River News: Our View

If readers have tuned in at all to the news this past month, they might be tempted to believe they had been whisked away for a little journey on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride: The ride has been certifiably wild — more than — and the surreal creatures we see before us must be the products of Disney.

Or maybe J.M. Barrie. Seriously, could anyone other than Barrie think up a president like Joe Biden, or a congresswoman like Rashida Tlaib? Or Liz Cheney? These people must surely come from NeverLand.

Move over Toad. Move over Peter Pan. The neocons and the Republicans and the Democrats are all here and dressed in their uniparty best, and we even have Daffy Duck (you know who).

Over in Congress, the Republicans can’t seem to settle on a Speaker of the House. The GOP can’t seem to find a peep of agreement about anything, while, on the Democratic side, nary a peep of dissent is ever heard about any narrative the anointed globalist leadership conjures up.

Debate and disagreement used to be considered a good thing in a democracy, even when it was bad politics, because there’s usually something rotten in the state of Denmark, or in Washington, when everyone is toeing the same line.

Is this a good time to point out that for almost the first time in our history, with the single exception of World War II, the U.S. is in a major war and there is absolutely no hint of an anti-war movement in the streets. No matter which side of the war you are on, this should make you worry: The lack of dissent and of vigorous protest is the hallmark of totalitarian regimes.

Establishment conservatives are especially upset about the congressional meltdown — how dare Matt Gaetz paralyze this august body of special interest panderers, especially when the pandering is for war — The Wall Street Journal even referred to the House mess as The Gaetz of Hell. Liz Cheney actually found a way to blame the mess in Congress on Trump because everyone knows he is responsible for everything bad. 

So this might also be a good time to point out that the lack of a speaker means Congress can’t get anything done, and when government can’t do anything, that’s generally a plus for individual Americans. For instance, the warmongers can’t funnels ever more billions of dollars to Ukraine.

On the other hand, it also means no new armaments for Israel to defend itself against immoral butcherers, so it’s complicated and confusing — and wild. Really wild.

Meanwhile at the White House, the president is backing Israel, thankfully, at least that’s what he is being told to do, to the chagrin of Tlaib, and he even went on TV — wonder of wonders — to tell us that the Ukraine War and the Israeli War against Hamas are really just one war.

And why is it just one war? Well, Biden told us, it’s because Russia and Hamas “both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” 

Poor Joe and that memory of his. He has not only forgotten about that Burisma kettle of fish he stewed himself into but also the part about where Ukraine is not a democracy. As others have pointed out, a 2021 Freedom House report noted that even before the war Ukraine was a “transitional or hybrid regime,” and since then there has been serious backsliding from even that — you know, nationalizing the media, banning opposition political parties, canceling elections. 

Around here, we call that The New York Times’s and The Washington Post’s definition of democracy.

Biden forgot, too, the part where the Ukraine war rolls on only because the United States keeps obscenely funding Ukraine and doesn’t desire peace negotiations, in other words, the war continues because the U.S. military-industrial complex uniparty wants it to.

Oh, and Biden also forgot another difference, the fact that, unlike in Ukraine, the Israeli declaration of war against Hamas has been undertaken to destroy a terrorist enemy whose mission it is to exterminate all Jews, and who acted just weeks ago in the name of that mission, demonstrating its evil essence.

And, finally, for those who think like Biden that it is all one war, Biden’s latest funding request proposed $61.4 billion for Ukraine but only $14.3 billion for Israel. So more or less one war — more for Ukraine and less for Israel. Perhaps we can call it a one-sided war? Let’s get real about where the Biden administration’s heart really is.

Well, we can sense that readers are confused — it’s just too much whirligig on the toad ride even for us — but don’t get off just yet. We have pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the streets all over the western world, and all sorts of student organizations embracing the slaughter of babies and other innocents. 

This is problematic, of course, but it is exactly what happens when you subsidize the indoctrination of our youth for decades in leftist incubators otherwise known as universities.

What’s also problematic is the number of conservatives calling for those voices to be silenced, both not only here at home but in the UK and across Europe. France banned pro-Palestinian protests. So did Germany.

In the UK, Daily Mail columnist Dan Hodges put it this way: “The right to protest must be safeguarded. But it’s clear that over the last two weekends London’s Jewish community has felt directly intimidated by the Gaza demonstrations. That’s it now. The point’s been made. There should be no further demos allowed for the foreseeable future.”

So if you make the other side feel uncomfortable, you have to call your protest off? We thought that was a point of protest — to make the other side uncomfortable, so surely that was a joke, a bad attempt to impersonate Justin Trudeau.

Here at home, CEOs were saying they would not hire students or others who embraced terrorism, and some rescinded job offers. Not that that is going to change the minds of the radicalized.

To be sure, CEOs have every right to hire who they want, and hiring terrorist fellow travelers who just one day might become full-fledged terrorists really doesn’t seem like a good idea. Does anyone really want to hire a fire-breathing graduate student who is yelling “Gas the Jews” in the streets? 

More problematic, though, are those conservatives advocating a ban on pro-Palestinian protests altogether, as well as those demanding social media censorship. Conservatives loved to make the point during Covid that free speech means allowing speech you hate, well, it’s come full circle and now is no time to turn a blind eye to the constitution.

Besides, everyone and their cousins have seen the inhuman attacks upon Israeli citizens. On YouTube, on Sky News, everywhere Hamas’s depravity has been on display. Anyone publicly embracing such evil is not making friends or winning converts; just the opposite. They are only making mainstream America realize what terrible educational mistakes we have made over the past two generations.

As always, the antidote to hateful speech is more speech, by directly confronting the garbage they are spewing.

Finally, to underscore just how wild this Toad Ride has been, we need to point out that Donald Trump’s name has all but fallen off the front pages. That’s wild but probably good for the Trumpster because now it’s Biden that is getting all that, ahem, love.

The solution to all this Toady Wild Ridism is just what it has always been — more constitutional freedom, and a big vat of patience. 

In Congress, the GOP will figure out a way to incinerate itself, they always do. Israel will destroy Hamas, with or without substantial U.S. help, making life on the planet better. The military industrial commandos will continue to fight their forever wars, and so-called constitutional conservatives will continue to wear their hypocrisy on their sleeves.

Mr. Biden will continue to wonder just who Mr. Toad is.

The wild ride will continue for a while. But, as is always the case, watching the ride from the outside in, the American people are taking notes. They will show the way; they always do.

They must. The answer is simple: The voters must rise up and take control of our institutions, from Congress to schools. We must demand that civil liberties and the constitution be followed, for the sake of everyone’s liberty.

Then and only then will Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride come to an end.

It’s a pretty simple exercise, if the American people will do it. As Benjamin Franklin put it when asked what kind of government was being formed in America, he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Now’s the time — or never.