Dear Weekend Jolter,
In China, “Xi Jinping thought” is being infused into school curriculums, so determined is the general secretary/chairman/president to be a metonym for the country itself. In Russia, Vladimir Putin, you may recall, was “reelected” with nearly 77 percent of the vote in 2018 (after now-imprisoned Alexei Navalny was barred from the ballot). But popular support for these two autocrats might not be as monolithic as it appears.
While their stifling of dissent clouds any picture the rest of the world might get about the true level of internal opposition, the regimes’ respective bungling of Covid-19 and the Ukraine invasion has emboldened, even slightly, those voices.
In China, tolerance for the CCP’s brutal, counterproductive, illogical lockdowns in Shanghai and beyond is wearing thin. Lianchao Han and Jianli Yang, from the pro-democracy Citizen Power Initiatives for China, write for NR that flickers of civil disobedience can be seen among the city’s angry residents:
Some dismantle barbed-wire fences, others bang their cooking pots on the balconies. In the video Voice of April, Shanghainese residents depict the endless suffering of people under the zero-Covid policy. The video went viral despite the CCP’s watertight censorship. Shanghai-based rapper Astro released a song, “New Slave,” to criticize the government’s abuse of power and its neglect of human life. More and more people have come out to sing the national anthem — in particular the line “Arise! Ye who refuse to be bond slaves!” Ironically, this has led Chinese authorities to censor its own national anthem. Some local party chiefs resigned, and neighborhood committee members abandoned their posts. Shanghai residents have formed a self-assistance and self-governance commission, unequivocally demanding democracy and freedom, and urging mass civil disobedience until Beijing ends its inhumane zero-Covid policy. On the night of April 24, people in many districts of Shanghai took to the streets to protest.
The Economist recently documented how Chinese citizens are increasingly challenging the Party line in response to the crippling lockdown policies and false assurances, even if they must do so anonymously. “We don’t trust these policies any more,” one Shanghai resident said.
Not only is there concern that government policies are killing more people than they’re saving, but more evidence is emerging that governments including China’s have covered up previous deaths. Jim Geraghty draws attention to some additional Economist reporting estimating that the number of excess deaths there (above what would normally be expected pre-pandemic) is between 550,000 and 2 million, in contrast with the government’s Covid-19-death estimate of 5,000.
Whether those figures point to unreported coronavirus deaths, deaths from other causes that rose because of lockdowns and medical-access issues, or some combination of those and other factors, we’ll likely never know. But the myth of the CCP, all-powerful tamers of the pandemic, should be well on its way to shattered.
As for Russia, Kevin Williamson writes that Putin’s Ukraine disaster has revealed his military to be a paper tiger:
Every army worries about bullets and missiles, but the Russians have been undone by much less lethal challenges — rain, among others. Russian armored vehicles have fallen to Ukrainian agricultural implements because of cheap and defective Chinese tires. Teen-aged conscripts rounded up from the schoolyards of Vladivostok have been shipped off to war, ill-informed and ill-prepared, and told they are hunting Nazis, which surely is understood to be a tall tale even in the hinterlands. . . . A British estimate has the number of Russian dead in Ukraine already at 15,000 — more than were lost in the Russians’ decade-long war in Afghanistan.
That doesn’t make his misadventure any less devastating for the residents of Bucha, Mariupol, and every other place ravaged by Russia’s ill-prepared forces. Kevin notes how, in echoes of the Holodomor, one Russian region is moving to “expropriate” grain from parts of occupied Ukraine.
But Putin’s fearsome and competent image surely is dented not only from the perspective of the West but of the Russian people. Thousands have left Russia in the wake of the invasion, as the government cracks down on anti-war protests. This alone reflects how the chances of any viable opposition movement gaining traction in Russia remain slim, but it also speaks to Putin’s eroding support. If nothing else, Sergey Lavrov’s outrageous and ahistorical Hitler claim a week ago shows a regime reduced to routine violations of Godwin’s law.
The emperors still have their clothes — but the people can begin to see parts exposed.
In other news, well, there’s lots of it. Without further ado . . .
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
The bombshell leak out of the Supreme Court should not go unpunished: An Egregious Leak
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: A Shocking Assault on the Supreme Court
Kevin Williamson: How to Regulate Abortion
Alexandra DeSanctis: What Americans Really Think about Abortion
Charles C. W. Cooke: Bret Stephens’s Fatally Flawed Case for Saving Roe
Dan McLaughlin: Chief Justice Roberts Must Find the Leaker
Andriy Yermak: Why the U.S. Has a Stake in Ukraine’s Victory
Marco Rubio: Defund President Biden’s Censorship Bureau
Ryan Mills: Unseen American Volunteers Work around the Clock to Rescue Ukrainian Civilians
Ryan Mills: American Citizens Finally Return Home from Afghanistan after Months in Prison-Like Refugee Camp
Jay Nordlinger: When Politics Invades Art
Madeleine Kearns: Rachel Levine’s Spectacular Mendacity (or Ignorance)
Michael Brendan Dougherty: Which Trumpism Won in Ohio?
John McCormack: Trump’s Decisive Ohio Senate Endorsement
Tom Cotton: Republicans Must Stop Biden’s Student-Debt Transfer
Frederick Hess & Hayley Sanon: On College Admissions, It’s the Woke Fringe vs. Everyone Else
CAPITAL MATTERS
The Fed made a big move this week — but it won’t be big enough, says William Luther: Fed Tightening Is Too Little, Too Late
There’s a risk in wildly pointing fingers on inflation, Russ Latino writes: Scapegoating Prevents a Return to Fiscal Sanity
Casey Mulligan calculates Hawaii’s Covid tradeoffs: Did Hawaii Beat the Virus?
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Kyle Smith eye-rolls at the eye candy in Marvel’s latest, but finds a deeper significance in its madness: Doctor Strange Taps Into America’s Disturbing Fantasy Life
Armond White (who also offers his take on the Doctor Strange brew) notices a version of The Player playing out in last weekend’s D.C. media/celeb gathering: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner: Where’s Altman When We Need Him?
Brace yourself for an unequivocal rave from Brian Allen (and catch his follow-up this weekend): A Profile of Dartmouth’s Nearly Perfect Hood Museum
THE TL;DR EDITION
About that leak . . . Rich Lowry has some thoughts:
The leaker, whether a justice, a clerk, or a staffer, clearly intended to engender a huge reaction to try to intimidate a member of the majority into changing his or her mind.
This is how hardball politics works in Congress or in the executive branch, where strategic leaks are the norm and very often no one trusts anybody. It’s completely inimical to the spirit of the Supreme Court, which is supposed to decide its cases as a strict matter of law free of political influence.
Tellingly, almost no one on the left criticized the leak — instead, many praised it as an act of brave defiance that reflects the gravity of the moment.
This is yet another sign of the hypocrisy of all the Trump-era lectures from progressives about the importance of norms and neutrally applied rules. As soon as a Supreme Court decision might go against them, they abandon all pretense of believing any of that and attempt to bludgeon the Court into submission.
The leak, in its own way, brings home how one of the key assumptions in the Court’s abortion jurisprudence has been wrong all along. It imagined itself settling once and for all a highly contested social issue. In reality, by attempting to take the issue out of politics, it made the fight over abortion even more divisive, while making itself a political football. Now, the issue that it sought to settle has blown back on the Court, perhaps changing how it operates forever.
If, as the Alito draft previews, Roe is about to fall, Kevin Williamson examines what an assertive but humane effort to regulate abortion might look like:
Even though abortion has the elements of the most serious class of homicides (premeditation, etc.), we are not obligated to treat it that way. Even in this very serious matter, we should seek the least invasive means of achieving the outcome we desire.
If additional measures seem called for after some period of study and consideration, then these can be undertaken, gradually and carefully, as needed. There is no benefit — practical or political — in living down to the Left’s caricature of the pro-life position.
Contrary to what one hears from the familiar ghastly Malthusians among us, repealing Roe and imposing abortion restrictions won’t require us to build an archipelago of new orphanages, nor will it likely have much effect on publicly subsidized health-care costs. The number of U.S. families who wish to adopt a child exceeds by many multiples the number of children who are available for adoption (which is why so many Americans wishing to adopt go to the far corners of the world), and even if we assume that every single one of the abortions that happen in the United States in a typical year (estimates vary, but probably around 850,000) would otherwise result in a pregnancy subsidized by Medicaid or another government program, this would not add up to a great deal of money — probably less than half a day’s worth of Social Security spending. If additional support for vulnerable mothers is required, then that is a bearable cost. As with practically every other welfare initiative, our problem there is going to be program design and administration, not resources.
So, there will be no Handmaid’s Tale, no cinematic dystopia. The hysterics among us should be reminded that while the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs prohibits abortion after 15 weeks, in France, the law prohibits it after 14 weeks. If your idea of a right-wing Christo-fascist hellhole is Paris, then you need a psychiatrist, not an abortionist.
We can be assertive and humane at the same time, provided that we keep our attention on the interests of the vulnerable parties involved in this issue rather than abandon ourselves to the tedious theater of pharisaical self-righteousness.
In a special guest essay from the head of the Presidential Office of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak explains why victory there is pivotal to the West and the cause of democracy:
Ukraine is grateful for all who have recognized the importance of this battle and who have outfitted Ukraine’s soldiers with the military-technical assistance that is allowing them to resist the Russian occupation forces.
But they cannot hold out without additional heavy weaponry. The defenders of freedom in Mariupol are paying with blood. Ukraine and its allies can still save those of them who remain alive by acting together through more unified diplomacy, strengthening Ukraine’s defense capabilities, and ratcheting up the sanctions regime against Russia.
Just like the Alamo became its epoch’s rally cry for freedom, this epoch needs the heroes of Mariupol to survive and prevail — for history to remember their sacrifices and as a clear lesson to future aggressors.
We thought the 20th century had delivered tyranny to the dustbin of history. But with the battle of Mariupol, the history of the Alamo and similar battles before it has returned. Ukrainians know that Mariupol must mark a turning point in this history.
That’s why Ukraine fights. Ukraine must stand. Mariupol must stand. It is here that the future of the world is being decided.
We cannot allow the sacrifice of Mariupol to be in vain. If Mariupol falls, if Ukraine loses, it will not only be a loss for Ukrainians. All the world’s democracies will lose. Despotism will triumph. And its triumph will not be confined to the countries of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. Tyranny doesn’t have boundaries. This is why Ukraine’s victory in its fight for liberty will be the victory of democracies around the world.
And now, a word from Senator Marco Rubio on Biden’s “censorship bureau”:
Administration officials say their disinformation board is necessary to protect American democracy. However, federal censorship is no guarantee against real disinformation.
Washington bureaucrats’ track record at discerning fact from fiction is dismal, and Biden’s new censorship czar, Nina Jankowicz, is no exception. In 2020, she dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “Trump campaign product.” Now, President Biden’s son is under official investigation — even the New York Times acknowledges the story was true. Doesn’t this make Jankowicz guilty of spreading disinformation herself? She has yet to issue a full retraction of her claim, however, raising concerns that she is even more partisan than the legacy media.
Similarly, in the early days of the pandemic, liberals railed against those who suggested that Covid may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Social-media censors, left-wing reporters, and the government itself — in the person of Dr. Anthony Fauci — called the lab-leak hypothesis a racist conspiracy theory and banned the topic from public discussion. Today, our intelligence community considers it to be as likely as not that the lab-leak hypothesis is correct. . . .
A government disinformation board led by a person who “shudder[s]” at the thought of “free speech . . . absolutists” is a step toward tyranny. It must be stopped. It has to be defunded.
Shout-Outs
David French, at the Atlantic: What Alito Got Right
Lahav Harkov, at the Jerusalem Post: Bennett to Lavrov: Stop using Holocaust as political battering ram
Philip Wegmann, at RealClearPolitics: ‘Make Them Famous’: Virginia AG Tells GOP to Focus on Progressive Prosecutors
Aaron Sibarium, at the Washington Free Beacon: De Blasio’s Gas Stove Ban Was Intended to Help the Environment. Experts Say It’ll Backfire.
CODA
Shifting gears from a coupla Codas that featured unreasonably long songs, here is a short one. “New Country,” by violin virtuoso for hire Jean-Luc Ponty, popped into my head this week for no apparent reason. It took a minute to place it, but only a minute. The theme, while a tad hokey, is unmistakable. Hope you enjoy.
As this newsletter often mentions, consider contributing to this here Weekend Jolt Playlist by shooting a song my way, for sharing: jberger@nationalreview.com. Thanks for reading.