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!

Porn Adultry PRIDE Week , Christians and Pharisees

Trump & Stormy Daniels: Social Conservative Hypocrisy | National Review:

So the media tells us that Trump had a dalliance with a porn star named "Stormy" at "sometime", for which he paid her off to keep quiet about. You can trust the media, they would never be anything less than truthful about Trump, and we all know they are nothing but honest.

Jonah Goldberg is shouting "hypocrite" because "social conservatives" that didn't like Slick Willie lying under oath about asking an employee to service his wee willie in a hotel room (Paula Jones), as well as presidential "emissions" being found on the blue dress of an employee, are not concered about the alleged Trump - porn star alleged liasion / alleged payoff.

Some discussion. "Christians" are actually NOT to be judgemental about others. Jesus is famously not judgemental about the woman at the well, the prostitute washing his feet with her hair, or even the adultress who was to be stoned until Jesus drew "something" in the dirt and everyone who was supposed to stone her walked away.

HISTORICALLY, back in the old days of "America", which was a Christian Nation, Christians felt that the leader of the country ought to be a professing Christian. BOistan is clearly NOT a Christian Nation as has been well covered here and elsewhere. Much as Christ once had little to say about Pontius Pilate and Caesar, Christians have little to say about Trump -- he leads a pagan nation where they happen to live. He is not their MORAL leader, he is the leader of BOistan. In a pagan nation, you need to support the pagan least likely to crucify you.

Slick Willie was actually president during the blue dress affair, and governor at the time of the whipping it out and asking for "service" with Jones. AFIK, the "Stormy" thing (if it IS a "thing") happened when Trump was a private citizen .. AFAIK, nobody has ever went after Slick about anything prior to him being at least governor. (and I pray they don't, I REALLY don't want to hear the details!)

So what is the "issue" here? Has Goldberg confused "Christians" or "Social Conservatives" with Pharisees? My understanding is that social conservatives are against abortion, gay "marriage", and forcing communities to allow "men" into womens bathrooms and locker rooms. Most of them are probably not in favor of adultery with porn stars as a general rule, however given the rather lax morals in BOistan, if private citizens indulge and cover it up, it seems more of a "Pharisee charge" than a "Social Conservative" or "Christian" one.

It doesn't sound to me like Trump was holding "Adultry with a porn star PRIDE week". I don't believe he was in any way saying "hey, bake me a cake! My morals are YUGE and you ought to be forced to CELEBRATE them!" If Trump is seeking sexual favors from interns in the Oval Office, or paying off porn stars for dalliances while he is serving as president, then it seems that a charge of "hypocrisy" is somewhat warranted. As it is, isn't it the "PRIDE" folks that ought bear the "hypocrisy" charge for trying to claim that someone ought have "morals"? (excuse me? What is "moral" in BOistan? Forcing a pro-lifer to bake a cake celebrating your abortion?)

Do I "approve" of sex with porn stars not your wife? Certainly not! However, Jesus also did not pass judgement on the woman at the well who had five husbands and was not married to the man with whom she was currently living. My "approval" or lack thereof not the point! I believe that Christ will be the ultimate judge -- in general, he was MUCH more direct in condeming the sin of judgement (eg. "you brood of vipers") than he was for your standard, or even "significantly" sinful person. Mathew was a tax collector, and in those days, that was about as bad as it got! (our "morals" seem quite different today!)

If Trump violates LAWS while he is an elected official, than he ought to be removed -- as Slick Willie ought to have been removed for doing just that. IMHO however, the bar is MUCH higher now -- Slick WAS NOT removed, and his party was in no way interested in removing him for obvious sexual harrassment, perjury, and likely rape, as well as a long list of financial and other improprieties. BO used the IRS against conservatives and did all sorts of extra-constitutional things including funding parts of BOcare without congressional approval. These are now the new "standards" estabilished by "The Party" (TP-D). Certainly I understand that TP, and apparently Jonah, think it is somehow incumbent on "Christians" to hold their political leaders to higher standards than the "other sides" political leaders in a pagan nation.

What even is "the other side" in BOistan? As near as I can see, many in the R party would certainly be just as anxious to be rid of the pesky "Christians" or "Social Conservatives" ... I'd put Jonah in this camp. I suspect they would likely be rather happy to see those "deploreables" thrown to the lions, and would likely pay good money to sit up with Chuck S and Nancy P to watch the "festivities". ( "I've tithed my cumin today, how about you Chuck? Wow, those Lions really enjoy Christian meat")

Christians have PERSONAL standards -- to the extent we lived in a nation where those standards were shared by BOTH political parties, it was reasonable to expect politicians of BOTH SIDES to follow them. News at 11, we don't live there anymore! Where we live now, there are officially NO RULES .... which means that POWER is the only "rule".

If you like to judge others behavior, the sort of religion you are looking for has Pharisee positions ... it isn't Christianity.

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Can Blacks Be Friends With Whites?

Can My Children Be Friends With White People? - The New York Times:

The content of the column is really not that surprising (I'm months behind on my blogging), nor really is the fact that it is published in what was supposed to be the "paper of record" in the old "America" ... the nation that was "Under God", and "endowned by it's creator". We don't live there, this is BOistan.

I do not write this with liberal condescension or glee. My heart is unbearably heavy when I assure you we cannot be friends.

The column is quite standard racial posturing -- forget all the multi-millionaire and even billionaire blacks. Take Oprah ... $2.8 billion and maybe running for president. Somebody is "afraid for their kids" -- we all know that if you live in a major BOistan city and you are white, you sure as hell tell your kids which parts of the city to stay out of entirely, and CERTAINLY after dark!

You may certainly be afraid for your kids if you are black as well -- but by far the most likely way for them to be killed is at the hands of another black!

So how "racist" can a nation that elects a black president (twice), and in which a black female multi-billionaire is considered by many a legitimate candidate for the same office on the basis of one speech on an awards show? Well, according to the author of the times column, VERY! Because, well, TRUMP!

Of course, the rise of this president has broken bonds on all sides. But for people of color the stakes are different. Imagining we can now be friends across this political line is asking us to ignore our safety and that of our children, to abandon personal regard and self-worth.

See Oprah can be an immediate legitimate candidate in the same nation in which Trump being elected means that blacks who imagine they might be "friends" with a white person would be "abandoning personal regard and self-worth". Got that?

This is what counts as "opinion" in the NY Times. Not just a random brain fart in a drunken stupor, but "opinion".

Does this person have any sort of thought that is NOT "liberal condescension"? I have my doubts.
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Faked Out In BOistan

Cory Booker hurts | Power Line:

I have no interest in the "shithole" controversy because it came from "unnamed sources" in a "closed meeting". Respectable media and people ignore those who traffic in rumor and innuendo from a "closed meeting". When they don't, there is no trust or truth, and fake manipulation wins out over reality. To wit:

1. The meeting was CLOSED -- **IF** it was said, it should not have left the meeting.
   
2. CERTAINLY, the "leaker(s)" and the media that spread it had and have an agenda and it is to manipulate the sheep against Trump.
   
3. **IF** it was said, it was denied, both by Trump and others at the meeting, then it was CERTAINLY not some "important policy position". **IF** it was said, it might have been a "slip", it may have been just "tough talk you can use in closed meetings", OR, it could have been Trump putting something out to play the media cycle ... (**IF** he said it, that is my guess. He was sick of hearing about "the book" ). 

Sadly, this sort of "shit" is what we deal with in BOistan ... the vast majority of the sheeple play the stupid media games, so prima donnas like Cory Booker shreik about what is "unacceptable" -- cry me a river Booker, this is why Trump was elected.

How this stuff plays out in the tribal media is really sad to watch. NPR has already converted this "leak" to a "fact" --  with multiple stories asking "What do YOU think of the RACIST LANGUAGE used by Trump to refer to PEOPLE from these countries!". It's classic "Dog Whistling" ... you manufacture a "controversy" that is essentially about nothing (The Seinfeld schtick), but makes some sort of marketing (or negative marketing) "point". You could just as well say "Trump is a crude racist unqualified to be president" ... which they do, frequently, but saying the same thing over and over gets old, you need "variety". Why not call your "variety" a "fact"? It's all marketing.

The Homeland Security Secretary happened to deny under oath that Trump said the supposedly offensive comment in a meeting that was supposed to be closed -- I would have preferred that she would have said "I don't comment on what is said in closed meetings", but we don't live in America anymore. We live in BOistan, where AMAZINGLY, Cory Booker is actually a SENATOR! I guess NJ must really be a "shithole"!

"Shit" is certainly a lowest common denominator human substance -- the issue is what does one DO with it? In the "shithole countries", one doesn't bother to keep it separate from drinking water, which means that Cholera is a major isssue, and humans literally shit themselves to death. Both shit and Cholera are completely color blind. Shit happens to all people, and Cholera is a completely color blind killer. Drink water contaminated with shit, and you have a really really high chance of dying! We ARE all equal in SOME ways -- the idea of America vs BOistan is that we were once able to realize that we really don't want to be equal in ALL ways!

In America, the idea was that we would ADVANCE from that lowest common denominator and aspire to levels where we wouldn't drink our own (and others) shit. Clearly NPR and Cory Booker are appalled that there are still people hanging around BOistan that believe in ridiculous things like "closed meetings", "honoring oaths", and even attempting to have some sort of "standards".  Get rid of those "standards", and it tends to be not very long before you are literally drinking shit, rather than just drinking it figurativly since you have bought into things like this whole "shithole controversy".`

And so I get exposed to a lot of fecal material when I listen to NPR ... I just hope that I have enough other media sources and character to innoculate me against catching any diseases!

The Lowest And Highest

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/opinion/trump-immigration-white-supremacy.html

Charles Blow is clearly a theologian in his own mind.

That is because Trump is man-as-message, man-as-messiah. Trump support isn’t philosophical but theological.

Trumpism is a religion founded on patriarchy and white supremacy.

It is the belief that even the least qualified man is a better choice than the most qualified woman and a belief that the most vile, anti-intellectual, scandal-plagued simpleton of a white man is sufficient to follow in the presidential footsteps of the best educated, most eloquent, most affable black man.

Our nation was founded on the idea that all men were created equal before God -- equal in opportunity rather than result. Yes, blacks and women for that matter, were not included in that declaration -- we are talking the late 1700's. The idea of equality before God vs the Divine Right of Kings, aristocracy, etc was a new and very exceptional idea, it needed a few revisions.

The part that is really hard for Mr Blow is the idea that one is required to "love their neighbor as themselves" and even to "love their enemies". Outside of Christianity, such thinking borders on the insane -- POWER, and "worthiness" as defined by Mr Blow are what "ought to count". I personally would find Thomas Sowell to be FAR more "educated, eloquent and affable" than Obama, but since we live in a political system where the selections for president are made by voting under the rules of the Constitution, neither Mr Blow's or my opinions really matter for that office.

"Trumpism" like "BOisnm" is indeed more of a "religion" than anything else -- since we have largely abandoned the ideals of "endowed by our Creator", the past two presidencies have very much been Nietzchean attempts at allegiance to value creating "supermen". When the coin of the realm is POWER as opposed to historical religion, philosophy, tradition, standards, etc, then "black power" or "white supremacy" are as good a basis as any other. When you throw out all that "old stuff", you are left with NO RULES ... which can seem pretty great when "your side" is in power, but not so great otherwise.

I'm not really sure what "perfect" means in a world with no God, no meaning, no love and certainly no shame, but it would seem Mr Blow has never heard of Matt 25:40, "The least of these'. My personal pick would be the sixty million and rising innocent unborn babies, not Trump.

No matter, to be a Christian is to say with Paul as in first Timothy 1:15.

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

I'll take the place of Trump as the chief of sinners -- the lowest. In his theological language, Blow seems to think that Trump somehow makes "white supremacy perfect". Can either white or black supremacy be "perfect"? I guess in the world of Blow it is so.

For white supremacy to be made perfect, the lowest white man must be exalted above those who are black.

Waiting For The Ubermensch

Trump Haters Left & Right versus Trump Supporters: Civil War Field Guide | National Review:

A worthy article to read -- a sober and well written categorzation of the feelings of the chattering classes and the electorate in the age of Trump. The haters -- something like a third to a half of "The Party" (TP-D), so something like 20% of the electorate are of course the most visible.

The Trump haters dominate our media and the universities, the entertainment industries, Silicon Valley, the billionaire green classes, the foundations and the brigades of professional foot-soldier activists, identity-politics operatives, and the Bernie Sanders shock troops. They are frenzied because they think their 1,000 cuts have finally hit arteries — only to see Trump revive in Nietzschean fashion, emerging stronger for the wounds. To come so close to ending this nightmare only to realize they are at the alpha and not the omega of their efforts intensifies their hatred.

Most of these people were also Obama Zombies who in their "post god" world saw BO as a Nietzchean "value creator" (ubermensch). In a world without god, the only support for "values" is a "superman", and the left felt certain that "all reasonable people" MUST have been changed to the "values" of BO ... slaughter of millions of unborn, "gay" marriage, unknown genders, disprespect for the flag and the military, snide posuturing against people "bitterly clinging" to the Bible and the 2nd Amendement, etc

Strangely, the screaming and howling of the sheltered elite when 2016 didn't go as they were certain it would is a sound that causes the culture of the old "America" to come together -- at least a little.

Yet Trump hatred only solidifies the Trump base. It also reminds independents and wavering centrist Republicans that in a Manichean fight (and the Trump haters seem to envision the current landscape as just that), one inevitably chooses sides. If the choice is reduced to a crude rant at a public Trump rally or the rioters at Claremont, Berkeley, and Middlebury, a screaming Madonna, the “pigs in blanket” chanters of Black Lives Matter, and the masked marauders of Antifa, the Trump haters probably lose.

The BO and the Trump base are way more similar than either would like to admit. They are BOTH looking for Nietzschean "value creators" who attack their opposition and make them feel justified, moral and powerful. BO did it with snide smoothness, Trump does it with twittering bluster -- the same buttons are being pushed in either case.

Trump’s base is as loyal as was Obama’s. Obama’s puerile cluelessness (the Malvinas are the Falklands, 57 states, corpse-men), his divisiveness (get in their faces, take a gun to a knife fight, punish our enemies), and his venom (high-horse Christians, stereotyping police, bitter clingers, etc.) could never erode the Obama foundation, as long as he offered his faux-southern-accent act, quoted arc-of-history banalities, talked Final Four, and caricatured the rich, the businessman, and the successful. So too the Trump voter will stay to the bitter end with Trump — if he stays with them.

Being a Christian, I'm not very excited about the idea of any human being  (or even human being ... being! ;-) ) a "values creator" -- however, anyone with a marginal education who pays even a tiny bit of attention certainly has to observe the prescience of Nietzsche relative to the "superman" ... Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, and yes, to a much lesser extent, BO and Trump -- "lesser" so far, but without any shared values, morality is purely a matter of POWER, so eventually, one of the tribal groups shorn of Constitutional restraint and any sense of honoring tradition is nearly certain to defeat / gulag / kill the opposing tribe and pay the dues of "killing god" in blood and treasure.

As a Christian, I also believe in the willingness of God to intervene on the side of a people who will seek his will -- "America" could revive and with God's Grace become again "One Nation Under God". I want a leader -- and a people, that kneel humbly before God, and proudly salute the Flag!

As is always the case with man, we await the almighty -- or some mere human that is willing to pretend he is almighty. To date, God has been FAR more merciful than any of the other "strong men" who attempt to create values for the masses!


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News From Lake Hebegone

Down Next. . . Garrison Keillor!?!? | Power Line:

The human tendency for anyone but a hard lefty is to look at guys like Franken and Keillor and be flooded with schadenfreude -- these are guys that have attacked anyone remotely conservative with the darkest venom they could muster with never a thought of mercy. They were SMUG in capital letters,  and that was that. They were on the "right" (meaning left) side of history, goodness, intelligence, wealth, power, privilege, etc, etc  ... absolutely qualified to put down ANYONE -- as Franken does my Lord Jesus here.  Hey, it's "humor"! Add into that the general tone of the callers to an MPR show this AM -- "I'm SHOCKED that you would not stand by good men like Garrison, while TRUMP get's off! I'm done with MPR, you will never see another dime!" In the tribal state of BOistan, we love our own and ONLY our own!

The odd thing is that if Garrson is telling the truth -- and no matter how far left and smug one is, that is always a possibility, then he is out because he put his hand on a woman's exposed back and apologized. AFAIK, that is all that is widely known at this point -- I can't really blame his left wing defenders to be losing an "icon" over a hand on a back.

Do I "believe him"? Well, no, the fact that MPR would "sever all ties" with a man that has been THE face of MPR since I've been able to listen, means to me that we are likely to find that there are LOTS of other tales to be told. He has a giant sense of entitlement and his personal power that "taking a few liberties" would HARDLY be unexpected -- this is BOistan after all, the land of "no controlling moral authority".

Are we really going to sit here and let the whole BOistani system of "Power is all that counts, corruption is king, and if it feels good, DO IT" be called into question? The MPR callers were certainly not -- they want their "icon" back! BOistan is supposed to be the land of ZERO morals, what is going on? (for THEIR side stupid, the conservative side is supposed to be concerned with 38 year old "charges")

"Sexual Harassment" is such a broad term that it includes what Clarence Thomas was ACCUSED  of (mentioning an x rated movie and suggesting that there might be a pubic hair on a can of Coke), after which Anita Hill followed him to two different jobs. It also includes charges of rape and attempted rape against Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein, as well as LONG lists of grabbing, exposing themselves, masturbating, etc, etc. Justice Thomas will never be forgiven for his ALLEGED words, while Slick is still an "icon" to many today, and if Hillary had been elected, would be functioning as "First Man" with no outcry from the MSM. (clearly, no Trump, no lefty puritanical purge!)

My contention is that "Sexual Harassment" was purposely created to be a weapon for women, with the assumption being that "liberal men" would largely be exempt, and it would be a way to take "sexually repressed, nasty conservative hypocrites" out of public life.  The law on Sexual Harassment is that "if she feels she was harassed, she was harassed"! Words, pictures, attitudes, staring too long, etc, etc are ALL part of Sexual Harassment! It might better be called "Sexual Correctness" (SC), since it's enforcement is done very much like "Political Correctness". I cover some more detail here if you have interest.

Take "Pocahontas" in the PC case ...  the word could denote a  wonderful Disney character, or if used by Trump it could be a "racial slur" -- it is all up to what "The Party" (TP-D) and it's wholly owned media say! What sexual behavior is and is not problematic is up to the same powers. (it's POWER baby!) The busty young lass with the low cut top bends over to pick something up, and the male is caught looking, that can EASILY be "SC"! She can wear whatever she wants, he is not allowed to look if it makes her OR some other woman "feel uncomfortable".

Gays are completely unable to control their sexual desires -- "it's their nature", heterosexual men are completely able to control their notice of exposed cleavage. If you want to stay in good standing with TP, you MUST agree!

Since the early '90s, the SC genie worked pretty much as intended -- when it showed it's face relative to a lefty politician, it was quickly ordered back in the bottle by the MSM and "feminist" women. When it attacked a conservative -- no matter how mild (or ancient) the "charges" as in the case of Clarence Thomas, it was a fearsome genie indeed, destroying many men's careers and political aspirations. (men on the WRONG (right) side!)

In an adult and civil society,  women would be well able to deliver a knee to the scrotum, a scratch to the face, a nice scream, or other "scene stealer", and go off to the supervisor, a large male friend, or something similar, and the cad would be put in his place. Slick Willie would have had his famous index finger broken so many times it would  crookedly point back at his oft beaten pulpy face in an adult world.

Alas, we live in a feminized society of back room gossip and palace intrigue in the media as well as the halls of government and business. Both manly and womanly honor and virtue are dead, replaced by sneaky, snide, slimy interactions and "cat-fight hissy fits" of the sort that Obama excelled at. The "end of life" for once great cultures is always thus -- Athens, Rome, Britannia ... all ended with deep corruption of all types ... sexual just being one example.

In a world of even minimal honor and virtue, "Sexual Harassment" would leave a "mark" -- the perpetrator bent double, nursing an embarrassing scratch on the face, a black eye, etc. It would be "out" in an instant, because the woman would find her personal honor and reputation to be worth far more than some "career" ... and indeed, the sorts of women that moved up the ladder in that world would be those that were known to be more than capable of standing up for themselves in any situation, as well as likely having male friends that any "masher" would seek to avoid a visit from at all costs.

I continue to detest the world that has been created by the gutless, godless, double talking politically correct vermin that generally hold power in this kindergarten swamp society. Apparently they are often "mean to women", and the women largely take it and stew in their juices for years, thus creating more such incidents for their sisters. One can't feel awfully sorry for them however, since Teddy Kennedy set the standard by killing his secretary and getting off scot free in '69, and then Slick Willie cemented the standard in '99 -- we are left with an amoral feminized society where the slimy tend to prevail. Nearly half the female population has been willing to trade their "virtue" to protect the right to sacrifice their children to the Moloch of "convenience" in abortion.

There seem to be two prospects here as to what's going on?, of the kind that allow a mixture of both:

1. TP decided that Weinstein was no longer worth protecting with Trump in the WH and the Clinton machine derailed. They gave him up knowing that there would be SOME collateral damage, but grossly miscalculated as to the extent.
2. TP, the Deep State and the RINO Swampies are in a TRUE balls to the wall panic as the swamp has begun to drain and things are becoming exposed. Strong evidence for this is the ADMITTED $17 million in public funds paid out to cover up sexual harassment since '97! The fact that a group of our congressmen sat down and set up a "slush fund" using public money to protect their own proves what readers of this blog well know -- DC in BOistan is corrupt beyond belief, and that corruption is DEEP in both parties!
   
   Certainly many on the left knew that mustering up 38 year old "charges" to try to steal a long-shot Senate seat reeked of desperation -- however, at least at the WaPo, they figured out that desperation is just where they are at  -- tax reform goes through, economy keeps humming, judicial appointments keep rolling, Deep State keeps taking hits ... they feel the icy grip of panic. They have been hammering Trump 24x7 since August of 2016, and he is STILL STANDING! They felt they had to fire all they had at Moore, and they set their own smouldering house fully aflame! It is a bit tough not to feel a LITTLE schadenfreude

I find the MPR / Keillor case to be likely a similar sort of exposure. The fact that they "cut all ties" reminds me of the exit of Bill Kling in 2010 ... this excerpt is from a 2009 article on his $600K salary ...

"Topping the list, of course, is Bill Kling, the president and CEO of the entity officially known as Minnesota Public Radio-American Public Media. He made $373,254 in compensation and benefits from MPR/APM, which for the year grossed $82.2 million. Kling's total take swelled to $606,753, including approximately $180,000 from American Public Media Group (APMG), which controls MPR, and $48,000 from Greenspring, MPR's for-profit arm."

"Non-profit" doesn't mean that certain people like Garrison and Kling don't make LOTS of money ... "officially", Kling took $48K from the "for profit arm" Greenspring. "Follow the money" is often a great piece of advice ... I expect part of the reason for the very quick and very clean separation is that the tax money soaking NPR and MPR (we send money to MPR as part of a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT here in the land of Loons) ... my guess is that someone looking closer at "Pretty Good Goods" and such might find some interesting finances.

I started out on #1, but am shifting toward  #2 ... it certainly isn't that Matt Lauer and Charlie Wrangle were not well known abusers.Here is Katie on Matt in 2012 on air ...

Here is Cokie Roberts letting us know that women DC reporters for YEARS knew not to get in an elevator with Charlie ...

What sort of people / organization installs a remote door lock in an office so Lauer can lock victims in? Would you listen to "news" from such an organization?

"Situational Morals" are NOT morals! For ALL unrepentant humans, the ONLY sort of "standards" are DOUBLE STANDARDS!  **ONLY*** by recognition that we are ALL filthy sinners in need of REGULAR repentance and participation in Holy Communion, can we even hope to do better.

Up until the '60's, America was largely a Christian Nation. In a Christian Nation, real standards matter! There was even an expectation that leadership needed to be held to a "higher standard". Starting in the '60s, we seriously abandoned God. Pick your poison ... Chappaquiddick, Watergate, Roe V Wade, "Borking", the Clarence Thomas lynching, Slick Willie, gay "marriage", 58 genders ... your list may well be different from mine, but America gave way to BOistan ... and thus Trump (well covered here).

Political Correctness (PC), Sexual Correctness(SC) are all symptoms of our migration to the sick tribal backwater of BOistan. Trump has barely dented the swamp, but he HAS begun ... some of the measures he is taking are hitting them very hard! Will the current tempest raise public outrage that our own "swamp congress" has spent $17 million of our money to protect themselves, when the protection is SUPPOSED to be that we get a chance to vote them out every two years???? I suppose that largely depends on the media -- we live in a nation where individuals don't dare feel "outrage" unless their favorite media outlet tells them it is OK.

Can we continue to live in a nation where any woman can "feel harassed" and make accusations decades after the fact and be taken seriously? I'll close with this from Power Line ...

Men lie. Women lie. Children lie like rugs. Rose McGowan I believe. Ms. Tweeden I believe, even without the grotesque photographic evidence. But I have grave doubts about some of the #MeTooers. Mark my words: Turning America into a perpetual Salem Witch Hunt where any man can be destroyed just by accusations of incidents that allegedly happened 40 years earlier and can never be disproved will not end well. Ask not for whom the 10, 20, 30-year-old sexual assault accusation tolls, my brothers; it tolls for thee.

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Gelernter’s Trump

Gelernter’s Trump | Power Line:

I have a huge respect for Gelernter and his work. He is a brilliant and world renouned computer scientist who was injured by the unibomber, has written a number of excellent books, and who I have a 2nd hand personal connection with (covered here if you have an interest).

To anyone with intelligence that is left wing, Gelernter is a big problem -- he is brilliant, AND he generally supports Trump, for the simple reason that if you care about freedom, you had and have no rational other choice.

I'll copy the transcript of the Gelernter comments in an interview with Bill Bennet here ... it is self explanatory.

People on the left find Trump not merely objectionable on principle but they hate him as a person. They find him grating and annoying and he drives them crazy. I understand that. He often drives me crazy. Obama had the same properties….He was such a pain. I think there is nothing worse than a combination of patronizing arrogance and insincerity. Whenever he opened his mouth, your stomach turned over. It was painful to hear him talk. Now I understand that people — my friends on the left — have the same reaction to Trump, but the remarkable thing is what this says about the way the country swings and why did we elect Trump? The left and academia [are] too busy hating him to ask why their countrymen were

The American people know perfectly well what is due to the office of the presidency. I think Trump is undignified in a lot of ways. I think Trump falls short in a lot of ways and I think that is absolutely as clear to a farmer in Alabama or a cowboy in Wyoming as it is to the Washington Post.

People were driven to elect Trump not because they deemed him a perfect candidate to be president but because they were angry, they were incensed, they couldn’t stand where the country was going and the analysis that should follow upon that isn’t there. I mean, it goes on in conservative circles but it ought to be the number one topic in the study of American government, in the study of American history all over the world, and it’s not, of course. Needless to say.

I remain absolutely a supporter and a sympathizer of Trump. And you know, no president checks every box. I think his virtues far outweigh his faults. I do wish he would take the office and the history of the office more seriously than he does…

Just the fact of getting elected was an extraordinary accomplishment. I mean, you could say it was the most culturally democratic moment in the history of the world. Never before has a great power spurned everything the elite — the intellectual and the social elite — knows, left and right, about who should be running the country. Never before has a great power said to hell with that. The dignity of the country is important and has a lot to do with the power of the country, but this is an emergency and we’re going to make use of the best candidate who’s out there. And the implications are enormous. The left believes that, since it refuses to report on the right, the right doesn’t really exist, that it’s just a bunch of uncollected morons with no serious thought.

We all know this. We’ve reached a point where the left’s blindness is aiding the collapse of the intellectual structure built up since the rise of Marxism….The left is too arrogant, too complacent, too self-satisfied to notice it or do anything about it — I hope.

And I pray ...



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Safari In BOistan, Wisconsin

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/on-safari-in-trumps-america/543288/

At one level, this article is extremely funny -- although it is also sad. Some left coast liberals took a "safari" to of all places, Western Wisconsin .. places I'm very familar with. The following paragraph is what I believe the BOistan "Declaration of Government Dependence" to replace the old American one might be ...

We hold these truths to be self evident; Uncreated, randomly evolved humans can be educated, indoctrinated,  or forced to believe in the true way of centralized all powerful government proscribing their every thought and action." (The New Preamble of BOistan, Year ONE of No god but Government)

So after some crying time after the election, the "Third Way" decided to go on safari in this strange land they did not understand.

Third Way, for its part, announced in January it would spend $20 million on what it called the “New Blue” campaign to “provide Democrats with a path out of the wilderness.” Like many of their peers, the think tank’s brain trust had been stunned by the election. On November 9, too devastated to work, its staff had simply sat together and cried.

Here we have the premises of their trip ...

The trip was predicated on the optimistic notion that if Americans would only listen to each other, they would find more that united than divided them. This notion—the idea that, beyond our polarized politics, lies a middle, or third, path on which most can come together in agreement—is Third Way’s raison d’etre. It is premised on the idea that partisanship is bad, consensus is good, and that most Americans would like to meet in the middle.

One shudders to think what "the middle" in the minds of these people is -- they built a lot of Hillary's strategy, so clearly, HILLARY was a fairly "non-partisan, consensus meet in the middle" candidate in their minds.

In the old country of America, politics was usually well down the list of things of importance ... God, Family, Friends, Vocation, Community, Hobbies, Pets ... and then somewhere on the 2nd set of fingers, the priority of politics might pop up. Crying about politics was generally unthinkable in America unless you or someone close to you was a losing candidate.

In Ellsworth WI, a local farmer explained to the anthropologists what was wrong  -- he could just as well have been talking to the elite in ancient Summeria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, or Victorian England -- bureaucracy, parasites, vampires, syncophants, toadies, lackeys, etc  are anything but a new problem for humanity.

“You’ve got all these parasites making a living off the bureaucracy,” the farmer declared, “like leeches pulling you down, bleeding you dry.” We had been in the state for just a few hours, and already the researchers’ quest for mutual understanding seemed to be hitting a snag.

 Certainly Hillary strategists are positive that "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" is a completely sensible statement. To the extent the "Third Way" makes any sense at all, is to forget left and right, let's have one huge single party government where we ALL think alike -- you know, CORRECTLY. It's the TP ("The Party - D) way!

It isn't that they could not find broad consensus, it is just that the only example of such was that young people no longer wanted to work ...

As we proceeded to meetings with diverse groups of community representatives, this sort of blame-casting was a common refrain. Disdain for the young, in particular, was a constant, across demographic, socio-economic, and generational lines: Even young people complained about young people. “They don’t want to do the work, and they always feel like they’re being picked on,” a recent graduate of a technical school in Chippewa Falls said of his fellow Millennials.

The low point for at least one of the 3rd Way folks was with a group of organic farming hippies who she thought would be dedicated consensus builders like themselves.

“I had a very hard time with that meeting,” she finally said. “The longer the meeting went on, the more it started to feel to me like just another community that had isolated itself, and it was right and everybody else wasn’t, you know?” The hippies should have been her kind of people, but the attitudes they’d expressed had offended her sense of the way America ought to be. She had come seeking mutual understanding, only to find that some people were not the least bit interested in meeting in the middle. And now she was at a crossroads: Would she have to revise her whole worldview to account for this troubling reality?

In the end, the safari found that BOistan was just like what they thought it was ... strong work ethic, lots of agreement, 70% of the people are "in the middle", meaning the "I'm with IT" -- Hillary, transgender, kneeling for the anthem, DC is great. In short, the BOistan that they expected to find. Confirmation Bias is alive and well. The 3rd way turned out to be "just another group that isolated itself, and it was right and everybody else wasn't, you know?" 

I'm thinking that a good many folks in previous nations that went from being successful to being sucked dry by a blood sucking leech of an Adminstrative State bureaucracy and large parts of the population paid off in one way or another to at least be quiet, would find more than a little of "deja vu all over again". Isolated elites living off the fruits of the little guys and surrounded with a bubble that tells them that all is A-OK would not be "new news" in the time of the Akkadian Empire over 2K years BC ... a glance through all the empires that have risen and fallen through history is theraputic from time to time.

How would someone come to agreement on some value, ANY value that "70%" of BOistani's are in agreement on? People need to stand for the flag / anthem? Nah.  "Hard Work"??? Seriously? Over half of the population is is drawing funds from the federal government in one way or another. God? Not likely ... I maintain there is not a single value that 70% of BOistanis agree on.

How SHOULD "America" be? It would be nice to agree on what America even WAS before it's destruction to BOistan before we try to think about that!

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Anti-Trump Meme Apologetics

This highly reasoned meme showed up on a persons FB feed who had unfriended me long ago, but was commented on by someone who is still a "friend", so I got to see it and comment. The lefty who had unfriended me lives in a tidy world where all leftward positions are 100% truth, and anyone in disagreement is either misinformed or willfully evil. Our world is essentially juvenile -- FaceBook is so much like junior high. 

The following is my response which I thought I would capture for future reference when confronted with the "well, certainly, nobody with any intelligence could POSSIBLY support Trump at this point!". 

The simplest answer for me though is always "Henny Youngman". Who when asked "How is your wife"? Would say "Compared to what?". This vale of tears is and always will be a Henny Youngman world of COMPARED TO WHAT! (relative)

So how is Trump compared to ??? impeachment? Pence? Paul Ryan? An imaginary perfect president? Rocket Man? ... The entire line of reasoning is simply fallicious. Even Hillary seems to be beginning to recognize that she didn't win the election, even though she is still working to list ALL of the other people and situations responsible for that ... no doubt a list that will extend into eternity as she sits in her own private space of hell working to explain how others failed her in this life. 

Anyway ... a few simple reasons for Trump, although, if you follow the links, it is "War and Peace". Enjoy. 

1). I saw 8 years of BO as the end of "America". I now live in BOistan, and 2016 was a "Russian Roulette" election for me ... absolute political death vs a good chance of political death. This is well covered here http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../the-flight-93-election...

2).Other than "deploreables", the main reason that Trump won is that Christians finally accepted that BOistan is not a Christian nation. We can't expect a Christian in the WH, but we can at least hope for representation that doesn't try to put us in jail for not celebrating gay "marriage" http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../a-party-typo-least-of...

3). Remotely traditional values, Christian old time independent hard working Americans have no representation in BOistan. It certainly isn't the "Republican" party as seen by their failure to repeal the main thing they lied about to gain power the past 8 years (BOcare).

They want to WORK, they see the state corrupting their rural values, culture and most of all their FAMILIES as it did the inner cities since the '60s, and they see Trump as the only thin reed of hope they have. http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../trump-genius-stay-down...

For me, Trump is the ONLY mild alternative to steady decline that we have had since Reagan -- Reagan "resisted", Trump fights! http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../first-cultural-wartime...

If anything like America is ever to be restored, it is going to be a VAST undertaking ... Buckley called the decline in "God and Man At Yale" http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../god-and-man-at-yale-wf...

I'll support Trump until there is an alternative. BOistan is politically enemy territory to me -- politically blowing it up is eminently preferable to seeing a lawless, amoral, secular humanist, financially bankrupt, ever more intrusive state increasingly become incapable of even understanding what it was that made it so. http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../trapped-on-ancient...

The tribes that make up BOistan are now so far apart that communication is increasingly impossible, thus we have "memes", which are just extended name calling in pictures. My guess is that this impasse ends in "divorce" vs "civil war"http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../civil-war-or-divorce.html ... I don't see either side "winning", and I very much doubt that either side really cares enough for an actual war. 

Adams said it best ... America was only possible with shared religious values, when we lost those, we lost America. http://www.moosetracksblog.com/.../john-adams-our...

Iconoclasim, Skynet, Satan

NR Statue Removal

Burke said it best:

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation—and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

Or, to understand it in more modern terms ... just destroy everything! (yesterday, August 29th was Skynet self-awareness day).

Or in God's Word 1 Peter 5:8

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

Creation vs Destruction -- The super free to view (but not to lose) fight of the ages. 

We all understand what is happening here, it has happened many times. Tear down the statues, burn the books, declare views that you disagree with to be "hate speech" / "subversive" / imperialist / capitalist ... in other words, "bad". The important thing is to DESTROY THEM!!!

The Creator or the Destroyer? The modern destroyers seek to deny any "creator" save randomness -- very very unlikely things "just happen". There is really no other explanation -- for there to be a creator would mean that some level of respect was owed to that creator. Or even classical civilization, Christianity, Founding Fathers, or, dare we say it ... parents / elders. 

But then how could each and every modern be "god" --- each with their own "sacred view" (well, at LEAST as "sacred" as the next guys, gals, ????) 

Raze the earth of it's past -- the PRESENT is so much better, and the future? Well, no doubt it will be better still in the "progressive" model -- it will have to be, it will be NEW ... for a bit, and then it will be gone ... ever replaced by the latest and greatest "more perfect" level of knowledge 

Thus saith the "progressives"! Materialist "knowledge" ( depending on a universe randomly ordered)  is god, wisdom is bunk. 

Matt 4:9 "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

Haidting Trump, Pagan Taboos

Trump Breaks a Taboo—and Pays the Price - The Atlantic:

I've read quite a bit of Haidt (pronounced "height"). Happiness Hypothesis, and Righteous Mind being examples -- in general he is a very smart guy and I enjoy his perspective.

It is a bit funny how in "Righteous", Jonathan points out that liberals claim to be virtually immune to "sanctity/degradation" relative to sexual mores because they have been so indoctrinated that no matter how "yucky" some sex act is, as long as it "doesn't harm anyone" (temporally, they don't believe in eternity), "it's OK". Of course, when asked about things like a guy taking a chicken home from the grocery store, warming it up a bit and having sex with it, a PET scan showed that the old tired morality centers of their brains were screaming "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" as God intended -- they had just been socialized to lie about it, so they claimed it didn't bother them.

Who says indoctrination doesn't work? (at least if one can't peek at the wetware (brain))

Haidt seems to have the hypothesis that while lefties have managed to get vast swaths of humans to deny and lie about their sense of sexual sanctity/degradation wired in by either many 10's of thousands of years of evolution or divine design.  OTOH, somehow within the last "30 years or so" (being charitable -- BO and Hilly were against gay "marriage" in '08), sanctity/degradation about the KKK, created by Democrats in 1865 and being recruited for by Robert Byrd up to the 1950's is going to be absolutely the end of Republicans!

In that moment, Trump committed the gravest act of sacrilege of his presidency. In that moment, the president rendered himself untouchable by all who share the belief that Nazis and the KKK are not just bad—they are taboo.

"NAZI" of course stands for "National Socialist", and the party of socialism isn't the Republican party. KKK is a creation of DEMOCRATS, who were the party of slavery and Jim Crow for well over 100 years.  Isn't it amazing how "sacrilege" fails to stick to Democrats?  Yes, yes, I understand that the idea that "right" is "nazi" has been more marketed than lite beer, but I'm just not the lite beer sort. I'm guessing that Haidt has bought into it -- no matter how smart you are, marketing tends to work unless you are the sort of iconoclast that is WAY more disbelieving in human wisdom than someone tearing down monuments

This is why, for many Americans, things feel so unsettled this week. Extraordinary sacrilege has occurred, but divine retribution has not yet come down from the heavens, and we have no priest and no scripture to guide us. The world is out of balance, and America can’t just go on as before.

Yes, but can BOistan? America would have had to have a Constitutional Amendment to kill 60 million babies in their mothers wombs, it would have impeached AND removed from office any cad who would stain the oval office (literally) (Slick Willie), and it CERTAINLY would have had a Constitutional Amendment before there was such a wacko thing as gay "marriage".

I understand that Haidt can't go there, but doesn't his PET scanner give him a little insight to what ACTUAL sanctity/sacrilege/degradation looks like when something as basic to the species and every human religion in history as gender is supposedly beyond figuring out?

What is "sacred" in BOistan? I'm not so certain that divine retribution isn't raining down constantly ... people are dying in droves from suicide, substance abuse and just plain old hopelessness. Compared to what I grew up in, and certainly the '80's and the '90s, this is HELL -- hundreds of young black men die in just Chicago at each other's hands every year now ... thousands across the nation in other Democrat controlled cities. MUST the wrath of God be mass plague, nuclear war, dogs and cats living together?

I DO understand the marketing -- we are all supposed to decide that some tiny rump remnant of old National Socialists or Robert Byrd recruited KKK is "a big threat", while an Administrative State with it's roughly 14 million workers when fully accounted for is "nothing to worry about".  Haidt would like it if our very paganized state of BOistan deeply felt "sacrilege" --- but how are we to do so when we have been indoctrinated to believe that the ultimate good is "equality and tolerance"? If you remove all distinctions and claim anything goes, how well does the "except THIS!" really work? (we believe the science except for that X and Y chromosome thing) 

The truly strange thing is that if the universally left wing reviled Trump tweet ... "We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!" was said by a previous president (not that many of them could actually state something that succinctly), it would sound dangerously like a boring platitude. It is the horror of TRUMP that creates the hysteria.

I understand that to the ruling elite and media, "Trump and reviled" are synonyms, however does that REALLY sound any different from what you would have heard from every president in your lifetime? Certainly our betters have TOLD us that BLM, Antifa, and even "Islamic Terrorists" are not violent (and in the case of self labeled Islamic, they aren't even Islamic), but DOES ANYONE SANE BELIEVE THEM if you PET scanned their brain? 

We need to remember the smarter old Bill ... or William S

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep."
Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?”

Are there any pockets remaining in the US that don't know what they are SUPPOSED to think? My sense is that is precisely why there is Trump. I'm actually not the only one that quit buying "The Party" (TP-D) mass marketing sometime around when Slick shook his finger at me and said that I better quit making a spectacle of "his privates".

This is BOistan, not "America" ... that was a nice place with God, churches, intact families, common decency, respect for the Constitution, freedom of speech, hard work, individual responsibility ... you know, that kind of tired old crap that our modern schools and TP detest!

Taboo? Is that a science guy thing?

Yes, the name of "progressivism" is to create constant new realities at each instant, and given the wonders of modern marketing, to make sure everyone at least claims to buy these new realities.

But how does the more ancient brain behave? Haidt would seem to know -- he has seen that even with full modern indoctrination, the underlying wetware still signals the actual OLD taboo, the question is just if you can condition the subject to lie as long as you watch them. But what if you are not watching -- or your "subject" doesn't actually give a rats ass for your conditioning?

Certainly Haidt is indoctrinated enough to believe (at least for publication) that National Socialists and the KKK have been "rebranded" to fit the current narrative, but DOES IT WORK? Are we truly as "the flies of summer", or is there a wee bit more in the human core -- perhaps, dare I say it, even a SOUL?

I keep wondering if deep down Jonathan has not studied a bit too much too deeply and might end up having a dark night of the soul. I pray that he does. I believe that our time frame is a LOT longer than the past 50ish years of heavy duty progressive indoctrination -- as in eternal. 


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What Is A "Democrat"?

Democrats, Then and Now | Power Line:

Founded by slave owner and indian fighter Andrew Jackson in 1828, the Democratic party is the party of Slavery and Jim Crow in the United States. One might say that Democrats have never met a form of slavery they don't like, as today they are quite commonly Socialists, and would have elected one Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist, as their presidential standard bearer if the Clinton Crime Family had not rigged their own primary.

At the moment, the Democrat party seems intent on tearing down the statues of their own Civil War heroes, the bulk of which were erected by Democrats in the Jim Crow south, or it's border states. The current Democrat Minority Leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi's father erected some nice ones in Baltimore that the linked article points out as now being part of Democrat history that they would like to erase.

Barack (BO) Obama was president from '09-'16 (the mourning goes on) and from '07-'10, Ms Pelosi was Speaker of the House -- somehow, neither Nancy or BO ever managed to mention that any sort of Civil War statue was worthy of any concern ... let alone being removed.

Democrats, which I call "The Party" (TP-D) since much like the old Communist Party in the USSR, they dominate the vast Administrative / Deep State where the real government power is at today, academia, the proffessions, finance, the wealthy, corporate CEOs, and of course the media --  both the admitted fake Hollywood entertainment sort, and the "stealth Fake" supposed left wing "news". Since they are so dominate, their whim of the moment is always made to sound like brilliant wisdom falling from heaven -- or more likely in their case, an official howl from Satan himself, since Democrats are not very oriented to anything about God and Heaven!

"Memory", or "consistency" are terms which Democrats simply don't consider of any use --- OK, so they supported slavery, created and presided over Jim Crow, founded the the KKK, put up all the statues honoring confederates in the first place, and up until very recently, they could care less about any of it. So? They suddenly decided it was politically expedient to tear them down. You didn't really expect them to honor any sort of historical memory or consistency did you? What part of "we make the rules and you just kneel" is it that you have failed to understand?

Making a "deal" with a Democrat is somewhat the same as making a deal with the Devil -- in fact, I suspect Satan is a tad more reliable. At least you ALWAYS know he is going the evil route -- in the case of Democrats, they will do ANYTHING to gain power -- even the occasional "good deed":

The idea that they have suddenly decided that their own statues are "bad" is a great example of how the Democrat mind works -- POWER, POWER, POWER!

It really is that simple!

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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.

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Officer Shot On Camera, The Price of BLM

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/10/south-carolina-cop-survives-shooting-on-video-tell-my-family-love-them.html

Pretty much every story has at least two sides. For the past few years we have been being innundated on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) side of the story -- racist trigger happy cops shooting young black men for no reason whatever. "Murder", "assassination", "genocide" ... all sorts of nasty descriptions.

The police side of the story is is rarely told at all, and when it is, it is often tinged with "the officer panicked", "why did he even have his gun out", "he ought to have just tased him", etc, etc. We see often shown parts of videos that look especially incriminating relative to the officer involved. Videos like this tend to be FAR from universally seen.

Please take the time to watch this video and then imagine that you are the officer, or the officer is your husband, wife, son or daughter. When the shooter sees that all the officer has in his hands is a tazer, do you think that makes a difference to the shooter? If he was staring down the barrel of a .40 or .45, would he feel less "luckly"?

Consider this in comparison:

I strongly suspect that if you are looking at the business end of a major handgun vs a taser, your quick draw confidence is reduced due to the increased price of overestimating your speed.

Why did the officer select his taser rather than his handgun? Why did the shooter think it was acceptible to ignore the repeated commands of an officer of the law?

THIS is what BLM is building. Police are not in a "fair fight", they have no way of knowing why the person of interest has their hands in their pockets. They MUST consider it is for the reason we see in the video above. As a nation, we need to ALL understand that when you disobey direct orders from a police officer, you are RISKING YOUR LIFE! You are risking your life because you are risking the officers life!

You have a choice -- you can comply, and in many situations you made the choice to be there. Like Philandro Castile ... you got high and drove around, you decided to carry a weapon, you decided to yell out "I've got a gun!", you decided to keep reaching for whatever you were reaching for ...

The officer decided to be a police officer, and now it is part of his job to answer calls and enforce the law. The OFFICER deserves the benefit of the doubt when he chooses wrongly at the last instant -- in this case, a wrong choice in the other direction (taser vs gun) nearly cost his life.

Certainly police should be scrutinized, but BOTH sides of the story need to be told. There really is a risk to an officer when somebody will not take their hands out of their pockets. Now you have seen it -- quit denying it.