Divide Between the Elites and Real America Growing, As American Economy Continues to Deteriorate

by Newt Gingrich

In an era when entire battles of presidential campaigns play out on Twitter, perhaps it’s appropriate that the liberal agenda can increasingly be reduced to a single hashtag: #FirstWorldProblems.

First World Problems, for those untutored in the lingo of social media, is the term for those times when the airport’s internet connection is too slow, when your satellite television is out, or when the fancy restaurant you’re eating at forgets to hold the olives on your salad.

Labeling something a First World Problem usually signals a certain self-awareness—an acknowledgement that there’s a difference between the real problems of life and the affliction you’ve taken to social media to complain about.

Today’s liberal elites, comfortable in the commanding heights of the universities, the bureaucracies, the media companies, and the coastal enclaves where they reside, practice a politics of First World Problems. But they do it without the self-awareness of the hashtaggers, and instead with a great deal of self-righteousness.

Far from acknowledging that their grievances are small in the grand scheme of things, liberals frequently describe their First World Problems as the great challenges of our time. And often, this moral self-indulgence comes at the expense of political and news media focus on Real World Problems—the real problems many Americans face in their daily lives.

For instance: despite our status as a developed country, many of our schools are destroying the opportunity to pursue happiness for generations of Americans. In Detroit, 96 percent of eighth graders are not proficient in math. Ninety-three percent are not proficient in reading. In Baltimore, 91 percent of the students fail the math exam. In Chicago, 77 percent of students fall below standards in achievement. In 17 of our 50 largest cities, fewer than half of all students graduate from high school.

And yet, what issue of injustice in schools has focused the attention, passion, and power of the liberal elites? Guaranteeing every child the right to use the bathroom of his or her (zis or xyr) choosing.

In May, the Obama administration ordered public schools nationwide to open their bathrooms and locker rooms to transgendered students of the opposite sex. The administration carefully constructed the rules to prevent schools from creating special “gender-neutral” bathrooms to accommodate transgender students. Instead, the administration insists that transgendered students must be allowed to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex—and if any of their peers are uncomfortable, they must request an accommodation.

It’s not that the liberal elites don’t care about the 93 percent of eighth graders in Detroit who aren’t proficient in reading. It’s just that they care a lot more actively, and get a lot more upset, and spend a lot more political and media resources over the case of the transgendered student who’s asked to use a gender-neutral bathroom. That’s the politics of First World Problems.

There’s no shortage of other examples.

For instance, in President Obama’s hometown of Chicago, 69 people were shot over Memorial Day weekend, including at least six fatally. Homicides and shootings in the city are both up more than 60 percent this year. President Obama, however, kicked off his own Memorial Day weekend reflecting on war and peace and the ironies of humanity in Hiroshima, Japan, where he called for a nuclear-free world. It’s not he doesn’t care about the murders in Chicago. It’s just that he has the luxury to focus on grander things.

Or consider California, where the Delta Smelt, a 2-inch, endangered fish in the Central Valley, turns out to be very important to the left. The livelihoods of thousands of California farm workers, who the Fish and Wildlife Service wants to restrict out of work, don’t get so much consideration. The environmental left knows about them. They’re just a lot more focused on the trials of a little fish. “Fish, yes; normal people, no” is a San Francisco upper-class elite attitude.

There are still more examples, from free birth control to oil divestment, microaggressions and gun show loopholes.

But most share one characteristic, which explains their evolution from complaints to political causes. To the left, these First World Problems have dramatic weight: they connote some symbolic, metaphorical, or allegorical value. They’re literary struggles, as opposed to the kind faced by millions of Americans—literal struggles, like getting a job, finding a good school for our children, or living in a safe community.

How nice for the liberal elites that they have the luxury of First World Problems. If only they’d leave the job of governing to people more focused on Real World Problems, perhaps there’d be no problem at all.

Vote for Hillary or Else

Global Trumpophobia

Srdja Trifkovic | May 27, 2016
At a press conference at the G-7 summit in Japan on May 26, President Barack Obama declared that world leaders are “rattled” by Donald Trump, “and for good reason. Because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe.”
This statement is remarkable not only for its eccentric syntax and convoluted logic. Obama assumes that 226 million Americans eligible to vote this year should take note of the fact that his G-7 colleagues—Messrs. Hollande, Trudeau, Abe et al—are unnerved, shocked, or put off by the Republican candidate, and that this should influence their decision next November. It should not: the election is an American affair, and it is offensive to suggest otherwise. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1980 could have made the same argument, yet for all their faults they sensed how impertinent it would have been to do so . . . but those were different times.
Obama’s statement is additionally irritating in view of the fact that three of his eight fellow-summiteers are unelected. Socialist Matteo Renzi is the third successive prime minister of Italy to be appointed through backroom deals in the country’s parliament; the last real “leader” to be elected to that post was Silvio Berlusconi, back in 2008. Luxemburger Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, was nominated by the European Council in 2014 and duly confirmed by the “European Parliament,” an institution chronically devoid of democratic legitimacy. In that same year, former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk was appointed president of the European Council by the Council itself. All three belong to the postnational, globalist elite class, so it is normal that they support Hillary Clinton. It is equally unsurprising that Obama cherishes their opinions. It is scandalous, however, that he expects to cajole American voters into taking those opinions to heart when deciding on who should be their next chief executive. Does Obama seriously expect us to assume that his fellow-“world leaders” are “actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe”?
Had it been up to the G-7 types, John Kerry would have been elected president in 2004. More significantly, during the 1980 campaign Ronald Reagan was viewed with much suspicion by the “world leaders,” to put it mildly. With the exception of Margaret Thatcher, our European allies regarded him as a dangerous, trigger-happy populist who could drag the world into World War III. They were horrified by his description of the USSR as an “evil empire” and his refusal to parrot the platitudes of détente and peaceful coexistence. The rest is history.
Three and a half decades later, one of the most rabidly anti-Trump organs of the Establishment is the Washington Post. It is an even bet that in the next day or two its editorialists will treat the world leaders’ alarm about Trump with grave concern. Let us recall that, exactly one year after Reagan’s first inauguration, the Post asserted that European nations “no longer trust our judgment and good sense . . . and they are alarmed by the Reagan administration’s compulsive flow of tough talk”:

Thus, more and more Europeans are asking: can the current administration—or indeed any administration chosen under our prevailing electoral system—ever again develop an informed and sophisticated strategy—what lawyers call “a theory of the case”? Or will America continue to flail about until it precipitates ultimate disaster? . . . Flawed as it was, détente was intellectually and emotionally satisfying: it acknowledged the existence of diversity in Soviet politics and rejected the banal hypothesis of a rigid ideologically driven adversary immune from internal conflicts and unresponsive to world opinion. If many Europeans now regard American policy as erratic and unpredictable, they are right . . . 

Trump’s “America first” is today’s equivalent of rejecting détente in 1980. The global context is different, but he shares with Reagan an abiding antipathy to the establishment’s cock-sure arrogance and moral absolutism. He, too, presents a challenge to the elite world outlook, to the intellectual and emotional satisfaction the global elite class derives from living in an abnormal world. Depriving them of that morbid satisfaction is in itself enough to hope for Trump’s victory.

New Law Attempting to Ban Draft of US Women Might Cause Opposite

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2016/June/40/6/magazine/article/10833432/


Well, shootfire: That didn’t work.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is against requiring women to register for Selective Service in our Brave New Military.  Accordingly, he proposed an amendment to the 2017 defense-spending bill that accomplishes the opposite of what he believes.

The idea, Hunter claimed, was that he didn’t want the executive branch to decide this apart from a congressional vote.  But the whole maneuver blew up in his face like an IED.  In the end, the House Armed Services Committee adopted the amendment, then passed the entire spending bill.  It was a contentious vote on the amendment, to be sure, but ultimately five members from the Grand Old Patriarchs “crossed over” to ensure its passage.

Before I continue, let me put this into a broader political context: Even Paul Ryan (as of 3:46 p.m., Tuesday, May 3) thinks this is too much too soon.  Paul Ryan, folks.

Hunter’s strategy in debating this topic is typical of social conservatives, demonstrating their inability to understand how to make an effective argument (or, alternatively, when not to make one at all).  As per usual, something is naively assumed about the subject of the minor premise.  All war is hell; women should be protected from hell; therefore, women should not be sent to war.

I will note in passing that this is not actually an argument against forcing women to register with Selective Service, but one against permitting women to be in combat—and that unsinkable luxury liner has already sailed.

Hunter, himself a veteran, showed graphic images of combat maimings and killings to the committee: “The draft is there to get more people to rip the enemies’ throats out and kill them,” he said.
How did he assume that this would be interpreted?  That women should not be permitted to be in the military, where they may be asked to rip out the throats of our enemies?

On what basis?

The conservative answer would be “because they are women,” and believe it or not, that still resonates with a fair number of people—fathers of daughters, in particular—because it has the advantage of being true.  But any man who says such a thing must then be prepared to be excoriated by Megyn Kelly and the other feminists at FOX News, to say nothing of the rest of the media.

Instead, the most quoted response came from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), who reminded us that the chief end of the military is not to win battles but to promote social justice within the military itself, which will obviously shine as a beacon of hope across the universe: “I actually think if we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, we should be willing to support a universal conscription.”

If we truly want those things, why are there no Transgendered Five-Star Generals already?  What, you say, that is ridiculous!  Yes, I respond, that is ridiculous.

[Slideshow image credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Anastasia Puscian [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]