There’s a word that seems to encompass what our ruling elite and the party they congregate around — that’s the Democrat Party, in case you’re a little slow — have in the way of an attitude toward the rest of us.
Contempt.
We’ve seen this for a long time. Eight years ago, when the Democrats made a transition from the charismatic (but certainly not friendly) Barack Obama to the anti-charismatic Hillary Clinton, even the most obtuse observer could see how nasty the Democrats had become.
Clinton was so repellent that the public decided they’d rather give the “You’re Fired!” guy from The Apprentice a shot at being president than to let her break the “glass ceiling” she ran her mouth so often about.
Or maybe a sufficient number of us recognized that Clinton breaking that “glass ceiling” and becoming the first bitter socialist female president would have the effect of raining injurious shards down on us. That’s perhaps a subject to be ruminated upon in the comments.
But when Clinton lost, the Democrats and their coalition of entitled elitists gave up on the idea that they’d be romancing the American people. Instead, that velvet glove has come off the iron fist.
So you had the slow-motion coup d’etat against Donald Trump that was the Russia hoax and Ukraine impeachment and COVID lockdown sabotage and Hunter Biden laptop fraud, and then you had the weaponization of the Jan. 6 protest, complete with ringing the U.S. Capitol, the People’s House, with razor wire.
And it’s only gotten worse from there.
1. The Helene Response Is Not Incompetence. It’s Something Worse.
You’ve doubtless heard the stories by now, thanks to Elon Musk’s opening of X into an uncensored medium of information exchange, of the heroic work by volunteers in rescuing survivors of Hurricane Helene in Georgia, Tennessee, and especially North Carolina. In those mountain towns and villages, where some 30 inches of rain fell in a mere three days, the mudslides and raging floodwaters scoured out whole towns and left few structures standing. Communications — whether physical, as roads and bridges were washed out by the floods, or electronic — were cut off. And thousands and thousands of people lost everything they had.
A hurricane that carries a great deal of its landing strength into a mountainous area is a lot more dangerous thing than people give it credit for. Storm clouds like those a hurricane carries passing through high-elevation land masses are almost like wet sponges getting squeezed; rain will pour out of them in a hemorrhage. Worse, that rain might fall chiefly on the mountains and hills, but it’s going to run downhill into the valleys.
And the valleys are where the towns are.
You wouldn’t think that living someplace like Boone or Montreat, this would be a life-threatening phenomenon. After all, you’re living in the mountains. You’re up high; you’re not going to flood.
But you aren’t up high. You’re actually down low.
The point being that our federal government, which is running a $2 trillion dollar deficit because the people running that government hate America and earnestly wish to bankrupt us (you don’t run a $2 trillion deficit if you love your country, sorry), had ample resources and should have had more than enough preparation that when Helene did its worst in western North Carolina, it could have rushed in to provide effective, efficient leadership in getting as many people evacuated as needed it and rushing in supplies to those who needed them.
Is that what happened? No.
In fact, we now have lots of examples of the government getting in the way of volunteers who pitched in to help the afflicted.
Including the so-called president, who waited several days to make a visit, of sorts, to the area:
Joe Biden flew in Marine One above North Carolina to tour the storm damage but did not meet or interact with the victims on the ground
He later attended an operation briefing at Raleigh Emergency Operations Center pic.twitter.com/cIcFsYJMwe
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 2, 2024
Did that help? Well, not really:
Having talked with locals and volunteers in North Carolina: Despite Biden saying his visit to the area would not affect rescue/aid operations, his visit halted/delayed operations because of the no-fly zone.
That was a problem because many communities can only be accessed by air.
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 2, 2024
I can personally confirm Biden’s visit delayed operations because the helo team I’m with had to sit outside the TFR for two hours after doing a supply run. We’re about to be in the air again for another supply drop.
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) October 2, 2024
I could deluge our readers with anecdotal evidence that the federal government’s response to Helene has been more harmful than helpful. I doubt many of you would be surprised.
Nor would you be surprised by this:
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has warned that FEMA “does not have the funds to make it through [hurricane] season” as it continues to respond to natural disasters. Donald Trump Jr. blasted the Biden administration in response, criticizing it for diverting nearly $1 billion in FEMA funds to shelter illegal immigrants, arguing the money should have been allocated for disaster relief efforts.
Key Details:
Mayorkas, during a press briefing on Wednesday, stated that FEMA “does not have the funds to make it through the season” as the agency grapples with ongoing disaster recovery from Hurricane Helene.
Trump Jr. accused the Biden administration of depleting FEMA’s emergency response funds by funneling nearly $1 billion into the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which supports illegal immigrants.
Critics, including Trump Jr., argue that the diverted funds could have been better used for disaster relief, particularly as FEMA faces a shortfall during an intense hurricane season.
Ahhh, so is that why the Helene response is so pathetic? FEMA is now a resettlement agency for illegal migrants?
You’re certainly entitled to despise these people with every cell in your body. That’s how they feel about you, after all.
2. Speaking of Those You Can Despise If You Want…
The death toll from Helene climbed above 200 on Wednesday, and it’s likely to be many times that before it’s all said and done, and dozens if not hundreds of communities from Florida to West Virginia have been wrecked.
And of course the federal response is a mess. Remember when the poor federal response to a hurricane was a scandal the media laid at the feet of a president? Good times.
Except for some reason that’s not really what we’re seeing now.
What was the top headline at the Washington Post‘s website Thursday afternoon as the Southeast dug out from the humanitarian nightmare that was Helene? Well…
The making of an alleged school shooter: Missed warnings and years of neglect
OK, well, just below that, there had to be something more relevant, right? Well:
Trump made a telling comment before Jan. 6, and other takeaways from Jack Smith’s big new filing
Scroll down the page from that, and you find an article about uninsured homes in Helene’s path that were damaged or destroyed. So the Post did actually notice the most important domestic news story in America, after all.
The New York Times? Well:
An Exodus of Agents Left the Secret Service Unprepared for 2024
Hmmm. Next to that is:
Seeking Some (Relative) Peace and Quiet in Brooklyn for Less Than $800,000
You have to scroll a bit until you find the Helene coverage, and when you do, you get this:
Aid Is Slow to Reach Some Latino Areas in Storm-Hit North Carolina
And…
As Buck Sexton said on the nationally syndicated radio show he shares with Clay Travis Thursday, no matter how much you hate the mainstream media in this country, it isn’t enough.
Because it certainly isn’t as much as they hate you.
3. And Again on Those Who Despise…
The Left did not take well to JD Vance’s colossal ass-kicking of Tim Walz in Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate. Many of them became quite morose.
Others, including many members of a particular demographic which seems to be very influential within the ruling elite in this country, had this sort of reaction…
JD Vance talking over the female moderators. We women have all been there. Overtalked by an entitled mansplainer.
— Amy Diehl, Ph.D. (@amydiehl) October 2, 2024
Amy Diehl isn’t somebody you’re obligated to know anything about. She’s an “expert” on “gender bias” who gets paid to tell organizations how much they’re oppressing women.
In other words, she’s a professional b***h, in every sense of the word you want to interpret it.
So of course this is the trash she’ll offer up when Vance steamrolls a pair of female moderators who break their own rules attempting to rig a presidential debate.
The thing is, Diehl wasn’t alone. I could dredge up dozens of similar meltdowns by people who fit her profile during and after the debate.
There is a problem we’ve got to deal with in our culture at some point soon. We need to decide whether adult women should be treated as adults, meaning we expect them to react rationally and with accountability, civility, and logic in contentious or adversarial situations, or if they’re wilting flowers who must be placed within styrofoam bubbles and treated like children because, in our expectation, to treat them any other way invites emotional meltdowns.
The answer to that binary is obvious, from the standpoint both of equality and function. Adult women are capable of acting with composure and rationality in high-leverage situations, and actually, most can and do.
But when you professionalize mental instability as in the case of Amy Diehl and many others like her, you come to a point where you break the consensus for the former approach.
This applies to Kamala Harris as well, of course. Were she a man, Harris would have become a figure of ridicule long ago for her utter inability to say or do anything recognizable as professional or competent. But because she’s female, they call it “joy” and her paper-thin-shallow approach to everything she touches is “fresh” and “new.”
Accept this at your peril. You do not want to be governed by the Amy Diehls of the world.
4. Doug Emhoff Redefines Masculinity, All Right
One of the funniest things about the current presidential campaign has been the Democrats’ attempts to resolve the significant gender gap Harris has built, a gap that is melting out sizable chunks of her base, particularly among Latinos and blacks, by presenting the men around her as the new wave of masculinity.
They tried that with Walz, and it hasn’t worn all that well. After Tuesday, it’s pretty much a disaster.
But Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, the second gentleman, is even more beta-male than Walz is. The Democrats decided to present this as an opportunity rather than a weakness. For a month or more, they’ve been touting Emhoff as the avatar of a “redefined” masculinity that is “non-toxic” and more sensitive.
Yeah, about that:
Kamala Harris’s husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, is credibly accused of physically assaulting a woman in 2012.
Three friends of the alleged victim, whom the Daily Mail only identifies with the pseudonym “Jane,” have come forward alleging Emhoff “struck the woman in the face so hard she spun around.” According to the report, Jane and Emhoff, who would’ve been 47 years old at the time, were “waiting in a valet line late at night after a May 2012 Cannes Film Festival event in France.”
According to one of Jane’s three friends, who have all chosen to remain anonymous fearing retaliation (we’ve all seen what the corporate media do to people who hurt the Democrat party politically), the assault allegedly happened at around 3 a.m. after they had both been drinking. There was a long line to get a taxi, so Jane “went up to one of the valet guys, offered him 100 Euros or whatever, to get to the head of the line.”
The friend says Jane “told me she put her hand on [the valet’s] shoulder. Doug apparently thought that she was flirting, and came over and slapped her in the face.”
She then slapped him back and broke up with him for good that night.
This friend says Jane called her from France that same night. “It was hard to hear her because she was sobbing. She told me she was with a guy and he hit her.”
Emhoff, we already know, blew up his first marriage by having an affair with his kids’ nanny and getting her pregnant.
Either way, what we know about Doug Emhoff is that nobody would look at him as a superior masculine figure. To everyone but those invested in him for political reasons, he’s quite inferior, indeed.
And when the Jen Psakis of the world continue to hold him out as some sort of male role model, it comes back to the same old thing:
Contempt.
Megyn Kelly:
5. Your Weekend Reading Assignment: From Hellmarsh With Love
I’ve been told that I’m not doing enough to promote the new novel we’re serializing here at The American Spectator on the weekends, so I’ll use this last 5QT thing for that purpose.
Have you been reading From Hellmarsh With Love? There are four installments of the eight already posted at the site, with the fifth about to land tomorrow.
If you haven’t been following it, here’s a quick synopsis: From Hellmarsh With Love is the sequel to King of the Jungle, which was the first novel in the current series and which came out earlier this year. It picks up after King of the Jungle, in which the protagonist, independent podcaster and journalist extraordinaire Mike Holman, is lately married and embarks on a honeymoon to London just in time for the U.K. to fall into unrest over immigration, crime, and a new government that doesn’t seem to like its citizenry any more than the Biden–Harris regime likes us here in America.
Holman has no initial interest in working during his honeymoon, but his new wife, PJ, who’s the narrator of this story (yes, I’m writing this from a female perspective, and no, you may not make Melvin Udall jokes at me), convinces him to do interviews with various movers and shakers amid the British turmoil.
And that lands Holman in hot water with a government that has a sinister view of free speech and a very foreign concept of justice to that which the West is accustomed.
It’s every bit as brutally satirical as King of the Jungle, though with a little bit of polemicism in it that fits the subject matter. At least, I think so.
The early reviews have been pretty favorable. Check it out and let me know what you think.