads against Ron DeSantis in Florida, even though he's on the ballot in California, as best anyone can tell in order to raise his visibility for 2024. In the Washington Post, Youngkin meets with megadonors amid hints he’s mulling White House bid, while in the National Review, Kamala Harris Backtracks after Guaranteeing Biden Will Run in 2024.

Doesn't this simply acknowledge the continuing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the 2020 election, that everyone should be jockeying for position so quickly in an atmosphere where almost nobody thinks the president we have is quite up to the job? That in itself, of course, simply reinforces Trump's continued standing and stokes the rage of the people who never liked him in the first place.

As I've been saying, moral panics are thought to reflect widespread uncertainty about social change. That change has been more visible this year -- for instance, the visible decline of Russia and its role in a world balance of power, as well as the collapse of the Nixon-era social compromises that included Roe v Wade, decided in 1973. Here's a pertinent comment at Slate:

Internal critics of the Democratic Party often say that its current leaders—who are for the most part in their 80s—believe too strongly in the value of political comity and the potential for bipartisan consensus. Tactically, strategically, and emotionally, this argument goes, Democrats have failed to realize that appeals to shared values and common purpose are no longer the most effective way to achieve tangible legislative results in the United States’ political system.

The old Nixon-era cliches that supported Earth Day (1970) and programs like affirmative action (Nixon executive order in 1969) were meant to paper over the issues that led to student protests and race riots in the 1960s. They've lost their effectiveness, though this raises the question of how effective they ever actually were.

At minimum, we can't go back to those days. As even Slate recognizes, the chief advocates and beneficiaries of doing that are in a fading generation. Trump was in many ways an opportunist who simply read the public mood, and the public mood isn't going to change.