Data Mining Evil Genius

http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-scandal-when-it-comes-to-trump

The article does a great job of explaining what anyone with a moderate level of memory remembers about 2012...

What, exactly, would Obama be doing? According to The Guardian, Obama’s new database would be gathered by asking individual volunteers to log into Obama’s reelection site using their Facebook credentials. “Consciously or otherwise,” The Guardian states, “the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page — home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends — directly into the central Obama database.”

Naturally, that was "genius, innovative, etc".

Facebook had no problem with such activity then. They do now. There’s a reason for that. The former Obama director of integration and media analytics stated that, during the 2012 campaign, Facebook allowed the Obama team to “suck out the whole social graph”; Facebook “was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing.” She added, “They came to [the] office in the days following election recruiting & were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

Is there even one of us that doesn't TOTALLY understand this? What is good for "our side" is GREAT, what is good for "the other side" is TERRIBLE! Human nature, as natural as breathing -- what CULTURE was once to do was modify human nature to allow that culture to survive and flourish above tribalism, the natural state of man. To understand that "the rules" were there for ALL ... not just "our tribe".

"The Hill" is a slightly left of center media bias rating ... apparently, for a mostly center media outlet, the contrast was just too recent and too glaring to not notice and they gave at least some lip service with the article.

These sorts of dichotomies are nearly daily issue on NPR. Trump had the audacity to congratulate Putin on his victory! Horrors. Naturally Obama congratulated Putin on his victory in 2012 and it was not a problem. That is what it means to be tribal -- when your tribe does it, it is fine, when the other side does it, it is a crime. Oh, and memory is the first thing to go.

At this point, I believe something over 70% of the population understands that we are politically tribal today  -- however my contention is that something like 90% of those people believe that "their tribe is right" (meaning correct).  They are wrong ... and any that still believe we have not fallen to tribalism are also wrong.

I voted for Trump because he was the most non-party / non-tribal candidate possible to win in 2016   -- however he is FAR from non-tribal enough to get us out of the mess we are in. And naturally, a new tribe of rabid supporters has formed around him.

1. Nobody in Washington, and very very few people nationally have any idea of what it meant to be "America" -- I cover this here.
2. Those that don't have shared transcendent values can only have tribalism -- so they fight, often at great cost to their selves, families, and even their own tribe, because they have no measure of "the good". Life is a constant tribal argument.
3. As we see in the recent budget agreement, people see a victory" when "everyone" gets "something", even though what they "get" is charged to their children and grandchildren, and many parts of the "get" are things they don't even want, but some other tribe does.

I'm a God/meaning loyalist -- the budget "deal" was terrible. The "Stormy Affair" isn't as bad as a boss having sex with an employee at the office (especially the Oval Office), but it is also just one more sign that we are in Sodom and Gomorrah territory -- but we have known that since Chappaquiddick.

The choices are actually very simple. We will either return to a point where "70-80%" of people in this territory agree on a set of values that transcend tribe / party, and thus have something like what America was, OR, one of the current, or some other tribal view will "win", and exterminate, re-educate, etc the "losers" as happened in the USSR, National Socialist Germany, Mao's China, Vietnam,  etc and those of the "victorius" tribe will live on in something like "The Lives of Others".

Naturally, none of the tribes study history, so they are absolutely certain that if THEY win, they will do it "right" this time!

Political Tribes, Group Instinct And the Fall Of Nations

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Tribes-Group-Instinct-Nations/dp/0399562850

Found the subject book by Yale professor Amy Chua to be a quick,  easy, and worthwhile  read. It seems such a perfect book to show up just as I'm closing Moose Tracks.

On page 40-41 she does a good job of quickly covering the basic science that we already know -- "our brains are hardwired to identify, value, and individualize in-group members, while outgroup members are processed as interchangeable members of a general social category".

"Humans aren't just a little tribal. We're VERY tribal and it distorts the way we think and feel".

"The key to ethnic identity is that it is built around the idea of shared blood; ... For most human beings, the family is primal".

Readers of this blog know all that, and they also know why destruction of the family is key to destruction of a culture!

She wisely spends a lot of the early part of the book discussing the US inability to recognize tribalism in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Venezuala. I was completely unaware of the degree to which the Vietnamese had been fighting against a Chinese minority that owned most of the wealth of Vietnam for a thousand years -- and we ignored that fact.

On page 46 she introduces the critical idea of a "market dominant minority" which the Chinese were in Vietnam, and are in Indonesia today: "in Indonesia the Chinese comprise 3% of the population but control 70% of the economy".

At this point it would seem easy to understand where she is headed -- something over 90% of the wealth in the US is controlled by an elite of well less than 10%, with something over half being controlled by a 1% who largely attended ivy league schools, live on one of the coasts in very large cities, and share a set of establishment values at odds with the have-nots of any color -- Asian, Hispanic, Black, White, etc.

Pretty much, she doesn't go there -- she goes to race.

On 166 she says "The Left believes that right-wing tribalism -- bigotry, racism -- is tearing the country apart. The Right believes that left-wing tribalism -- identity politics, political correctness, is tearing the country apart. They are both right."

From 21-33 she asserts that we became a "super-group" in "1965" after the Voting Rights Act, and defines a super-group on page 22 to be "a group in which membership is open to individuals of any background, but at the same time binds it's members together with a strong,  overarching, group transcending collective identity". To the extent she defines that "identity", it is "The American Dream" ... simplified to the idea that everyone can economically surpass their parents.

What she doesn't focus on much is that Christianity as the prototype super-group -- the strong overarching goal is serving Christ and others, and everyone, regardless of background is a "blood brother/sister" in the blood of Christ. Galations 3:28 "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Obviously, her objective is a SECULAR super-group, which she thought the US had from 1965 to the election of Barack Obama. She notes as I have on previously page 165 that 1965 was also the year when an historically unprecedented wave of immigration, much of it non-white,  started -- this was not an accident. The elites at that point felt that America was too slow to change, so they would just change the population. Brilliantly, they also told us that Americans should avoid having children because world hunger was the "end of the world issue" of that day, similar to "climate change" today.

On page 181, she spots a little problem with identity politics ... "The demand is not for incluson within the fold of universal humankind ... nor is it for respect "in spite of" one's differences. Rather, what is demanded is respect for oneself as different."

So much for "everyone being created equal" -- try each individual being "evolved" different and special, AND demanding to be SPECIALLY respected for being different! Everyone a star! Sacrifice? Tolerance of those who do not share your particular differenc?

Not the values of identity politics!

She spends a good deal of time on things like "The Prosperity Gospel", "Sovereign Citizens", the WWE, NASCAR and a few other things to it is not clear what end -- something like a few on the left doing a "Safari to America" after Trump was elected. Clearly she, being on the left, would like to focus on the tribalism on the right.

 By the most scary estimates the FBI or the Southern Poverty Hate  Center" could come up with were "as many as" 300K members of apparently highly feared "Sovereign Citizens" ... I'd never heard of them, I've never met one even though I'm a denizen of gun clubs and crazy conservative meetings. Apparently no web site exists for this dangerous group ...  sovereigncitizenship.net was expired. There were LOTS of web hits on how much of a threat they are however. It's on the Internet, it must be true.

Would NPR listeners be a "tribe" like "NASCAR"? Since I'm a regular "spy listener", I'd certainly say so -- very much a secular humanist world view with recent movement toward "intersectionality". How about BLM? At a minium, they seem to have a lot more web presence than the fearsome "Sovereign Citizens". Amy is right about tribalism ... even if you DO have a transcendent value beyond your tribe, seeing your OWN tribe is HARD --  we just assume our own tribe is just the normal, reasonable, decent, intelligent people!

So once we had a country that Amy believes was a secular super-group, a goal of at least hers  -- and then came Obama, the proof of the existence of that super-group, and "poof" it was gone. So how do we get it back now that we are no longer going to have any dominant majority group? However, we will apparently continue to have a very elite coastal ivy league "Market Dominant Minority" of the 1% that own all the wealth?

I'd argue that even with lots of minority problems, we were much more of a sectarian (Christian) super-group than she gave us credit for well before 1965  ... that Federick Douglass could rise to the prominance he did as an ex-slave in the mid 1800's shows that much of the country held merit to be a much greater factor than race even at that time. Something about America -- I'd assert it to be our written Constitution, was enough for people to fight and die for even though we remained far from a "perfect super-group". As she points out, nobody else on the planet even sees that as a goal.

The book is a good survey of the prevalence and problems of tribalism -- it does not in my opinion acknowledge how far the generally Christian Western civilization had risen above tribalism by the apogee of America post WWII 1945 - 1965. It does show that our higher level educated "elite" no longer subscribing to the values embodied in our Constitution, and certainly losing Christianity as a common glue, has resulted in what most students of civilization and culture would assert to be a fully expected descent into tribalism ... Darwin's Cathedral is one post/book that goes into more detail here.

She provides a hugely hopeful story on page 205. A young  Mexican American Yale student, "Giovanni" lived in a poor trailer park in rural Texas near "the Joneses", who were extremely kind to his family. In 2016 he thought that due to their social media posts, they must be "racists". He told the author however, that the "Joneses exemplify a critical paradox that progressives often overlook or dismiss, to their own detriment." Despite their racist attitudes (determined by Giovanni based on social media posts), "they treat our family with nothing but love and respect, in fact, they treat my sister and me to be their adoptive grandkids".

She goes on; "I found Giovanni's story to be striking first because he was talking about racism in a way that is completely taboo among progressives (the group he identifies with). Among progressives, once someone is deemed racist, that's it. You can't talk to them, you can't compromise, and you certainly can't suggest they might be decent people just because they are nice to a few minorities.".

Perhaps Giovanni is an Easter Person (Christian)? Somewhere in his heart might he imagine that his judgement is less than ultimate, and that ALL are redeemable? For me, the saddest part of Hillary's deploreables comment was that she judged them (us?)  "irredeemable". As a Christian, it isn't the Joneses works that make them redeemable -- nor mine, nor anyones. If it were, then Christ would not have needed to die because ultimate redemption would be a matter of meeting some standard of works (vs proper social media posts as judged by "progressives"). "Morality" would  be a matter of "keeping up with the Joneses"!

We have exchanged a dominant culture where all people were at a minimum "redeemable", and at least the standard was that as a practicing Christian we were  bound to not only not judge them, but to even LOVE them! For a "progressive" culture where worth can be judged via social media posts, redemption from such posts is not possible, and such posts define your worth even beyond repeated actions! Giovanni is a rare person -- rare enough for his Yale professor to call out his behavior in not cutting off people that have been kind to his family for years on the basis of social media posts to be an "amazing hopeful sign" in this tribal nation of BOistan!

As I wait for the potential of yet another major spring snow storm, I reflect on where our culture has moved over my lifetime. In my youth and even up to middle age, it was considered wise to believe in a set of transcendent values  that included a created world with a loving God showing us how to live happily not only in this life, but eternally, and feeling gratidude to be blessed to be  living in a nation with a written Constitution, exceptional among all nations on the planet, insuring our right to think and live freely in peace with our neighbors.

We traded that for a world where this short life is all we have, the whole of Western culture is nothing but a terrible tale of oppression, and the avowed purpose of our nation is to insure that there will be nothing recognizeable in the future save "accelerating change" toward an unknown, but promised to be "progressive" future. We are required to believe in this, rather than anything we might see with our own eyes -- lest we be judged "irredeemable deplorables" by the elites driving this "progress". Oh, and "nonbelievers" in the "progressive" mantra are to be pitied -- for it is guaranteed by the elites that the "future beyond the future" is CERTAIN to be even more wonderful! What a brave new world!

Have we not been to this movie before? Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Charlottesville, Alt-Right, How To Think

An Establishment Conservative's Guide To The Alt-Right - Breitbart:

As an avid NPR listener, I DO know how I am SUPPOSED to think about Charlottesville. Charlottesville is FINALLY the turning point for Trump. It unmasks him completely as the racist he has always been and shows once and for all that conservatism is racism! It's SIMPLE, as the positions of NPR tend to be -- oh, and if you refuse to agree with this obvious truth, then you too are a RACIST -- end of story. There are correct thinking progressives -- Democrats, the MSM, etc, and then there are the racists. We live in a very simple and easy to understand world -- at least for the standard NPR listener.

The linked article gets long, but it can be summarized in a valid fashion pretty easily -- you won't get it all from here, but you will get the sense of it.

The ALT-right is the modern equivalent of the campus radical left "Weathermen", etc from the 1960's. Acolytes of Saul Alinsky -- rebel revolutionaries and faux revolutionaries like Tom Hayden, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (Obama worked as a "Community Organizer", the main foot soldier in the Alinsky revolutionary vision). The key words are YOUNG, radical and transgressive ... as the young often are.

The '60's lefty revolutionaries grew up and became Senators, Presidents and such -- somewhat less rabid than when they were young, but still with the same far left views. The left grew up, suffered under Reagan, then mostly took over the levers of power and gave us a stagnant economy, gay "marriage" and gender confusion -- not everyone was excited about these developments, so now the youth are "Alt-Right".

These young rebels, a subset of the alt-right, aren’t drawn to it because of an intellectual awakening, or because they’re instinctively conservative. Ironically, they’re drawn to the alt-right for the same reason that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s: because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don’t understand.

Of course, just as was the case in history, the parents and grandparents just won’t understand, man. That’s down to the age difference. Millennials aren’t old enough to remember the Second World War or the horrors of the Holocaust. They are barely old enough to remember Rwanda or 9/11. Racism, for them, is a monster under the bed, a story told by their parents to frighten them into being good little children.

Naturally, the dried up leftist old fogies like Hillary, BO, Bernie, Nancy and their buddies at all the major news outlets want to go as negative as they possibly can on the Alt-Right, so it is important for them to link the group with skinheads, National Socialists, white supremacists, etc, and those groups of course DO exist, just like the Black Panthers, Students For a Democratic Society, SLA (kidnapped Patty Hearst), Charlie Manson, etc existed in the '60s ... and the "right" attempted to tie them to the general anti-war, peace, free love movement. (when the media is on the other side, it never works)

Repudiating National Socialists, skinheads and actual white supremacists is great and correct. We don't want to be like the left is with "Black Lives Matter", Nation of Islam and Islam itself. BLM is obviously a black racist group that needed to be repudiated from the left a thousand times over, but of course it has not been. Likewise, the difficulty which BO had with uttering the term "Islamic Terrorism" would be funny if it were not so sad.

The problem is that since the left media is dominant, and the left are EXPERTS at identity politics, Trump is on very dangerous ground here. He would have been FAR better off sticking with his initial statement about "ALL SIDES".  Absent the old world of actual principle -- eg. "we all revere God, Country, the Constitution, Apple Pie and Chevrolet", the "burn your bad actor "allies"" strategy is only demanded of one side. BO can cozy up to BLM even when they are yelling "Pigs in blankets, fry em like bacon!" with no MSM outcry to "repudiate BLM"!.  (why would the media want to repudiate BLM? they are on the same side!!!) In a world with no actual shared values, WINNING is the only "value" that counts.

Racism is indeed wrong, although it is inherent in the human condition. "White Privilege" is the current black equivalent of calling whites the equivalent of the N-word. Every white has it, they can't escape it, it is evil, it invalidates whites, etc ... They are a bunch of white N-words! We all have racism in our DNA -- the magic for the left is to be allowed to use it for their side BOTH to make their own identity groups (BLM) feel superior, but to label the other side as "bad racist", while blacks braying about "white privilege" have "dog whistle privilege".

So what is a "true conservative", the sort that has values beyond economic success to do? The article covers the "true conservative" (they call it "natural conservative") definition pretty well.

 For natural conservatives, culture, not economic efficiency, is the paramount value. More specifically, they value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe. Their perfect society does not necessarily produce a soaring GDP, but it does produce symphonies, basilicas and Old Masters. The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting."


Needless to say, natural conservatives’ concern with the flourishing of their own culture comes up against an intractable nemesis in the regressive left, which is currently intent on tearing down statues of Cecil Rhodes and Queen Victoria in the UK, and erasing the name of Woodrow Wilson from Princeton in the U.S. These attempts to scrub western history of its great figures are particularly galling to the alt-right, who in addition to the preservation of western culture, care deeply about heroes and heroic virtues.

So the Alt-Right has a strongly shared value with "natural conservatives" -- which is likely why we more natural conservatives are reticent to throw the whole Alt Right movement out with the bad apples travelling with them.  We are perfectly willing to repudiate David Duke, skinheads, National (and other) Socialists, but draw the line at tarring the whole Alt-Right with that broad brush.

The left OTOH, won't even repudiate BLM -- let alone tar NAACP, Black Caucus, "White Privilege" intellectuals,  etc with a validly repudiated negative label! In fact, they cowtow to BLM because they know how identity politics is played! Repudiation rhetoric is for SUCKERS -- which means Republicans to them.

I found this paragraph to be very intriguing:

Some alt-righters make a more subtle argument. They say that when different groups are brought together, the common culture starts to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Instead of mosques or English houses, you get atheism and stucco.

Sadly, this is often the case. Decide you want "Christian Unity", and soon you have women ministers, gay ministers, ministers that can't tell you what they are, atheist ministers, no historical Jesus ministers, etc, etc. As long as America was a "melting pot" where everyone signed up for AMERICAN values -- hard work, self-reliance, reverence for the Constitution, Christianity, speaking English, etc, etc (ie. "American Culture"), it was fine to be an "Italian AMERICAN" who did some different dances, drank some different wines, and served some tasty food -- but spoke English and revered America.

The current sort of BOistani balkanization is more like the Italians would own a section of the city, speak Italian, throw out non-Italians,  and the Mafia would be in charge -- and that was OK, cuz it was "their culture", and there was no thought that there was any sort of "American culture". (why would there be? We live in BOistan).

If the left Davos elite succeeds in defeating Trump,  natural conservatives and assorted disenfranchised Christians, workers, misfits and hangers on (the likely outcome), the Alt-Right will be less than a footnote in a few years. 

**IF** however by some amazing luck, act of God, etc, "America" -- or something like it rises from the swampy wasteland of BOistan, then the Alt-Right likely contains the leaders of the future -- 30, 40, even 50 years in the future, as the Alisky left contained the leaders of today's now "mainstream left" -- even including avowed socialists like Bernie. 

Will Natural Conservatives stick around as researchers like Haidt would say they must because the position is "wired in" to everyone ... and dominant in many? 

The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt,includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.

At one level, all humans want to "go home". I argue that "home" is actually Heaven (and the Garden of Eden), and the evolutionary psychology ideas of "Darwin's Cathedral" are VERY specialized wishful materialist imagination. Christ is the difference that allows Christian Conservatives to make the best attempt in world history at actually loving their enemies and viewing history / reality through the transcendent eyes of eternity.

Or we may just be deplorable white privileged racists as the left has confidently labeled us.

'via Blog this'

Google "Diversity"

Google Fires Author Of "Outrageous" Memo Slamming Company's Anti-Conservative Culture | Zero Hedge:

Why do cultures die? Because "diversity" of race, gender, ??? gender uncertainty ???, and sexual preferance become mandatory "values", and diversity of thought is prohibited!!!

Man can neither live by bread alone, nor by his gonads alone. The essence of humanity is somewhere in the region of the soul, consciousness and intellect, not between the legs or painted on the skin. Is it really important if there are 58 "genders", or 5800? There are really only two and we all actually know it. If one has to swear fealty to some other nunber in order to work, the shallow basis for a grasp of reality slips even more. People forced to ascribe to nonsense become more and more able to live with nonsense rather than reality. (a potential degree change in temprature in 100 years is a greater crisis than $20 T debt, $ 150T unfunded liabilites TODAY!)

I'll go read what the guy wrote eventually, but seriously, if he can do his job well, is it not remotely possible that he could be allowed to believe that other people as well would be better served in doing their jobs rather than being "stylish"?

Have we come to the point where saying "women better suited for conceiving and bearing children than men" is "inappropriate? Note, I DID NOT say ONLY having children!

BOistan is certainly not a very factually oriented place.

'via Blog this'

I Still Love America, I Just Miss Her

America: Can You Stop Loving Her if She Changes? | National Review:

Jonah Goldberg is having a tiff with the editors of NR over "What is America" (Rich Lowrey is editor in chief). The editors declare they would still love America even if it had a completely different set of ideals -- and Jonah apparently doesn't realize that the area of N America where the nation of America used to exist DOES have a completely different set of ideals -- which is why I call it BOistan.

Rich started by saying that America is a nation, not an idea. He then went on to demonstrate the ways in which America is a nation (it’s got borders and a people and a culture and the like). That’s fine with me, I suppose. I concluded a while ago that the “Nation vs. Idea” argument is poorly framed. If all you have to do is cite borders, roads, and a post office to prove it’s not an idea, then what’s the point?

Every philisopher understands neccessary vs sufficent. Philosophers all breathe, sweat, defecate, etc -- which are neccessary conditions. NONE of those is SUFFICIENT to call yourself a philosopher. All nations have borders, people, culture, post offices, etc -- those are neccessary conditions, not sufficient to being called "America".

"Idea, ideals, values, principles" -- The TRUTHS that America held  to be self evident and endowed by GOD. To believe in America is to believe in divine founding -- else there are no transcendent truths, and America could not exist without transcendent truth. The founders certainly allowed people to live in the territory of America (the neccessary but not sufficient borders) without acknowledging God -- they were just to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and declare that the founding principles were self evident "just cuz" ... like created equal without any creator, rendering "equal" just another man made thought changeable by the only remaining moral authority when God dies -- power. "Might is right" with a ballot or a bullet.

Roe V Wade, Obergefell, BOcare, not impeaching Bill Clinton, 20 trillion in debt and a few hundred other things finally convinced me that "We weren't in Kansas (America) anymore".

The unwillingness of someone of Goldberg's stature to even recognize that we are fish swimming in a BOistani rather than American pond is traumatizing -- failure to recognize and accept reality is not a good sign for ability to remedy our situation. Jonah ends his column rather whimsically for such a serious matter.

Imagine one person tells you that his ideal form of government would be to get rid of the Constitution and make Kim Kardashian queen. You’d think that person is silly, probably even deranged. Now imagine that 270 million Americans believed that and, having the necessary supermajority to pull it off, voted away our Constitution. As the coronation of Queen Kim, First of Her Name, unfolded on every channel, would you not change your view of America, her culture, and her people? Might you not fall out of love with America as it is? 

My hunch is Rich et al. would still love America, but you know what America they would love? The America That Was. They might even join the resistance to the regime of Queen Kim (I’m fairly certain Charlie would) in an effort to restore self-government to America. And here’s the funny thing: They’d be fighting against the American nation in the name of that great and glorious cause, the American Idea. And that’s the crucial difference.

It would really be nice to have a discussion about what ideas/values/truths/etc that we seek to return to -- I think we need a much clearer picture of the America that we see receeding away from us ... sort of a philosophical version of this shot of Queen Kim ... only in this case a picture of  "The America That WAS" (TATW) receeding -- what would she look like in your mind?

'via Blog this'

The Left Notices the Farther Left

How the Left Lost Its Mind - The Atlantic:

When you are the dominant political strain, you tend to spend the bulk of your time focused on those evil unwashed masses that hail from "the right" ... that strange set of morons that believe in God, freedom, families, hard work, personal responsibility, and trash like that. As William Buckly used to say of NPR, they were even handed -- they tended to cover both the left and the far left views with great detail.

Given US propoganda since 1950, it continues to mystify our media, educational institutions, entertainment industry and the vast state and federal bureaucracy that there STILL exist people out there in Red State flyover country that are not "of the body", better known as "The Party", TP-D. Why, it is almost like there is actually a God, and that people somewhere live in a reality with actual work and some divine grace bringing forth crops and energy to keep the lefties alive!

This article is a bit different -- it takes notice of the fact that there is a leftward fever swamp, and has been for a very long time. MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, Huffpo, Slate, etc. How odd for them to be bringing this up post Dan Rather letting the Fake News cat completely put of the bag back in '04, and just in the last couple of weeks, CNN giving 3 "star journalists" the heave ho over shall we say "imaginative reporting" on Trump / Russia.

The HuffPo was nice enough to take down the following ...

Just this month, editors were forced to delete a contributor post that began, “Impeachment and removal from office are only the first steps; for America to be redeemed, Donald Trump must be prosecuted for treason and — if convicted in a court of law — executed.”

Come on folks, we have seen the severed head, we certainly know that the left has wanted those that think differently executed since the French Revolution! Are we to think this is "new"?

It is WAY too long, and WAY too much navel gazing ... I got a good chuckle out of this:

Before we go on, let me try to quiet the cries of “False equivalence!” before they begin: No, these personalities and publications do not yet wield the same influence in the Democratic Party that their counterparts do in the GOP. But ignoring them would be a mistake.

Yes, those Democrats are might selective on their news sources -- I know they never stooped to Dan Rather in the past or CNN more recently. The big left wing fiction is that the NY Times is anything "better"  that the left wing poltical believer version of "AM Coast to Coast!"

The tinfoil hat on a pink background WAS a very nice touch for the lead though -- gotta give them credit for that degree of self awareness!

'via Blog this'

Yanez, The Memory of America Fades

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/448740/philando-castile-verdict-was-miscarriage-justice

In America, we had a court system that included "juries of our peers" and we honored that system because we agreed that was far more just than mob dscisions or some "pronouncement of the elite". In BOistan, everyone believes their opinion is "as good as the jury" who took 6 days from their lives to sit through testimony, then another 5 days to deliberate. They pull their favorite snippet from the proceedings and declare the jury wrong / racist / stupid / etc.

And even though any of us could be asked to sit on a similar jury, we assume we won't, and amazingly it is broadly OK to disparage the decision made by a jury of our peers, that was once cornerstone of America's legal system. That is what is shocking about the linked post above, it is from NATIONAL REVIEW, an ostensively conservative source, yet totally fails to understand that our criminal justice system is based on honoring a jury of our peers ... they cherry pick their "evidence", draw their conclusion, and decare "the jury is wrong", where in America, the jury was honored and RIGHT unless it could be overturned by new evidence / procedure.

America had a population educated enough in civics to understand that without respect for basic civil government and a legal system, anarchy or tyranny are the only possible outcomes.

Most of our population has no idea of what America even was. The idea of respecting ANY institution over their own "fresh off social media" meme level opinion simply never crosses their mind. They are "god", and they have an opinion, and with apologies to Baron Von Raschke, "that is all the people need to know".  I covered this lack of knowledge here. 

I do know that MPR really wanted this officers hide in the worst way. One comentator this week from one of the lefty schools in the twin cities (Hamline I think) felt that "the good of the community" should overshadow mere evidence here. They have been running excerpts from "74 seconds" a lot over the last 6 months. https://www.mprnews.org/topic/philandocastile

You get impaired on weed, go drive around with a kid in the car, get stopped, have a gun on your person, and then -- likely because of the impairment, fail to follow police orders relative to the gun EXPLICITLY and ... ??? Up to that point, the decisions are all yours, and you can take your time deciding the correct course.

I put myself standing outside that window, smell of weed reeking in nostrils, obviously stoned driver, says "I have a gun" and rather than leaving hands solidly on wheel in plain sight starts reaching in his pocket where I can likely see the gun ... what would **I** do?

I really can't imagine ANYONE that would not "fear for your life" -- do you shoot? I'm not sure that any of us know that answer for ourselves, and likely it will vary "depending on" a huge set of variables along the lines of ; do you miss the deer that jumps out? lose control? ??? ... the real "action" wasn't in "74 seconds", it was in 1 or 2 tops.

A courageous, and I think honest jury. One guy is dead, destroying another life more than it has been won't bring him back. Unless you believe that he needed to go to prison "for the good of the community". It has seemed peferectly clear all along that Yanez was forced by Castile's decisions into a split second life and death call. There is no reason for anyone, permit or not, to put an officer in that situtation and hope they decide to risk their sober life for your impaired one.

What TP ("The Party" TP-D) wants to happen is that cases like this give the State more power. No more jury trial -- "the State", meaning the Administrative State, decides what outcome best meets their current political, economic, social engineering, etc objectives. The very idea of a "Jury of your peers" is totally out of line with TP anyway. The sad thing is to see that even NR has forgotten what America was, and are willing to disparage the decision of the jury without even a moment to honor their sacrifice and the system. 

74 Seconds: The death of Philando Castile and the trial of Jeronimo Yanez |…

MPRNEWS.ORG

The Costs Of BO

The $600 Billion Man - WSJ:

If you cared about the country formerly known as "America", it's murderer, BO is already a name clouded in stench. This article gives some numbers to go with the smell.

$1.9 TRILLION is spent by BOistanis every year to comply with the reams of regulations spewing from the federal maw. BO added $600B to that yearly total!

2016 was the all time record for pages of new federal regulations, 95,894 pages. “Of the top 10 all-time-high Federal Register page counts, seven occurred under President Barack Obama,” 

The three best words to describe BO? Stink, Stank and STUNK! 

'via Blog this'

A Nation Gone Under

https://www.facebook.com/Area51.US/videos/10154174843304555/

Go off and watch the little video ... the rest of this will make more sense.

Reagan warned us that when we were no longer "One Nation Under God", we would be a nation "gone under". As per usual, he was right.

I could quibble with a lot in the video -- the profanity (although the "F word" is basically just a part of speech today). The statistics are mostly hooey ... take out the REALLY failed black Democrat sub-culture, and most of those clean up.

Infant mortality is a complete crock ... we count ANY baby "born alive" ... most of the countries on the planet just count "babies to term" ... they don't even try to keep many of the ones we do alive, and we do it even with the poor, the black, the fetal alcohol syndrome, crack, etc  -- compare "white middle class births within 3-4 weeks of term" and we are #1 ... damned close with life expectancy as well.

Defense? My book bill is pretty huge -- but compared to my income? Nothing of any interest ... same with the US. Compare defense to GDP and we are fourth ... behind Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia ... India, France, UK and China are right behind us in the same ballpark. The official NATO goal that ALL the NATO countries are supposed to meet is 2%.

The fact remains, BOistan is NOT the greatest nation -- Russia, Israel, Iran and China would all be in the running ... maybe Germany. At least the rest of them have some pride in their own existence.

More education is no use ... knowing everything about nothing is counterproductive at best. WHY?? That is the question. What is it that is supposed to be unique about BOistan? We are the only nation where a majority of the youth have been taught (brainwashed?) to hate their own countries history? What would our goal be? Our people are absolutely the same and have no distinguishing features? We love everyone and believe everyone will love us because we love them? We are the only people that can't figure out if we are men or women -- or what it would even mean to "act like men"?

Perhaps our goal is "We are clueless, pity us" .... Maybe the "natural evolutionary path" of BOistan is to develop into a nation of leeches like the Pacleds from STNG ... "We look for things we need ... things to make us go .."

White Death, The Spirit Haunts BOistan

The disease killing white Americans goes way deeper than opioids - The Washington Post:


Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Mathew 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Human life requires hope and meaning, remove them and you get death. Religion has been a cornerstone of that hope and meaning for millennia, love and family for even longer, and community wrapping those together for that whole time. 

BOistan has pretty much destroyed actual religion (some "social religion" still exists), as well as  family and community, while trying to replace it with a paternalistic "Party Community" of "The Party (TP-D)". In TP "community", everyone is  god as long as you 100% follow every single dictate of TP all the time. You can have other "friends" that are equally committed to whatever TP tells you to be committed to at the moment, but you may not stray lest you be shunned. Naturally, groups of little gods that shit don't have much luck forming much in the way of  actual robust "community". These fake communities are fragile in the extreme -- one can often observe them tittering about "what they are against" ... deploreables, country people, Christians, etc. 

For those that don't accept that bargain, you are "deploreables" and as such, deserve to die -- and as ought to be no surprise to the WaPo, they are dying -- like flies.

"So the theory comes back to despair. Case and Deaton believe that white Americans may be suffering from a lack of hope. The pain in their bodies might reflect a “spiritual” pain caused by “cumulative distress, and the failure of life to turn out as expected.” If they're right, then the problem will be much harder to solve. Politicians can pass laws to keep opioids out of people's hands or require insurers to cover mental health costs, but they can't turn back the clock to 1955."

I love how spiritual is in scare quotes -- it is indeed the scariest of concepts to the ruling powers in BOistan. What WOULD a "spirit" be? Like so many other words that are meaningless to the secular god of science -- consciousness, love, beauty, honor, morality; the scary spirit can't be measured, and like the other words I listed that can't be measured, they haunt the arid spiritual wasteland of BOistan.


I covered this back in late 2015 -- the situation is if anything worse now. I believe we can understand a LOT about BOistan by looking at how "The Party" treats this crisis vs only real comparison of the last 50 years to this -- AIDS. TP was DESPERATE to allow gays to continue to to follow the lifestyle of bathhouses and open sexual license that they had also loosed by their removal of religion / morality. AIDs was a story that CONSUMED the TP controlled media!

The wages of TP have been known for a long time -- and TP is more than fine with that. The worship of death and darkness is the natural result of rejection of life and light. The unborn, the infirm, the elderly and eventually all who fail to bend their knee to the power of TP must die!

The intellectual comfort of TP demands it.


'via Blog this'

Coming Out Is Hard To Do

Coming Out—This Time for Trump - WSJ:

Worthy of a read. I have no understanding of gayness, but assume it is looking at a man like I look at a woman in "desire mode". There tends to not be lot of deep thought related to that ... looking at a tall cold glass of beer on a hot day comes to mind as a similar sort of non-intellectual endeavor. If the species needed very much intellect for feeding, fighting, fleeing and, er "procreating", we would likely either be a lot smarter or "not" (as in not existing).

Liking beer, scotch, tobacco, chocolate -- or not, never seemed to be hugely intellectual to me either. There is the "addiction factor" of course -- I used to really enjoy smoking a pipe, but I gave that up and it wasn't too hard. I still enjoy the occasional cigar, but it doesn't average out to "weekly", so not much addiction factor. Eating too much for emotional reasons? BIG addiction factor -- really hard to give up eating though -- and it tends to not end well.  Sometimes we have to totally fight STRONG urges to even survive, let alone be "moral". Just ask a "recovered" addict.

I can imagine that the "secrecy factor" can be significant  -- the long term religious person doubting their faith, marital infidelity, being a victim of abuse, and likely an abuser, lots of addictions, etc. It would be interesting to note the percentage of the population that has "no secrets" vs "significant secrets" vs "secrets that are thought to be at an acceptable level"(whatever that means!). It's difficult to even put categories on such things. Having had some personal experience plus experience in talking to others, I'd guess that the totals for "having done or been the victim of something that has or occasionally causes moderate or greater guilt" is well over 50% of the population, possibly close to 90%? Who knows? They are called "secrets" after all! "Redemption" is an idea that doesn't apply if there is no sin -- and it doesn't apply politically. As Hillary reminded us, Trump voters are not merely "deplorable", but "irredeemable".

As the guy in the column says:

Worse than Mr. Trump’s inconsistencies, however, are those of his detractors. They cite his lack of inclusiveness yet discount that tens of millions of Americans voted for him, and he won 30 states. I am as afraid about acknowledging that I voted for Mr. Trump today as I was about being gay yesterday. There seems to be as little understanding of my political views as there was about my sexual orientation.

I suppose there is really no irony there at all, but it feels that way to me. If we take the old "10% gay" number that is thought to be VERY high (1-2% being closer to reality), 30 million out of our 300 million population would be gay. Therefore, that a significant percentage of 60 million Trump voters now feel reticent to "come out" would be considered to be "progress" by the Hillary voters. People feeling uncomfortable because they have desires that go against nature and human mores for thousands of years is "unacceptable" we must love the sin AND love the sinner. (actually, it often seems that the Christian ideal of loving the sinner is not really understood at all by non-Christians -- it is the sin that must really be loved)

However if 2x+ even the inflated the old number of gays have thoughts counter to recently expounded "progressive" positions, then they OUGHT to feel uncomfortable and be "closeted"!!! From the "progressive" POV, all that is required is to increase sanctions against them until they TRUELY "get their minds right" -- the idea that people would CONSIDER a position different from "progressive" orthodoxy is bad enough -- that they would find the gall go "come out" and admit it is totally beyond the "progressive pale"! It is as if the very worst of any sanctions formerly used against gays have suddenly become nearly mandatory from the left if used against Trump voters!

Certainly Trump supporters know that they are a "minority" in any way that counts, the much vaunted Hillary "3 million" more popular vote being the most meaningless part. As I lament to boredom, at this point, Trump support is DEFINITELY counter-cultural. You can lose your job, friends, social standing, etc -- and as "progressives" would say, that is only the beginning -- as evidenced this last weekend, they may want to attack you physically or even attack your kids. Proper thought must be maintained! My guess is that their big worry is that it might actually become acceptable to think differently from them! (the horror!!, I assume this is what they mean by "normalizing")

Is being a "minority" really bad? Women are in fact a MAJORITY, yet a million of them marched yesterday because they don't feel enough like a majority after the inauguration. The Davos crowd is in somewhat of a funk because Brexit and the US election didn't come out as they wanted. Eight of them have as much wealth as the bottom half of the planet, and if we counted the whole 3K attendees, it would likely be 2/3's or even 3/4s, yet they don't quite feel "powerful enough" since not everything is going their way.

My Packers are getting killed while I write this -- yet when Rodgers claimed they could "run the table", I thought he was crazy. They did WAY better than I would have expected getting to this point --- but since they didn't win it all, I feel the pangs of disappointment.

My current section of study in DBT -- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (a class I'm teaching) is "Distress Tolerance". Life is painful, sometimes very painful (like your spouse or child dying), sometimes ridiculously smallish painful (like your team losing). Even when you are part of an elite that has over half the wealth on the planet and fly around in beautiful private jets, life comes with "distress". The higher our expectations, the greater our distress. For the elite, the election of Trump is like someone dying ... even when discussed on a private jet flying to Davos.

As we have known since Genesis, our nature is to believe that each of us has a right to "be like God" -- or at least like what we assume God is like. When others are not what we want -- they vote for Trump, they cheer for another team, they don't worship as we do, they practice something (typically sexual) that makes our skin crawl, they don't "look like us" (they are way too fat, way too beautiful. the wrong color, smelly, etc), we feel various levels of "discomfort, disgust, hatred, anger, etc".

DBT would tell us that "our feelings are valid" -- they ARE the feelings we have. Claiming that we "shouldn't" have them is counterproductive. Nobody as ever used reason to create love or remove disgust. Most all of us have tried to overcome feelings with logic and reason, and we can often do a darned good job of "faking it" -- or at least we think we can. Usually, everyone pretty much "knows" at some level so we are really ALL just thinking we are faking everyone else out while everyone else actually knows about the faking. We live in an age where "The Emporers New Clothes" is no longer cautionary, but rather "kill the little kid being honest! He is a deploreable!"

In DBT, the idea is to "breath deeply", allow time to pass, "allow the solution to find us". This somewhat mumbo jumbo is called "wise mind" ... we all know what they are reaching for.  (2:50 is the admonition from Obi Wan if you are in a hurry).

Christ went over all this 2K years ago and offered to change us so that our "still small voice" was aligned with good rather than evil. So aligned in fact, that it was just barely possible to see the potential to ACTUALLY love our enemies!

Search your heart -- what do you "know to be true" about the "million woman march" or the protests at the inauguration? Do you feel the love and understanding for the vast majority of those 60 million Trump voters by the marchers/protesters, and a strong encouragement for them to "come out" so they could practice "radical acceptance" of their views of religious freedom, the need to maintain a culture that can somehow be identified as "American", the value of hard work, thrift, as much self determination and responsibility as possible? How about the radical concept of  local and even individual control of who uses a bathroom or even associational freedom as to if you need to bake a cake for a wedding that is against your religious sentiments vs selling a dress to Melania Trump that is against your political sensibilities?

What is "progress"? Having 60 million in the closet vs 30 million? Who decides that is "progress"? Davos Man? The New York Times? Harvard? George Soros? How many people you can get to march or break windows and burn cars? It looks like the left no longer even wants to honor elections? How are things decided when elections are no longer honored?

Will there ever be diversity of thought and love for even our enemies on a broad spectrum, or is "war" either via politics or direct means the lot in life of the failed state of BOistan forever? Reason will never get us out of our pit -- yet Christ created a way.

Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

'via Blog this'

Walker, Wisconsin Not Washington

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443214/federal-state-balance-walker-letter

I wanted Scott Walker to be president, I think he would have been great, but he would never have had a chance against Hillary. If Trump can take Walkers advice on States Rights as given  here, as well as breaking up government workers unions, maybe Walker can win in 2024.

The separation of state and federal authority is one of the most essential principles of our Constitution. It explains the Constitution’s structural allocation of powers as much as the division between legislative, executive, and judicial functions. If we lose the separate and independent existence of state governments, we will lose our Constitution. 

Hence the potentially historic importance of the initiative just announced by Governor Scott Walker, under the heading “Wisconsin, Not Washington.” This morning Governor Walker sent a letter to President-elect Trump, asking for Trump’s help in restoring the federal structure of the Constitution.

The natural order for human society is intended for power to flow from God ->Family (people) -> Church/Community -> State -> Federal.

As a nation shifts to the Satanic, we naturally see another inversion -- all power  moves to the Federal level , and it seeks to destroy all authority "below" it, especially God.

The question is not what functions the federal government should give back to the states, but what functions should the federal government have in the first place. The federal government was originally created to be a small, central government of limited powers, with everything else left to the states. Through years of federal overreach, this model has been turned on its head, and now is the time to right the ship. Power flows from the people to the government, not the other way around.

It is a great time to do this because Democrats in their typically inconsistent fashion have weirdly started it already with "sanctuary cities" that thumb their noses at existing immigration laws and marijuana havens that invalidate federal drug laws. At the same time, a state trying to declare that men and women should use bathrooms and locker rooms for their actual rather than imagined sex is declared a national pariah!

What an optimistic Christmas surprise to see this like of positive thinking arise from the wreckage of BOistan!

Russian Hacking, Is It A "Slam Dunk"?

Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House - The Washington Post:

As a conservative, watching the weathervane of the MSM turn is one of the most enjoyable things about the shift of power. The CIA, the foolish agency that called WMD in Iraq a "Slam Dunk" suddenly has revived it's credibility with the media! Wonders truly never cease.

And yet another old practice has been revived -- leaking! In order to believe this headline report, you first have to believe the words and spin of the opposition senators that decided to violate their oaths to keep the information they were briefed on secret, as well as buying into their spin on the leaks they were sworn not to make. Why, just a couple months ago, "leaks" about Hillary were tantamount to "treason", but already they are important and likely "patriotic" in anticipation of Trump taking office!

This is a good story angle for the Democrats -- their policies, their attitude, their name calling are NOT to blame! They don't need to change ANYTHING ... those damned Russians rigged the election!! As far as that goes, fine with me ... better they focus on anything but making changes that will allow them to win! However.

To me, the interesting question here is what actually may be going on. Those of us that follow conservative media know that the White House was supposedly hacked in the fall of 2014 just before the mid-term election, ostensively by the Russians.

Earlier this year when an iPhone used by the San Bernadino terrorists was allegedly "unhackable" I covered a couple of things here. The bottom line points of that post are:

1. There is no such thing as "unhackable" 
2. The Russians, Chinese and who knows who else are likely MILES ahead of us (covered in link) on hacking technology -- so pretty much anything IS to some degree vulnderable. 
3. Trust nobody -- certainly not Trump, BO, Democrats, Republicans, the NSA, etc ... BOistan is lawless. We deciced to go that way for sure once we started killing babies in their mother's wombs -- it just went downhill from there, and we are way downhill. No rules always means NO RULES, people just have a hard time understanding that for some reason. 

BEFORE the election, it was "crazy talk" to mention that the election might be "rigged" -- now it is crazy talk to NOT look into it being rigged. At least this is something that we DO understand intimately -- "The Party" (TP-D) is still in as much control as a corrupt political party in a declining nation can be -- pretty much like the old communist party in the USSR circa '70s-'80s. All the alphabet agencies are the real power in BOistan, and they are still FIRMLY in the hands of TP and will be unless Trump can do a MAJOR "Scott Walker" on them -- which is going to be HARD.

So, I have to assume that the CIA was fully in TP control in '93 and now -- "their spin" is TP spin, which TP assumes to be beneficial to their power. My guess is that they knew post 9-11 that W would have no choice but to invade Iraq if the CIA assessment was a "slam dunk" on WMD. As now even WaPo is willing to report, the ferocity of the W counterattack left the terrorists spinning -- but not TP. The CIA essentially "forced" us into Iraq with it's assessment. Was "Slam Dunk" a black op to defeat W? W is enough of a Boy Scout to assume that post 9-11, the CIA really cared more about America than TP politics -- NEVER trust ANYONE! 

Anybody that cared about "the good of the nation", would look into potential hacking before an election rather than after it.  What the hell are they going to do if there WAS hacking? Have a "do over"? We investigate security threats on the president BEFORE they are carried out, not AFTER the president is dead! ... at least we try to. 

One possibility is that Trump knew the election was rigged, as did BO ... but Trump ALSO knew that the Russians had found a way to "outrig the riggers", or potentially (and this would REALLY be sweet), just "disable the rigging" -- making it very likely he would win. If BO wanted to take his warning BEFORE the election and look into it, then BO would know as well that the "rigging was off" -- but it would still be off, win, win for Trump.

If Trump won but the removal of the rigging was undiscovered, then Trump could do what he wanted. Either bring it to light, or not -- no sane person would assume that TP would come out AFTER the election and say "we now think it was rigged, after we told you it definitely was not -- trust us".

**IF** there is any real information at all, it was known before the election and BO was confident that things were rigged in TP's favor. 

In any case, looking into it NOW is insane! ... but since BOistan is an insane place, that is what is happening.

The cost of the '93 CIA "Slam Dunk" was a gigantic loss of face for the agency, and because of the way it was handled for the entire US government as well. Yes, I understand that TP made a calculated move to take the WH in '04, and they didn't mind that the collateral damage included a vast loss of faith in US intelligence, military, and especially the presidency. They assumed that with their media superiority they could lay that entirely on the Republican party and the sheeple would bleat along. It turned out that their media wasn't THAT powerful.

So post 2016 election, they are now doubling down HARD on destroying faith another institution, this time elections (they dabbled in that from 2K-2004 as well ... "Diebold") This looks especially strange because in October, they were the ones declaring that there were NO ISSUES with the election and that "voter fraud did not exist". Just for good measure, anyone that claimed there might be a problem was "insane, trying to foment violence, unpatriotic, etc, etc".

The worm has clearly turned, NEVER believe ANYTHING that TP is spouting! 

I'm A Lumberjack And I'm OK

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/is-canadas-economy-a-model-for-america/?hootPostID=6fd4767e821928e00b8057f1f5c24a1a

Mark Steyn is a much better writer than I and similarly wordy. He has a wit that I admire deeply ... my real advice is to just go read the linked article. After reading "American Amnesia", the biggest thing I realize I enjoy about conservative writers is that they generally have wit and humor.

Some samples:

As we know from 9/11, the Wahabbis in Saudi Arabia use their oil wealth to spread their destructive ideology to every corner of the world. And so do the Canadians. Consider that in the last 40 years, fundamental American ideas have made no headway whatsoever in Canada, whereas fundamental Canadian ideas have made huge advances in America and the rest of the Western world. To take two big examples, multiculturalism and socialized health care—both pioneered in Canada—have made huge strides down here in the U.S., whereas American concepts—such as non-confiscatory taxation—remain as foreign as ever.

In order to properly understand the following, this video ought to be reviewed. Thankfully, with the election of Trump, I'm guessing that it can survive on the internet for awhile longer even though it clearly lacks proper respect for transvestites!

My colleague at National Review, John O’Sullivan, once observed that post-war Canadian history is summed up by the old Monty Python song that goes, “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK.” If you recall that song, it begins as a robust paean to the manly virtues of a rugged life in the north woods. But it ends with the lumberjack having gradually morphed into a kind of transvestite pickup who likes to wear high heels and dress in women’s clothing while hanging around in bars. Of course, John O’Sullivan isn’t saying that Canadian men are literally cross-dressers—certainly no more than 35-40 percent of us — but rather that a once manly nation has undergone a remarkable psychological makeover. If you go back to 1945, the Royal Canadian Navy had the world’s third largest surface fleet, the Royal Canadian Air Force was one of the world’s most effective air forces, and Canadian troops got the toughest beach on D-Day. But in the space of two generations, a bunch of tough hombres were transformed into a thoroughly feminized culture that prioritizes all the secondary impulses of society—welfare entitlements from cradle to grave—over all the primary ones. And in that, Canada is obviously not alone. If the O’Sullivan thesis is flawed, it’s only because the lumberjack song could stand as the post-war history of almost the entire developed world.

The closing health care example is really not to be missed, so I will include it here, even though I am WAY over my quote limit! The truly sad part here is that if the babies had died, Canada's "infant mortality rate" likely would not be affected -- the government does the counting.

**DO** just go and read it!

"A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a U.S. hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Autumn, Brook, Calissa, and Dahlia are in good condition at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada, but none had space. The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician were flown 500 kilometers to the Montana hospital, the closest in the U.S., where the quadruplets were born on Sunday."

There you have Canadian health care in a nutshell. After all, you can’t expect a G-7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal intensive care coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote, rural Montana. And let’s face it, there’s nothing an expectant mom likes more on the day of delivery than 300 miles in a bumpy twin prop over the Rockies. Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait—six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.

40% Of Americans Unemployable Due To Religion

The Culture War Expands | The Weekly Standard:

It has come to my attention "Post Trump" that apparently many BOistanis have lost the understanding of Freedom of Association as well as tolerance, both of which were critical in the mother nation that was called "America" (1776-2012).

While Associational Freedom is so obvious to most at most times that it is like "air", the US history of slavery and Democrat run Jim Crow in the south led to a dangerous precedent with "Brown vs Board of Education". For whites relating to blacks , Freedom of Association was suspended. It was NOT suspended in the reverse direction -- all black schools, all black organizations, etc were still and still are completely legal. The intent was to use this rather extreme measure to break an egregious case of racial apartheid that allowed institutionalized and political oppression in the old Democrat controlled US South.

Rather than clearly understand the specific abridgment of a deep and natural human freedom as a radical measure taken for a highly specific purpose, the same party that managed Jim Crow has seen fit to attempt to generalize the use of force to apply to other groups to gain further political power via Identity Politics. Women were rather quickly added, then minority religions, gays and now "transgenders".

Sadly, while the coercive totalitarian approach is gaining ground in forcing compliance on one side, the opposite is also taking place as "liberals" disassociate themselves with family, friends and businesses because they  "may have/did vote for Trump". Tolerance and Associational Freedom go together in a "classical liberal" Democracy/Republic ... they are part of "why things worked". In a totalitarian state, "tolerance" is replaced by government enforced compliance.

In the linked column we have the case of a young married couple who are practicing Christians. They have a hit show about fixing up homes (not all that sexual). Their church does not support gay "marriage" -- so it is time for them to be boycotted, taken off the air, etc.. If supporting gay "marriage" is a requirement to be employed, then 40% of americans (including me) are ineligible for employment today, or we need to stay quietly "in the closet" and hope nobody "outs us".

Think about that for a moment. Is the suggestion here that 40 percent of Americans are unemployable because of their religious convictions on marriage? That the companies that employ them deserve to be boycotted until they yield to the other side of the debate— a side, we should note, that is only slightly larger than the one being shouted down?

 We were once a Christian nation -- we had shared values that aligned well with our Constitution. Yes, in the South, Christian values were corrupted and used to further a cultural and political system of oppression. Just because an extreme measure was used to break a specific problem should not make that extreme measure now the norm. Unfortunately, the oppressor political party in the old Jim Crow case still has a political vision that requires oppression and lack of tolerance in order to flourish. The Unconstrained Vision of the world.

The idea of our framers was to LIMIT government so that it would never be big or intrusive enough so we even had to waste time on these discussions. The assumption was that free and reasonably well educated people would interact and work our such issues ON THEIR OWN in accordance with their generally Christian beliefs.

The question of a nation founded on ideas rather than territory, ethnicity, language, religion, etc surviving was one of the things (beside the concept of limited government) that made America exceptional. BOistan has an exceptional heritage it chooses to largely ignore, but it is on completely new ground relative to sustaining itself in a way that Europe does not. Eastern Europe shows us that nations founded on territory, religion, language, etc "survive" in a sense even when they are under totalitarian rule (USSR) for nearly a century. France is very likely to still be called "France" and have the same borders even if it becomes an Islamic state. Probably no wine though.

Americans knew who they were and what ideals they held to be sacred. BOistanis don't think much of all that -- they were certain that they were going to continue to hold political power and thus stamp out any remnant of America once and for all. Trump is at least a bump in their road.

The way back from BOistan is long and arduous at this point -- philosophy and religion, at least the language of both, have to return to be foundational for EVERY person that considers themselves "educated". REAL tolerance -- as in understanding the importance of tolerating, COMMUNICATING WITH,  and even respecting the rights of people who think differently than you is critical. The sad thing is that without divinely inspired, or VERY well thought out transcendent principles, such tolerance is impossible.

We are deeply broken -- we have been losing our way for over 100 years. We took huge losses in the 30's and 60's, and then the combination of decades of losses, mass media and BO pulled the last straw and we absolutely fell into the post-constitutional, post-truth failed state of BOistan. The greatest loss for humans is always meaning. Death is small next to that. As Nietzsche said, "He who has a why can endure any how".  Thus, the primary goal of the collectivist forces is always to destroy the why -- the meaning, and replace it with assimilation to the collective.

I could just keep writing, but will stop here  -- one book if you want to dig deeper ...  "Ideas Have Consequences".

'via Blog this'

Women Are XX and Men Are XY

Transgender Conformity by Katherine Kersten | Articles | First Things:

The linked column is excellent, though a bit long -- the tragic story of the Nova Academy in St Paul is ignored by me here, but well worth the read. It points out that today we explain things through science that were once once fully understood by grade school children.

Every cell in the human body marks individuals as either male or female, with males bearing an XY and females an XX chromosome. Sex is not “assigned” at birth. It is identified anatomically when an infant is in the womb and then confirmed at birth. “In mammals such as humans, the female gestates offspring and the male impregnates the female,”

Much as if you declare yourself to be a cat, your body is still not that of a cat because your DNA is not that of a cat -- every one of your cells is YOURS. Not merely human, but YOURS, as it we spend lots of time with matching and anti-rejection drugs to allow transplants. Wearing a long tail will actually not make you a cat -- no matter what your other friends wearing long tails tell you. We know all of this scientifically, but part of the modern project is to reject pieces of science (the birds and the bees), while demanding that other pieces be converted to holy writ (AGW).

But we can all pretend -- a lot of things. The modern Recovery Movement has decided that "there is a higher power" (they assiduously avoid "God"), we are all here for a purpose, we have each been given unique and important strengths, and the way to live a happy and full life is to recognize this and live accordingly. They have reached this conclusion because people are dying -- in droves, from suicide, drugs, or simply giving up on life and slowly bloating or wasting away. They make it clear they are just pretending because they have to do something -- it would be more effective if they actually believed. 

Those are also things that a typical 6th grader could have schooled the modern PHDs on in 1950.

"“Hardwired to Connect” warns that American children are facing a “crisis” of “mental and behavioral health.” Young people are struggling with anxiety, depression, alcohol abuse, behavioral challenges, and thoughts of suicide, all at unprecedented levels, the report’s authors say. According to one study, by the 1980s, U.S. children as a group reported more anxiety than did children who were psychiatric patients in the 1950s. The report attributes this, mostly, to the breakdown of the family and other fundamental social institutions, which has weakened moral and behavioral norms and deprived young people of the “authoritative communities” that have traditionally provided security, meaning, and purpose.

The modern project of the destruction of God, family, community and interpersonal relationships (via social media, cell phones, games, internet, etc) had already made our youth by the 1980's to be equivalent to mental patients 30 years before. These are of course issues far less likely to be studied by our "science" than say the "crisis" of Global Warming, but I can't imagine that anyone over 50 doesn't realize that today's youth are conservatively 2-3 times worse off than the youth of the '80s.

Today’s transgender crusade can be seen as the latest manifestation of this denial. It is inherently authoritarian, as other latter-day Gnostic projects have been, because it has to be. Nature and common sense oppose it. In the “Gnostic dream world,” as Eric Voegelin once put it, “non-recognition of reality is the first principle.” Critics who persist in drawing attention to reality must be discredited or silenced. Otherwise, the Gnostic fantasy world crumbles.

I don't call "progressivism" regressivism as a joke, I call it that because that is what it is. It makes knowledge once accessible to grade school children into breakthrough ideas from PHDs. What is more, the reason why this is so is also obvious to grade school level thought.

Our natural God given bodies and brains know how to accomplish carrying on our species even though the actual mechanics of it are well beyond even our most advanced science ... eg. we can't manufacture even a dividing bacteria, let alone a human in a test tube.

Similarly, our culture and traditions, which prominently included religion, naturally inculcated purpose, meaning, answers to ultimate questions like death, and structure in which to live lives in "95%" loving and meaningful ways. They worked because they had either been divinely inspired or evolved (or both) over thousands of years. Failing to pass down the "DNA" of culture is as fatal to civilization as if we declared procreation to be "unnatural and restrictive, culturally imposed".

However, our culture was not "perfect" in a regressive sense -- it may well have been "perfect" in the practical sense of "it worked nearly as well as it could". There were always children who were "different", and for some of those children those differences were sexual. There were however acceptable roles for them -- the bachelor farmer, the two old sisters or brothers that ran the farm down the road and kept to themselves while nobody asked any questions, the nun, the priest, old spinster english teacher, etc.

Certainly there was a sanction to "follow society" as there is today -- which is why all who disagree with the regressive project are "racist, homophobe ... deploreables". I believe I will henceforth just use that handy summary word. The sanction allowed 95%+ to find an acceptable way to fit in, today's method alienates half the population and causes huge percentages of youth to be effectively equivalent to mental patients of 30-60 years ago.

The problem is in the numbers. No matter how much regressives like to fantasize about each individuals "right" to "create themselves", it is simply not possible to declare yourself a cat and suddenly become one. To attempt to do so is to consign yourself to a life of frustration.

The Judeo-Christian vision, which shaped Western civilization for 1,600 years, holds that God created man—body and soul—with purpose and meaning in an ordered universe. But the post-Christian worldview fast replacing it has no place for God, and perceives no purpose in nature. Christian man has become “psychological man” and the soul has become the self, in the words of Philip Rieff. The free-floating self—unconstrained by reality—is now believed to forge its own “identity” through a creative assertion of will.

The article closes with this -- none of this is particularly new to readers of this blog, but it is well done and the Nova Academy story is a classic tale for our times.

Over time, public policy making will become impossible if new interest groups attempt to piggyback on the transgender movement’s success, as seems likely. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch now insists that schools accept a kindergarten boy’s self-understanding and treat him as if he is a girl. What happens when an individual suffering from body integrity identity disorder identifies as disabled and applies for federal disability benefits? What if a white male business owner identifies as black and seeks to participate in a federal contract set-aside reserved for minorities? What if a forty-year-old woman regards herself as a senior citizen and demands Social Security benefits? How can policy makers logically deny their claims? As we enter the world of fantasy—when reality ceases to matter—it is impossible to predict where our society will crash against nature, as it inevitably will.

'via Blog this'