It’s Friday, the Ides of March 2019…and in honor of the Romans, whose Republic lasted some 500 years, and their Empire almost 1,500 longer, we catalogue signs of the imminent decline and fall of Western Civilization, as evidenced by the views of these hopelessly naive innocents…

…and the rise of one of the most powerful and popular “politicians” in America…

…an educated idiot who’s done nothing, knows nothing and who, like our last two Presidents, when not reading from a cue card, can hardly string a sentence together.  And the current Dimocratic field is no better.

With apologies to the late, great Winston Churchill, never in the field of American politics was so little known by so many.

But never fear, a number of puff pieces assure us…

…Beto’s here!!!  But as Rush observed Thursday, the racial grievance industry is already attacking Beto for his White-privilege; though, as Jim Geraghty records at his Morning Jolt, Beto is White, and he’s definitely privileged:

“This presidential campaign is a rerun.

What will rankle conservatives — and perhaps have the Trump campaign licking its chops — is that if Beto O’Rourke had an “R” after his name instead of a “D,” the world would know a lot more about the less-appealing aspects of his life story. Not just the DUI, but his private-sector development career that used eminent domain and gentrified poor Latino neighborhoods, and marrying into a billionaire’s family. The image celebrated in these gushing profiles doesn’t match the reality. He was never in the military but talked about veterans’ issues so much that some people think he was. He’s not Latino, but his “rise fuels hope for Latino Democrats.” He’s the outsider who was in elected office from 2005 to 2018. He’s the modest everyman with a net worth of $9 million. He’s a boarding-school-attending son of a judge who escaped serious consequence for not just the DUI but also burglary charges…”

We could be wrong, but somehow, someway, we doubt 2020 will be Beto’s year…or any other White male running for President as a Dimocrat.  Which should make Howard Schultz happy.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, catch the drift of this 2016 John Stossel video… 

…then consider a contemporary commentary courtesy of Kevin Williamson writing at NRO:

“New York City collapsed in 1977. There were 1,557 murders in the city that year, more than twice the number there had been ten years earlier. That awful trend would continue to get worse until the city hit its homicidal apex in 1991, with 2,245 murders, but the shadow — the literal shadow — of 1977 continued to loom over the city.

…New York City was not alone.

On the other side of the Atlantic, London had found itself in much the same situation, along with the United Kingdom at large. It was the high-water mark of British socialism, with strikes crippling the country, rampant inflation crippling the economy, and the attempt to impose wage-and-price controls in response making things even worse. Homes lost their heat, hospitals were running on batteries or ceasing to operate at all, transportation came to a standstill.

The 1970s saw much of the notional radicalism of the 1960s put into actual practice in the United States and the United Kingdom, producing a terrible alloy of étatist command-and-control economics, cultural libertinism, and delusional liberationist policies touching everything from law enforcement to mental health — it was the golden age of “deinstitutionalization,” the results of which can be seen and smelled and heard raving on the streets of any U.S. city today — all under the watchful eyes of powerful public-sector unions and related interest groups. In short, it was a time of permissiveness in all the things requiring rigor and regimentation in all the things requiring liberalism.

The blackouts in the United States and the United Kingdom were emblems of the despair of that time and, more pertinent, of the failure of the political ideas that shaped those years. But there were others: Gasoline rationing and hours-long waits at fuel stations come to mind.

In the United Kingdom and the United States, the rejection of that arrogant and dysfunctional étatism resulted in the elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, respectively, and in support for their broadly deregulatory, market-oriented reform agendas.

But it is in the nature of human beings to forget. When Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela, progressive activists in the United States and the Democratic politicians allied with them lionized him as a rebuke to American capitalism and its excesses, celebrating him as a people’s champion and the leader of an authentically popular movement. Philadelphia Democrat Chaka Fattah accepted the gift of a few gallons of heating oil from the Chávez-run state oil company and sang hymns to the great dictator, thanking him “and the Venezuelan people for their benevolence.” New York Democrat Jose Serrano later eulogized the Venezuelan strongman as a hero who “understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life. His legacy in his nation, and in the hemisphere, will be assured as the people he inspired continue to strive for a better life for the poor and downtrodden.” Joseph Kennedy suggested that those critical of Democrats who accepted the patronage of the Chávez regime were countenancing “a crime against humanity.” The usual suspects — Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Michael Moore — came to sit at his feet. Under Chávez’s successor caudillo, Nicolás Maduro, things got worse, but Jesse Myerson of Rolling Stone assured his fellow Millennial socialists that Venezuela’s economic program was “basically terrific.” There was no food, medicine, toilet paper, etc., and people were reduced to eating pets and zoo animals, and opposition leaders were disappeared in midnight raids, but Myerson insisted that Venezuela’s “electoral system’s integrity puts the U.S.’s to abject shame.”

The lights have been out for a while in Venezuela. People are dying in Venezuelan hospitals because there isn’t enough electricity to run the dialysis machines and other necessary pieces of equipment. People are starving because food cannot be refrigerated or transported. Looting is common. The police crackdowns and political retaliation are brutal. As one Venezuelan put it, literally and perhaps more poetically than intended: “We don’t have light.”

None of this should surprise us. Not in New York. Not in London. We have literally seen this before. And where are American progressives? On Maduro’s side of the barricades, to a depressing extent. The failure of what Bernie Sanders likes to call “democratic socialism” in Venezuela cannot be forthrightly admitted lest they come to discredit Democrats’ domestic political ambitions. What has, say, the average columnist at The Nation learned from this brutality and privation? “The left wing of the Democratic Party needs to sharpen its crisis-response message,” writes Greg Grandin, “to figure out a way to use such moments to put forth a compelling counter-vision to the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment.” As long as the suffering of the Venezuelan people can be used for something! If it helps Ilhan Omar, then at least it will not have been entirely in vain.

Some shadows are very long indeed, and some darkness almost impenetrable.“

Seriously, the inhabitants of what was once the richest country in Latin America have been reduced to eating their pets and zoo animals…at least the ones who still had nutritive flesh on their bones!  This isn’t…

Rather it’s the ultimate in Progressive insanity born of self-denial!!!

There are none so blind as those who WILL not see.  Wake up and smell the inevitable effects of Socialism, America!  As for AOC and her like-minded Millennials, first get the facts, then we’ll converse…about race, anthropogenic global warming, transgenderism, abortion or any other subject.  But again, first get the facts…

In a related item at the WSJ, Dan Henninger suggests, when it comes to the most destructive economic system ever devised…

Socialism? Yes, Be Afraid

The next Democratic president will come from a zombie army of anti-capitalists.

“When the old socialist gent Bernie Sanders appeared in 2016, he was amusing. But intriguingly back then, in most head-to-head polls against the Republican field, Bernie came in first. In May that year he led Donald Trump by a poll average of more than 10 points. Somewhere, he had a following.

Now comes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Bernie’s socialism cubed.

There are moments when the Queens congresswoman calls to mind the “Saturday Night Live” feature “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey.” AOC posted an Instagram video of herself making chili while wondering out loud about the social implications of climate change—“It does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?”

This got me to thinking my own deep thought: Is there a point at which self-absorption should be considered a threat to humanity?…”

Yes,…and it’s NOW!

Since we’re on the subject of self-absorption…not to mention self-delusion…in today’s installment of the Environmental Moment, Tucker Carlson relates the latest act of projection by The Left:

In a related item of environmental derangement, writing at the WSJ, Paul Tice records how…

On Climate, the Kids Are All Wrong

And a band of ignorant brats shall lead them: Some things have hardly changed since 1212.

“In the summer of 1212, thousands of divinely inspired young people from across Catholic France and Germany took off to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims. None made it to the Holy Land. Many died along the way or were sold into slavery. As military campaigns go, the Children’s Crusade was a disaster. Yet environmental activists and politicians are adopting the same “a child shall lead them” strategy to push their climate change agenda and its latest incarnation, the Green New Deal.

Youth-oriented climate groups have proliferated in the past few years, helped by logistical support from the United Nations. (YOUR tax dollars at work…for Progressive purposes!) With earnest names such as iMatter Youth Movement, Zero Hour and Youth vs. Apocalypse, these outfits publicly lecture world leaders and march for the cause. This Friday has been designated “a global day of action” on which thousands of students world-wide are expected to strike—otherwise known as cutting class.

A few of these youth groups are highly litigious, bringing lawsuits on the novel theory of “intergenerational equity.” Most cases have been dismissed, although some continue to work their way through the courts, including Juliana v. U.S., filed in 2015 by Our Children’s Trust.

Meanwhile, the Green New Deal has been introduced, appropriately enough, by the youngest member of Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It reads more like a progressive letter to Santa Claus than a serious piece of legislation. (See its actual genesis in our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 beneath our Quote of the Day at the top of the page.)

Members of Congress not yet on board—Democrats and Republicans alike—are targets of adolescent Alinskys. Sen. Dianne Feinstein was recently ambushed in her San Francisco office by middle- and high-school students from the Sunrise Movement. To her credit, Mrs. Feinstein tried to explain to the youngsters that the Green New Deal would cost too much and would never pass into law. The exchange called to mind a grandparent laying down the law when the parents can’t or won’t do their job.

The Feinstein fiasco should give pause to the adult climate-change activists hiding behind—and exploiting—all of these doubtless sincere young people whose heads have been filled for years with frightening tales of climate disaster. Children are innocent, but innocence goes with inexperience, naiveté and unwisdom. From following the Pied Piper into a medieval forest to sailing off with Pinocchio to Pleasure Island to shoplifting candy from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, children tend to make bad choices, which is why we don’t let them run things—or vote, consume alcohol, drive cars or enter into contracts.

Anthropogenic global warming is a highly politicized, scientifically complex issue that still requires debate despite the purported consensus. Given the strategic importance of the nation’s energy sector, any mitigation efforts would have wide-reaching economic and geopolitical ramifications.

Letting children lead the way on climate change would be a recipe for disaster. Remember the summer of 1212.“

At the risk of seeming repetitive, we recommend you also recall “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”…not to mention those who never learned an accurate account of history in the first place!

Which brings us, appropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Finally, we’ll call it a week with another amazing anecdote from News of the Bizarre, and this just in from the Land of Wine, Adultery and Surrender:

Killer French farm chickens gang-up to kill fox that sneaked into henhouse

“A fox in a henhouse got way more than it bargained for when a group of killer chickens turned the tables on their traditional foe and pecked it to death. The henhouse was located at an agricultural school in France and the fox likely entered the coop at dusk last week and got trapped inside as hatch doors close when the sun goes down, AFP reported.

The body of the fox was discovered the following morning by students at Le Gros Chêne school in Brittany when making a routine check on the creatures. “There, in the corner, we found this dead fox,” Pascal Daniel, the head of farming at the school, told AFP. “There was a herd instinct and they attacked him with their beaks.”“

Two closing thoughts: (1) we have to believe, in addition to their beaks, the hens utilized their… 

…large talons; and, (2) welcome to France, the only country we know where the chickens are the only ones who fight!

Magoo