Notable classic movies airing this week include 'Trading Places' and 'The Color Purple' plus a Marilyn Monroe Icon-a-Thon!

Reuters reports that Syrian Islamist rebels have captured Damascus and  overthrown the regime of Bashar al-Assad, ending at least for now the six-decade rule of the Alawite regime. The Guardian notes that the rebels are part of an Islamist alliance Hayat Tahir al-Sham (HTS), whose founder, Abu Mohammad Jolani, fought with the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. forces as part of the Islamic State, and the Syrian National Army backed by Turkey. Netanyahu understands that the fall of a brutal regime often produces chaos which can be more deadly than tyranny. The United States has designated HTS, which was formally affiliated with al-Qaeda, as a terrorist group. Assad, whose regime was backed by Iran and Russia, has reportedly fled to Russia. U.S. forces are present in the eastern portion of Syria controlled by the Kurds. Syria is a land divided among rebel groups who will undoubtedly engage in a struggle for power, as previously happened in Iraq after U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime, and Libya after U.S. forces helped overthrow the Gaddafi regime. Like Hussein and Gaddafi, Assad was a brutal dictator who headed-up what the Financial Times called a “parasitical regime [that] bled the country dry,” just as his father Hafez al-Assad did until his death in 2000. “Assad’s demise,” writes Andrew England in FT, “will be welcomed by the many millions who suffered under his rule … But the massive outpouring of jubilation will be tempered by wariness about what comes next.” One possibility is Syria becoming a “fragile, hollowed-out state in chaos with Islamist groups at the fore.” Middle East expert Edward Luttwak noted that Assad’s fall was helped along by Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah, which long supported Assad’s regime. Just a few days ago, U.S. forces carried out a military strike against Syrian forces in eastern Syria.  So Assad’s defeat is a loss for both Iran and Russia, but that doesn’t mean it is automatically a gain for the United States in the region. President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the U.S. military “is not going to … dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” while president-elect Donald Trump said that the struggle in Syria “is not our fight.” President Biden commented simply that “at long last the Assad regime has fallen.” Meanwhile, Israeli forces have taken control of a buffer zone on the Golan Heights, the strategic ground that separates Israel from Syria, because the Syrian Army “abandoned its positions,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also called Assad’s fall a “historic day” that “offers great opportunity but is also fraught with significant dangers.” Netanyahu is approaching the developments in Syria with a “tragic mind” — Robert Kaplan’s phrase to describe a realist approach to international affairs. The “tragic mind,” Kaplan has written, is anti-utopian, appreciates the limitations of human nature and the “terrible power of the irrational.” Netanyahu understands that the fall of a brutal regime often produces chaos which can be more deadly than tyranny. Kaplan saw that happen in Iraq — a war that he initially supported only to conclude that as bad as Hussein’s regime was, the chaos that followed was worse. The choice in human affairs is not always between good and evil — it is quite often between different degrees of evil. Neoconservative voices are already applauding the fall of Assad’s regime, with Bill Kristol, the champion of regime change throughout the region, snidely remarking that with Assad in Moscow, Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson can now “visit both of their BFFs [i.e., Assad and Putin] on one trip.” Kristol wants to shape what happens in Syria “as much as possible.” The editors of the Washington Post urge U.S. leaders to help build a “new Syria,” forgetting perhaps how we failed to build a “new Iraq” or a “new Libya” or a “new Afghanistan.” For the neocons, Syria is just another land to experiment with nation-building — like Marxists after communism’s repeated failures in country after country, the neocons believe that maybe this time nation-building will work. Donald Trump seems instinctively to approach international developments with a tragic sensibility, aware of the limitations of American power and the potential unintended consequences of unbridled hubris. It is quite possible that none of the outcomes in Syria will benefit U.S. interests, but surely contributing to the chaos will not help matters. We have no vital interest in making Syria a democracy. Surely, we have learned the lessons of our failed and costly nation-building efforts in that part of the world. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: The National Endowment for Democracy Should be Defunded on Principle National Review Tries To Jump on the Trump Bandwagon The post Approach Syria With a Tragic Mind appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

During an 1873 lecture Mark Twain offered the following observation about newspapers and their influence on the electorate: “That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism.” And, with advisors like Tulsi Gabbard, Trump will be well prepared to resist the blandishments of the military industrial complex. Much has changed during the subsequent 150 years, of course. Today, no journalist would deign to dig a ditch and few could make a shoe if their very lives depended on it. They are still quite capable, however, of cobbling together baseless calumnies about public servants whose positions fail to conform with the orthodoxies of the left. Having smeared Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, the horde is now going after Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence (DNI). Gabbard was a four-term Democrat House member who served on the Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. She served in the Army National Guard for two decades, deployed to Iraq and Kuwait and is now a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. According to a report in Politico, “Gabbard does have one of the highest levels of security clearance, known as a TS/SCI.” Yet, the media are circulating a letter from “a group of former national security officials” who inform us that she isn’t really up to the job: Ms. Gabbard, if confirmed, would be the least experienced Director of National Intelligence since the position was created. Prior directors had executive branch experience working on intelligence matters or served on a congressional intelligence committee. Most have also had significant management experience. The Senate must carefully evaluate whether Ms. Gabbard is equipped to effectively oversee an organizational structure as unique and large as the National Intelligence Program and also the effect of her holding this position on the willingness of our closest allies to share intelligence with the U.S. This crew also makes the following claim: “Her sympathy for dictators like Vladimir Putin and Assad raises questions about her judgment and fitness.” This nonsense goes back to a ridiculous suggestion by Hillary Clinton that the Russians were “grooming” Gabbard, whom she implied was a “favorite of the Russians.” The former secretary of state has nursed a longstanding grudge against Gabbard, who embarrassed her by resigning from the Democratic National Committee to protest the rigged primary process that assured Clinton’s capture of the party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Gabbard compounded that sin by circulating a petition to ditch the DNC’s deployment of “superdelegates” to rig future nominations. Unelected superdelegates control 15 to 20 percent of the votes in the Democratic Party’s national conventions and are unpledged to any candidate. They are “party leaders” who control the DNC and effectively appoint themselves to make sure that rank-and-file delegates chosen in the state primaries don’t foolishly nominate the “wrong” candidate. Tulsi Gabbard, having watched this undemocratic process play out in 2016 and 2020 became increasingly disillusioned. She finally had enough after months of watching the Biden administration mismanage the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. She announced her departure from the party in an X video released on Oct. 11, 2022. She explained her exit as follows: I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution, who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, who demonize the police but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, who believe in open borders, who weaponize the national security state to go after their political opponents, and, above all, who are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war. This description of the Democrat leadership as warmongers produced a fresh spate of “news” and opinion pieces depicting Gabbard as Russia friendly. A number of publications exhumed the following statement she posted on X: “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.” This means that Gabbard has a far more nuanced view of the Ukraine crisis than her media critics. Even before Putin’s rise, Russia has consistently warned that the steady eastward expansion of NATO constituted a significant threat to its security. That doesn’t necessarily mean John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is correct when he writes, “[T]he United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.” But the “ignorant, self-complacent simpletons” of the corporate media have forgotten that Russia was invaded by Western powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. That Tulsi Gabbard understands the significance of this to Putin suggests she is more sophisticated than Obama retreads like Jake Sullivan, whom she will soon replace. Meanwhile, Trump has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict. Considering the fall of Kremlin ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Putin may be more open to a deal than he has been thus far. If so, most Americans will feel far safer. And, with advisors like Tulsi Gabbard, Trump will be well prepared to resist the blandishments of the military industrial complex. Nonetheless, the horde will continue to question her competence as well as her loyalty to the nation she has so honorably served for decades.  No one with any sense will listen to them. READ MORE from David Catron: The Indefatigable California Vote Factory Can Musk Dismantle the Deep State? The post Pathetic Corporate Media Targets Tulsi Gabbard appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

There is a new sense of tranquility this Advent that may resemble that of the very first one two millennia ago. Shortly before the birth of Our Lord, the Roman republic was rocked by civil wars, assassinations, and much insecurity. Its greatest champion, Julius Caesar, lay dead, mortally stabbed by politicians desperate to preserve a tottering government, and Roman rule was up for grabs. Despite the myriad forces against him, Trump succeeded in improving the country on every front. From the chaos and carnage emerged a good leader, Octavius — Caesar’s great nephew and heir — intent on realizing his uncle’s expansive vision. He defeated all opponents to take the throne of Rome. As Augustus Caesar, he began the Pax Romana, two hundred years of peace and might. All the world then needed was spiritual salvation, and on Christmas Day in a distant Roman territory, He came. (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: MAGA Animal House) The last six years have been a dark time for America. The decade started out with the right man in limited charge, yet under relentless attack from the inside, including his own people. Unfamiliar with the many tentacles in the Swamp, Donald Trump got constantly strangled by them, while their media parasites increased the pressure on him. His very election was Russian interference, they chimed, which was expensively investigated and publicly sensationalized for two years before proven false. His phone call to Ukraine president Zelenskyy concerning previous Vice-President Joe Biden’s corruption via crackhead son Hunter became grounds for his impeachment. The laptop later confirming this corruption was branded “Russian disinformation” by 51 former intelligence officials. And, in an unprecedented display of censorship power, the iconic newspaper validating the laptop story, the New York Post, was blocked by every social media site, most notably Twitter. Despite the myriad forces against him, Trump succeeded in improving the country on every front — economy, foreign policy, military, immigration — until the perfect storm. A mysterious Chinese virus caused a media-inflamed pandemic that crippled his presidency, allowed his degenerating opponent to hide his decline from the public, and enabled votes of suspicious origin with arbitrary rules. When Trump challenged his election loss, and his supporters broke into the Capitol to question it, the Deep State trap sprang shut on both parties. Mainstream media called Trump an election denier, and social media banned the President of the United States. While the entire Democrat machine condemned the January 6th protest as an insurrection and Trump for instigating it. But Trump’s four years out of office made his last two in the White House seem like a picnic. He endured a second impeachment for inciting an insurrection, countless criminal yet all political (“Find me the votes!”)  charges, international press ridicule, and his political epitaph. And these were before he became a candidate for President, opposed by stars in his own party. One thought helped keep him keep going — that the American people were worse off. And indeed, we were — under the pathetic Biden regime. Every move they made was destructive. Domestically, they removed Trump’s border policies, allowing millions of unvetted illegal aliens into the country, while legally opposing Texas’ efforts to stop them. And they wasted close to $400 billion on the useless Inflation Reduction Act, causing an economic downturn. Foreign policy-wise, they waved Trump’s Iran sanctions, restoring the huge money flow that would lead directly to the demonic October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. They disastrously pulled out of Afghanistan, killing 13 U.S. servicemembers and seriously wounding many more, while leaving modern American weaponry in Taliban possession. Culturally, they did untold damage in promoting infanticide — AKA abortion — and transgender lunacy. The ridiculous Assistant Secretary for Health, Admiral Rachel (formerly “Richard” but still a man) Levine, will forever be the ugly face of this dead hysteria. But perhaps most implosive of all, they exposed the leadership on their side as emotionally unbalanced feminist fanatics, led by the losing candidate and, for one more month, Vice President. (READ MORE: A Happier Thanksgiving) But as in the Pax Romana, God had more uplifting plans for this Advent and consequently this country. It was His hand that turned Trump’s head aside at precisely the right instant in Butler, Pennsylvania last July. As the once and future President acknowledged on Truth Social, “it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.” And no recent event more gloriously represented the current nearness of God and Man than the wonderful reopening ceremony at Notre Dame Cathedral last Saturday (after the devastating fire of 2019). Christianity may be dying in Europe, but you’d never know it from the glorious spectacle that took place in Paris, graced with clergymen, choirboys, and cantors. A South African soprano singing Amazing Grace with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France is as close to heavenly as art can get. Some fifty past and present heads of state attended, including Emmanuel Macron of France, Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Giorgia Meloni of Italy, and Prince William of Britain (okay, a symbolic leader, religious deference doubtless too stressful for communist Labour PM Keir Starmer). But the center of attention was Donald Trump. Every other leader deferentially greeted — if not all welcomed — him as the man who will change the world. Let’s pray it’s the Advent of the Pax Americana, along with the Birth of Our Lord. Want to enjoy this merry post-election Christmas even more? Read my new political thriller, The Washington Trail, which predicted the electoral outcome. Of course, my two private-eye heroes, Mark Slade and Neil Cork, had to risk their lives to attain it. The fun part is finding out how they did it, and if they survived. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever fine mysteries are sold.   The post Trump and the Advent of the Pax Americana appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The fact that Joe Biden lied, saying he wouldn’t pardon his crackhead son Hunter, and then did exactly that, isn’t the end of the pardons our president will grant or the controversies they will result in. There are forty-two more days Biden will be president, so there’s more damage to be done. The Constitution doesn’t limit a president’s power to pardon. Only common sense and good judgment do. Biden has neither. The presidential power to pardon extends only to federal crimes excepting impeachment. That power is subjected to no check or balance in our system of government. It is the president’s alone. As Andy McCarthy has written, wrongful pardons are simply another form of “lawfare,” a term that is loosely defined. It includes abusing the justice system by indicting and trying people who shouldn’t be indicted — such as President-elect Trump — and pardoning undeserving people such as Hunter Biden. To be at least a bit fair, Biden was going to pardon his son regardless of what he said. Anyone who was paying attention to the lies Biden has repeated on a wide variety of subjects couldn’t have been surprised. The White House has said that Biden is thinking about pardoning others which means other pardons have already been decided and will be granted before Biden leaves the presidency. Who may be the beneficiaries? The Wall Street Journal postulates that Biden could pardon former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Milley and Dr, Anthony Fauci for his role in concealing the origins of COVID (and lying about it to congress) as well as others.  Gen. Milley was certainly culpable in the debacle that Biden created in withdrawing from Afghanistan, but timidity and stupidity aren’t punishable under criminal law. But his calls to Chinese leaders — during which he allegedly told them that he wouldn’t order a strike on China regardless of a presidential order — are definitely punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Whatever Dr. Fauci may have been guilty of, the statute of limitations — usually two, but not more than five years, under the U.S. Code — has already run out. It’s a rarity for an offense to have a statute of limitations longer than five years. The WSJ and other publications overlook several more likely candidates. For starters, Biden will almost certainly pardon his brother James. James Biden has been involved in most of Hunter’s influence peddling and his involvement probably continues. We know, thanks to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, that James Biden — on a joint account with his wife Sara, wrote a check to Joe, dated September 17, 2017, in the amount of $40,000 which probably was part of Joe’s fee for influence peddling in China. That’s probably not within the statute of limitations, but there may be further acts at later dates. Joe will probably pardon James preemptively for that and any other crimes — e.g., the Burisma scam that Hunter perpetrated — that James was involved in. Biden could even pardon himself. Another possible pardon Biden may give is to Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks, who pled guilty to one count under the Espionage Act and is now in Australia. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, when he was CIA director, said that Wikileaks acted as a hostile foreign intelligence agency. It leaked hundreds of classified U.S. documents to the media and conspired with an Army enlisted man Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning to do it. Assange is a favorite of the left and Biden may pardon him and welcome his return to the U.S. to continue his past practices. (He can do that anyway, having been sentenced to time he already served in a UK jail.) While he’s at it, Biden could also pardon Edward Snowden, a contractor working for the National Security Agency, for his leaking of thousands of highly-classified NSA and CIA papers. Snowden’s leaks almost certainly endangered U.S. spies in the field and caused disruption in several NSA and CIA programs that were monitoring terrorists and other nations. It’s relatively unlikely that Snowden would receive a pardon, but given Biden’s fealty to the hard left, we cannot rule it out. Biden and the Next President Biden should, but won’t, pardon Trump for the crimes he’s alleged to have committed in the January 6, 2021 mess and his mishandling of classified documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith is dismissing these cases without prejudice which means they could be brought again in 2029 when Trump is no longer president. The Biden pardons raise the specter of other politically-motivated pardons in the future. Remember the “Fast and Furious” ATF program that ran guns to Mexico? When Congress tried to investigate it, Obama claimed executive privilege thus protecting his attorney general, Eric Holder, from having to testify, basically quashing the investigation. Had Holder been compelled to testify, Obama could then have pardoned Holder from any criminal liability. That brings up the question of whether cabinet officials and others (not just a president’s family) would be pardoned for various criminal acts. It won’t happen but if, for example, a cabinet member committed fraud or received a bribe, that official could rely on a president to give him (or her) a  pardon. The Constitution doesn’t limit a president’s power to pardon. Only common sense and good judgment do. Biden has neither. The left’s lawfare will continue at least for the entirety of Donald Trump’s second term. Politically-motivated litigation will try to create bars to everything Trump does, from cutting back on Biden’s regulatory spree to reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. Moreover, people like Assange, Snowden, and their ilk will leak highly classified information and there will be litigation to protect them and what they publish. Nevertheless, during the next forty-two days we can count on Biden granting more pardons to some of the least-deserving people imaginable. READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Opening CAIR’s Books Hegseth and Ratcliffe Face Big Challenges The post The President Isn’t Done With Pardons appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the political class in Baton Rouge, Louisiana went around talking about their town as “America’s next great city.” And at the time, that wasn’t a ridiculous boast to make. The city, after all, had — still has — a lot going for it. It’s located on the Mississippi River, a little more than 100 miles from the river’s mouth, and as a result Baton Rouge’s port is one of America’s 15 largest by tonnage. Baton Rouge is located along I-10, just 30 minutes from I-55 to the east and 45 minutes from I-49 to the west, giving it excellent, if not-all-that-well-maintained, highway connections. It boasts one of only a handful of rail bridges over the Mississippi River. Baton Rouge is the home of Louisiana State University, a major research center and a flagship university with excellent programs in business, engineering, and other hard-science disciplines. The coach now faces a monumental challenge. He’s got to turn a failing city around, and he’ll have to do it within the next four years. And it’s one of the world’s largest petrochemical hubs, with a massive ExxonMobil oil refinery just north of downtown and installations of many of the major petrochemical players up and down the river to provide huge numbers of middle-class jobs one doesn’t need a college degree to perform. There’s a nascent, if not especially significant, tech sector. State government is in Baton Rouge to provide another employment base. The southern part of the city is relatively wealthy, with average household incomes not far from six figures. At the turn of the century, “America’s next great city” wasn’t a fantasy. But Baton Rouge has lost two decades since, and nobody talks about the place as the next great anything anymore. Not until, perhaps, Saturday night. The Winning Coach Because for the first time since 2004, Baton Rouge just elected a Republican mayor. Sid Edwards, a high school football coach who had never run for anything before and was attacked by his opponents for not bothering to vote in the eight years prior to the election, knocked out the two-term incumbent Democrat Sharon Broome by a 54-46 count in one of the most shocking election results in Louisiana (and maybe even American) history. Edwards didn’t have any money. He threw his campaign together after making a surprising entry into the race on the final day of qualifying. None of Baton Rouge’s Republican politicians had the courage to enter; the conventional wisdom was that it was a suicide mission. Four years before, a popular state representative from wealthy South Baton Rouge named Steve Carter ran against Broome and was clobbered, 57-43. Broome beat state senator Bodi White by just under 4,000 votes in 2016. In the three elections prior to that, Broome’s fellow Democrat Kip Holden skunked Republican opponents by 10 points or more. East Baton Rouge Parish, which has a consolidated city-parish form of government although there are a handful of separate incorporated cities within the parish (we call them parishes; you call them counties), has a Republican elected sheriff, coroner, assessor, and clerk of court, but the perception based on Holden’s and Broome’s success was that Baton Rouge was lost, destined for a slow, yet accelerating death along the lines of a Jackson, Mississippi, St. Louis, Newark, or Detroit. And this year a Democrat politician named Ted James, a former hardcore leftist state representative from the slums of North Baton Rouge who had served as Kamala Harris’ state campaign chairman in 2019, jumped into the race early against Broome. At one point James was thought likely to take over as chairman of the state party but instead left elected office to serve as a regional administrator for the Small Business Association. James developed a campaign against Broome that centered on an appeal to … white Republicans. You can’t win in Baton Rouge, went James’ ultimatum. Your only hope of getting rid of her is to bow down and support me. Give me your money and your support and I’ll end her. James recruited a couple of white Republican politicians, former state representative Scott McKnight and current state representative Paula Davis, to carry that message for him. He focused on an anodyne campaign proclaiming his commitment to do obvious things, such as alleviating traffic congestion and building a mental health facility to help reduce the armies of homeless bums camping at Baton Rouge’s interstate exits. But James’ voting record in the Louisiana legislature marked him as one of the weirdest left-wingers in office, and he’d repeatedly played the race card from the bottom of the deck, once posting a meme equating Trayvon Martin with Emmitt Till on his social media. There weren’t a lot of takers for him during the primary; James came in third with 28 percent, while Broome was second with 31 and Edwards, relying on nothing but sweat equity and grassroots volunteers, placed first with 35 percent. Still, the conventional wisdom went, a Republican can’t win. It was obvious one could, and moreover, Edwards was suited to the task even without political experience. Edwards’ Formula: Character, Cohesion, and Leadership Sid Edwards was the mentor to one of Baton Rouge’s most famous athletes, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Warrick Dunn. Edwards was an assistant coach at Catholic High School when Dunn arrived, and Dunn attributed much of his success to the coach’s efforts at making him believe in himself and showing him how to be a man. When Dunn’s mother, Betty Smothers, a Baton Rouge police officer, was shot dead by criminals attempting to rob a late-night bank ATM, Edwards and his wife did the best they could to help him get through high school and off to Florida State, where he had an All-American career on his way to NFL stardom. It was Dunn’s nomination which later resulted in Edwards, who’d moved on to become a head coach at Redemptorist High School and then to Central High School, being awarded by the NFL as the national high school coach of the year. He’s a legend in his profession in Louisiana, and he’s taken teams made up of working-class and underprivileged kids to the state playoffs time and again not because he’s a brilliant X’s and O’s man but because he stresses character, cohesion, and leadership. Sid Edwards builds winning organizations, and that’s a skill that travels. People understood this, and it made Edwards stand out. James raised and spent a million dollars, but other than establishing himself as an accomplished grifter he convinced no one he was capable of improving on Broome’s performance. And it isn’t hard to do that. I could write a book about what a disaster Sharon Broome has been as Baton Rouge’s mayor, but most of what that book would say is exceedingly familiar to our readers who live in big blue cities. Three things stand out, though, as examples of her abject failure. Regular readers might remember a column I wrote a couple of years ago about the murder of Allie Rice, a beautiful LSU coed slaughtered at a train crossing by a couple of hoodlums, likely as part of a gang initiation. The Allie Rice murder shocked the people of Baton Rouge for several reasons, not the least of which was its racial implications. Despite a reward being offered which ultimately topped $50,000 the police to this day don’t have a single lead in the case. The Fall of Baton Rouge Meanwhile Baton Rouge has become Clownshow Murdertown, ranking dead last out of 182 cities surveyed in public safety. Broome has proposed budget cuts to the city’s police department and the political class has begun advocating merging BRPD with the much more effective East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the areas outside the city limits. Also two years ago, Broome attempted to impose a new $40 million annual tax on landowners in the city-parish via a stormwater utility fee, and she told the Baton Rouge Metro Council, seven of the 12 members of which are Republican, that she couldn’t discuss the details of what the fee would cover because it was proposed as a means of bringing the city in compliance with federal mandates, and that the feds had demanded she and her people sign a non-disclosure agreement. This came under scrutiny both by the Metro Council and by Baton Rouge’s congressman Garret Graves, and it was quickly uncovered as a lie. A scandal ensued from which Broome never really recovered. But most important of all was Broome’s near-comic mismanagement of St. George, the newly incorporated city in the suburban south of the parish. Despite a vigorous campaign by the mayor to stop it, the voters in St. George chose to incorporate the new burg in November of 2019, and by law that should have resulted in a mayor and city council being chosen first by gubernatorial appointment and then by an election. Only after that would have followed the transfer of tax receipts from a two-cent sales tax according to Louisiana law. But Broome and her cronies filed suit to invalidate the St. George incorporation, and for the five years that followed those tax receipts weren’t put in escrow but instead spent by Broome’s city-parish government — and not in St. George. The tab is now over $250 million and it grows at nearly $4 million per month, without a single check remitted to St. George despite the Louisiana Supreme Court finally throwing out the lawsuits in June and the city being fully incorporated. Ironically, the other major item on Saturday’s ballot in East Baton Rouge Parish, aside from a handful of state constitutional amendments, was a tax election in St. George to force those revenues out of the city-parish’s coffers going forward. And while voter turnout inside the city of Baton Rouge was a meager 29 percent, it was 44 percent in St. George — giving a giant boost to Edwards and sinking Broome’s political career. The Challenge and the Promise The coach now faces a monumental challenge. He’s got to turn a failing city around, and he’ll have to do it within the next four years. Baton Rouge still has those assets and it can still be America’s next great city, but it needs an economic boom and it needs a thorough housecleaning not just at City Hall but in the institutions of power which have assisted in its decline. We’ll see if his experience in building winning organizations quickly can create the turnaround Baton Rouge needs. But there is reason for hope. While Edwards was winning the mayoral election this fall he was also coaching Istrouma High School, a perennial sad-sack program which hired him two years ago, into the state quarterfinals. Maybe politics isn’t as hard as winning in football. We’ll find out. But pray for us — because if Baton Rouge really can become America’s next great city, there’s hope for urban America after all. READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Old Game Continues Among the Worst GOP Senators Robert Reich’s Ravings Against Musk Are Pure Lunacy The post Hope Returns, Miraculously, To Baton Rouge appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

In 1986, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, wrote The Cycles of American History, which included a chapter on the cycle of American politics. Schlesinger viewed America’s political cycles as alterations “between public purpose” (which as a liberal, he favored) and “private interest.” He claimed that since the late 19th century, each cycle has lasted about 40 years. Trump astounded the political world by defeating Hillary Clinton … the political establishment of both parties, and every “right-thinking” person. Schlesinger’s heroes were Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and later John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson — all shaped by the Progressive Era in U.S. politics. He asserted that presidential administrations that emphasized the “public purpose” were less corrupt than those who emphasized “private interests” — in reality, the opposite is true. The book was typical Schlesinger — using history to promote liberal politics. Instead of cycles, American political history has been divided into eras that were and are shaped by political movements and political leaders. We are today living in the Trump Era. Since 2016, Donald Trump has dominated American politics whether he was winning or losing elections. Trump has led a populist revolt against the Progressive Era, which dominated American politics, except during a few brief interludes, for more than a century. Trump did not start the political movement that seeded the revolt against progressivism, but he did embrace it as his own and lead it to political victory. Let’s see how we got here. The Founding Era of American politics was shaped by the War of Independence and differing perspectives on federalism. The political leaders that most defined that era were George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who promoted domestic unity, foreign policy neutrality, mercantilist economics, and Manifest Destiny. That era was eclipsed by the Jacksonian era, when populism and sectionalism emerged to reshape American politics. Schlesinger, in a much better historical work, called this era the “Age of Jackson.” The Jacksonian Era lasted until the Civil War. The next political era could be called the Capitalist Era, when the industrial revolution and the titans of American business dominated American society. The leading figures of this era were men like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. This era lasted until the early 20th century, and during this period the business of America was business (to borrow a phrase from Calvin Coolidge, who tried to revive the era in the 1920s). There was no political movement or political figure that dominated the politics of this era. The abuses of the Capitalist Era led, however, to the next political era — the Progressive Era — which, with several bumps along the way, lasted until today’s Trump Era. The Progressive Era was shaped by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and was a movement promoted by intellectuals. In domestic politics, progressives spoke and wrote and legislated on behalf of the working man. In foreign policy, progressives looked beyond the national interest to promote the good society abroad. The movement and the era culminated in the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency. FDR’s legacy is government activism to improve the lives of less fortunate Americans at home and to remake the rest of the world in America’s image. Nothing symbolized the hubris of progressivism better than FDR’s “four freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The Progressive Era saw the enormous growth of the federal government to a size and for purposes that would have astounded the Founders of our country. It included the creation of the national security state as part of the growth of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” It also included the creation of government bureaucracies that regulated businesses and increasingly intruded into the lives of American citizens. It reached a crescendo during the administration of Lyndon Johnson which engaged the government to simultaneously wage war in Southeast Asia and promote the Great Society at home. The Johnson administration was the essence of progressivism, and a colossal failure. Even progressives revolted against Johnson’s presidency — but they did so because they viewed it as not being progressive enough. During his and Nixon’s presidencies, progressives took to the streets to attempt to transform American society into a progressive utopia, but when that failed the progressives began to infiltrate America’s key institutions — schools, universities, the media, Hollywood, scientific institutions, political parties (especially the Democratic Party). That is why the Reagan presidency — for all of its conservative accomplishments — was only a brief interlude in the Progressive Era. By 2008, the progressives succeeded in getting one of their own in the White House — Barack Obama, who promised to fundamentally transform America. Obama’s presidency was the triumph of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. Progressives advanced their transformational agenda during his presidency and Biden’s presidency (which in essence was Obama’s third term). This agenda included apologizing for America’s past sins abroad; continuing endless wars started by the neoconservatives in the Bush 43 administration; promoting the LGBTQ+ agenda; institutionalizing “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” throughout federal agencies, including the Pentagon; demonizing police forces around the country; promoting illegal immigration in unprecedented numbers; subsidizing a green energy revolution; paying homage to schemes for “global governance”; decrying “white Christian nationalism”; labeling parents concerned about the oversexualized content of their children’s education “domestic terrorists”; colluding with social media platforms to censor conservative voices; and calling those who supported their political opponents “deplorables,” “garbage,” and “threats to democracy.” The Seeds of Trump Even before Obama was elected, the seedlings of the Trump Era began — first with the populist candidacies of Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan, then with the rise of the Tea Party movement and alternative media outlets. Perot and Buchanan were unconventional populist candidates who attracted a surprisingly large following. The 2010 midterm elections were a harbinger of things to come. Republicans — including Tea Party-backed candidates — gained 60 seats in the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate. Populist-nationalism was on the rise, and in 2015 Donald Trump recognized this and made it the overall theme of his 2016 campaign — which was even more unconventional than Perot’s or Buchanan’s. Trump astounded the political world by defeating Hillary Clinton despite being opposed by the media, the political establishment of both parties, and every “right-thinking” person. But as Walter Russel Mead explains in a fascinating piece in Tablet, even after losing the 2020 election and being subjected to unfounded and politically-motivated investigations and prosecutions, Trump not only regained the White House in a decisive electoral victory over the Democrats on November 5th, he also “achieved a domination of the Republican Party that no previous Republican president has ever enjoyed.” Mead concludes that Trump is “a political genius, a once-in-a century talent combining an instinct for showmanship with the ability to read the frustrations and longings of potential supporters.” He is, writes Mead, a “towering figure in American politics.” Historians, if they hew to the truth, will one day write about the Age of Trump. READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: National ReviewTries To Jump on the Trump Bandwagon The National Endowment for Democracy Should be Defunded on Principle The post We Live In the Age of Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Many persons have dismissed Pres. Trump’s claim that he can end the Russo-Ukrainian War in 24 hours. Trump was vague about the details, and he was likely exaggerating the speed, which is characteristic of him as a salesman. Though remember, he does have a tendency to see his promises through. Just as important for Russia, it will cease being a pariah politically and economically. Trump does not buy into the anti-Putin propaganda that Putin is trying to conquer Europe or the world. This is the traditional song that is bandied about to justify entering into armed hostilities (in this case, the EU). Admittedly, Putin does have a Sudetenland mentality and has wailed about Russians living abroad in “hostile” countries. He would also like to see Belarus and Ukraine reabsorbed into Mother Russia (just prior to invading Ukraine, he gave a rambling historical lecture on why in his mind Ukraine is an artificially created state that should not exist). Both Belarus and Ukraine have made it clear that it’s not going to happen. Putin was even deluded into thinking that Ukrainians would welcome the Russians with open arms. By now, he has turned the page on that dream. He is, after all, a realist (if nothing else, the lack of Chinese support opened his eyes). There has been a lot of propaganda from both sides (or by proxy) that one side or the other is running out of manpower, and that each side is playing for time — Europe and America will get tired of supporting Ukraine and will get distracted by the next shiny object, or, conversely, Putin will be overthrown because of the meatgrinder the war has become or his whole army will defect. Independent, Non-NATO Ukraine The deal that Trump would probably propose is going to be a logical one, and it would be one where both parties can claim victory, thereby saving face. First, there would be a ceasefire while negotiations take place. (As we went to press Dec. 8, Trump is reported to have called for a ceasefire after a meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky.) Second, Trump would demand that both sides return to their original borders. If Russia does not agree, America could take the leash off and European troops can participate in the war strictly within Ukraine, beginning in the spring (“Cry havoc! And let loose the dogs of war!”), but America will not get involved. Since Russia has recruited troops from other countries to help out in the war (North Korea, Cuba, etc.), Trump will point out what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Putin is well aware that if his troops have not smashed the Ukrainians by now, it certainly cannot resist the combined forces of Europe. The same goes for Putin’s nuclear threat, an spineless prattle that gets put forward every other week. Third, although Ukrainians would legitimately demand that kidnapped Ukrainian children and POWs be exchanged, it could not make any other demands (such as reparations to help rebuild the extensive damage). Fourth, and this is the key, Ukraine cannot join NATO, nor the EU, but will remain a buffer state. This will be guaranteed by a formal treaty instead of the verbal assurances made a decade ago that NATO would not expand eastwards. Said assurances have been broken and made Russian paranoia hit the roof. This treaty will also include a guarantee of Ukrainian independence. Stationing NATO forces in Ukraine without formally joining the organizations would be an obvious violation of the treaty. Thusly, Ukraine could boast of having retained its independence, though it would regret not having membership in the EU or NATO. On the other hand, Russia could boast of having taught Ukraine a lesson and of having achieved the goal of arresting NATO expansion. Just as important for Russia, it will cease being a pariah politically and economically. Russia will try hardest to retain Donbass and the Crimea for one extremely important reason. Those regions are rich in natural gas and gas has become a powerful weapon in Russia’s aim of disrupting unity in Europe. If Ukraine also acquires those gas fields, then a potential weapon would be lost, not to mention the income therefrom. We shall see what happens. READ MORE from Armando Simón: Transgender ‘Care’ in North America: The Island of Dr. Moreau This Should Be Feminists’ Worst Nightmare Armando Simón is a  trilingual native of Cuba, a retired psychologist and historian, author of The Book of Many Books and When Evolution Stops. The post Trump Will Force a Compromise on Ukraine appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When Julius Caesar was repeatedly stabbed in a Senate meeting in 44 B.C., it wasn’t just Brutus, Cassius, or the other 60 “liberators” who were killing him — it was, in their minds, “the people.” While the Senators miscalculated — the “people” were furious at them for killing Caesar — their goal in acting together is one often associated with collective action: the diffusion of responsibility. When more people become involved, the less accountable each individual will feel. “Society,” the Senators wanted people to believe, was culpable in Caesar’s murder. Meritocracy and individualism, even when pursued imperfectly, were once the core values in Western society. The modern West has been plagued by a shared mindset that normalizes blaming society for individual failures. Instead of “liberators,” we now have “liberals” who cite systemic discrimination as the cause of marginalized groups’ struggles, while ultimately creating a culture of stagnation and helplessness. (READ MORE: The Surprising, Uplifting Truth About Inequality) It is often the case that when a group of people are “underrepresented” — have small numbers of people from that group — in certain jobs or educational institutions, it is because few people from that group have performed at the same standard required of others. Rather than delve into how or why we see these outcomes, intellectuals have preferred to discuss “glass ceilings” or “opportunity bias” in order to explain them. This has perpetuated the belief that the system is fundamentally unfair to individuals in certain groups. In Life at the Bottom, Theodore Dalrymple describes how intellectuals and activists have taught the underclass to blame society for their struggles. Such a pernicious mindset reflects a diffusion of responsibility, where stagnation is attributed to external forces like inequality, rather than internal ones, making individuals feel less accountable for what is often, as Dalrymple terms, socially destructive behavior. Doing well in underclass neighborhoods has become something that often carries stigma from others within the same place. Working as an emergency room doctor, Dalrymple recounts experiences of treating young people from these neighborhoods who were beaten up for simply doing well in school. Economist Thomas Sowell, in response to these observations, compares this to the experiences of black Americans, where academic success is often dismissed as “acting white.” Dalrymple contrasts this troubling trend with the experience of his father, who also grew up in the slums. In earlier generations, underclass neighborhoods placed a strong emphasis on education as a means of escaping poverty. Before the rise of the modern rhetoric of “understanding poverty,” there was a shared belief in the power of personal effort and learning. Today, however, a new generation of the underclass has not only been denied these tools but has also been conditioned to see their circumstances as entirely “society’s fault.” With decades of powerful civil rights law enforcement, this has occurred at a time when failure is less likely to be the result of society than it has ever before been. The welfare state heightens a “non-judgment” rhetoric by treating the underclass as what Dalrymple calls “livestock.” Socially destructive or self-destructive behaviors have been removed from the realm of personal responsibility, shifting responsibility to “society” to chip in for the consequences for such behaviors. Hence, there should be more focus on true compassion in holding people to higher standards and treating them as personally responsible human beings, not “livestock.”(READ MORE: Misleading Statistics on Income Inequality) Merit and Responsibility Performance standards have increasingly been trivialized and even condemned. Thomas Sowell notes that there is a growing belief in universities which have implemented Affirmative Action policies that holding individuals to performance standards fails to account for how the playing field has been “tilted.” According to this view, the skills that foster success have systemically excluded disadvantaged minorities. This reflects how the term society has been weaponized to evade personal responsibility, functioning as a modern equivalent of “The Devil made me do it.” Similarly, success and achievement are often scrutinized after the fact and dismissed as mere “privilege,” ignoring the personal effort required to attain them. In Asian American communities, often cited for “‘overachieving” or reaching disproportionate levels of success, discipline instilled at an early age and a strong belief in meritocracy have helped large numbers of individuals attain success. For some critics, there is an aura of mystery that surrounds the achievements of Asian Americans, especially given the lack of policies specifically designed to lift them up. The explanation for this is actually quite simple: they outwork everyone else. Independent educational traditions within Asian American households foster the importance of work, as it was found that Asian Americans from low-income families scored higher on the SAT than white and black Americans from upper-income families. While government policies have nearly destroyed the independent educational traditions in black Americans from low-income families — traditions now more commonly seen in Asian American and Jewish American communities — it is undeniable that individual effort plays a crucial role. Recent government policies in ghettos have made it more difficult to attain quality education like the education Thomas Sowell received in the ghetto roughly 80 years ago. However, as Sowell would put it, society cannot be blamed for this disparity, nor can it solve it. Meritocracy and individualism, even when pursued imperfectly, were once the core values in Western society, but have been greatly undermined by the half-century of collectivist intellectuals who claim that society is to blame for individual struggles. The diffusion of responsibility arising out of this societal blame produces a culture that incentivizes and subsidizes inaction and personal irresponsibility. The post The Poisonous Erosion of Personal Responsibility appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The prescription painkiller OxyContin was released by Purdue Pharma in 1995; the six-part TV series Painkiller, created by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster and directed by Peter Berg, was released by Netflix in 2023. During the intervening 28 years, Purdue’s flagship product brought even greater riches to the company’s already rich president, Richard Sackler; brought relief to a good many patients suffering from severe pain that was otherwise untreatable; and brought tragedy to countless families as legitimate patients became addicts and then death statistics and as perfectly healthy people, many of them very young, began using the drug recreationally and, caught in the grip of its addictive power, ended up in morgues all over America. Painkiller is four hours and 42 minutes long…. I watched the whole thing in one sitting. Out of this grim history, Fitzerman-Blue, Harpster, and Berg have made a remarkably captivating drama. It recounts the story of OxyContin by following the lives of several characters, most of them fictional composites. Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), an investigator for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the western district of Virginia who has seen the lives of her mother and brother destroyed by the crack epidemic — and who serves as our narrator — recognizes early on that OxyContin is leading America down a similar path. Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), a mechanic, is put on OxyContin after suffering a workplace accident. And Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny), recruited just out of college to join Purdue’s army of pretty, perky, and pushy young sales reps, is brainwashed by the firm, and by her mentor, Britt Hufford (Dina Shihabi), into believing fervently in the little blue pill’s ability to deliver happiness to patients — and wealth to its merchants — until, eventually, reality comes crashing in on her. The one major character drawn from real life is Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick), president of Purdue Pharma, who himself also starts out as a true believer in the magical powers of OxyContin. Purdue was purchased jointly by Richard’s father, Raymond, and Raymond’s brothers, Mortimer and Arthur, all of them doctors and all of them partners in an array of businesses. The most formidable of them is Arthur (Clark Gregg), who is famous for making Valium a record-breaking success and whose name, at the time our story takes place, adorns museums, university buildings, and hospital wings around the country. (There’s a whole Wikipedia page titled “List of things named after the Sackler family.”) In a flashback, we see Richard as a schoolboy, hearing from Arthur the story of how Alfred Nobel transformed his image from “merchant of death” to “man of peace” by establishing the Nobel Prize; by making big donations to important institutions, explains Arthur, he’s doing the same thing for the name of Sackler. He’s a fascinating character, and so, in his own eccentric (indeed, rather goofy) way, is Richard, who, when Purdue faces the prospect of financial catastrophe after Arthur’s 1987 death, is inspired by his uncle’s Valium triumph to formulate and market the ultimate wonder drug. When that drug, OxyContin, proves to be far more powerful than morphine, Richard’s father and uncle are wary. “Abuse is gonna be a real issue,” one of them says. But Richard’s eyes are on the prize. “We’re gonna give a lot of people their lives back. We’re gonna take away a lot of pain.” Cut to an auditorium full of pretty — and utterly ignorant — twentysomethings being trained to push the product. Until recently, they’re told, pain hadn’t been seen as “something to treat in and of itself.” Indeed, “doctors don’t respect pain.” But the reality is that “pain is no longer something we have to tolerate. It’s something we can overcome.” Cut to these girls calling on doctors, flashing broad, winsome smiles while distributing discount coupons and blue plushies designed to look like giant OxyContin pills. One of those doctors, dismissing this sales army in high heels as a bunch of “cute little dandelions,” tries to tell Shannon the truth about the concoction she’s pitching: “You’re dangerous, and you’re dumb…. You’re a f******g drug dealer.” But he’s the exception to the rule; other physicians tend to be more like Glen’s GP, who blithely keeps upping his dosage as his resistance inexorably builds. After all, who doesn’t trust the FDA? Ah, the FDA, the story of whose approval of OxyContin makes up much of Painkiller’s second episode. The FDA, we’re told, is “a small government agency” that trusts pharmaceutical firms to file honest reports about the results of clinical trials and that more or less rubber-stamps their applications. But one man at the FDA, Curtis Wright (Noah Harpster), does have serious questions about OxyContin, and keeps denying it approval. Robert does his best to massage the man’s ego, even arranging for a scientific paper by him to be published, but Wright holds firm: unfortunately for Purdue, they’ve been stuck with “the one guy [at the FDA] who gave a shit.” But finally, after Purdue puts Wright up in a luxury hotel suite — and, it’s implied, supplies him with sex — the approval comes through. A year later, Wright leaves the FDA to work for Purdue. With FDA approval secured, Purdue launches a staggering marketing blitz. We’re shown excerpts from TV news stories calling it “the fastest growing drug in America” and “the most heavily prescribed narcotic in the country.” We see Purdue reps telling doctors in a hotel conference room that if they don’t prescribe OxyContin they’re committing malpractice. But we also see the dark beginnings of the opioid crisis. We see two girls snorting OxyContin in a car outside a pharmacy, then driving off and crashing the car. We see people being prescribed OxyContin who obviously don’t need it. We see a long line outside a drug store, and a truck driver shipping “OxyContin mules” to another drug store. We see OxyContin addicts committing crimes to support their habits. We hear that this whole ugly business has gotten to be too much for local police departments to handle and that more and more doctors are raising the alarm. During a harrowing visit to a morgue, Edie witnesses the dreadful toll that Richard’s wonder drug has taken. Glen, who’s tried unsuccessfully to quit OxyContin, ends up buying it illegally and snorting it. Eventually the crisis hits the national news, and the bosses at Purdue respond by blaming it on abuse by “junkies.” The firm bribes doctors with trips to pain-management seminars — i.e., free vacations — and with paid speaking engagements. One bought-off pill-pusher declares that OxyContin is addictive in only one percent of cases, causing a doctor at one hospital to comment: “I’ve got an ER full of the one percent.” Summoned to testify in Congress, a Purdue official prevaricates about what the company knew about abuse of OxyContin and when it knew it. This lie, told under oath, provides Edie with a crime for which Purdue can be indicted. What she doesn’t count on, alas, is the ability of rich companies to escape responsibility by hiring well-connected lawyers. Painkiller is four hours and 42 minutes long — almost an hour longer than Gone with the Wind — and, unable to turn it off, I watched the whole thing in one sitting. That’s how engrossing it is. The sequences about Glen and his family alone could be spliced together into a fine movie of normal length. What makes them work is that they’re written and directed in a self-assured, low-key manner: the filmmakers know that they have solid material here and that they need only present it as straightforwardly as possible in order to make an impact. In other sequences, however, one has the impression that the filmmakers are insufficiently confident in their material and feel a need to pep things up. For example, there are needless flashbacks, lasting only a second or two, to scenes we’ve already seen; there are busy, noisy montages that are intended to drive home points that have already been made; and there are deliberately herky–jerky cuts that are meant to ramp up the tension, which doesn’t need ramping up. Some bits reject realism entirely: in one scene, Richard is accused by the ghost of his late uncle Arthur of destroying the family reputation (whose importance to Richard has already been adequately explained to us); in another, Edie’s boss and his male colleagues at the District Attorney’s office, apparently smelling Purdue’s blood, break out into bizarre wolf calls. As for Edie herself, she’s a useful storytelling tool, although in the first episode she pays tribute at length to government bureaucracy in a fatuous speech (excerpt: “I’m a bureaucrat. There’s no civilization without bureaucracy”) that I dearly wish the writers had omitted. No, as a rule, government bureaucrats aren’t the heroes, and private corporations aren’t the villians. Broderick, for his part, is mostly admirable, if sometimes rather cartoonish. (In one scene, riddled with angst and consoled by an uncle, he’s suddenly Leo Bloom again in The Producers being buoyed by Max Bialystock.) All in all, however, Painkiller does an impressive job of telling a dark and gripping story about a tragic chapter of modern American history — a chapter that ended only with the reformulation of OxyContin to make it harder to snort or inject; with the advent of fentanyl, which is even more powerful — and lethal — than Purdue’s product; and with the removal, over the course of the years 2022 and 2023, of the Sackler name from buildings all over the country. READ MORE from Bruce Bawer: A Quarter Century of Entertainment — and Propaganda Sandra Gilbert and Feminism’s Endless Rage The post The OxyContin Story appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.