Five Quick Things: The Death of Good Faith
I’ll start this off by wishing everybody a very, ummm, satisfactory Lenten season.
For those of you who are Catholics, you’re welcome to post in the comments what you’re giving up until Easter. I myself am using this time to break a personal addiction of sorts, as I’ve gotten to the point where I cannot stop eating dark chocolate-covered almonds. Something about those has flipped a switch for me, and the cravings have reached a point where they need controlling, so it’s cold turkey for the next six weeks or so.
We’ll see how that works.
There are other things we as a society need to give up for Lent, if not forever…
1. Bad Faith, All of the Time
I did a radio segment on Thursday on Chicago’s Morning Answer show, as I often do. My friend John Anthony was sitting in for the usual host, Dan Proft, and we were talking about a couple of the most recent columns on this page — yesterday’s piece on the Randy Fine-Muslims vs. Dogs controversy, and last week’s item about the Amelia meme in the U.K. and what it says about elite control and celebrity. (RELATED: Randy Is Just Fine, Say Dogs and Most Americans)
Here was the segment. I’m posting it for a reason beyond self-promotion as a radio and podcast guest, I promise; there’s something John and I were talking about that I wanted to pick apart further…
Political discourse in America has devolved into what one commentator describes as a “food fight,” with little room left for good-faith debate and increasing overlap among culture, technology, and public policy. That was the assessment of Scott McKay, publisher of @TheHayride and… pic.twitter.com/yn438HMI5n
— Morning Answer (@MorningAnswer) February 19, 2026
If you’ve paid much attention to the quality of argumentation extant in modern America, you might have noticed the abrupt about-face we’re seeing in the very nature of arguments, particularly those made about politics.
The classical interpretation is that you have these arguments because both sides are trying to get to the truth, and a good-faith argument will produce items of consensus along the way as the sides make their points. Along the way, the argument gets narrower and narrower until some sort of consensus is forged. And in that process, mutual respect and even sympathy are found.
But we don’t do any of that anymore. When people make arguments now, it’s not an effort at truth and rationality. We’re not trying to understand the other side’s position so that we can distill the real source of the disagreement. And often that can’t even be done because the disagreement doesn’t spring from rationality at all.
And what’s becoming more and more clear is so many people — not just trolls on the internet but politicians and others who are supposed to be good at this stuff — are actively trying not to understand the other side’s position, but rather, they’re playing dumb in order to fool bystanders into thinking things which aren’t true.
Randy Fine is a good example. One reason Fine is so hated by many on the Left was that he was shown a picture of a dead kid in Gaza and asked, as a Jew who supports Israel, how he could sleep at night. Fine’s response was, essentially, that he had no trouble at all.
Ever since, he’s been reviled.
But of course, the dead kid met his end as an end result of actions taken presumably in the kid’s interests — meaning, Hamas launched a stupid and destructive war against Israel, largely by attacking Israeli kids, some at a music festival of all places, and then Hamas uses Gazan kids as human shields against the Israelis who are trying to kill terrorists.
Fine understood that, and he also understood that the people trying to guilt him with that picture were not acting in good faith, so he steamrolled them by playing the part of the ogre.
Which isn’t illegitimate. They’re going to call you horrific names anyway; might as well get your money’s worth.
The downside being that we are no closer to consensus.
If you want that war to end — we’re hoping the current armistice holds, but it’s anything but guaranteed the Israelis and Palestinians won’t be trading punches again by the time you read this — it’s going to require everybody coming together around key principles like Dead Kids Are A Terrible Thing, and We Should All Agree Not To Do Things Which Produce Dead Kids.
But that isn’t where we are. We’re far away from that sort of understanding. When the opening gambit is The Other Side Wants Dead Kids, there is no road to consensus. Civil war is a lot more likely.
And once you notice the shift away from truth-seeking and effort at consensus and toward gotcha moments and demonization, you can’t unsee it. It’s pretty much all there is now.
Just consider the debate on the SAVE Act, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. (RELATED: Save the SAVE Act: Sunset the Filibuster)
2. Some Help for AOC
She utterly botched that question on the China-Taiwan conflict in that discussion in Munich last weekend, and it’s fair to wonder if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can be fixed as a foreign policy expert. But I thought I’d throw something into the mix on this anyway, because it’s an interesting scenario if nothing else. (RELATED: AOC’s Big Comedy Show in Europe)
The thing is, China is unlikely to try to take Taiwan. They’re very likely to rattle sabers with an eye toward spooking the Taiwanese into giving lots of concessions, but an all-out invasion is a very dicey thing for a Chinese political elite not prone to taking big risks.
Why do I say this?
You might have heard of Casey Jones, a civil engineer and YouTuber. He’s got a decent following of about 70,000 people, but he’s done a couple of videos of late that touched on a key vulnerability of China’s.
Here’s one. He’s talking about the Three Gorges Dam.
There’s a bit of debate as to whether Taiwan has enough hardware to take that dam out. But that’s the point — it’s debatable. What’s not debatable is whether a full-on missile strike would do enough damage to create a very serious problem for China. It would. You don’t need a full collapse of the dam in order to get massive, catastrophic flooding. Simply blowing out several gates would be plenty enough to flood big chunks of the Yangtze River valley, including much if not most of Wuhan.
So if you’re AOC and you get asked this question, an easy answer is “I’m not sure the Chinese really think this is a risk worth taking.”
It’s not a crackpot theory. Engineers and others have been kicking this around for 20 years. It’s a pretty well-known vulnerability.
3. Is It Sarcasm? (Answer: Yes)
The internet is destroying our national sense of humor.
For example, this was quite well done, but Good Lord, the ratio…
These poor black folk have gathered in the White House to celebrate black history month, and nobody told them the President is a white supremacist. They cheered him continuously, and a few even yelled, “we love you!”
Imagine how embarrassing that must be for them. Someone… pic.twitter.com/QIY2opz6DB
— Natalie Jean Beisner (@NJBeisner) February 18, 2026
Now, admittedly, some of the responders aren’t so much dense as they’re pretending to be, per our first item in this post. Nevertheless, when the sarcasm is just dripping off something, even on Facebook or X, it’s your duty to perceive it.
4. Will Quentin Deranque’s Death Lead to the Death of the French Regime?
I could probably have done an entire column on this, but a truly horrific murder in France has that country roiled in the kind of way that might not be reparable.
The victim was a 23-year-old college student and Catholic activist who’s been described as “far-right.” Whether that’s true or not, Quentin Deranque was on hand to provide security for a protest in Lyon by a group known as Nemesis Collective, which is a group of women opposed to Islamic penetration of French culture and politics. For his trouble, Deranque was set upon by 11 Antifa leftists and beaten to death.
It turns out that two of the Antifa thugs who killed Deranque were legislative aides for a politician named Rafael Arnault, who is with a party called La France Insourmise (France Unbowed), a hard-leftist/communist outfit which is part of the coalition formed to keep Marine Le Pen’s party out of power.
Generally speaking, people will get a little alarmed when people are slaughtered on the streets over politics. And in France, they’re pretty alarmed.
So what does the French government do? Well…
An autopsy found that Deranque suffered a fractured skull and fatal brain injuries, according to Lyon’s prosecutor, Thierry Dran.
He launched the police investigation for homicide and other potential criminal charges.
Dran’s office said police detained a man and a woman on Wednesday morning, with nine other people taken into custody on Tuesday night.
…
Deranque’s death triggered a storm of recriminations, mostly targeting France Unbowed.
The party is led by veteran hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist who stood for the presidency in 2012, 2017 and 2022 and failed to advance to the decisive run-off round.
And…
The first wave of arrests was announced late on Tuesday, as Dran said nine suspects had been arrested. Those detained included people who were suspected of having participated in the violence and others who had provided support to them, sources told Agence France-Presse.
Hours later, two more suspects were arrested: a man who the prosecutor said was suspected of being directly linked to the violence as well as his partner, who was suspected of trying to help him evade justice.
The LFI politician Raphael Arnault confirmed that his parliamentary assistant was among those detained, adding the aide had “ceased all parliamentary work.”
On Wednesday, as news of the arrests spread, the LFI said it had been forced to evacuate its national headquarters. “The national headquarters of LFI have just been evacuated following a bomb threat,” the party’s coordinator, Manuel Bompard, said on social media. “Police services are on site. All employees and activists are safe.”
That bomb threat is quite likely to have been a hoax, but it’s enough that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads this murderous band of thugs disguised as a political party, is now calling for the disbandment of the Nemesis Collective.
This being the Nemesis Collective…
This is ridiculous, Islamic supremacy is out of control in France, the far left are murdering people & the government are scared of a few women who use their voices to oppose the downfall of their once great nation. Rise France rise , patriots across the world support you,… https://t.co/7aXHxQtR4O
— Tommy Robinson ???????? (@TRobinsonNewEra) February 18, 2026
Because those are some killer tights those girls are wearing, or something.
Social media has exploded in France over this outrage, and that’s why you now see Emmanuel Macron, who’s in a coalition with France Unbowed and beholden to them, making asinine statements condemning free speech…
Macron: “Free speech is complete bullshit”
The mask has come off. Anyone surprised?
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) February 18, 2026
This is going to be hard to make work. (RELATED: Munich and the Fate of the West)
It isn’t like things are otherwise going well in France, you know.
5. Kathy Ruemmler
One of our readers shot me an email this week, irritated that nobody at The American Spectator has gone ballistic over the revelations in the Epstein files about former Obama White House counsel (and now-former Goldman Sachs chief legal officer) Kathy Ruemmler.
And that’s valid. Ruemmler turns out to be one of the greasier and sleazier characters in the epic tale we’re just starting to absorb from the last massive document dump from those files.
There aren’t any smoking guns putting Ruemmler into child sex trafficking or pedo prostitution per se, but we do have a bunch of data points that establish a pattern which is, to put it mildly, gross.
Specifically…
- Sharing confidential White House information with Epstein: the files indicate Ruemmler gave Epstein nonpublic details about Team Obama’s handling of the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Colombia in 2012. She forwarded Epstein a draft response to press questions about the scandal. That email includes internal White House communications. In that email thread, Ruemmler is asking Epstein to advise her on edits and media strategy. At the time, she wasn’t the White House counsel anymore, but she was still in Obama’s inner circle. The implication is that the Obama gang was getting advice from convicted sex offenders on matters involving sex scandals. No problem, right?
- Trashing Epstein’s victims: Kathy Ruemmler wasn’t Epstein’s lawyer per se, it doesn’t appear, but she nevertheless gave him friendly legal advice to Epstein when his victims began suing him, including under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. There is a 2015 exchange in which she says, “Victim’s rights, my ass” as a characterization of some of the claims. Ruemmler was also coordinating media responses for Epstein — in one case, she drafted a letter to ABC News to discredit Virginia Giuffre, the most famous Epstein accuser who died a couple of years ago, not of natural causes, and Ruemmler’s efforts blocked an ABC interview with Giuffre from airing.
- The Swag: That we know about from the files, Ruemmler received a $9,400 Hermès bag, a $4,200 Fendi fur-trimmed coat, a $1,700 Fendi bag, luxury boots, a watch, and a funded first-class trip to Europe. There could be other stuff. She’s in the files thanking him in a stomach-turning way, calling him “Uncle Jeffrey” and saying, “I adore him. It’s like having another older brother!” Seems like Kathy is a material girl.
- She Makes Jokes: In emails, Ruemmler is cracking wise about “trading” one of Epstein’s “Russians” — Epstein’s underaged girls weren’t really the bulk of what he did; he was involved in a modeling agency that hired lots of Eastern European girls, and Team Epstein just called them the “Russians” — for a better compensation package during career discussions. It’s a joke, but what we don’t really know is how on the nose this was. There’s so much perversity and depravity in these files that it’s not unreasonable to see this as half-serious — as in, did Kathy Ruemmler know or assume that Epstein’s Russians were transactable?
- The Social Lobbyist: Epstein is in the files describing Ruemmler as his “arch feminist” and “great defender,” and saying she’s useful in giving the world “the other side” of him to skeptics like Melinda Gates — who, let’s face it, should shut up about how sympathetic she is to Epstein’s and her ex-husband’s victims. Ruemmler advised Epstein on issues around his sex offender registry problems, the bad PR over his lenient 2008 plea deal, and other stuff.
So there’s all of that, but then we have this…
NEW: In 2016, Jean-Luc Brunel was discussing a date to walk into the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York to provide evidence against Jeffrey Epstein—in exchange for immunity. On May 3, Epstein fired off an email to Kathy Ruemmler. He wrote that Brunel was planning to go to…
— Khadeeja Safdar (@khadeeja_safdar) February 19, 2026
And this…
Yep.
Jeffrey Epstein asked the CIA’s 2015 “Agency Medal” winner Kathy Ruemmler –former White House counsel to President Barack Obama and now the top lawyer at Goldman Sachs– to show him her “version of Washington one day, if possible CIA or NSA or boy stuff.”
“[O]f course,”… pic.twitter.com/LFumFXtPQz
— Grant Smith Ellis (@GrantSmithEllis) February 19, 2026
The import of which is summed up as…
This is pretty astonishing. When Jean-Luc Brunel, who ran Epstein’s “modeling agency,” was about to get an immunity deal to spill the beans on the operation, hush money negotiations began. The first person Epstein turned to for advice was Kathryn Ruemmler, a key member of Obama’s… https://t.co/4hDJZQs8Gj pic.twitter.com/Y8pH1Nduym
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) February 19, 2026
Yes, Obama’s former White House counsel has a lot to answer for.
Maybe Obama does as well.
There are people out there who accuse the Epstein obsessors of a “moral panic.” But the real issue is that the Epstein files show how deep and entrenched the corruption is among our elites in money, culture, and politics. And Kathy Ruemmler, who just lost a job she didn’t need, isn’t likely to deal with any further consequences. Certainly nothing like going to jail. I’m not sure if she can even be proven to have done anything illegal.
But she ought to be in front of a Congressional committee soon. And after that, it’s time for Kathy Ruemmler to go away.
READ MORE from Scott McKay:
Randy Is Just Fine, Say Dogs and Most Americans
The 2028 Democrat Contenders’ Pilgrimage to Europe
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