Fundamentalism Of The Smug Liberal

The smug style in American liberalism - Vox:

This article is a long but AMAZING read. Not so much for what is in it but because it exists at all. It is written by a liberal for a liberal site PLEADING for the liberal intelligentsia and hangers on to try their hardest to develop the merest hint of actual empathy!

I've covered all of this ground seven ways from Sunday, but to see an actual LIBERAL realize that maybe there is more to dealing with something possibly over half of the American Electorate than dismissing them with derision and smugness is a real treat.

This, I think, is fundamental to understanding the smug style. If good politics and good beliefs are just Good Facts and good tweets — that is, if there is no ideology beyond sensible conclusions drawn from a rational assessment of the world — then there are no moral fights, only lying liars and the stupid rubes who believe them.

Much of this goes back to "What's The Matter With Kansas" -- a book that SCREAMED about how STUPID poor people were to not be voting D and still clinging to tired old ridiculous Christian values to boot! "Good Facts" are critical -- liberals are sure of nothing if it isn't that THEY have ALL the FACTS on THEIR side! The following paragraph is a rare view of what a liberal might realize if they were to be a high school educated white Christian in some hick town in flyover country.

I am suggesting that they instead wonder what it might be like to have little left but one's values; to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around and see the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place. To work with people who do not share their values or their tastes, who do not live where they live or like what they like or know their Good Facts or their jokes.

It's a worthy read, but we pretty much know it already -- liberals are smarter, better educated, better people, better looking, more tasteful, kinder, gentler, more moral, more culturally advanced, well, just BETTER! They are absolutely certain of it and they are even more certain that they have every right to be SMUG about it!

The thing that I would add from my experience is the quite large number of people who don't have the education, intelligence or money to actually be solid smug liberals, but they hang their entire sense of moral goodness on their embrace of liberal morality. They LOVE gay "marriage", they HATE the NRA, Faux News, they obsess about Climate Change -- they don't know a lot about many of these issues, but it gives them a chance to feel morally superior to their "hick neighbors". Often, it is the only sad "superiority" that they have.

Here is the Trump angle (doesn't everything have that these days?) :

Here's the conclusion I draw: If Donald Trump has a chance in November, it is because the knowing will dictate our [the liberal] strategy. Unable to countenance the real causes of their collapse, they will comfort with own impotence by shouting, "Idiots !" again and again, angrier and angrier, the handmaidens of their own destruction.

The smug style resists empathy for the unknowing. It denies the possibility of a politics whereby those who do not share knowing culture, who do not like the right things or know the Good Facts or recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of their own ideas can be worked with, in spite of these differences, toward a common goal. 

It is this attitude that has driven the dispossessed into the arms of a candidate who shares their fury. It is this attitude that may deliver him the White House, a "serious" threat, a threat to be mocked and called out and hated, but not to be taken seriously. 

The wages of smug is Trump.

The part of the Smug style that hurts personally is the requirement for "separation". I grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist church that encouraged Christians to "be ye separate" -- not in heart and behavior only, but actually to separate yourself from the "world churches" and people who attended them -- which was basically everyone. ONLY the little General Association of Regular Baptists had the truth -- all else was error and sin.

Smug liberals can't associate with people who have "empathy for the unknowing", or even worse can enter a discussion with the smugly superior liberal in which the liberal ends up tongue tied and sputtering. They end up tongue tied and sputtering because their entire moral value as a person is tied up in the metaphysical correctness of their liberal world view, yet, since their view is dominant in media and culture, they have no knowledge of how to defend it. Like the fundamentalists of my youth, when faced with difficult questions, they have no choice but to say "get behind me Satan!"

The Fundamentalists of my youth put a lot of their self image into being "the ones in the right", but they DID believe in a God that was far superior to even them. The modern liberal is sure that somewhere between John Stewart, the NY Times, BO and a few really smart professors SOMEWHERE it is "all known and worked out" ("settled").

When liberals have trouble defending that faith, it gets VERY uncomfortable for them -- especially since they fervently believe that what they believe is not a "belief" at all, but proven and obvious FACT!  ("Good Facts") People who disagree with them MUST be either stupid or very poorly educated, and probably both. It makes it supremely embarrassing to not be EASILY winning a discussion with someone whom your entire world view depends on being as dumb as a box of rocks!

The urge to smugness is endemic to the human condition. Christ definitely came to discomfort the smug (ALL of us!) -- he was a LOT harder on the Scribes and Pharisees than he was on the immoral poor. The immoral poor knew they sinned -- the Scribes and Pharisees were very sure they didn't! (in those days / Jewish culture, they had the "Good Facts")

If Christ is in heaven and we will all be there for a lot longer than we will be here, we can enjoy earthy discussion about pretty much anything. Our worth as people is not be about our politics, our brilliance, our education or much of anything beyond God's Grace! Christian's could enjoy those discussions -- but "liberals" absolutely can't . They MUST be correct, and OBVIOUSLY / SMUGLY so!

The fact that a tiny fraction of liberals seem to understand how smug their movement has become and see it as a bad feature might be cause for hope, but I don't believe that humans can really cure their own smugness without God's Grace.

My soul weeps at the barrier that has been erected by the fundamentalist and smug secular humanist religion. It has destroyed the love of families far worse than even the divisions in the Church once did.

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Losing Life to Government

Rich People Are Living Longer. That’s Tilting Social Security in Their Favor. - The New York Times:

If the Bible was not divinely inspired, it was written by people who were alive thousands of years ago that understood human nature far better than the NY Times understands it today. The Bible understands that there are MANY distinctions between people and these cause envy (covetousness) even so far as a desire to kill those that "have more" in any form -- wealth, property, donkeys, beautiful wife (or wives in those days), etc.

For example, an American man who is consistently in the top 1 percent of earners — making $2 million last year — will, if he starts taking Social Security benefits at age 66 and lives to be 87, end up with more money than he and his employers paid into the system in taxes during his lifetime. In the language of finance, he would receive an inflation-adjusted “internal rate of return” of 1.07 percent. 

By contrast, if a member of Mr. Moneybags’s household staff, born the same year, made about $30,000 annually and also lived to be 87, he would receive a 2.57 percent return after inflation. That’s quite a decent return — a higher rate than any inflation-adjusted United States Treasury bonds pay, for example. 

That’s progressivity in action. Or rather, it would be if Mr. Moneybags and his gardener actually lived to the same age.

The best laid plans of mice and men  often go awry. As government has destroyed the family and the work ethic, the people MOST affected are those at the lower half of the income spectrum. As I've come close to harping on in this blog, white HS graduates with no college are dying in droves.  When you die at 40 or 50 your FICA collections aren't very good.

The research from Mr. Chetty and his colleagues indicates that the richest 1 percent of Americans gained three years of life expectancy from 2001 to 2014 alone, while the poorest had almost no gain (0.3 of a year).

People are EQUAL BEFORE GOD ... we all live and then die in a short span, and then comes the long eternity. Any kindergartner knows they are FAR from equal in any other way -- size, strength, intelligence, pluck, emotion, musical ability, athletic ability .... the list of differences is thankfully INFINITE! Thanks be to God!
But as Burke so eloquently told us "sophists, economists and calculators" seek to convert each eternally unique human into a number to be dealt with as they desire.

Life used to be a battle to maintain food, shelter and clothing in the face of nature. Now it is a battle to maintain a wisp of independent life in the face of cloying government intervention. When you lose your life to Christ, you gain it, when you lose your life to government, YOU LOSE IT!

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Prince Jehovah's Witness, I'll Have A Double!

Soup With Prince - The New Yorker:

They say you learn something every day, I certainly did today! Prince became a Jehovahs Witness in 2002! I find a few of his songs to be fine -- at one time I think pretty much everyone couldn't avoid "Party Like It's 1999" or "Purple Rain". Who knows why a little skinny guy is dead at '57 -- I suppose we will find out. He isn't an artist that I will be missing a lot, but OTOH, 57 is certainly too early to go for ANYONE, he certainly did have talent. LOTs more than me!

Since Curt Schilling is in the news, I found the following paragraph interesting from the New Yorker.

"When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ “"

So how is it that the New Yorker does that interview and nobody comes out with a massive "we gotta boycott his records!" campaign? We know that being black isn't as good a protection as it once was -- Cosby is an example of that. He only left the reservation enough to say that "black people need to take SOME personal responsibility" and all of a sudden his Slick Willie level of sexual license goes poof!

In the Secular Humanist religion is it possible to gain enough immunity so you can freely speak your mind if you androgynously slither around stage for enough years looking like you are "sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever"? He is even pretty clear that he thinks "The Party" has it wrong ... but then so do the Republicans. He might have been a 3rd party guy!

So here’s how it is: you’ve got the Republicans, and basically they want to live according to this.” He pointed to a Bible. “But there’s the problem of interpretation, and you’ve got some churches, some people, basically doing things and saying it comes from here, but it doesn’t. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum you’ve got blue, you’ve got the Democrats, and they’re, like, ‘You can do whatever you want.’ Gay marriage, whatever. But neither of them is right.”

How does a famous guy get away with heresy like that -- and poor Curt Schilling loses his job because he thinks people with dicks need to be in the mens bathroom rather than the women's. Hell, up to about 10 min ago that wasn't even an issue!

Somebody posted on FB that Prince was a Jehovahs Witness and I just didn't even believe it! If someone had said "Prince is a religious guy, what is he?". I would have said "Muslim ... Black Muslim like Mohammad Ali".

There must be something here that is so painful for TP it is like the Catholic Hierarchy finding out that they have a bunch of gay priests molesting little boys -- it is just too terrible for them to conceive of, and they just can't accept the reality of it. It is kind of like you are sitting in the local BWW, turn around and see Godzilla walking across the parking lot (or at least his feet and tail), but people are still going in and out and everything seems to be fine. Or Obama gets elected.

The smart thing to do is to just call up the bartender and say "I'll have a double!". That must be what the left all did when they read about Prince the Jehovahs Witness!

ADDENDUM: A current article covering the Jehovah's Witness conversion / life in more detail. http://www.wsj.com/articles/princes-little-known-life-1461542745?mod=e2fb

Will the media turn on Prince because he was a "terrible bigot" who did not approve of gay "marriage"?

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Osteen, Anger, Hell, Homosexuality

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3059879/posts

Somebody posted the linked on FB and I read through it. It is full of discomfort for me -- and as a Christian, I think discomfort is often a good, or at least necessary thing.

First of all, my inclination is to dislike Osteen. He is a TV minister, a class that evokes the same sort of visceral reaction as "politician, used car salesman, etc". Being a Christian means one should ALWAYS feel at least uncomfortable about those reactions. We know we are supposed to LOVE even our ENEMIES.

The writer of the column doesn't get my vote either though -- very much "works righteousness", "holier than thou", "Scribes and Pharisee's", judgmental, etc I have a hard time understanding how any Christian can feel comfortable making the kinds of harsh judgements he is making.

I could go have a long scriptural "verse off" with some of the verses he quotes, but I don't feel like that today, nor do I feel "led" that way.  I went and visited my Dad yesterday and got to hear an MPR discussion about "political mixed marriages" that made "acceptance of homosexuality" one of those "we can't associate with people who fail that test!"

I overeat. I was sick over the weekend, so I've been trying to use that impetus to cut back AGAIN. Overeating is gluttony. Gluttony is sin, and it is just as bad as homosexuality. Do I "feel" that way? No, I find homosexuality especially yucky, not my temptation, but there are plenty of other sins that ARE tempting. Overeating is a nice clear not yucky, not embarrassing one to talk about.

Sexual sins are especially difficult sins. It is my firm belief that at our core we all know that "love, marriage, children,  family, extended family, community" are the human center of life. For those that are believers, God demands that we put HIM at the center of our lives -- which changes the focus of life.

Without (1) the sexual union of one man and one woman, none of us would be here. We also know that we will ultimately (2) face death, either alone or (3)with Jesus holding our hand. EVERYONE that is sane agrees with 1 and 2. Many, maybe even most, will try to deny or avoid thought about 2, but it's there.  We also have no choice on 1 and 2. We are here, we were born -- so we will die, end of story.

All human kind is in this boat. I find the fact there is not more love on the planet to be enough to prove the existence of Satan / evil on it's own! We are all short timers in a boat we did not choose to be in, and we KNOW that it ends in death! Why not love others in our shared situation?

In listening to the NPR show, reading this article  and dealing with atheists over the years, I'm convinced that the desire to judge others as being "less than ourselves" is an absolute hallmark of human nature. When Christ tells us to "love our enemies", he is giving us a command that is impossible for humans to follow -- like "love God with ALL your heart". The fact he would give such a command is proof that he is more than human. Humans have a hard time even conceiving of such things when they hear them, let alont think them up!

Have you ever met an atheist who even gives a HINT of loving their enemies? They are almost always pretty angry at those that disagree with them -- religious people, very much so! They are certain they are completely justified in their anger -- "righteous" even!

We all love ourselves. Even if we hate ourselves at times, it is always someone else's fault -- our parents, someone who abused us somehow, the political system, bad genetics (our parents again), racism, the system, ... maybe even God, sometimes even if we claim we don't believe he exists. We ended up "marooned" here with no way out but death unless we "give in" and subscribe to the "foolish idea" that there is a God and a potential for eternal life with him.

But many CAN'T accept that, because that comes with HELL, which is "immoral" according to  "our morality" since WE are  better judges of morality than the "certainly must be imagined" God who would conceive of such a terrible thing as eternal punishment.

I believe that accepting the moral authority that God has a RIGHT to actually judge us is one of those acts of humility that comes very very hard to many. I wrote on that some here. It is really a very mild humility asked of us compared that of almighty God being willing to suffer even unto death for our sin!

But in the meantime,  our natural desire is to feel better about ourselves by putting labels on some other groups and calling them "untouchables", "deploreables", ... "the evil".  If you go about 38min into the MPR piece (nearly the end), they finally get down to brass tacks -- "we can't be around people who are homophobic, racist, islamophobic or sexist ... these are non-negotiable". Let's ignore the fact that believers in Islam are "homophobic and sexist" by the MPR definition for the moment, we humans are also inescapably inconsistent. Humans are extremely limited beings.

Christ's forgiveness has no limits. I agree with Osteen that there will be people that have practiced homosexuality in heaven, and they will have sought forgiveness for their sin in this life. I pray fervently that there will be recovering gluttons in heaven as well as those fighting the sin of judging others in heaven, and especially those that have lusted after women in their hearts  -- and that I will be among them. Homosexual acts are sin, not homosexual desires, exactly like man or woman desiring a partner not their spouse. Sin is sin -- without Christ, it is like life, always terminal.

This somewhat long discussion for me is summarized by 1 John 1:8 " If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the TRUTH is not in us."

Christ is the Truth. Homosexuality is a sin, and it is not the unforgivable sin. Drinking to excess is a sin and alcoholics have a compulsion to drink to excess -- we don't tell them "go ahead and drink or you are not being true to your nature". Is it really possible to look at the wreckage of alcoholism, drug addiction, homosexuality, transgenderism and abortion and still say "these are not sin"?

Since ALL have sinned -- and even worse, struggle with sin each day, listing sins ought give no Christian comfort just because they can list a  group which happens not to tempt them personally. Any practicing Christian MUST have no problem pointing to a list which DOES NOT make them comfortable! Being a practicing Christian REQUIRES constant admission of our sinfulness!

Comfort, pleasure, ease ... Christians are NOT to seek these, but rather to serve the Lord!

For me, this analysis makes it clear why those without Christ are pretty much forced by human nature  to establish their own Secular Humanist religion with it's own "mortal sins" (homophobia, racism, etc above), and as the MPR program shows, they have done so, and it includes even "shunning" like the Amish.  I think Sapiens does a good job of covering the secular religion compulsion.

Matt 6:33  "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." We are in what to human eyes appears to be a hopeless situation, however ...

Matt 19:26  "Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

TV Cesspool

http://nypost.com/2016/04/10/in-a-race-to-outshock-the-viewer-quality-shows-become-ever-more-immoral/

I don't watch very much TV ... just not that interested. I don't consider myself a "prude" -- I managed to make it through "Pulp Fiction". Probably the weirdest thing I ever watched was "Sin City" because I heard so much about how "brilliant and innovative" it was and it had Bruce Willis in it. I guess it's as "shocking" as anything here, but it's not on TV:

Thursday night, on ABC’s “Scandal,” Olivia Pope, the protagonist — long established in the show’s vernacular as a “white hat,” or good guy — beat a wheelchair-bound stroke victim to death by pulping his face with an aluminum chair. 

It was a lengthy scene, and even for a Shonda Rhimes soap that bills itself weekly on “OMG twists” — gruesome scenes of torture and dismemberment, politically expedient murders and illegitimate war, rape, kidnapping, blackmail, and one interminable scene where an imprisoned terrorist chewed through her own wrist to escape — this one was morally and artistically bankrupt.

There is a litany of such things in the article and this is the NY Post ... AFAIK, not exactly a "bastion of puritanism". They close with this observation:

“At a certain point, as always happens in Hollywood or culture in general, a set of superficial things come to stand in for quality: sex, violence, moral complication,” says Martin. “When done well, it’s the highest form of art. If it’s done poorly, and if that’s all you’ve got — the idea that quality is tied to immorality — you enter the realm of the absurd.”

"As always happens in Hollywood or culture in general"? So did Socialist Germany get into "absurd" on the first million Jews, or did it take a few? Did we get there on the first 10 million legally aborted babies, or are we there now at 60 million? Or maybe we have to double it.

"Immorality"? As near as I can tell currently from the culture that would be "Not applauding when an obvious male in a wig and a dress follows your 8 year old granddaughter unaccompanied into the ladies bathroom at the park".

"Morality" is applauding.

"Absurd"? What the hell does "absurd" mean these days?

They seem to think it will "cycle back" and evil will no longer be good and the guys in the white hats will be cheered once again. Perhaps my prayers will be answered.

Cuba: "Negro, Are You Dumb"

Cuban Media: 'Negro' Obama 'Incited Rebellion and Disorder':

It's hard to overstate how excited and entertained our media was in '08 when W was attacked by having a shoe thrown at him in Iraq.

Needless to say, the dressing down of BO by Fidel Castro and some of the articles showing up in Cuban papers like the linked one are not getting much coverage.

Referring to BO as a "dumb negro" is in line with the administration in Cuba:

In a video declaration in 2015, Ladies in White dissident leader Berta Soler explains that, of known political prisoners, 60 percent are black. Black people are often forced to live in segregated neighborhoods and kept far away from tourism industry jobs (except prostitution). “To the government, the black person is a thief, a bandit, a troublemaker,” Soler argues, noting that the Cuban people are significantly less racist than the regime.

There is nothing surprising here. To the left, IDEOLOGY TRUMPS ALL -- consider the "love" for Islam which subjugates women and stones gays.  I love the fact that in Cuba, if you want to call someone really stupid you refer to them as a "Swede":

The article is titled “Negro, ¿Tu Eres Sueco?” which roughly translates to “Black Man, Are You Dumb?” (The idiom “pretend to be a Swede” means to play dumb, hence the title is literally asking, “Are you Swedish?”)

I happen to be of mostly Swedish descent, and the "big dumb Swede" putdown was a fairly common "friendly put-down" growing up in NW WI when I was young. Yes, in the days before PC, "friendly put down" among neighbors and friends was actually a common thing!

"Political Correctness" in Cuba is different -- the ONLY group you better be careful to not piss off is the government, or that will be the LAST time to make an insult!

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Abortion, Politics, Morals, Penalties

An Echo, Not a ‘Choice’ - WSJ:

There seems to be universal political agreement that even if Roe-V-Wade was overturned and states were allowed to protect the unborn, killing them should be a "victimless crime".

I'm CLEARLY not a politician  -- so that probably is the only "reasonable / non-crazy / winnable / etc" POLITICAL position. I'm surprised, but I'm surprised a LOT these days.

Morally though, it seems to me that taking the life of an unborn baby is either wrong or it isn't. If it is not wrong, then why would it ever be made illegal? If it IS made illegal, how did we get to the position that it is "politically insane" for there to be a penalty for breaking the law?

Let's say that Jamar Clark's (black man killed in scuffle for policeman gun in November up in Minneapolis) girlfriend decided that after probably being beaten many times, maybe with huge emotion, soul searching, reticence, etc that she was going to take matters in her own hands and kill the bastard.

Now depending on circumstance -- was he in the act of beating her, did she "fear for her life", etc, she may well get off with self-defense (and I'd be fine with that) ... however, if after a certain beating she just decide when she got up early to eviscerate him with a butcher knife, there would be a trial and a penalty. "Soul searching, thinking she had no options, etc notwithstanding.

I know I'm WAY out on a limb here -- even the WSJ asserts that "nobody holds the penalty position".

My question then is whether the battle for the unborn is not already lost then. Jamar Clark had a nasty criminal record, had beaten his girlfriend bad enough for EMTs to be called and was interfering with them forcing them to call police. This information was considered (as it should be) immaterial relative to his life being lost in a scuffle with police. He was "innocent until proven guilty". Had the officers been found to not have acted properly they would have been charged with some level of "manslaughter" -- or possibly even murder.

If a baby in it's mothers womb is NOT human life, then why regulate abortion at all? It can't be "killed" any more than your appendix can -- which is why pro-choice people hold the position that they do (at least the ones that care about morals).  No "tissue rights".

Is it possible for the pro-life position to have any moral standing but not deal with the question of there being a penalty for killing the unborn baby?

I can't see how.

 I don't say that the penalty for "first offence, especially underage, extenuating circumstance" has to be large, but we definitely live in a society where if an underage male is accused of ANY form of "sexual harassment", there is no compunction whatsoever for the system to identify them as a "sex offender" with a trail that may follow them for life.

I think Trump handled the question badly for sure, but I had never realized that the official position of the pro-life movement was that there could be no penalty for women getting an abortion if Roe V Wade was ever overturned.

Given that moral position, I can't imagine how it ever will be.

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Narratives, Unarmed Black Victim, Domestic Violence

No charges in Clark shooting draws a strong reaction - StarTribune.com:

I continue to subject myself to an hour or two of MPR a week, and since November, a liberal might say that I've been "the victim" of WAY more coverage of Jamar Clark than a rational person should be subjected to.

During the hours that I listen -- typically in snippets from 9:30 AM to 1:00PM, the coverage of this has been INCESSANT, and the CONSTANT is "Jamar Clark, unarmed black man victim of police shooting in Minneapolis". MANY times we also covered the "witnesses say he was handcuffed and on the ground at the time he was shot" -- sometimes they even said "executed".

When you have your hand on an officers gun you are NOT "unarmed", and when you are shot, you are a "suspect" or now "perpetrator". Let's try this out -- "Jamar Clark, a violent domestic violence perpetrator was shot and killed in a struggle for a police officers gun"!

COUNTLESS representatives from "Black Lives Matter", "Justice for Jamar", NAACP, the University of MN, black political leaders and various community members and activists were given a HUGE amount of time to talk, and to summarize their points:

1. The Minneapolis Police Department is racist, "their narrative" should not be covered AT ALL.  
2. The entire idea of "police" is "White Privilege", the entire idea of "law" as it exists today is "White Privilege". MPR is racist, continues to dispense the "racist police propaganda". 
3. The idea of "truth" as a "racist construct". The ONLY truth that counts here is the TRUTH of the Black Community -- Jamar Clark was handcuffed, on the ground, and executed. 

Here we have a short summary by the local head of the NAACP from the article.

"Your entire narrative today was to push the propaganda of the Minneapolis Police Department," said Raeisha Williams, communications director for the Minneapolis NAACP and a candidate for the Minneapolis City Council. "You, Mr. Freeman, did not give a fair and accurate portrayal … and let me tell you: If the city burns, it's on your hands.""

We FINALLY heard the police side yesterday -- not very much in the article above.

• Jamar Clark beats up his girlfriend at a party bad enough that EMTs are called. 
• EMTs arrive, they get the girlfriend in the ambulance, clark is fighting with EMTs trying to get at girlfriend again, EMTs call police. 
• Police are less than two blocks away, they arrive, tell Clark to get hands out of pockets, he refuses. 
• Officer Ringgenberg takes Clark to ground and Clark continues to resist, he gets his hand on Ringgenberg 's gun,  which Clark has moved toward  Ringgenberg 's back. Clark has hand on gun, Ringgenberg  is fighting for control and tells partner -- "He's got my gun!"
• Partner Schwarze puts gun in Clark's face and says "Let go of the gun or I'm going to shoot you!" 
• Clark says "I'm ready to die" ... Schwarze feels that in order to save the lives of his partner and possibly himself and others around, he has no option and shoots him. 
• Clark's DNA is found on the gun and Riggenberg's belt, No DNA from Clark is found on the inside of the handcuffs, there are no marks on Clark's wrists from handcuffs. 
• The "20ish" witnesses variously say "he was handcuffed in front", "he was handcuffed in back", "he had one handcuff on", "he was not handcuffed". 

 The BLM narrative usually consists of merely "he was handcuffed, on the ground and executed" -- I've never see them asked to extend this any as to what we have to believe to believe their story. It would have to be something as follows:

• Two racist police officers get a call, they show up and find a black man scuffling with EMTs.
• They grab him, handcuff him, throw him to the ground, and within 60 seconds of their arrival they decide that with two EMTs standing there plus about 20 witnesses, it is a good idea to execute him in cold blood, so they do.

Could that happen? I suppose, but if this is what police forces in the US are like, especially in heavily Democrat states and cities like Minneapolis, one would expect at LEAST 100's if not thousands of young black men executed by police each year in this country. Our news media and for certain MPR would not have the hours to do the coverage! They would need 10-20 stations in the Twin Cities alone just to cover the police killings of "unarmed black men". 

Since Fergusson MO it has been clear that "The Party" (TP-D) and it's media arm wants to whip up racial tensions to increase turnout for the 2016 elections, so EVERY opportunity is fanned to fit the story line of "white police murder unarmed black man". 

Left wing narratives are so ubiquitous that we often don't see how selective they are. When the violence is Islamic, we MUST NOT generalize -- there are no "root causes" except possibly "W invading Iraq".  The incident is the incident -- nothing more general can or should be discovered. 

When there is a mass shooting in the US, we MUST generalize about the "problem of gun ownership". What may appear to be the proximate cause -- the perpetrator is a raving lunatic who ought to have been locked up long ago, such complicating factors are "avoiding the REAL issue of guns in America". The blood is "really on the hands of the NRA and every gun owner in America". 

When a black man is shot by police, we completely ignore proximate causes and purely generalize to "racism" in police forces and the general public. In the Clark case, it is interesting that nobody cares about the girlfriend and the relationship of domestic violence and substance abuse to the incident. 

Here is a statistic from the HuffPo on violence against black women: 

In 2011, the most recent year for which such data is available, black females were murdered by males at a rate of 2.61 per 100,000 in single victim/single offender incidents. For white women, the rate was 0.99 per 100,000.

If Clark had not been beating up his girlfriend there would have been no call and no death. He also had a blood alcohol level over the legal limit as well as evidence of other drugs in his system. Perhaps if he had not been high he would not have been neither abusing his girlfriend or resisting arrest? But substance abuse is a "victimless crime".

One more case where the vast majority of the public are simply sheep bleating to the narrative that TP and it's media arm choose to apply to fit whatever story they seek to use to increase their political power and control of the masses. "Follow the money" is indeed a worthy maxim, but "be aware of the narrative" is possibly even more critical as TP consolidates it's power over a largely blind public.

'via Blog this'

Post-Apocalyptic Conservatism

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/03/14/preparing-for-the-post-apocalyptic-conservative-movement/?singlepage=true

The column author is pretty sure that Trump means the end of the Republican Party and current conservative movement. I found the key part of his thesis to be here ...

The nature of politics is such that campaigns must offer something of value. If you tell a guy that he needs to solve his own problems, then what does he need you for? There must be an answer to the question: what are you going to do for me? Many conservatives don't like that, feeling that the only acceptable limited government answer should be "nothing." But "nothing" will never be a winning campaign platform. There has to be something. There has to be a product with features and benefits, and it has to be better than what the competition is offering.

He seems to be starting from the "pinata model of politics" -- "what's in it for ME"? His answer to what the "future" of a conservative movement ought to be is "no racists and lots of education".

Something tells me that no matter what happens, "Conservative / Republican / Liberty / ???" or whatever the "old Republican party" becomes, or possibly what a new 3rd party is about has to be A LOT clearer than the current Republican party, which as pretty much returned to the pre-Reagan  status of "Democrat lite".

First of all, The Democrat Party, "The Party"  (TP) is EASY to define:

1. Socialist / Fascist economic policy.
   •  FREE STUFF!!!!  Medicine, education, food, drugs, housing, abortions, birth control, cell phones ... keep thinking, TP will try to give it to you! 
   • Leveling -- no matter what somebody does, or doesn't do, "outcome" ought to be basically the same. 
   • NO RESPONSIBILITY! ...  to work, stay married, take care of your kids, take care of your parents, etc. Don't want to have a baby? KILL IT! 

2. NO traditional MORALS!  58 genders and LOTS of "preferences". If you want to live life leading with your sex organs, this is your party! Drugs? No issue! Telling the "truth"? No such thing other than what TP says it is! Theft? TP takes from who they want, keeps what they want and gives the rest to who they want. Lawlessness is as close to "virtue" as they come. 
3. Anti-Christian. Muslim is great.  Wiccan? Far out! Whatever -- just keep quiet on that "Jesus stuff"! 
4. Anti-American. TP would rather be part of Europe. America was bad -- sexist, racist,  imperialist. That is why TP killed it and are very happy they did! BOistan is NOT America! 
5. Anti-White. Since the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, the TP has been replacing white people with browns and blacks. They are pretty much done -- and in 10-20 years this is a non-white country. White people -- TP hopes the door whacks your ass on the way out! 
6. COMPLETE LOYALTY TO TP!! No unapproved speech. Certainly no guns, TP is "giving" (stealing and transferring) you everything to make you "happy" -- so BE HAPPY and SHUT UP about anything political except praise for TP. Got it??? I

Here is my cut at a start of what a new party needs to stand for:

1. Philosophically rooted in the value of Transcendent Principles, No specific Federal Church, but certainly States are allowed to have churches that support the agreed and understood Transcendent Principles. (See "Ideas Have Consequences") (Islam is not one of those religions) Religion and Philosophy are the roots of the nation -- politics and science are servants of the eternal order. 
2. Capitalism and decentralized markets are the basis of economic policy. 
3. Individualized education that seeks to bring out the unique gifts of each individual while insuring that all that are able have a deep understanding of religion, philosophy, rhetoric, language, history and classical literature and the arts. None may take part in any aspect of governance unless they can pass rigorous standards in the history, meaning and imperatives of culture and civilization.
   
   All elements of society must guard against the twin perils of education on one hand becoming indoctrination with no room for innovation, and on the other, becoming a value free stew of disordered and undifferentiated data.
   
   Wisdom is the beginning and the end of education.
   
4. Local and State Rights -- See Switzerland. Federal government handles national defense and referees interstate commerce. "City States" are the rule. Thousands of laboratories of what works and what does not, with the freedom to fail, and fail badly being one of the values held in greatest esteem. 
5. Family, Church and Community are the recognized and cherished building blocks of society. 

• Excellence in service to God, Family, Church and Community is the objective of every citizen. 
• Inheritance is important and encouraged 
• Both the past and the future are more important than today. Family history, Church History, Community History are all items of sacred reverence. 
• The trinity of Family, Church and Community is the rock upon which the individual can boldly risk much in gaining their unique mission for a meaningful life. 

Well, a raw start. At some point I believe it is critical that at least some have some idea of "where to go from here" once the present state of TP fully fails. Perhaps it will be in a seceded new nation from Texas to the Canadian border -- perhaps the heartland of Canada may join with Alaska to have a great nation from Alaska, Northwest Territories to the Gulf of Mexico abandoning the east and west coasts to live with their chosen depravity. 

I like to dream dreams of a hopeful future. It's Spring, just past Easter ... it is so easy to abandon hope as we look at the mess that TP has wrought, but we need to keep Faith, Hope, Love and Truth alive in our hearts and minds!

Sowell, Socialism and Fascism

http://m.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/06/12/socialist_or_fascist?utm_content=buffera663c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I've covered this a number of times, but it is always worth reading the wisdom of Sowell.

One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

The "left vs right" problem is covered in detail here. Since the media lies to us nearly every day on this, it is important to keep the truth firmly locked in our minds!

My White Male Privilege (WMP)

Got in a discussion today with some other "Privileged White Males", and we decided that we DID have ONE rather large privilege.

We are the only remaining group in America that is not absolutely expected to think a specific way about politics. We are allowed to have some diversity of thought.

Nobody is going to tell us "There is a special place in Hell for white males who fail to help another white male" as Madeline Albright said about women and Hillary.

We aren't like blacks or hispanics who are expected to be universally Democrat or not be "REALLY members of their own race".

I'm being incomplete I know -- Indian (both Native and from India) and various orientals are not so pigeonholed, but they are small enough groups that "The Party" really doesn't care about them.

I also realize that for even a white male to hold a position as anti-social and intellectually unpopular as "Republican" or "Christian", or "Conservative" can easily prevent promotion at work, cause the loss of employment, or other things, but the fact remains that we are not considered "traitors to our own kind" for leaving the sanctity of "The Party" thought reservation!

Foreign Affairs, Clash of Civilizations

The Clash of Civilizations? | Foreign Affairs:

A little historical context, like a Montgomery martini, VERY dry -- and in this case old. The article I pulled this from in '93. Some of the points that I'm interested in:

"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."

Remember, this is '93 -- the USSR is just gone, the first Gulf War was 1991, and appeared very economic / Arab on Arab (Iraq invaded Kuwait). The next paragraph covers the

In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it, "the wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenth-century pattern lasted until the end of World War I. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy.

Everyone thought that the world was going to go into a "golden age" as science replaced religion, but as the 20th century wore on with it's two world wars, Korea, Mao killing millions in China, Vietnam, Pol Pot killing millions in Cambodia,  and scores of regional bloodbaths, religion started to look better than it once id.

The "unsecularization of the world," George Weigel has remarked, "is one of the dominant social facts of life in the late twentieth century." The revival of religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.

I'd argue that in the West -- Europe and the US, religion has NOT recovered and along with it's continued decline, any sense of culture or "civilization" has declined with it. The cultures are less damaged in Europe, but in the US, the culture is on life support at best.

Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor rich, but Russians cannot become Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you on?" and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question is "What are you?" That is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.

So the US is essentially unarmed in this conflict, because there is no longer any answer to "What are you". ... "black", "Christian", "progressive", etc, but NOT "American". Other than at Trump rallies, there really aren't any people very excited about "America" -- let alone rallying around it. No, it is all about "special interests" and "voting blocks" ... women, minorities, elderly, gays, the unemployed, single mothers, etc, etc ... "Americans"? You mean the "Trumpkins"???

Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.

So as early as '93, there wasn't enough "American civilization" to recognize -- and there is a LOT less now! I'd argue that we are already not "playing" in this clash, but rather just LOSING.

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Dilbert, Trump, Women

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/141164805651/real-donald-trump-quotes-about-women

You go off and look at the link, you will see some words from Scott Adams, creator of "Dilbert" linked to this video.

His view is that this will resonate far less with people than the creators of the video believe. His assumption is that America has had a bit too much of "feigned outrage" and that they really don't care to be manipulated anymore.

I'm wondering how many women there are that have never called a guy a "dick", or a "dork", or a many other remarks are "outraged"!  Likewise some sort of reference to "wrong time of the month" from males, "nice rack", or "IA farmers dream, flat as a board" or ... well, I'm pretty certain we ALL get the picture.

Back when Slick Willie was staining the oval office and James Carville was saying things relative to Paula Jones like  "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find." and "Elections are about fucking your enemies. Winning is about fucking your friends.", crudeness wasn't much of an issue.

As I covered here, yes, Trump is crude and part of that crudeness applies to quotes about women.

The issue comes down to how solidly the powers that be can keep the sheeple operating as they want them to. It is very close to looking like the Republican Establishment has failed, and the left is definitely getting worried -- the WaPo thinks maybe the next election may have to be invalidated! So much for "democracy".

The fact is that the culture has gotten a LOT cruder since Slick was getting "serviced" in the Oval Office, but at the same time it has gotten a lot more falsely Politically Correct. Higher and higher levels of false public standards on thousands of year old dichotomies between the sexes are puritanically pantomimed in public, but in private, little has changed.

In private, men and men, women and women, and often both together make statements very much in line with Trump -- sure, not always the SAME exact utterance or profanity, but they damned well know what they are getting at!

So in the late '90s, "The Party"(TP) and it's media arm proved to us that the sheeple could be manipulated to allow the president to get away with blow jobs at the office with an employee -- something that would NOT be allowed in any place of business in the US, even McDonalds, with "consensual" having nothing to do with it!

The Ad above assumes that people can now be manipulated to find comments by a candidate that they themselves likely use, have used, or have heard from their friends relative to their own or opposite sex, to be offensive enough to disqualify that candidate. Strangely, the candidate is running against the wife who used all means possible to demean and discount women that were providing sexual services to her husband in the late '90s.

I've given up trying to determine how the fickle and shallow American public will be affected by various media and political candidate manipulations. I pretty much just sit back and watch -- in my view, we walked off the cliff with BO, so a lot of this election is just enjoying the fall.

Finkeilkraut, France Moving Trump?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/world/europe/once-hopeful-for-harmony-a-philosopher-voices-discord-in-france.html

The following from the NY Times on a French philosopher,  Alain Finkielkraut. Love the name, reminds me of Charles Krauthammer.

Before and after the attacks, those themes have not varied: Much of Islam is radically incompatible with French culture and society; Muslim immigrants represent a threat; French schools are crumbling under a mistaken multicultural outreach; the inherited corpus of French culture is in danger; and anti-Semitism is on the rise again, this time by way of Islam.

Many of the 2015 attackers were French. “Hatred of France is present in France,” Mr. Finkielkraut said in a recent interview. “What the attacks proved is that we have a redoubtable and determined enemy.”

Does anyone need to think more than a second looking at this to wonder how this is not so? How about people that fly Confederate Flags? Is the US not dead set against them? White supremacists? Nazis? The demonstrators from the Westboro Baptist Church? 

We could go on, but it really isn't hard to find people that any societies "anti-bodies" rise up in rejection. Right now, lots of folks on the left, and even right are having that reaction to Trump. 

If a Confederate Flag is a "threat", how can it be that Muslims, who force women to wear coverings, support child marriage, polygamy, stoning gays, etc are not? 

Should it make us feel better or worse that the same cognitive dissonance is active in France? Remember how raptly attentive our media once was when the French opposed W in Iraq? 

Hatred of the US in the US has been alive and well since the 1960's at least. It is almost a requirement on college campuses, and rife in the media when a Republican is in the presidency. 

When BO ran for president, his associations with his virulently anti-American pastor, Jeremiah Wright ("God DAMN America!") ,  bomber Bill Ayers, and members of the Black Panthers were downplayed by the MSM and considered a matter of no importance. Trump desiring his supporters to stand up and defend their right to assemble and not be intimidated are considered "incitement to violence".  Nearly nothing is said about those seeking to disrupt Trump rallies. 

We live in strange times -- perhaps our media only finds France praiseworthy as long as they are in their cheese eating surrender-monkey pose? 

New Yorker Sees Stopped Epistemological Clock

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-internet-of-us-and-the-end-of-facts?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true

The New Yorker sees Trump and worries that "Facts have ended". They have been worried for awhile,  due to "Climate Change". In their universe, there is no irony whatsoever in using Hillary Clinton has a model for truth and reality with this telling quote:

But what she means, I guess, is that even some random old lady can see what Republican aspirants for the Oval Office can’t: “It’s hard to believe there are people running for President who still refuse to accept the settled science of climate change.”

We have been over this issue WAY too often -- in order to understand the problem with "settled science", we have to understand the terms "settled" and "science".

"Settled" -- "Metaphysical core unchallengeable base belief taken as self-evident" -- "I think, therefore I am", "I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth".

"Science" -- "Testable hypothesis/theories trusted insofar as all tests to date verify the hypothesis as an inductive proof. Falsifiable if the next test fails, but never settled or proven". I often use the Thanksgiving turkey as an analogy. The turkey operates on the hypothesis that humans are a benevolent creature who feeds and cares for turkeys. This hypothesis is inductively verified each day until Thanksgiving, then it suffers brutal falsification.

This means that the term "settled science" is a logical fallacy, like "married bachelor" or , "virgin birth" (which is what makes it a miracle for Mary -> Jesus). The definition of "settled" and "science" mean that putting the terms together proves that we live in a wonderland where terms have no meaning. Which readers of this blog understand, but the vast percentage of modern people don't, and the New Yorker clearly is part of that vast percentage.

This does not however mean that reality fails to intrude on their reverie even though they have sworn rejection of reality rather forcibly. For many on the left, Trump seems to be enough of a shock to the system for them to see the broken epistemological clock of our nation. To wit ...

Lynch has been writing about this topic for a long time, and passionately. The root of the problem, as he sees it, is a well-known paradox: reason can’t defend itself without resort to reason. In his 2012 book, “In Praise of Reason,” Lynch identified three sources of skepticism about reason: the suspicion that all reasoning is rationalization, the idea that science is just another faith, and the notion that objectivity is an illusion. These ideas have a specific intellectual history, and none of them are on the wane. Their consequences, he believes, are dire: “Without a common background of standards against which we measure what counts as a reliable source of information, or a reliable method of inquiry, and what doesn’t, we won’t be able to agree on the facts, let alone values".

The foundation of Western civilization was that there was indeed such a common background -- Christianity, or at least "Natural Law / Deism". The metaphysical recursion stopped at a "prime mover" -- God, who had created us and thus we were able to discern his will / meaning / etc. Civilization requires a foundation, and it HAD one -- we would not have gotten to the lofty peak from which we now decline if there had been no foundation.

Philosophically, it is true that reason can't defend itself even WITH resort to reason. Lifting yourself by your own bootstraps STILL doesn't work, and metaphysical "Free Lunch" is STILL not to be had no matter how many Bernie Sanders voters there are. Reason always reasons from faith (in something) as it's foundation -- faith in the fact of words having meaning and comprehensibility if nothing else. But only those that understand this can even begin to discuss "facts".

The column closes with this rather chilling summary.

He [Lynch] thinks the best defense of reason is a common practical and ethical commitment. I believe he means popular sovereignty. That, anyway, is what Alexander Hamilton meant in the Federalist Papers, when he explained that the United States is an act of empirical inquiry: “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” The evidence is not yet in yet".

First,  I certainly HOPE he is very wrong about Lynch (it seems unlikely a philosopher would think that), he is CLEARLY wrong about Hamilton. Hamilton was a FEDERALIST, he believed strongly in Rule of Law, Written Constitution, Separation of Powers, aristocracy curbing democracy, eg. Electoral College, Senators not elected by population, etc. 

"Popular sovereignty" is rule by majority -- mob rule! In the article he blithely wastes a lot of time showing how "proof by trial" is "atavistic" (mere appeal to "previous generations" or "tradition"), and therefore clearly wrong -- because, after all, the dominant modern religion is "progressivism", the faith that the newest is the best. It's "proof" rests on "if they were so smart, how come they're dead?". 

Mob rule is just another form of "might makes right" ... "test by trial" / atavism. Might can come from a ballot, bicep or bullet, but it is STILL just might! For some strange reason, Trump suddenly makes all sorts of people on the left question their metaphysical assumptions -- but amazingly not the column author!  

What Hamilton DID mean is a "Government of Laws, not men" ... some of the aspects I listed above. Our founders understood a great deal of what most moderns clearly do not -- as in my favorite John Adams Quote "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". 

Even Jefferson, who had the most faith in popular sovereignty of all our major founders rejected "democracy", and rejected it FAR more in later life after the bloodbath of the French Revolution.

Lincoln understood that a "house divided" cannot stand, but it is even more obvious that a house with no foundation cannot stand. We HAD a foundation, as this article and a lot of other "thought" (really emotion) flowing around now shows us that we have none. We will either return to the foundation we had, come up with a new one (which I believe to be impossible) or fall. 

The most likely path at this point is certainly a continued fall to dissolution.

Hildebeast, AIDS, Progressive Narrative

This post is a discussion of primarily how one of the shards of the false narrative of modern liberal/progressive dogma is created and cemented into the popular culture.

First of all, the Huffo on Hillary doing a retraction on nice things she said about Nancy Reagan relative to AIDs.:

Michelle Goldberg noted in Slate how absurd the former Secretary of State's comments were, given that the Reagan administration publicly laughed at the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Nancy Reagan did little to sway her husband, Goldberg said.

Then, the New Yorker following the same vein, chimes in against the Reagan administration on the issue of AIDs.

President Reagan’s first speech on the subject wasn’t until May 31, 1987. By then, more than twenty-five thousand people, the majority of them gay men, had died in the United States.

First of all, the idea of "the Reagan administration laughing at AIDs" is a completely fabricated part of the lefty false narrative covered here, but if you follow the MSM, it is GOSPEL, and "apostates", or even those that "speak well of the dead" as in Hildebeasts case, have to recant immediately!

Trying to write this post got me thinking about the value of life and I wrote this post.

In the left wing narrative, the deaths of gays from AIDs are like "martyrs for the cause", somewhat like young blacks killed by police. Their political value as "wedges" is huge, and as the take-down of Hildebeast shows us, there will be NO DISSENT! One might think that letting the current presidential candidate slide on comments at a FUNERAL 30 years after the fact might be OK, but one would be WRONG!

For we poor humans, it is ALL about the narrative, and the left has an extremely firm grasp of that! They make the Baptist Fundamentalists of my youth look "loose" by comparison.

Fundamentalist extremism in the defense of liberalism is no vice to the left!





Secondly

100 Million Deaths, DDT, Malaria, Value of Life

Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies - Forbes:

Readers of this blog know that I believe ALL lives matter, and that I am intrigued, dismayed, perplexed and frustrated by the WIDE variation in how much given lives in fact do matter! To that end, I've come back to the issue of DDT and Malaria.

To make the longer story REALLY short, DDT came online at just the right point in history -- right as WWII was getting underway, and from 1943 - 1960, it saved on the order of HALF A BILLION ... yes, you heard that right, 500,000,000 lives!!!  If you have time to read just the very early part of this article, it is WELL worth your time!

Then, along came "Silent Spring" -- a FICTIONAL work, that was supposedly based on science, but was not, that is credited with founding the environmental movement. The results of the world wide emotional backlash against DDT were immediately catastrophic, and if you must see the "punchline", at least 100 MILLION dead, making Carlson in the ranks of the greatest mass murderers in history:

In Ceylon, for example, where, as noted, DDT use had cut malaria cases from millions per year in the 1940s down to just 17 by 1963, its banning in 1964 led to a resurgence of half a million victims per year by 1969.[18] In many other countries, the effects were even worse.

By 1970, the National Academy of Sciences was worried, they tried to head off the rush to disaster with this:

To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT. It has contributed to the great increase in agricultural productivity, while sparing countless humanity from a host of diseases, most notably, perhaps, scrub typhus and malaria. Indeed, it is estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Abandonment of this valuable insecticide should be undertaken only at such time and in such places as it is evident that the prospective gain to humanity exceeds the consequent losses. At this writing, all available substitutes for DDT are both more expensive per crop-year and decidedly more hazardous.[19]

But it was banned in the US anyway, and many other places to follow.

And even for those that did not, the halting of American DDT exports (since U.S. producers slowed and then stopped manufacturing it) made DDT much more expensive, and thus effectively unavailable for poor countries in desperate need of the substance.[25] As a result, insect-borne diseases returned to the tropics with a vengeance. By some estimates, the death toll in Africa alone from unnecessary malaria resulting from the restrictions on DDT has exceeded 100 million people.[26]

I did more reading this PM on DDT than I really wanted to ... the guy that wrote this article used to eat a teaspoon of it before his speeches! He died of a heart attack at age 84.

I could ramble on -- in general, danger to humans, very close to nil. Danger to birds, nothing if used in ANY sort of sensible way -- the issue of eggshells / eagles is from having it virtually POURED on fields for no good reason other than it was "cheap and effective so more must be better".

Back to the important point, LIFE!

No images of lilu in her outfit today guys! ;-(

So a woman writes a fictional story about birds being killed at just the right time so a bunch of lefties go off the deep end about a pesticide that has saved HALF A BILLION lives, and it is banned!  We finally start getting back to use it FIFTY YEARS  after it's banning has killed well over 100 MILLION !!!

I understand that most of the lives saved and lost were black, and I certainly understand that from the point of view of the left-liberal-progressives in this country, black lives are "pawns". They are CRITICAL as a voting block today, but as 6K young black men die in the streets here by shooting each year, those lives matter as much as the lives of babes in their mothers wombs. Abortion falls especially hard on the black, which was the intention of Margret Sanger and the eugenicists.

The gay guys that died from AIDs mattered HUGELY, although far, FAR less than a common street thug that attacked a police officer in Ferguson. His life approached the worth of an assassinated US president if one considers the amount of media time spent on it.

OTOH, many many thousands of deaths of poorly educated white people in an epidemic of suicide and substance abuse are worth even less than those of the young urban black men shooting each other!

My answer is that we have abandoned any sense of proportion, reason and morality and are being completely driven by a politically controlled media, government and educational monolith under single party (D) control that is 100% directed to gaining and locking in POWER.

I'd like to hear alternative answers.


'via Blog this'

Christianity Invented Children

http://theweek.com/articles/551027/how-christianity-invented-children

One of the major reasons that he left must destroy history is to destroy the historical record of not just Christ himself, but of the myriad of ways in which modern culture itself would not be possible without Christianity, and where we are already in the process of returning now that we have largely abandoned this main thread of what allowed Western civilization to once flourish.

I'm not really going to encourage you to read through this if you are bothered by disturbing facts, but, the bottom line is that abortion and homosexuality are only part of the horrors of paganism that we have started to sample -- it DOES get worse, including infanticide, abandonment of children and rampant sexual abuse of children.

The illusion that "modern is better" is one of the saddest of the lies taught by "progressives". It is possible that the very elite of the left believes that an "inner circle" of  erotic license is actually going to be "better" for them, but for the bulk of the population, pagan society is a dystopian hell of meaningless violence, hatred, hopeless debauchery and ugly early death. As Christianity rose, it gave the IMPRESSION of things improving only because Christianity is not only moral, but blessed. When we started turning from Christianity, Western civilization started declining, and the decline is getting steeper!

Good to at least be aware of the Christian Difference that is being destroyed so that "pleasure" can reign.

But really, Christianity's invention of children — that is, its invention of the cultural idea of children as treasured human beings — was really an outgrowth of its most stupendous and revolutionary idea: the radical equality, and the infinite value, of every single human being as a beloved child of God. If the God who made heaven and Earth chose to reveal himself, not as an emperor, but as a slave punished on the cross, then no one could claim higher dignity than anyone else on the basis of earthly status.

A deeper understanding of how Judaism and Christianity improved the lot of women and children is covered in the excellent column linked in this post -- it is also disturbing, but truth often is.

WaPo Quotes Burke, Equates BO to Trump

Trump is the demagogue that our Founding Fathers feared - The Washington Post:

When the WaPo quotes Edmund Burke and even starts to wonder about democracy being good, you know you have fallen down the rabbit hole to a new level of Wonderland (as in Alice In). When they list the BO administration policies directly as being a "horrible danger" when Trump talks about them, you know that folks in Wonderland think that theirs is the only world.

Burke is about tradition, rule of law, aristocracy, the need for democratic inputs to a government to be STRONGLY controlled,  etc.

“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.” (Burke) 

Indeed. Farhter on, the column quotes Federalist 10 of all things!

“Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.” A representative government is designed to frustrate sinister majorities (or committed pluralities), by mediating public views through “a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.”

"intrigue, corruption, or other means, first obtain the suffrages" Obtain the votes! How about just by not having to show an ID? The WaPo is favor of that after all. They are REALLY in favor of using government funds to buy the votes!

Our founders wanted to mediate the level of democracy they allowed through "a chosen body of citizens" -- meaning that to be allowed to vote, you had to meet some criteria! Like own land, have a certain level of wealth, a certain level of education, etc! The idea of "everyone voting" was crazy talk to our founders, and even then they wanted it FAR more limited than it is now!

The Senate was supposed to be appointed by the State, NOT elected by popular vote. The 17th Amendment screwed that up in 1913. The Constitution was to provide a rule of law that has been usurped constantly since the Warren court and continues to be desecrated today. Our slide into Mob Rule is all but complete -- and now WaPo is concerned as to what it really means to have NO RULES!

In 2008, a "sinister majority" voted for "Hope and Change", and a man that called broad swaths of the electorate "bitter clingers", and stood before faux greek pillars and declared that he would stop the rise of the oceans by his messianic presence.

With the theory of a presidential nominee as a wrecking ball, we have reached the culmination of the founders’ fears: Democracy is producing a genuine threat to the American form of self-government. Trump imagines leadership as pure act, freed from reflection and restraint. He has expressed disdain for religious and ethnic minorities. He has proposed restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies with retribution. He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness. None of this is hidden.

Lets take this rather amazing near closing paragraph apart and show how the WaPO manages to totally point out that Trump = BO in all important aspects, just varying in the usurpation choices of what used to be America!

"Trump imagines leadership as a pure act" -- So BO has proudly used "executive action" in direct usurpation of the Constitution on immigration, EPA actions on climate change, and gun control. Both Bernie and Hillary explicitly promise more of the same on at least guns. So what is supposedly unique about Trump beyond the WaPo not liking his possible selection of where to be lawless? They have supported lawlessness for 7 years!

"disdain for religious and ethnic minorities" -- What part of "bitter clingers, clinging to their guns and Bibles" has been missed? Has not every Bible believing Christian that respects life and marriage as between a man and woman been maligned constantly and in more and more cases even lost employment with the sanction of the current administration? How many times does the WaPo expect us to be called all sorts of names including "racists" for not agreeing with BO on policy? How long do you need to watch BO to realize that disdain for his "enemies" is his standard mode of operation!

"restrictions on press freedom and threatened political enemies" -- Both the 1st and 2nd amendments are in the Bill of Rights.  BO has not only "threatened", he HAS restricted 2nd amendment rights by executive order!  He has openly espoused to the need to "control Fox News and Talk radio" on MANY occasions, and directly espoused the overturn of Citizens United which gives a tiny bit of ability for those not agreeing with government in all cases to have free speech that matters and costs money!

"He offers himself as the embodiment of the national will, driven by an intuitive vision of greatness." -- I haven't seen Trump use grecian pillars yet. I'm not even going to insult your intelligence with having to point out the finger wagging snobbish constant of his worshipfullnesss,  the brilliant, the totally superior, "the ONE", his supreme odifferousness --- BO!!!! that we have suffered under since '09!

We have already crossed the rubicon that the WaPo now is concerned about. One can only guess as to their thoughts as to how to prevent those who they disagree with from having a voice. We see that violence is already being directed at Trump with outlets like the WaPo blaming Trump because he is being attacked. Do they also blame women that are raped for dressing provocatively?  It isn't hard to imagine all kinds of sanctions from the left against Trump and people supporting him -- the normal left wing argument is SHUT UP!!!!!  (or be dead if you refuse!)

WaPo can't understand why people would support him. For a large segment of our population dying in droves at a rate not seen since AIDs, all for the "crime" of being white and lower middle class at the time in which BO decided to squeeze them into dependency.

When God, Law, Tradition, Family, Work Ethic and countless other aspects of the fabric of society are torn apart, the results are unpredictable specifically, but predictably bad. BO showed many of us how bad such results can be -- we can rest assured that the lessons will go on in unpredictable and very bad ways!

The left's answer to this problem is historically "Kill the ones we don't like". We can get a good idea as to how they operate from TP running Jim Crow in the South for 100 years.

 The conservative / Christian / Founders reaction was "Religion, Rule of Law, Limited Government and Democracy, Individual Freedom and Responsibility, Family, Community and WORK".

We decided to go the left way as a nation. Readers of this blog should not be surprised at the outcome.

Trump, Hildebeast and BS all promise to continue the decent, the question is just who specifically gets bloodied during the fall.


'via Blog this'

Trump, Rush, Media, Wet Fish

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/03/09/a_trump_schtick_explainer_for_experts

I've been driving back and forth to Barron a lot, so I've listened a lot more to Rush Limbaugh than I have in YEARS ... most likely since I was driving back and forth to Eau Claire and Bloomer in '03 when my Mom was dealing with two severe heart surgeries. You can read through the attached article on Trump -- it is wordy, and I'll try to explain it all here and more.

The CORE is "It's all an act" -- certainly in the case of Trump, Rush, all the media, BO, Hillary, etc.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. (Shakespeare) 

We live our lives entirely between our ears. The outside world comes in processed by our individual filters and models, making "sense" only as it fits into each of our unique world views -- that are indeed unique to some degree, but much more products of what we have cultivated as our model -- "liberal, educated sophisticate", "hard working, common sense, down to earth", "Christian, conservative, realist", "caring, compassionate, idealist" ... and on it goes. The basic types are very well known, and our identity, friends, family, employment, etc is wound into those thoughts. They are "us", and we are sure they are "real", but for the most part, they are only "really real" in each of our own heads.

All the word's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one main in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.  (Shakespeare) 

We play our parts -- the seven he refers to are infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, judge, "pantaloon" (money), old age (near death and death). But there are many more -- son or daughter, sibling, schoolmate, husband / wife, parent, friend, career person, church roles, medical patient, hunter, teacher -- a nearly endless list. Some roles are "real", they feel like "us", at least most of the time, but nearly all of us "play the part" at least at times, and in some roles, all the time.

None of this is new, but like a fish swimming in water, we often lose track of what it means to be "wet" on our stage and in our roles. "The map becomes the territory" -- which can be very good if we are truly engaged in something of real meaning and import. Those are the best parts of life!

For thousands of years, religion was the "anchor" that allowed nearly everyone to step off the stage and connect with what was felt to be a deeper "more real" reality -- for centuries, that was a truer sense of "It's got soul!" than any Blues vibe in the most real and soulful establishment known to man today. People entered the "Soul World" regularly.

The key book to visit on the dangers of not realizing that "your model has been messed with" (meaning "how you see the world", which IS the world in your head!) is "Ideas Have Consequences". It is CRITICAL to have some values and "transcendent space" that allows you to step back and realize what roles you are playing, what narratives you are buying into and who it is that is messing with your mind and why!

Note, many (maybe even most) of the people messing with your mind probably believe what they are selling, but a good many of the ones you believe are just good at telling "stories" (some parts may even be accidentally true). As Hillary said in the debate last night, "She is not a natural politician like Billy C or BO"! To the extent she was trying to tell the truth, that means she doesn't lie as well as they do. When she is mad, dislikes you, or finds you to be an idiot, she is not able to smile sweetly, curl her lip, slap you on the back and treat you like you are her best friend in the world like BO or Slick. I'm guessing that Slick might have lied to her rather impressively more than once.

In the old world, where there were actual religious values and people believed that their immortal soul was at peril, lying was harder. The consequences of being caught were also greater, PLUS, there were the "weekly" or more frequent times when everyone went down to church and admitted to their sinfulness, begged for mercy, and promised to repent. Certainly, everyone still fell short, but it is the difference between having a speed limit and not having one. Today there is no moral speed limit! "Truth is relative"!!!

 Back to Rush. He has CONSISTENTLY made it clear to his frequent listeners (and in his books) that he is "playing a part" -- he is like "Steven Colbert" before Steven Colbert thought of being the fake comedy conservative. That doesn't mean he is "the same" as Colbert, it means that all his "talent on loan from God", "drive by media", "EIB research", "dittos", etc is his "schtick". His listeners "get it", but in general the rest of the media and politicians do not. It is a MAJOR part of the fun -- like being a "Packer fan", able to recite most the lines from some stupid movie, communicate back and forth in titles from classic rock, baseball stats -- again, the list is ENDLESS, but "special knowledge" (gnosticism), being an "insider" in SOMETHING is a major part of being a normal healthy human.

It is a normal part, but historically, in every case but religion -- and the special case of that was that most / many / nearly all the people ACTUALLY believed that at least some of the time! 

But today, there is no "greater truth", there is no point at which you "get dry" from the myriad of roles and narratives you live in as a "wet fish".  You are "inside". You are "wet" all the time. You have no time to "examine your life" -- to make your life the kind  that Socrates said WAS worth living, as opposed to the "unexamined life is not worth living". Today, few even know who Socrates was, what he had to say, much less, what it MEANT!

So in the modern distracted irreligious completely unreflective life lived by a huge percentage of our population, people are totally unaware of what "stages, roles, actors, narratives, etc" make up what they think is reality. The college students stopping speech they don't agree with is a symptom. College was to be a place for "the free exchange of ideas",  but they want to INVERT (there is that word again!) that and make it a place of absolutely controlled speech that fits with their pre-packaged view of "correct".

THEN CAME TRUMP!

As Rush points out, he is CLEARLY playing a role! His supporters are his "insiders" -- he gives them inside clues that the MSM and opponents THINK that they have "picked up on", but in fact they are outsiders and  ("wink, wink, nod, nod"), his supporters know exactly what he is doing". Rush has a decent example in the linked article above, but I like this one better.

In his victory speech in Nevada, he said "I love the poorly educated." The MSM and TP went BALLISTIC, it was ALL OVER! The assumed that such and utterance would KILL HIM!

The full context of what he said was:

"We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated."

He was responding to exit polling. His supporters know that he DOES (at least in the role he is now playing)  "love the poorly educated" -- meaning those without degrees or even high school diplomas. He is clearly their champion, they are hopeless and dying in droves and he LOVES THEM (at least in his role)! He didn't call them  "low information voters" (like Cruz called Trump voters today), he didn't call them ignorant or stupid. He said they were "poorly educated" -- which they know they are, and so are MANY more due to the sad state of our Democrat union controlled public schools -- even if they DO graduate and have a degree!

But neither the Republican establishment nor "The Party" (TP-D) media and minions can get out of their own "stages, narratives, roles, etc" to see that Trump is using THEM, the supposed "overlords"  to help him build his own "Trump Stage" -- with caring for the "poorly educated", the "angry", those "sick of being ignored", etc.

Is any of it "real"?  It is AT LEAST as real as "if you like your healthcare you can keep it", "red lines", "wipe it with a cloth", and a myriad of false promises about how important it was to get "both houses" from the Republican establishment.

As I've pointed out with boring frequency, the vast number of Americans have lost all contact with what reality might even be -- and the left keeps changing names on things like "marriage", "gender", "life", "truth", "theft vs success", etc. We live in such a house of mirrors so that the standard American's grasp on anything "real", let alone "lasting" has been completely unmoored by the dominant TP surrealism machine. They want it that way -- but like ALL ideas, it has CONSEQUENCES and definite costs!

I'm coming to understand that it probably HAD to be someone like Trump who knows how to manipulate symbols, the media, and TP itself to help build his mass. As I've said before, it IS certainly dangerous, but BO has been a complete unmitigated DISASTER, and many don't even know that! Hillary is clearly pathological. When one is living in wonderland, danger goes with the territory!

Potentially Trump is enough to get at least a FEW more people to understand what stage we are on and what roles we and our "masters" are playing. There is a whole lot of waking up to be done, is Trump the hard slap in the face that I really really thought BO would be enough to accomplish for our sleepy US electorate ???

We so very very much need to WAKE UP!!!!!!