Insight

“The people are the most important element in a nation; the land and grain come next; the sovereign counts for the least.” —Chinese philosopher Mencius (372–289 BC)

Observations

“[Twitter] bypasses the traditional means for measuring the quality of communication. … There is no cost for insults, ad hominem attacks, and provocative statements. Incitement, in other words. People can hide behind their anonymity as well, and act if possible even more brazenly. Too often, therefore, the median stimulates a reactive rage as it denies, even to competent users, two of the main privileges traditionally granted to them: The presumption of innocence and the right and ability to engage in effective self-defense. The mob can say anything at all about you or your thoughts online, despite your hard-earned reputation, and there is nothing you can do about it. … Perhaps more worrisome of all is the fact that this incited rage bleeds over into the real world. All the impotent anger generated is externalized away from the social network and dispersed. Thus, the ambient emotional temperature of general society is raised degree by degree to the boiling point. … I believe that Twitter’s reward structure — even more than Facebook’s — incentivizes malignant narcissism. It enables and benefits free riding and prioritizes psychopathic motivation. And it garners disproportionate attention in doing so, capitalizing on the attractiveness of outrageous behavior while externalizing all the associated and inevitable costs to the innocent broader society.” —psychologist Jordan Peterson

“Deeply, profoundly stupid. That is the only way I know how to describe one of the worst decisions behind an administration that has become famous for bad decisions. I am talking about Pres. Biden’s assault on sustainable, affordable energy. … American ingenuity — and I’m referring to fossil fuels — has made the most out of one of the most versatile resources that the world has ever known. But, the Biden White House is determined to punish us for that innovation — just determined to punish us — by making every single part of the American Dream more expensive. … For the sake of Americans’ economic futures and for the sake of our national security, Mr. President, we cannot continue to rely on foreign oil imports — we can’t — while pretending to run this country using wind, solar and wishful thinking. Because that’s what the president’s new policy is on energy. It’s wind. It’s solar. It’s wishful thinking. Wishful thinking doesn’t fill gas tanks or grocery carts.” —Senator John Kennedy

Friendly Fire

“CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked President Biden about inflation … on December 10th, and President Biden told her then that he thought December 10th was the peak of the crisis. … It just seems clear that the Biden administration has misjudged how bad inflation was going to get for months and months and months.” —CNN’s Jake Tapper

The BIG Lies

“There are those who thought with the last administration we sort of walked away from the Middle East. That we were going to create a vacuum that China and/or Russia would fill. And we can’t let that happen.” —President Joe Biden

“When we predicted — I predicted — [Vladimir Putin] was going to attack, others were saying, ‘No, he’s not going to.’” —Joe Biden

“Years from now, history will record this as the moment when we decided what we would do to defeat the threat of fascism in this country posed by the modern-day Republican Party with the Supreme Court as an accomplice.” —Congressman Mondaire Jones

Non Compos Mentis Awards

“The notion that anyone is suggesting that abortion should happen up until the birthday is an absurdity and deeply offensive.” —Congressman Dave Cicilline (“The ‘Women’s Health Protection Act,’ which Cicilline and every Dem except two voted for would’ve allowed that.” —Greg Price)

“I would think it would be like bringing light to darkness. … The Hyde Amendment is an unnecessary barrier to abortion care for people across the country. And repealing Hyde is a critical step in achieving economic and reproductive justice.” —Congressman Danny Davis

And Last…

“Why do the same people who refer to Florida’s parental rights bill as Don’t Say Gay put quotation marks around the ‘heartbeat’ in heartbeat bills when it is quite literally about the heartbeat?” —David Harsanyi