A reasonable person can read this article and think, "yeah, that could work"! See the problem with that is that you likely actually have some sort of "honor, moral sense, belief in redemption, etc". "The Party (TP-D) has sworn off those things a LONG time ago!
See Teddy Kennedy, Barney Frank, Gary Studds, John Conyers, Slick Willie, Al Gore, Joe Biden, etc, etc
The BASIS of the D party relative to sexual morals is "If it feels good, DO IT!" If a baby results, KILL IT! One of the major purposes of TP is to stamp out morals and propriety -- 50+ genders "doing it" (whatever the hell that means with 50+ genders), GREAT! TP will fine you and throw you in jail if you are unwilling to celebrate every "gender" and whatever acts they might choose to engage in!
The author of the column feels that R's are again not being trusting enough of our D counterparts!
Sean Trende summarized a common argument in conservative circles: “(A) We fought a battle over whether character counts, and got our [tushes] handed to us and (B) liberal leaders always circle the wagons around their guys, and ours always cave.” This may or many not be accurate; we can think of cases where Republicans were caught in scandal and served out their term (Idaho senator Larry Craig) and we can think of cases where Democrats were more or less pushed out of office quickly (former congressman Anthony Weiner). Most partisans prefer to remember both the cases where their side acted honorably, demanding serious consequences for bad behavior, and times when the other side circled the wagons and defended the indefensible.
It's a bit on the laughable side that Craig is "the example" -- he lost his Senate seat over trolling for gay sex in a bathroom at the Minneapolis Airport! Gary Studds (D) OTOH, had sex with a male congressional page and never lost his seat. I have no problems with R's deciding to get rid of an unseemly senator for whatever they want, and D's keeping one around -- the point is that trying to use the term "morals" in concert with "Democrat" is false advertising. The big PLUS of the D party for a lot of their members is that THEY DON"T HAVE ANY STINKING MORALS!
AFAIK, Weiner - Holder is the TP ticket in 2020!
Those that want to trust the intentions of D's need to watch this video again! HOW many times to they have to screw us??? !!!!!
Perhaps the key slogan for a better 2018 would be “You can’t treat people like that.” But if character is going to count again, both sides of the ideological divide need to sign on.
Sure, TP will be signing up for that right away! The TP playbook is to push Rs to live TOTALLY up to their morals -- even when the "morals" are to be applied to 38 year old charges that have never surfaced until now!
The important thing to remember about "sexual harassment" starting in the '90s is that "the standard" is supposed to be that "if the woman feels harassed, then she was harassed" ... it could be words, could be looks, could be something that you wore, displayed, had tattooed, etc, could be ANYTHING! Including of course ANY sort of touching, bumping into, etc. I covered my personal experience with this here, as well as some discussion on who got off, and who didn't.
The most famous guy that got off totally is Bill Clinton. Clarence Thomas narrowly managed to make it onto the SCOTUS after being accused of ... well, "talking" ... mentioning some x-rated films and a potential pubic hair on a can of coke. Those were the CHARGES, and they almost did take him down, except that:
1). The charges were old (a decade or so when made)
2). The "victim" had followed him to multiple jobs since the charges supposedly happened
3). They could not get anyone else to come forth and make similar charges.
When they went after Harvey Weinstein, I was shocked -- having your way with women has been one of the perks of being a lefty in good standing for a LONG time. Situations like Slick Willie where the accusers were mercilessly abused and castigated by the press and Democrats made it clear that powerful lefty men were allowed "favors" without retribution. If a woman complained, she was destroyed.
The big choice in human life has always been first and foremost GOD ... and from thence, morality.
A shared belief in a God that was always watching and would sort things out for eternity has always been the gold standard for morals. It is what we do when we think we are going to get away with it that is problematic! Do morals backed up by an infinite all knowing God that will ultimately judge you ensure moral turpitude? Of course not! We are talking odds here -- strong religiously backed morals put you in the "80-90th percent reliable" area. FAR from perfect, but a high standard for this fallen world.
In a world with God as the standard, women would have come out EVEN IF their careers were going to be destroyed because IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO ... for your eternal soul, for your current female sisters, and for any female offspring you might care about. When you drop God, and especially if you start killing the unborn, "your career" is quickly the only thing that counts!
When morals fail, the next backstop is law and justice. It isn't nearly as good, because it requires some sort of "enforcers", "evidence", and if you don't get caught, then you are as good as guilt free. For all but murder if you are a D (see Chappaquiddick), there is going to be some sort of statute of limitations -- because the trail goes cold, and "proving" things after a decade or more can be really difficult. Oh, and especially nasty, law and justice require that they are applied EQUALLY in order to be respected -- power doesn't get to play.
That has always been a problem for Ds ... see Roy Moore. No way such "charges" would even arise against a D. "Old News" ... which in D parlance means that "we heard it before, maybe just last week". Thirty+ years for a D? Oh please!
As I've argued elsewhere, Chappaquiddick is as good a place as any to select as a point where pure POWER became the coin of our realm. That the incident included both sex and murder in one not very tidy tidal pool, along with America's most powerful political family, and a man who would become the "Lyin" Of the Senate, made it it especially full of damnation for America. Chappaquiddick established the "Democrat Standard" or rather "The Democrat Non-standard" relative to morals, law and justice. POWER is the godless Democrat standard.
The moral calculus since Mary Jo Kopechne as been that if a Democrat decides to have his way with a woman, just be glad and very quiet if he doesn't kill you (it is easy to be quiet if he does! Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment!) In the Slick Willie years the D sisterhood worked to establish a level of pride in providing services to prominent D's like Slick, -- "taking it for the right to kill babies", the ultimate sacrament of the Democrat party. It is hard to imagine that this sort of attitude did not engender more entitlement on the part of D men -- so most likely we are just seeing the very tip of the iceberg now.
The assumption was that the Democrats would always have enough power so that such sacrifices would be worth making to insure that the blood of the unborn continued to flow freely on the altar of Molech - Democrats. The whole idea of the sexual revolution was to give women POWER over their bodies -- certainly to murder their young, but also so that they could bestow sexual favors for their own pleasure, advancement, gain, etc -- for whatever suited them. That is what POWER is about! The charge of sexual harassment was the female equivalent of male physical power.
As Janice Min, the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter, told me, when Barack Obama stepped off a stage and into Weinstein’s arms for a big hug after giving a $400,000 speech as an ex-president in the spring, it sent a signal that the ogre was in a protected magic circle.
He was, but the power behind the "magic" had already evaporated -- the ogre was exposed as an ogre. The D's are even all claiming to be having moral buyers remorse over protecting Slick Willie! As this column tries to tell us, "Hell froze over" ...
If the ground beneath your feet feels cold, it’s because hell froze over the other day. It happened at 8:02 p.m. on Monday, when The New York Times published an op-ed called “I Believe Juanita.”
Written by Michelle Goldberg, it was a piece that, 20 years ago, likely would have inflamed the readership of the paper and scandalized its editors. Reviewing the credibility of Broaddrick’s claim, Goldberg wrote that “five witnesses said she confided in them about the assault right after it happened,” an important standard in reviewing the veracity of claims of past sex crimes.
As any minor student of history, theology and philosophy, let alone a Christian believer will tell you, without God, there are no morals, no love, no consistency. The current calculus is very easy -- Roy Moore is a warm up for taking down Trump -- the D's seek to trade a sudden attack of feigned morality about an EX president for the hide of a sitting president.
It is not for nothing that the Republican party is known as "The Stupid Party" -- while there are actual honorable Republicans with principles, Reagan being a great example, and the party is the last refuge of people of faith in BOistan, it too has been corrupted by the loss of religious faith and the power of DC and Davos. Trump is shaking the DC foundations -- the R's may well go along with his removal, since Pence is FAR more to their liking! There are no morals left in the leadership of the R party either.
Many will be confused by the seemingly "honest" shedding of tears over Slick's victims 20+ years too late. Heck, I would not be shocked at this point to see the D's throw BOTH Slick and Hillary under the bus, and maybe BO as well! Any intelligent Democrat has to see the courts being mightily moved away from them and even their "firewall", the Deep State, now being assailed by Trump!
Power MUST be completely ruthless to survive unless it is divine! Communism killed over 100 million in the 20th century, abortion has killed 60 million and rising. One thing that Islam is right about is submission -- the word Islam means "submission", and the basic fact of human life is that peace requires submission. Submission to God, or submission to an all powerful state.
Don't be confused -- there is zero chance of the current Democrat party having an attack of actual morals (a Democrat getting morals would be like a vampire getting a tan!), what you see is what has been obvious since at least Wilson, Democrat = the worship of godless power!
Expect A LOT of bodies as the D's try to appear to "come clean" to have the "moral standing" to take down Trump!
I applaud this article for it's honesty. OF COURSE the left wants to repeal the 2nd Amendment! As the article boldly admits ...
Maybe it’s because they argue their case badly and — let’s face it — in bad faith. Democratic politicians routinely profess their fidelity to the Second Amendment — or rather, “a nuanced reading” of it — with all the conviction of Barack Obama’s support for traditional marriage, circa 2008. People recognize lip service for what it is.
The article leads in with the classic shibboleths about "more guns = more crime" ... Of course you can find a study to "prove" nearly anything, but the fact is that if you remove our liberally governed heavily gun controlled murder capital cities ... Chicago, DC, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc, our murder by gun numbers are like Swtizerland. The big lie that is used to pump them up beyond the murder rates for our Democrat disaster area cities is SUICIDE by gun -- as Australia discovered, get rid of the guns and people kill themselves at the same rates by other methods. Humans are resourceful.
Deaths from guns at home? PLEASE! If you really care, outlaw swimming pools ... 3,500 drowned a year, 700 of them children under 14 ... does anyone really "need" a swimming pool?
Naturally, you can't even trust a liberal when they tell you what they are going to do in the headline ... they DON'T want to "Repeal the 2nd Amendment", which would require a Constitutional Amendment. No, they want the SCOTUS to overturn it from the bench! "Unconstitutional"? No doubt the non-existent "Privacy Clause" includes some "riight" for you to be free from the fear that your neighbor has a gun. There is no "law", Constitutional or otherwise beyond liberal power ... at least in their minds.
Repealing the Amendment may seem like political Mission Impossible today, but in the era of same-sex marriage it’s worth recalling that most great causes begin as improbable ones. Gun ownership should never be outlawed, just as it isn’t outlawed in Britain or Australia. But it doesn’t need a blanket Constitutional protection, either. The 46,445 murder victims killed by gunfire in the United States between 2012 and 2016 didn’t need to perish so that gun enthusiasts can go on fantasizing that “Red Dawn” is the fate that soon awaits us.
Oh, the "Red Dawn" thing. After Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nicaragua, etc, etc, the left continues to imagine that a dedicated local armed citizenry has "no chance" against either a rogue government trying to usurp the right to bear arms, or against an invading outside force. The "Red Dawn" reference is to a movie in which armed Americans foiled a old cold war Soviet invasion.
The left is all about "fantasy", and not very much about either history or American reality. Naturally, when a Republican president attempts to deploy troops anywhere, the left will point out the "futility of attempting to suppress guerilla warefare" -- consistency, like history or reality is not a liberal value.
The only "value" that the left/liberal/progressive mind cares about is POWER. Certainly, the removal of the right to bear arms would be a major step for them in making totalitarian government control much easier, so it is completely unsurprising that is their goal -- this article was just a tiny bit more honest than most on the subject.
I suspsect that besides risking advertisers and their balls, the other reason that shows like SNL tend to avoid making fun of liberals is that it is too damned easy!
"Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice. "
Nah, I'm certain from your perspective it seems completely reasonable -- but why let us live? I mean, if we are so bad, why not just take us out all the way?
The "progressive" brain is really one of the wonders of the planet, if not the entire universe.
Lots of small details always seem to get in the way of the beautiful progressive utopia. Such a shame.
UPDATE: Power Line reports that they pulled this piece down. NOT because it was "nuts", but because it was apparently "fake". So some editor decided it was worthy to post if it came from a person with the alleged credentials ...
Bill Buckley's boast that he could always detect a liberal got my brain a whirring. I've had one case for sure in my life where I had pegged someone 100% as liberal and turned out to SPECTACULARLY wrong. Nice looking, single woman few years younger than me, walked to work rather than driving a car, happy, outgoing, intelligent, obviously caring -- she just looked and seemed, well, "liberal". She was and is not -- mostly likely to the right of me a little bit (not that there is anything wrong with that)!
The term "Gaydar" might we related -- I've had to be told on multiple occasions "they're gay", when it never crossed my mind. Oh, sure, the flamboyant obvious case -- "Liberace, Elton John, etc", but Rock Hudson? Nope. Lesbian, no hope, I'm totally oblivious.
Here is what I believe.
I suspect that females have "Gaydar" that exceeds even the gay. They are wired to realize if they are "being checked out", and to realize if another female is being "checked out", especially by "their guy' (targeted or captured). Much like it is claimed that our 688 attack subs would figure out where our "boomers" (missile subs) were at because there was a "sonic hole in the water" (we built them TOO quiet, they were a sound screen), the "Gaydar" is really detecting that the male in question isn't giving off any level of female attention reading for ANY woman in the group ... ergo.
I believe that the default person is "liberal", meaning that they believe that humans are generally good, or if not good, easily educated to be good. When someone has been properly educated and socialized, they will as a matter of course be a fellow liberal. The more intelligence, communication ability, creative ability, artistic ability, social grace, etc a person has, the more likely it is that they are liberals. Liberalism is the natural state of political belief for a healthy happy human that wants to get along in society and be successful. Given basic intelligence, a normal desire to get along with others, and even fairly minimal education, any sentient person is liberal. It is a core liberal matter of faith.
As a conservative Christian, I agree liberalism is the natural human state. People like to see themselves as good, and they like to see those that agree with them as good. I was a liberal until I was 21 myself -- it is often said that if you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. I agree with the generalization humor in that, but I disagree with the other part that if you are not a conservative by "40", you have no brain. I believe that high intellect and especially a high level of education, skill in a field, and even financial success (depends on type, small business will tend to turn people conservative) will generally encourage one to be and stay a liberal. The increasingly leftward direction of the US to BOistan, where liberalism is increasingly the state religion as well as just a good idea, makes it painful to not follow the crowd in especially the coastal areas and large cities.
My belief is that the biggest differentiator is belief in God ( the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God). Certainly not all conservatives are Christians, but in order to be a conservative, you need to hold to a set of values that can't be constructed by reason. They have to be, "felt, intuited, discrned". Modern brain science shows that unless we are a psychopath, sociopath, asbergers, etc person, we all DO feel the moral impulse.
Where does it come from? As we might all guess, that is a matter of faith. Hard work has been put into coming up with a narrative that might allow evolution to create it (eg "group selection"), however at best, that is always going to be highly speculative (as an atheist would say religion is).
Modern BOistan has gotten so lost that there are indeed a number of people who are supposedly God believing "christians" who don't believe much of the Bible or in the diety / redemptive power of Christ. Brokaw may even be one of those. It allows one to intellectually call themselves "chrisitan", while believing none of the tenets of the faith (Christ is Gods son, died for our sins, which we admit to, and will save us if we accept his life, death and resurrection and follow him as a result). The "secular christian" is essentially no different from the "secular humanist" in thinking that there may or may not be an afterlife, but since I'm certainly better than most people, I don't need to worry about it.
Again, this is a GENERALIZATION, so there are definiely "many" cases where it doesn't apply -- atheist conservtives, actual political liberals that somehow manage to correlate that with real faith (although I can't explain it, I'm not the judge, Christ is), the point is that in general, the conservative view follows quite naturally from "looking for God" ... or at a minium, the transcendent. The idea that this isn't all there is.
So as a conservative, I believe that man is flawed -- he has a moral nature, but he has an animal nature as well, and that is too prone to take over and cause short term evil that tends to begat longer term evil (cover-up, attachment to the evil, attempts to justify, etc). Also, without faith in a higher power, attention to long-term gain and willingness to accept short term pain for the long term benefit is difficult at best. Eternity is the longest of long term -- so foregoing questionable earthly pleasures in light of eternal gain makes a lot of sense to people with that outlook, obviously NONE to people without it.
If we didn't die, get sick, have to work in order to be fed clothed, etc, then liberalism would be the clear ticket. No responsibility (at least none except voting for "good people"). A world with a TON of "rights" ... freedom to say exactly what you want and recently to not have to hear anything that you don't like, free health, free education (to learn how to have greater pleasure ... like study the Karma Sutra), free shelter, free food, free beverages and recreational drugs (at least they SHOULD be covered!), guaranteed respect and participation trophies, freedom from war, violence (unless beating up a conservative for pleasure), etc, etc. A good reality if you can get it.
As PJ O'Rourke once said, liberals believe in Santa, conservatives belive in God. The only problem with liberalism is that there is no Santa!
It is clear why the young tend to be liberal -- in BOistan up to 21, and lately even 26 and beyond, many of their lives are close approximations of the previous slightly whimsical description. For a wealthy guy like Brokaw, it at least "seems" like the proper alingment of large beauracracy just "might" be able to keep things rolling in general, and it has certainly worked out GREAT for him! Yes, the "sickness and death" thing has started to intrude, but modern medicine helps keep the sickness thing as somewhat less horrible than formerly, and at least mostly hidden. Death is a nagging problem, but it MUST be kinda OK -- everyone does it, certainly it has to be graded on a curve at the very least, and "I'm OK". Why, even if it did somehow turn out that I was "personally responsible" (insane, but this nagging feeling ...), hey, I talk way better than just about EVERYONE, and when you get right down to it, I AM a pretty darned nice guy!
After all, I turned down NIXON (of course) ... in the unlikely event there is a hell in Brokaw's mind, I'm certain he sees Nixon as justifiably there. He LIED to the American people! He erased a tape!
Do I think I can usually spot the conservative in the room? Sure, the same way as a 688 attack sub spots a boomer, or a woman a gay. Because there is the absence of "standard liberal chatter" from that person. They avoid politics just a little bit more than is even the average. They never bring up SNL, and laugh only uncomfortably about "the great skit that really put Trump / Sarah Palin / W in their place!"
For some strange roll of the dice, I'm an even rarer breed, the "conservative inconoclast'. I keep silent not because I would not be perfectly happy to have the give and take, but because of the level of discomfort, hatred, and down right leaving the room screaming that will be ingnited if I expose myself is truly terrible. For some reason, the comination of large size, relatively glib tongue, not being totally stupid, and being decently aware of liberal positions as well as COUNTER positions is especially incendiary. if I dragged my knuckles, they could look the other way and go cluck cluck, but as it is, well, "they can't normalize pure evil"!
My thinking is that the reason for this is that it makes them question their assumption that "anyone reasonably intelligent / well read / emotionally able to communicate", MUST be a liberal! Certainly they at some level know this is not the case -- Buckley after all was WAY more intelligent, well read, glib tounged, etc than I, but my sense is they feel that anyone with even a wisp of that sort of madness ought be clearly marked, and not allowed to just walk around in the open. Perhaps the "outlier conservative preserve" should be formed in the interest of keeping liberals safe.
So I stay stealthy. At my workplace, I'm sure there are suspicions ... they know that I'm an Elder and a LCMS church! They haven't heard me say anything nasty about Trump! I've only laughed minimally and probably detectably and uncomfortably at nasty things said about Trump and Trump voters at the office where politics are to be STRICTLY off limits! Of course the executive director went out and marched in the woman's march, a couple of the people have "Vote Democrat" on their cars and in some strategic not too public spots in their office. After all, when you ARE a good person, you have to be just a little proud of it!
... and that's the way it is! As another noted liberal used to say. As a rather funny postscript, I went off to find a Youtube of Walter doing the signoff (easy to find if you want), but instead explained that he came up with it because "other distinguished broadcasters had one, why shouldn't he?" even though his boss correctly pointed out that it might well not be true -- they may have made mistakes, not gotten all the information, drawn wrong conclusions, etc. But, "people liked it" -- as many DO tend to like "authority", so it became part of the liberal manufactured "reality" of the US -- "fake, but true", or at least accepted as "true". "Uncle Walter" was always right, and we could all believe him ... as he signed off each night with something that was suspect at best, and in many cases, a direct lie.
Americans have enjoyed fake news for a very long time!
We've been over this more than a few times. The assertion is that "Secular Humanism", "The Party" (TP-D), "Blue America", "progressivism", etc, have become very much a religion, and not a particularly tolerant one. TPism is pretty much like Islam -- It demands that the State and the religion be one in the same -- in Islam, that is called "Sharia Law", in the TP Religion it is called "Secular Humanistic Administrative Law" with Political Correctness enforcement as one of it's branches.
Cults get very unhappy with members that leave, especially if they publicly say bad things about the cult -- and Trump was a definite member in good standing of the TP elite until he "went rogue'.
The whole linked article is not all that long, but still not very worthy, but I found the following to be the highlight:
Blue Team Progressivism is a church, offering you moral superiority and a path to spiritual enlightenment. As a church it's got a lot going for it. It runs religious programming on television, all day every day. Every modern primetime program is like a left-wing Andy Griffith show, reinforcing lessons of inclusion, tolerance, feminism, and anti-racism.
Watching a 90-pound Sci-Fi heroine beat up a room full of giant evil men is as satisfying to the left as John Wayne westerns were for the right.
The Blue Church controls the HR department, so even if you don't go to church, you have to act like a loyal churchgoer in every way that matters while you're on the clock. And off the clock, on any kind of public social media platform.
Jon Stewart and John Oliver are basically TV preachers. Watching them gives the same sense of quiet superiority your grandma gets from watching The 700 Club. The messages are constantly reinforced, providing that lovely dopamine hit, like an angel's voice whispering, "You're right, you're better, you're winning."
Hollywood award shows are like church talent shows - the skits and jokes aren't really funny, but it's fun to look at the pretty girls, and you're all on the same team.
When you have been ensconced in a blue bubble through all your educational years (and for many, in your comminity and job as well), fully assured that you were on the "right" (meaning correct) "side" of history and heading inevitably to nirvanah, an event like Trump can be REALLY disconcerting!
The "Blue Church" has it's own escatology (description of the "end times") that is rooted in concepts like the old Hegelian / Marxist Dialectic of "Thesis->Antithesis->Sythesis" or "Problem->Reaction->Solution". Since most of the post-moderns are not aware of much of history, theology or philosophy, many of them think this is also "new".
This all assumes that "history" somehow has some sort of "direction" apart for the one in Christianity. Historicism asserts that somehow, not just plants, animals, etc are "evolving" to a "better" state. How did it get this "direction"? ... big mystery. It "just is", or "somehow" in 10 to the 400th UNIVERSES, this one with all these cool Goldilocks characteristics also has some mysterious built in "random teleology" that pushes it toward "better", and "better" just happens to always align perfectly with whatever "progressives" are thinking as being "better"! A very very happy accident indeed!
The bottom line here is that as finite and very limited beings, ANY explanation of our existence is at some level "fantastic, improbable, paradoxical, etc" ... which is why when I went through my greatest faith chllenges, I eventually settled on belief in things that have a history (meaning 100's or thousands of years) of WORKING! 'via Blog this'
I believe the cartoon captures both the religious and cultural state of the west today. The moderns gleefully want to kill the culture, tradition, Christianity, Capitalism, the family, philosophic and often even scientific truth -- yet in their glee, they fail to realize it leaves them nowhere to stand!
The following is written by a liberal friend on FB. I know him to be intelligent and totally believing of the dominant left narrative taught in US public education, the media and entertainment. He is not an atheist, but has moved to become a modern secularized Christian, denying the Bible on at least sexually related issues like abortion, homosexuality and gender. As with all people of the left, I certainly do not blame him in a human sense for "following the crowd". Holding the beliefs that I do is often costly in certainly friendships, some family relationships and possibly job and career.
While he as at times "unfriended" me on FB, I believe he attempts to be civil. I certainly have no trouble remaining his friend, FB and otherwise, because I hold this mortal coil to be but the most fleeting of experiences for our true eternal selves. To even consider judging or "unfriending" someone over the merely political would violate my own values, but given life in BOistan today, I fully understand why members of "The Party" (TP-D) feel they have no choice but to do so.
I'll summarize and give my views on the quoted FB post below. He titles it: "Leave it Blank?":
Though I am clearly a Democrat, I live in this country, I work with lots of good people, and so I know lots of good people who are Republicans. Honest, moral people with integrity. They think there's a better way to go about governing than what Democrats do. I respect that.
And in a normal election cycle, I would expect them to support their "team president" because that person, the GOP Presidential Nominee, would represent their conservative values -- and would probably also be an upstanding representative of the kind of personal behavior they prize. Mitt Romney was not a "perfect" Republican for some conservatives and some Evangelicals, but he was/is Conservative, spent a long time as a public servant, and presents himself as an honorable, respectful man. John McCain was even better (the closest I've ever come to supporting a GOP candidate.) When their "team leader" is a person like these two, I can't blame Republican friends for supporting the leader.
What we have this time, though, is a candidate who quite simply does not represent the demeanor of a President, who doesn't have enough respect for the job, or the people with whom and for whom he'll have to work, to truly represent the kind of Republicans I know.
So, can those people really vote FOR Donald Trump, just because he's on their "team?"
Now, I don't expect most of them would vote FOR Hillary. I can dream, but I do recognize that Secretary Clinton is more liberal than they are. And there are really good reasons a traditional GOP Conservative would not vote for Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein -- well, if Clinton is too far left, Jill is not right for a Conservative either.
So, what I am wondering is this: Will these true honorable Conservatives just leave the Presidential candidate selection blank? I mean, in the future, whether Trump loses or wins, would these people want to have voted for him?
Or does some sort of "team loyalty" require them to do what Ted Cruz did --- go against the very morality which matters so much to them and vote Trump?
Now, I am sure I also know some Republicans who honestly support Trump. I don't get those people, but they are there. But they were not in the majority in the the early days of the GOP primaries, and many of that majority fought against Trump precisely because of the attributes he has continued to display.
I expected the "politicians" to fall in line -- I had some hope that Cruz would stick to his principles, but even he recognized the future political disadvantage of not being a team player.
But the average GOP voter does NOT have future politics to consider. They have to decide whether a vote for Trump is something which will weigh on their conscience in the future.
Now, perhaps Trump would not be another Hitler, as so many of us liberals (and non-US people) worry about. Perhaps the checks and balances in place would keep him from truly taking the US in dangerous directions. Perhaps, once his records are made available, we won't find anything impeachable, and when his financial assets are placed in a blind trust, he'll be unable to try to work the system for his personal benefit, and he'll stop trying. Perhaps the "only" thing he'd do is continually embarrass us until 2020.
But even if a President Trump is only embarrassing, will a typical Republican really want to admit, 20 years from now, "Yes, I voted FOR Trump" or will they just leave that part of the ballot blank?
That's what I am wondering today.
This post boils down for me to:
Democrats have been saying the Republican nominee is "Hitler" at least since Nixon, with Reagan and W being prime past examples, and this whole straw man has it's own name (Godwin's law). The entire argument is based on the fallacy that "right" is control and "left" is chaos/freedom, when of course the opposite is true. Whole books are written on this standard piece of TP propaganda, which I cover in summary here. The charge has been repeated so often that one wonders why anyone would bother to do it yet again.
In my mind, killing over 60 million babies in their mothers wombs is easily comparable with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Biblical sacrifice to Moloch ... but that is a world view that radically differs from the approved world view of TP.
There is the "metaphysical certainty" that Trump is somehow "evil, bad, embarrassing, etc" ... which TP assured us was true of at least Nixon, Reagan and W. In this case, "somehow", one would be "embarrassed" years later to have voted for Trump ... and least at this point, supposedly worse than they would have been for Nixon, Reagan or W. Therefore, they would "leave the space blank", implicitly helping Hillary.
I voted for Carter, and I'm not "embarrassed". I was young, I had just been fully indoctrinated by 16 years of schooling, my family voted Democrat, so I voted for him. The loss of Iran as an ally certainly caused and continues to cause world problems. The miscalculation on Afghanistan also had far reaching repercussions. Could these had been avoided with a better leader? I firmly believe so, but as with pretty much anything outside of proven mathematical equations, reasonable people can and will vary in their opinions. My only claim to wisdom is the fear of God -- I prayerfully consider decisions and study hard -- I don't take credit for Reagan, nor blame for Carter. I doubt that will ever change.
I have no confidence in Trump as a leader -- as I have commented on the writings of Decius, I see this as the first of likely many Russian Roulette elections. Hillary is roulette with a semi-auto, Trump is a revolver -- at least for people that have nostalgia for the old Constitutional Republic that was America. Best to have an outside chance of a pause in our decent to totalitarianism. A Trump victory would be a chance for the left to revisit how they felt after Reagan, Newt as Speaker, or Ws election. People with a rightward tilt got to feel that way for the past 8 years -- only I suspect we don't feel it as deeply as they do, since politics is WAY below God for us.
BOistan is a territory based on no principles, save possibly the hope that "with more government everything is better". 2008 was the HUGE election, 2012 was the "kill shot" for America. America is dead already, many people are just not aware of it -- and some, (as I suspect the author of the post above) celebrate the "change".
If Trump wins, as Scott Adams, the writer of "Dilbert" expects him to, it will be a LONG way from any indication that "good things will happen". It will merely be proof that there are still a lot of people out there that oppose the ending of America that BO was able to accomplish. Any road back to a Constitutional Republic is going to be LONG and arduous. The most positive aspect of a Trump win in my mind is the potential for some level of national "dialogue", more likely to be a shouting match, since the majority of the Trump supports merely sense that things are broken really badly, but have no idea at all why America once worked, how it was destroyed, or how to rebuild it.
The left will of course continue to arrogantly dismiss all who disagree, as is covered here.
As the copied post tells you, loyal members of TP see no reason to even attempt to "reason" or consider any alternative views. Indeed, in BOistan, POWER is all that counts, and increasingly it is coercive power as in "we will put you in jail if you claim Global Warming isn't gospel" (Exxon, NY).
The smarter TP members (like the post author) vaguely realize that once law has been abandoned, such mechanisms could theoretically be used by the opposition. I think they are wrong ... they forget the power of the administrative state, which only operates for left leadership.
Most of all, I wish for a renewal, which I believe must be a revival, of acceptance of Christ and Biblical principles as the transcendent values that the vast majority of Americans would be again in agreement on, and thus see government as FAR beneath those principles.
Government would be returned to being a SERVANT of both God and the people. In America past, and I hope in an America or at least "remnant" of it, future, Christian friendship would FAR outweigh anything political, not only because one is eternal and the other but a tiny temporal moment, but also because God's Wisdom would be what drives the lives of a clear majority of Americans.
Both Trump and Hillary are so far from decent leaders that such a vision most certainly requires a miraculous intervention from on high. Both are likely to make such a vision less possible, but I see Hillary as certainly continuing on the path to Bible following Christians being directly persecuted -- a threshold we are perilously close to.
The fact is that 100% of humans "prefer people like them" -- it is wired into the wetware. As "liberals" have become more powerful, they DEMAND that people at least claim to be "like them", or they will throw one of their labels on them --- "racist, sexist, islamophobe, homophobe, climate denier, etc".
To a person capable of independent thought, it is obvious that screaming labels at somebody is taking part in exactly the same kind of generalization, objectification, stereotyping, etc that the accuser (TP) is accusing their target of. They are merely taking advantage of the fact that their tribe is dominant, so they can place the label, write the articles, and demand that everyone agree with their position or the targets unwillingness to bow is taken as proof of their label being "real", while TP is "right". As they say, "it is good to be king" (in the dominant party).
"Trump supporters (or half of them) are racist, white, elderly, disaffected, uneducated, angry, less intelligent, afraid of losing status, etc, etc" is the same type of statement as "Blacks are prone to crime, poorly educated, emotional, on welfare, lazy, violent, unpatriotic, etc". Like all generalizations, there is both truth and falseness in both cases, but for the dominant party ("The Party" (TP-D)), the first generalization is pretty much gospel, where the second is "racist".
As Kierkegaard said "Once you label me, you negate me". The power to reduce a person to a mere label is a truly awesome power. The fact that TP is able to increasingly accomplish this and hold sway over so many minds who are either too brainwashed or too afraid to question the power of TP lest THEY be labeled shows how totalitarian our situation has become.
The proper label for TP is FASCIST -- using raw power and complete absence of morals to declare their position to be "godlike" merely on the basis of raw political power.
Christianity gives mankind a potential to rise above our condition by declaring that ALL are flawed and power is meaningless next to morality, which is transcendent. (might has no bearing on RIGHT!!) Take transcendence away, and the only possible order is based on power and coercion rather than love and the God given order which created Western civilization.
“[I feel unsafe] all the time. I had someone follow me home from practice and try to report me to police. And this is right on 28th and 7th in New York City…
I want people to know that as hard as [these racist incidents] are on me, they don’t come even close to things we’ve seen like the shooting in North Carolina or the rhetoric around the Khan family at the DNC.
It’s ridiculous and we as a country have to change and I feel like this is our moment.”
In a world with no truth, everything is relative. Note the young woman is competing from the USA -- the country that "has to change". Sharia Law Islamic states? No concern about THEIR changing!
Islam means SUBMISSION to Islamic law, or it means DEATH which is also a form of submission.
Why does the the left love Islam? Because they believe in SUBMISSION -- they just think they can use Islamists just like they use Blacks to gain POWER -- the they may well treat them as they do Christians today -- or very possibly kill them and Christians just as they abort babies today.
There are only so many 8lb rocks you can dodge when buried up to your neck -- then you learn submission.
I'm sure we will spend a lot of time on "what gun did he use?" since the killer was a person of color and indicated support for Islam and apparently BO. Muslims, blacks and gays are all part of "The Party" tent, so the only"foul" here is the weapon itself. Two of "their Tribes" had a disagreement.
In Iran, Saudi Arabia and any country close to Islamic rule, homosexuality is a death penalty crime -- we are told not to talk or think about that. Islam is the "religion of peace", and their culture is to be respected. Christians on the other hand love gays, addicts, and even pedophiles (all have some level of genetic component), but hate their self and societally destructive behaviors. For the position on gays, Christians are often loathed by the left -- pedophiles are still not considered "natural and normal", but there are some movements in that direction on the left -- only being an addict is seen as a condition with a genetic basis to be treated / cured as opposed to embraced by both left and right.
In a nation that has killed 60 million babies in their mothers womb, life is clearly worth less than inconvenience -- even 9 months of inconvenience. If a person is part of a "good religion of peace" (not a BAD religion like Christianity), and that "good religion" teaches that homosexuals ought to to receive the death penalty, is it THAT hard to understand how such a person would see killing a number of them as a way to handle that? Perhaps a gay had inconvenienced them?
No doubt there will be lots of posturing and finger pointing -- "hate", "gun control", etc. No doubt Islam will be completely NOT an issue for the MSM and sitting politicians. Can you even IMAGINE if the shooter had been a Trump rather than a BO supporter?
We are a nation with no respect for life, so no respect for much of anything else. We elected BO, certainly the majority has no sense of what "America" even was. The best we have is a vacuous promise from Trump to "Make America great again!" -- whatever he means by that. Hildebeast is pledged to keep destroying it, and given that the country is largely controlled by TPs bureaucracy, I'm pretty sure that she can drive us deeper into oblivion than even BO.
Can Trump do anything positive? I have no idea -- but a nation that can't figure out what bathroom to use isn't likely to have any clues on preventing mass killings by Islamic terrorists!
The left LOVES trains! I think it is a control thing -- the train runs on it's schedule and you figure out how to work your schedule so you can meet it. The left loves that -- people need to be compliant. Trains employ a bunch of people that vote Democrat, and they lose a bunch of money, increasing the percentage to the economy under government control -- WIN, WIN!
Cars are bad. Some rich guy can decide to drive a Yugo and you can't soak him like you want for transportation. WORSE, he can drive ON HIS OWN SCHEDULE! That gives the "illusion of self determination". Naturally, the left will point out that the roads are PUBLIC -- but paid by massive gas taxes which are really "user fees". The PROBLEM is that those fees are NOT based on income! The rich guy in the Yugo might pay LESS than the Hispanic in the low rider ghetto cruiser in actual dollars, and of course MUCH less in terms of percentage of income! Rich people ought not have that kind of freedom!
So light, heavy, fast, slow, dangerous, expensive, etc, the left LOVES trains! Having the train is SUCCESS! Why? Because it is a giant trophy that shows that they can get what they want even though it hurts everyone, including the constituency that they claim to be serving! (a better bus system would serve more people that need it FAR better for a FRACTION of the cost).
BUT, it makes them feel good and superior -- and in the final analysis, that is what "liberalism" is all about; feeling smart, good, in with the in crowd and SUPERIOR!
A useful short read, but I suspect most of the group that reads my blog will feel a bit like me. When you are on the "minority team", you HAVE to hear "the other side" -- pretty constantly. Now I go out of my way to NPR, Slate, etc, so get a MEGAdose of what the "other side" has to say, but we are all soaking in the dominant culture.
"When someone communicates that they are not “on our side” our first reaction is to run away or dismiss them as stupid. To be sure, there are hateful, racist, people not worthy of the small amount of electricity it takes just one of your synapses to fire. I’m instead referencing those who actually believe in an opposing viewpoint of a complicated issue, and do so for genuine, considered reasons. Or at least, for reasons just as good as yours. "
The other missing item in the article is that at one time we as a culture DID believe that "Western civilization" -- which included Christianity was "better", and there was a good deal of evidence. Europe once "ruled the world", capitalism advanced the condition of people around the planet, rule of law and just basic civic decency was common, people believed that hard work and personal responsibility were virtuous, the family is the cornerstone of society, children were a blessing and the promise of the future, etc.
The "big divide" is now between pretty much everyone except a few "radicals" agreeing with the previous paragraph, and today's world where "the winning side" believes that god is dead, all values are relative, man is an animal, the environment (and animals like gorillas or even snail darters) are more important that human life, Western culture is decadent / corrupt / evil, Islam is the "Religion of Peace" and Christianity died with god and survival in a godless world goes to those who can prevent the births of their succeeding generation.
The "old values" people are largely the ones dismissed as "backward, stupid, reactionary, bigoted, etc". Sure, with the advent of Trump, the "todays world" people are taking some "abuse", but that is a pretty new phenomenon.
Never the less, being able to at least MAKE the points that the other side makes is worthy. I believe that we will actually have to AGREE on some set of transcendent values though before we return to actually "making progress" and truly "getting alone". The article not so subtly makes the point that there is "no real truth", it is is all relative.
The NY Times naturally presents this as a "free speech" issue. The woman has received some "threats on the internet" -- ho hum. Not supporting gay "marriage", men in women's bathrooms or saying "all lives matter" is good enough to get one at least internet death threats in this time of incivility, boycotts, and loss of jobs for non-PC speech. Meanwhile our tender college students demand to not even hear the name "Trump", nor see it chalked on sidewalks.
The pictured young woman expects to graduate in a couple of weeks and is seeking a career in media, I know it is the most egregious of cynicism to even suggest that wearing such a hat and getting covered in the NY Times might be an asset to such a career.
She said she was set to graduate in two weeks with a degree in media studies from the College of Staten Island and wanted to pursue a career in music, radio, social media or journalism. She has already started looking for jobs in those fields.
As for the custom-made cap, Ms. Lake said she had ordered only one but planned to buy many more.
We know of the long list of terrible sins against the secular god of Political Correctness that may not be uttered or even alluded to lest someone be offended. But how WOULD someone have a "nation" these days? Back in 2008, Michelle Obama was for the first time "proud of America" -- but only because she saw it stepping up to be "Fundamentally Changed".
It has been, and now we live in BOistan -- and nobody ought take offense at a hat saying that "America was Never Great". They may have fought for that never great nation, possibly have been wounded and still bear many scars, but their view is wrong and to be offended by such a hat is WAY outside the bounds of what is now allowable in this territory.
There is LOTS of right to take offense at a Confederate Flag, somebody saying "All Lives Matter", a person objecting to a man in a wig and a dress (or apparently just "feeling girlish") entering a woman's changing room with their 12 year old daughter however -- in fact, the Totalitarian State of BOistan may well prosecute for "Hate Speech" if they step out of line and transgress these disallowed types of speech.
Yes, Trump has all sorts of flaws, but look at the hat and read the article.
This election is about "Is BOistan Great"?
If you vote for Hildebeast, or stay home, you are voting for speech like this blog to suppressed.
In BOistan as advanced by the Hildebeast, there will soon no longer be dissension -- we are RAPIDLY getting to the point where all MUST agree with whatever edicts the head of "The Party" chooses to hand down, and the "Bitter Clingers" will shut up or disappear!
A column in which Prager points out the obvious fact conservatives, Republicans, etc pretty much never state the name of THE PROBLEM that is killing us.
Why? Because they assiduously avoid identifying who or what acts are causing our universities to mimic fascist institutions, namely: ruining dissenters' careers; penalizing dissenting students; not hiring dissenting professors; disinviting the few invited speakers with whom the majority differs; shouting down dissenting speakers; students and faculty occupying and taking over college administrators' offices, etc.
The Bloomberg-Koch column is like going to your doctor and getting back a fully accurate report that you are dying that doesn't even hint at why you are dying.
Why don't Bloomberg and Koch mention the words "left" or "progressive" or "liberal" even once? The entire deterioration of the American university (and high school and elementary school) is the result of leftist influence. How could they not mention this?
The simple answer they don't name it is because they don't want to be called idiots. There is a whole book that covers a lot of this, Roger Scruton, "Thinkers of the New Left". The left already took over the university, and if Prager hasn't noticed, the entire Federal / State and Educational bureaucracy, as well as most of media and entertainment, law and a few other major parts of our world.
I enjoy a lot of Prager's thinking, but I really think this is one he knows. Calling the left out is like calling out Godzilla, or going for a stroll in Iran with a funny picture of Mohammad on your shirt.
No, if you are in the public eye like Bloomberg-Koch, you better try to pussyfoot around like mammals hiding out from T-rex. Also, since Bloomberg is a lefty and Koch is a libertarian, it really would not do for Koch to say that "Bloomberg is the problem" if they want to write a column together.
The BIG reason for not naming the left as the problem though? Like fish in water, or Madge and Palmolive, "We're Soaking In IT!".
The title is a variation of "Everything I say is a lie ..... I'm lying." Covered well on the old Star Trek.
I've attempted to write quite a few posts like this, and will no doubt attempt many more, since I believe that the biggest question of our age is "Truth, does it exist, and allowing that, what forms does it exist in and how are those to be perceived". My short answer would be yes, transcendent -- as in eternal, metaphysical, God, scientific -- as in the best current approximation of physical phenomenon, and emotional -- as in the feelings perceived by humans for each other, God, community, country, etc.
I find this paragraph critical to his thesis.
Perhaps the most evident sign of civilizational devolution is the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge reality, to come to terms with things as they are, and to oppose the suppression of objectivity and its substitution by fantasy, illusion and wish-fulfillment. The resonating dictum of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides from his fragmentary poem On Nature—variously translated as what is, is, and what is not, is not!—sounds like an empty tautology. But it has relevance for our present historical moment, with respect to the cultural and lexical inversions of contemporary thought and discourse. Apart from its metaphysical implications, which we won’t go into here, the Parmenidean maxim expresses the criterion for survival, the need to separate truth (aletheia) from opinion (doxa) and to recognize things as they are if an individual, a culture, a people is to transact successfully with the existing world. But when thought and action come to be governed by the anarchic principle that what is, is not and what is not, is, a process of social, political and epistemological disintegration invariably sets in. This is the condition in which the West finds itself today.
Today, outside science, there is only "doxa" (opinion), and each personal doxa is supposedly just as valid as anyone else's, but of course, there is the rub. POWER ... of media, of party, of public opinion, of money, etc is what REALLY makes some opinions to be "truth". If you fail to bow to them -- as in believe that men should stay in men's bathrooms even when wearing a dress, well then you have to be bludgeoned into agreeing with the POWERFUL opinions!
It is all well worth the read, I've come to see our present crisis as completely obvious, but I realize that is a minority option -- us cranks enjoy seeing the occasional apparently sentient human in agreement! I'll close with this for those of you not up to reading it all.
When a civilization, or its cultural and intellectual curators who wield the instruments of power and authority, re-interprets reality as merely discretionary, decline and eventual extinction are guaranteed, and the Angel of History will preside over the ruins. When pretending becomes believing, and believing becomes mandatory, and calling out the naked emperor is punishable by law or fine or ostracism or loss of employment or worse, and when the scale of such abuses becomes effectively global, the “lifeworld,” or communal nature of daily life, as we have known it has ceased to exist.
I often wonder if a major piece in the lack of trust in institutions, candidates, or each other, we pretty much all now have, doesn't go back to the rise of divorce. That was pretty much THE big sacred lifetime vow that most people made -- "till death do us part" before God, family and friends. Then it became common and socially acceptable to break it.
Nothing is that simple though. In making weekly trips to take my Dad to appointments or just visit since his prostate cancer diagnosis in January, it has occurred to me that the cultural shift that started with FDR, of the government being responsible for care of the aged, was a big enabler. Prior to that, in "good / lucky / typical" families, care of elderly parents was something that children did -- and it helped for both the parents and the children's marriages to be intact. Inheritance was also a factor -- "leaving something behind for your children" was considered honorable by nearly everyone ("honorable" actually used to be a word!).
"Freeing" everyone from their "family obligations" made "I'm spending my children's inheritance" sound like something one could be smug enough to put on a bumper sticker. So far, we haven't added "and spending 20% of my children's and grandchildren's income for FICA, Medicare, BOcare and Medicaid as well!!". It hasn't been added, but it is true. Many fathers also don't feel responsible to care for their children anymore either. The lefty way is that you are "responsible" ONLY to the government -- there are no other "obligations", it has all been outsourced!
Vocation, calling, responsibility, sacred duty, Gods Will, etc" become "hardships, burdens, toil, constraints, even enslavement ...". When life had a purpose beyond individual ease and happiness the world was a different place. As it is put in the old saw about Moses and FDR -- 5,000 years ago, Moses said, "Pick up your shovels, mount your asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land." When Welfare was introduced, Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel, this IS the Promised Land."
As meanings become fluid and declared by the state or it's media, people who want to stay in the good graces of "The Party" and be seen as "intelligent, reasonable, "moral", etc" have to be able to change from one "factual statement" to it's opposite on a moments notice.
For example; how may "experts" told us that Ronald Reagan was CRAZY to believe that the USSR was EVER "going away"? Many ... hundreds, thousands even. When it DID go away, how many of those "wise men" lost face and realized that they ought not be making such pronouncements as such "certain truth"? Virtually none -- the "wise men" that are still living are STILL "wise", and the left is constantly working to re-write history to make Reagan completely senile in his second term!
In a 2012 debate, BO taunted Romney saying "the '80s wants it's foreign policy back" for thinking that Russia could be a major threat. BO is still "wise", Russia IS a threat, but BO is undiminished by his error. TP tells you what to think.
How many times in the 1970's did we hear that "We are out of oil, gas is ALWAYS going to go up in price, and anyone that says otherwise is an IDIOT"! Uncountable -- it was the "standard wisdom", more "settled" than Global Warming is today. Then we heard "It will NEVER go below $2 again" from the great and powerful BO himself, but it did. The people that claimed it would go below $2 were complete fools or liars, but when it DID got below $2, the "fools and liars" remained "fools and liars", and BO remained "honest and brilliant". For the believers in TP, the "important fact" never changed -- TP is STILL right!
The Democrats, media and even BO declared Iraq to be "lost", then BO declared it to be "won" before he lost it. The MOST critical thing about being on the side of TP is that when you and their pronouncements are "proven wrong", they are STILL right! Past statements simply disappear and the new statements that contradict them -- sometimes multiple times, are now "truth". We live in an OZ where the man behind the curtain is exposed but 80% of the people still believe in the wizard of TP!
Which brings us to Trump -- doesn't it ALL come down to Trump these days?
How many pundits told us "Trump will NEVER be the Republican nominee"! Only he is. Now the SAME "experts" are telling us with the SAME confidence, "Hillary will win by a LANDSLIDE!". That may well be true -- TP is powerful. They own both the virtual and the dead vote, so if it is even close, we may have queen Hildebeast. But I do believe I detect a bit of nervousness on the part of the TP faithful. If we are to lack confidence in Trump because "he isn't reliable", how are we to have confidence in the many "wise men" that are certainly not reliable?
For this world, the most adaptive part of religious belief is that believers have a core transcendent belief that is NOT OF THIS WORLD. "God is good, ALL the time"! That is a FAITH statement, and people WILL live by faith, sometimes in the face of horrible diseases, economic collapses, war, or even having a fight with their spouse and not getting divorced. The strength and weakness of transcendent truths is that they are "true by definition", they can't be "proven false" ... nor true in a "scientific" way. (of course NOTHING can ... scientific "truth" is always provisional on the next experiment.
TP on the other hand claims to be "better" because it's wisdom IS of this world and CAN be shown to be both true and false! However, when it is proven false, that is to be ignored and the NEW "truth" is to be taken as "truth" -- and NOT questioned!
Eternity provides perspective -- but a little earthy perspective is OK as well.
It appears that there are about 80 million children < age 20 in the US. From age 5-14, 13 per 100K die each year. From age 15-19, 50 per 100K die each year. If we just pick "40" per 100K, that is 40 x 10 per million = 400, so 400 x 80 for the US, or 32,000 new bereaved parents EACH YEAR. Every 10 years, that is 320,000 bereaved parents!
How much do we care about them compared to say "transgenders"? Of maybe the 10 or so blacks killed by police in any sort of "questionable circumstance" each year? Or how important do we think TP being "always right" is to those parents? Is TP REALLY the "ultimate issue"? Do we ever consider their feelings say as much as "Caitlyn Jenner"? No, pretty much, we "think and feel" (to the extent we still know what that is) pretty much as we are told by TP on a day to day hourly basis as long as nothing like personal death, disease, etc collapses the TP view-screen. Even those of us that fight TP can no more escape from it's effects than we can from breathing.
We have largely destroyed the perspective of the eternal, the family, the community, the historical and even the very simplest things like our gender. Most have lost ALL perspective other than the false perspective of TP.
But now, there arises Trump, who challenges the "truth" of TP, and is even willing to challenge the whole concept of "truth" in the same way as TP has done increasingly for years. He says exactly what he wants to say and changes his position at the drop of a hat -- just like TP and the TP candidates. In method, presentation, arrogance, showmanship, derision of his opposition, etc -- in pretty much ALL ways, Trump **IS TP**!!! When there is no truth and no values, ALL that matters is "perception and POWER". TP has made that clear, and the vast majority have no perspective at all to make sense of "what is trump" (in the card sense).
What is truth? Trump or TP? In a world with no truth, does it matter?
I'm not going to run out and buy this book -- I've seen enough articles and even heard enough through NPR and the NY Times to know that the basics are certainly true. The Clinton's STATED net worth is in the $110+ Million range, and the Clinton Foundation BROUGHT IN $214 Million in 2012, followed by $262 M and $223 M in 2013 and 2015 (Wiki skipped 2014 for some reason ...).
On the up and up, the "Foundation" can can cover any "expenses" the Clinton's might have that aren't covered by Slick being and ex-president, various people providing them "services" as part of their relationship, etc. Remember when the $300M wealth of Mitt Romney was such a HUGE issue? That of course being 8 years after the $800 M wealth of John Kerry was a complete NON issue. People that have any level of memory and lack complete and total trust for the media machine might wonder just a bit about some "small" differences in the ways these things are treated!
From 2001 through 2012 Bill collected $105.5 million for speeches and raised hundreds of millions for the foundation. When she was nominated, Hillary said she saw no conflict. President Obama pressed for a memorandum of understanding in which the Clintons would agree to submit speeches to State’s ethics office, disclose the names of major donors to the foundation, and seek administration approval before accepting direct contributions to the foundation from foreign governments. The Clintons accepted the agreement and violated it “almost immediately.” Revealingly, they amassed wealth primarily by operating “at the fringes of the developed world.” Their “most lucrative transactions” did not involve countries like Germany and Britain, where modern ethical rules and procedures are in force, but emerging nations, where regulations are lax.
It's good to be Queen. The only way I can parse the fact that the Clinton's are given a pass is that "The Party" (TP-D) is now the closest thing to a "religion" that something around half of pagan Americans have. As such, the leaders of TP are like Popes and Cardinals used to be -- "infallible", so they can simply do what they want.
With the rise of the NSA and data gathering the past 10-15 years, I keep wondering, "who's got the goods"? The ability to run down Denny Hastert over drawing too much money out of a bank is likely just the VERY tip of the iceberg. How many people does TP have in their pocket over everything from sexual matters, financial dealings, substance abuse, having once held some now unpopular position, etc, etc. Owners of the New York Times? Washington Post? virtually every media outlet there is? It makes me wonder.
I loved this quote ... isn't it wonderful to see how the DC wing of TP ("The Party"-D) thinks?
I live in Washington, D.C., and I spend time around Hillary-style Democrats. They really think that they’ve got this thing in the bag. And I don’t just mean her versus Bernie. I mean the Democratic Party winning the presidency for the rest of our lives. From here to eternity. They can choose whoever they want. They could nominate anybody and they would win. They think they’re in charge.
I tend to agree with them -- they have brought in enough illegals, made voting with no ID nearly the national standard, and through organizations like ACORN and just the fact of 90% of the people tabulating the votes being union government employees, that all counts are suspect. As Stalin said "The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do". TP counts the votes -- or contracts for the machines to count the votes.
The main thesis of the article is:
According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient. Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class. In so doing, the Democratic Party radically changed the way it understood social problems and how to solve them, trading in the principle of solidarity for the principle of competitive individualism and meritocracy.
There is that left wing word again "meritocracy" -- oh how they hate the idea that people are blessed with different abilities and can use them wisely or foolishly to obtain different economic result! TP moved away from PRIVATE sector unions in the '70s and focused on the massive growth of PUBLIC sector unions. Automation, global trade and non-competitive labor had pretty much destroyed vast swaths of American industry by that point already, Steel being a great example. TP cares about POWER not people -- they go where the power is, and it was certainly with the professional class.
But Frank seems surprised that TP operates as it does and clearly took action when BO took office to benefit it's major constituency, the upper 10-30% (Frank wants it to seem more elite than it is, it's more than 10%) -- government workers, teachers, university professors, lawyers, financial people, fortune 500 professionals.
This is not only because of those evil Republicans, but because Obama played it the way he wanted to. Even when he had a majority in both houses of Congress and could choose whoever he wanted to be in his administration, he consistently made policies that favored the top 10 percent over everybody else. He helped out Wall Street in an enormous way when they were entirely at his mercy.
He could have done anything he wanted with them, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt did in the ‘30s. But he chose not to.
He didn't do what FDR did because what FDR did failed miserably. It prolonged and deepened what would have been a bad recession, much like 1982 into the Depression. BO's "FDR lite" of STILL massive government intervention, regulation and cronyism have made a "recession" into the "Great Recession". BO got away with what he could get away with to not make the disaster as obvious as it ought to be. It is STILL easy to look at the 1930's, late 1970s and 2008-2016 as times of TP taking control (they took Congress in 2006) and the economy being bad.
The big overarching problem of our time is inequality. If you look at historical charts of productivity and wage growth, these two things went hand in hand for decades after World War II, which we think of as a prosperous, middle-class time when even people with a high school degree, blue-collar workers, could lead a middle class life. And then everything went wrong in the 1970s. Productivity continued to go up and wage growth stopped. Wage growth has basically been flat ever since then. But productivity goes up by leaps and bounds all the time. We have all of these wonderful technological advances. Workers are more productive than ever but they haven’t benefited from it. That’s the core problem of inequality.
First of all, productivity is NOT improving. The OBJECTIVE of the left is the story of inequality! A more and more privileged government crony elite class and an ever more dependent and controlled mass "proletariat". The left is about CENTRALIZATION OF POWER in the hands of the VERY few, ultimately THE ONE! Left is control, right is chaos, the US was supposed to be "center right".
If policies of merit and competition are allowed to work, one gets the US 1982 - 2008. If the policies of the left are allowed to work, the result is East vs West Germany prior to '91, North Korea vs South Korea today.
The biggest question I have is whether Frank is a "Useful Idiot" and doesn't know that BO (and FDR and Carter before him) are doing exactly what is intended, or if he is simply a propaganda shill for the TP. I guess it really doesn't matter ...
I ran into this on one of my old blog posts -- I'll likely put up a few of them at least, it looks like they may all be a good read by a woman that emigrated from the USSR in 1980.
“Authors writing about socialism need to know what socialism is. The author of this article would rather just go into a tirade about the problems in our country … and automatically jump to the conclusion the problem is socialism. Huh? What? Where is the socialism you’re talking about?”
An old Soviet joke goes as follows: “A Soviet and an America journalist argued about whose society is freer. The American declared, ‘I can stand in front of the White House and yell that our president is a fool!’ ‘Big deal,’ responded the Russian, ‘I can stand in front of Kremlin in Moscow and yell that your president is a fool too!'”
This joke is at least 40 years old. But today in the U.S., very much as it was in the USSR, a rodeo clown’s livelihood is in peril because he dared to make a joke about the president. One can measure level of socialism by the number of lives wasted, humiliated or destroyed by a centralized government that is pursuing its agenda and control.
I covered the Rodeo Clown incident a bit here. She has an excellent list of some of the techniqes used by socialist / centralized / command and control nations. I'll bring a few here, but the whole set is worty:
Polarizing society by dividing people into groups by ethnicity.
Controlling speech, enforcing political correctness and attempting to suppress opposition media.
Intimidating opposition through Justice Department investigations of journalists, IRS intimidation of groups and individuals who oppose government policies, and information collected on citizens that becomes quite handy.
Controlling people by making them dependent on government for basics such as medical care, property rights and income.
Applying separate standards in medical and other services for government employees and acolytes vs. the rest of society.
A prominent Soviet physicist, Lev Landau, defined the USSR’s system as “a dictatorship of bureaucrats.” It amounted to socialism, he said, “because the means of production do not belong to the people, but to bureaucrats.”
