The SR-71 Blackbird, The Titanium Spirit That Was America

The Thrill of Flying the SR-71 Blackbird:

This is one of those articles well worth just ignoring my words and reading in it's entirety.

This was the America that I was privileged to grow up in and enjoy most of my adult life in. The exceptional nation, and undisputed in that exceptional nature for those that cared for freedom vs the tyranny of the socialist system of the USSR. Even with the rise of godless socialists in this country during the sick 60s and the malaise of the '70s, we went to the moon, Reagan defeated the USSR, and we had unmatched audacious technology like the SR-71 that was undefeated. Enemy attempts, 4000, enemy success, ZIP! 4K to zip, American stats! Plus, in this rare case, we never lost anyone even in the ejection cases! Incredible for an aircraft that operated in the environment and mission of this one!

The Author of the article, Brian Shul is also the author of the book "Sled Driver", which thanks to thoughtful friend an autographed copy of which  has set on my shelf and been frequently read / admired for years, but now needs to move to my fireproof safe -- the non-autographed copies are worth $315!

Shul was shot down in Vietnam, assumed to never fly again, but with great personal effort came back and flew over 500 hours in the SR-71, or "Sled" as the pilots often referred to her as.

Just a sample from the article if you didn't take my advice! It is in reference to their penetrating Libyan airspace to assess damage after Reagan's '86 bombing of Libya:

It is a race this jet will not let us lose. The Mach eases to 3.5 as we crest 80,000 feet. We are a bullet now - except faster. We hit the turn, and I feel some relief as our nose swings away from a country we have seen quite enough of. Screaming past Tripoli , our phenomenal speed continues to rise, and the screaming Sled pummels the enemy one more time, laying down a parting sonic boom. In seconds, we can see nothing but the expansive blue of the Mediterranean . I realize that I still have my left hand full-forward and we're continuing to rocket along in maximum afterburner.

Some links:

The definitive SR-71 site which includes a list of SR-71s now on display which made me realize that the one that sat up at the MN Air National Guard Museum at the airport in the cites was "stolen" to sit at the CIA HQ in DC! I've seen that one before it moved, the one on the Intrepid in NYC, the trans-US speed record holder at 64min, at Smithsonian, the one at the US Alabama Museum in GA and the one at Wright Patterson ... so doing pretty well!

As this once great nation descends the path of Rome and Britain before her into the "ash heap of history", the SR-71 remains a symbol of what we once were. When we believed in God, I believe this battle with decline is one that "God would not let us lose" -- we abandoned him, he never abandoned us.


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The Lives That Don't Matter, 5 killed, 12 wounded, Chicago

5 killed, 12 wounded in Tuesday shootings | Chicago:

I know nobody cares about this article from Chicago, the TOP story on google news right now is about a teen that is SHOWN ON SURVEILLANCE VIDEO pointing  gun at an officer who shot and killed him.

That is the TOP story. There are NO stories about Chicago ... not even this one about a 14 year old being among those charged with the slaying of an 18 year old on Monday. The mug shots show you the people whose lives the media REALLY believes don't matter ... along with the victims of course.

They don't matter because they can't be used to further the agenda of "The Party" (TP-D) because they are the RESULT of the policies of TP! If there was too much focus here, people may realize that in Detroit, in DC, in Chicago, in Memphis, and in most major US cities, the welfare, unwed mothers and race baiting "Community Organizers" like Sharpton, Jackson and BO have led to an ACTUAL epidemic of killing of young black men. The ones that DON'T MATTER!

You are being told what to think about -- police shooting blacks, while blacks shooting blacks by the thousands (like 6K in 2011) due to the policies of TP is NOT NEWS!

All I needed to do was google "Chicago killing" to find a tiny bit of perspective, but the media wants to make sure that you, nor anyone else that follow mostly headlines has any perspective at all.

They want you to think that white officers shooting black teens is the problem you should be focused on!

You are being brainwashed by propaganda, get angry and get suspicious!

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So Called Christmas

Where Christmas really came from (Opinion) - CNN.com:

It is that time of the year, the 2nd most important Christian holiday after Easter, so we need to have a little gratuitous criticism and debunking from someone who at the very end declares themselves to be a "Christian" themselves. Interestingly, in the author, Jay Parini's Wiki entry, there is no mention of his Christianity. As our Pastor is fond of saying, "if accused of being a Christian, you want to make sure there is enough evidence to convict!".

Whatever the foundations of his faith, they wouldn't seem to have a lot of connection to the Bible as we know it:

But there was, among early Christian gatherings, a strong need to have a myth of origins, a story about the beginnings of the man who ultimately became the Messiah, the Christ. Probably drawing on Persian myths, Matthew and Luke came up with Christmas stories that have almost nothing in common. They can't be reconciled, in fact

The article contains the usual litany of solstice connections, commercialization, Isis/Horus, Celtic Yule, etc, etc. Advent is part of the "So called" Church year, Paul doesn't talk about Christmas, so all the references must be made up -- we need to naturally call the Virgin Birth into question and even Christ being described as "The Word" (it should really be "understanding" according to the gospel of Jay P)

We then have his "statement of faith":

But one must never forget that Christians themselves -- and I am one of them -- consider this a holy time, a time of spiritual renewal, a time of the year when darkness opens to the possibility of light. 

Whatever the specifics of his birth, Jesus became the Light of the World for those who follow his path. He is, indeed, the Prince of Peace, and he invites us to a change of heart, a way of overcoming violence in the world with love and grace.

Let's see, "spiritual renewal", "light of the world", if you "follow his path", a "change of heart", a "way of overcoming violence". Anything missing?

Hmmm ... Unto us is born a SAVIOR? How about KING? Anything about a cross? Dying as sacrifice for our sins? Resurrection? How about Mathew 10:34, "Do not suppose that I come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"?

It gives pause to think where Christians have ended up. If CNN had someone that "called themselves gay", but suggested that what sexuality one practices is a choice and those that have strong religious beliefs have every right to seek to limit special rights claims for those that choose to be gay? I wonder if that would bring a large outcry, calls for bans, "justice", boycotts, etc? Ya think?

Certainly we Christians don't want to go the way of Islam, where if such as article was done by someone claiming to be Muslim, their life would be forfeit, any CNN site would be a legitimate bomb target, and CNN personnel would be in grave danger. However, how have we gotten so unwilling to stand up that it is likely that such an article will go pretty much without public comment?

The specific day of Christmas is not important to Christian doctrine, and no doubt there are connections to holidays that are even older. What is important is the actual message -- the birth of a SAVIOR, which means realizing that mankind is sorely in need of one! That is what Christians focus on.

The other part, which Jay and CNN are intent on destroying is the value of traditions that are thousands of years old  -- because that is what "progressives" do. They work to make it seem as if the world can be culturally obliterated and recreated in their image de jour at any point in history as easy as a new suit of clothes. As Burke pointed out, they want to destroy the culture of thousands of years "so man becomes as the flies of summer".

They seek to make our existence "factual" ... like eugenics once was, or the idea that everyone can live life by having no children, and the modern secular negation of culture will "live on" --- somehow. Perhaps some future secular "deity" (it looks like they may need to wait longer than Obama) will raise up new suitably leftist population from dry bones -- although certainly only enough to be "environmentally sound".  Can't get in the way of the "fact" of AGW!

So from CNN, please enjoy your pagan, commercial, "so called" holiday!

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Sarah Palin Hecklers at Gabby Giffords Memorial

Protesters heckle NYPD cops paying respects at slain officers' memorial - Washington Times:

Oh, sorry ...  it was pro cop killer hecklers at the memorial for the two officers in NYC.

The MSM memory hole has naturally totally forgotten the rush to try to generate SOME sort of connection with Sarah Palin using "crosshairs"  on her website prior to Giffords shooting. No matter how hard they tried -- and not only did they jump out right away claiming that Palin had effectively pulled the trigger, the nut that did the shooting was (as is usual) far more left wing than right wing. From the media POV, damn ... no story there, move along.

Now we have BO, Holder, de Blasio and Sharpton to one degree or another believing that even AFTER due process has operated and Grand Juries have spoken, the protests are "justified". While they are mostly smart enough to not directly condone chants like "What Do We Want?? DEAD COPS!", they don't like to directly take action to quell such protests either -- and in Sharpton's case, they speak at protests where this was chanted without even condemning the chanting.

But what is the media position? They agree with the "civil rights activists and leaders" at  the end of this article:

Civil rights activists and leaders, including Al Sharpton who has been at the forefront of the Garner protests, have insisted that the ongoing demonstrations are not fueling anti-police sentiments.

Try to imagine for a second if a nutcase killed a couple people and posted a bunch of rants supposedly by the "Tea Party" on some website / social media! I continue to be most worried that sme lefty fruitcake will do just that because they understand what the firestorm would be like!

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Government Healthcare Popular Like Concert Tickets in Britain

The queue that shames Britain: 7.11am and desperate patients wait in the cold and dark outside surgery - just so they can be seen by their GP  | Daily Mail Online:

People wait in line for concert tickets don't they?

In an increasingly Statist world, it is hard to get any real reports as to how state run medicine actually works. It doesn't require much thought to realize why that is so, but just in case your puzzler is sore, here are a few easy ones:

• There are many more well people than sick people and well people tend to like nationalized medicine. Why? Because it is cheaper of course! If you are generally well, then you have no idea how good it all works. It is like your fire insurance -- you likely assume yours is great, right? You most likely have never used it. 


• All the news sources tell you it is great. They even tell you that in the US. They also told you we were completely out of oil in the late '70s, starvation would be rampant by '90, the US was WAY past being able to produce more oil (for DECADES), lots of carbohydrates were good for you and the USSR was going to be around at least as long as the US (and was maybe even a nicer place). But hey, you might be unpopular if you thought independently of the mass media! 


• All those statistics on government run healthcare? They come from some GOVERNMENT! Of course you probably trust the government -- but still use FedX if it absolutely positively has to get there! But hey, just cuz they can't deliver mail all that well doesn't mean they can't do brain surgery. Right? 


• "You met someone", or "Everybody that I talked to ...". Strangely, so have I and 80% of those that I've talked to are on the other side -- in fact some of them came from Canada, England and other places to work in the US explicitly to get healthcare in the US! Sorry, neither my sample nor yours is REMOTELY statistically valid, and in fact it is REALLY hard to get statistical information on something like "how good is healthcare" because: 


1. Selection bias -- the coal mine canary problem. We interviewed 100 coal mine canaries as to the risk of their job, all responded it was risk free! See the problem?  The canaries that died in the line of duty (the reason for coal mine canaries) are not available for sample. In healthcare, those that have a REALLY bad experience are non-reporters in surveys, and in fact, those that are sick tend not to be anxious to pick up the phone, fill out surveys, etc either. (they are sick, remember?)
2. Pool removal -- those that have a really bad time with public healthcare may well have emigrated to another country (likely the US) rather than live on with the problem. Your health tends to be high on your priority list -- people have been known to leave countries due to high taxes, it is a rare person who doesn't find their health to be MUCH more important. 
3. Compared to what? If you live in say Canada it is unlikely that you get very much honest information about US healthcare (see media bias). The media is >90% Democrat, which means that their faith in government is statistically higher than someone who claims to be Christian having faith in the Virgin Birth. How would the average man in the street have ANY idea of what they ought to be comparing their healthcare to? 

Just like many things that I blog on, 90%+ of people have no exposure to any other view than "minimal standard MSM reporting", nor are they inclined to do much thinking about any of this. It's a damned shame that we have slipped to be so democratic. If we were more aristocratic, there would be no need for them to! 

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R-E-L-A-X! Fusion Is On the Way!

Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details | Technology content from Aviation Week:

OK, maybe not QUITE as small as the pair of units that power the Terminator in T3, but never the less a "Compact" Fusion Reactor (CFR) the size of a semi-trailer / container ship container vs a good sized building.

The article is well worth the read -- enough power for 80K homes or a major ship from a unit the size of a container -- lots of obstacles, certainly some likely over optimism, but WAY more real than "Hope and Change"!

It makes me think of Matt Ridley's excellent book "The Rational Optimist" which I read and liked but never blog reviewed. It gives a nice big picture of how from Malthus to Anthro Global Warming, alarmism as been constant, but so far human innovation has been FAR stronger.

The numerous predictions of "Peak Oil" and the reality of gas slipping under $2 due to Fracking is just one of the many examples of how innovation has a very strong tendency to trump a lot of what appears to be very rational pessimism that has the very bad Achilles heel of not taking technical innovation and the fact that "trend lines" often don't last into consideration.

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The Evil GOP

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/12/21/orig-snl-dr-evil-slams-north-korea-sony.cnn.html

Sure one has to be able to take a joke, but really, how much is this kind of gratuitous political negative advertising worth to TP?  (The Party - D)

"There is already a GOP and it is already an evil organization". Ha Ha

Right. Without a GOP, there would be only TP -- a one party system, and we can see how well that has worked in various places around the world.

We Want Dead Cops, Releasing the Genie

NYPD officers killed; New York ex-governor slams mayor - CNN.com:


Last week thousands of protesters in NYC chanted; "What do we want? --- DEAD COPS! 

This week they got them.

So there are something like a million Police in the US and something like 40M blacks. Let's see, if we are after eye for an eye "justice" here, vs the due process grand jury style, the police need to kill close to 80 more blacks. Better make sure they are all killed assassination style just standing around minding their own business if that is how we now do  "justice"!  Doesn't seem like the left leadership (BO, Holder, etc) is interested in honoring the results of our legal system via Grand Jury.

But maybe more importantly, we have released a malevolent genie -- one not seen since those heady days of the left in the late '60s, the tacit encouragement of angry mobs to kill, especially the police. The officers certainly realize it as they turned their backs on the NYC Mayor de Blasio as he walked into a press conference. The TP controlled media certainly gets it ... "Finger Pointing Begins". Contrast that with "Unarmed Black Teen Gunned Down" and countless things like "Ferguson Seeks Justice" --- nope, no "finger pointing" ever happened in Ferguson.

Somehow, the linked CNN article talks of the protests as "Black lives matter", peaceful, and seems to be blissfully unaware of  the many videos and articles (in the "right wing" media) showing the "Dead Cops" chants as linked. Isn't funny how ANY video that purports to show police violence is splashed everywhere, but thousands marching saying "What Do We Want --- Dead Cops!" is nearly invisible. Nobody in power -- not BO, not Holder, not de Blasio has had anything bad to say about this chant -- lots of words about "justice", even after the Grand Jury results, but nothing to say about thousands chanting that they want dead cops?

Is TP still running an exercise, or are we running up to the main event?  Cuba has a very active version of the CIA known as G2  perhaps our Dictator BO made a deal with his comrades for a bit of help?

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North Korean Red Line, Unless That Dictator is ME!

Obama Vows a Response to Cyberattack on Sony - NYTimes.com:

BO on "The Interview":

“We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States.” That would encourage others to do the same “when they see a documentary that they don’t like or news reports that they don’t like.

BO on the tape that supposedly "caused" Benghazi (but didn't, just another BO lie):

In a speech at the United Nations around this time, the president declared — no doubt with Nakoula in mind — “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." 

Hillary Clinton said: “We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Now that "red line" BO and Hillary followed through on!!

The guy in the picture is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a person our current dictator saw fit to imprison for making a film that probably did offend some Muslims, but had NOTHING to do with Benghazi.


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Vermont, A Single Payer Canary Dies

As Vermont Goes . . . | National Review Online:

Vermont loved BOcare and thought they were going to do one better by going to single payer. Guess what? The liberal la la land of Ben and Jerry's found out it was too damned expensive!

This would be a really good story for Americans in general to be extremely aware of, so you can be certain that the coverage of this in the MSM will be very slight.

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Peak Left?

Next Up in America: The Liberal Retreat - The American Interest:

I VERY highly recommend reading the attached article. I FERVENTLY hope it can be true -- that we can significantly turn the corner without things being much worse or even an ending of the US as we now think we know it.

I would love it to be so, but I think there are a few things that must be soberly considered:

• The political gains since BO have been in midterms. The bulk of the true low information and complete wards of the state voters don't come out in those elections. 
• Even Reagan failed to actually REDUCE government -- he slowed the growth, but he did not reduce it. 
• 40% of Americans now get over 50% of their income from some form of government transfer. Over 50% get a significant amount of their income via transfer. Those statistics and trends are not sustainable and must be changed for there to be an ACTUAL turn away from the left ditch. 
• The top income quintile now provides over 90% of net US tax revenue. The 2nd highest quartile provides a bit, but the bottom 3, 60% of the population are net takers vs makers relative to tax revenue. People have a tendency to vote where their bread is buttered --- thus, smaller government is at somewhere between a 60% - 80% current disadvantage. 
• 90%+ of government workers including teachers and university professors are left leaning Democrats who contribute millions to their employer / party via AFSCME, plus run the IRS, run any campaign contribution policing, and of course indoctrinate our kids that "left is best". We are perilously close to an effective single party run state. 
• Maybe worst of all, people like to believe what they like to believe. An ACTUAL change of direction is going to be painful -- we have all been embezzled to the tune of $120T in unfunded entitlements + $18T in on the books debt ... something like a $138T hole. I covered this here. 

I could go on, but the bottom line is that the "soul of the nation" has largely been turned from the basic principles of America -- a highly moral and religious people, strong work ethic, strong belief in individual responsibility and initiative, belief in ACTUAL Equal Protection (as in no "progressive" income tax), etc, etc to very much a "Statist" view -- highly centralized and powerful state with impacts on all aspects of day to day life, strong redistributionist / leveling economic policy and maybe worst of all, the State taking over as the center of life vs God / religion / local community.

Until we ACTUALLY make a turn, what might look like a "turn from peak" is really just a pause with no progress away from the abyss and often just a reduction in our headlong rush to totalitarian state control.

We must make an ACTUAL TURN away from the leftward totalitarian slide if we truly want to make this time to be seen from the future as "Peak Left".

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Taliban Kills 145 Total, 132 Children, US Ends Operations

Pakistan school attack: Taliban kill 145 - CNN.com:

This story has pretty much flashed by the US media and disappeared. In other news, the US and NATO ended combat operations in Afghanistan this week

Things are going really well aren't they? Well, we are way to focused on more important matters. N Korea hacking Sony and successfully stopping a movie, and BO making nice with his comrades in Cuba.

It turns out that no matter how intently we would all like to gaze at our navels, there are people in this world that are quite busy going about creating the kind of world that they want. Since BO is in the WH, one pretty much has to read between the lines to understand that the kind of world they are busily making after the retreat of the US is not really what most folks here probably have in mind.

Our borders are completely porous, and we have plenty of home grown Islamic sympathizers that would be just find executing an attack like the Pakistan school attack here. While BO and the MSM went nuts over one crazy kid at Sandy Hook killing 20 kids and 6 adults, one wonders if an Islamic organization carried it out here it would be termed "workplace violence" -- that is what they classified the Ft Hood shooting that killed 13 and wounded 32 as, in fact as of 2013, the shooter was still collecting pay while awaiting trial.

We are certainly not awake. I'd guess that a very small percentage of Americans even realize that BO ended combat operations in Afghanistan this week. A few more know about the school attack in Pakistan. Maybe what "5%" or less know about the "workplace violence" and the pay still being collected?

Think WAY BACK to the W Bush administration. How much coverage was there of nearly ANYTHING that could possibly be construed (or fabricated) to be a negative reflection on the president? His National Guard experience, Abu Ghraib, the question of if he mishandled 9-11, Valerie Plame, Katrina, how low his poll numbers were .... the list was ENDLESS.

If Reagan was the "teflon president", BO is the "alternate universe president". It is as if anything that happens in the country or world that is less than completely positive is happening in some alternate universe that must be kept "top secret" from the American Public.

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HP, "The Machine"

The Machine: A new kind of computer:

I swear I worked on one of these once ... "Pacific", the IBM S/38, somewhat descendent of IBM's abortive attempt to re-create computer architecture post 360, "Future Systems".

There is a part of me wants to dust off the old resume and beg to climb on board such an ostentatious endeavor ... "big projects", "big architecture", "millions of KLOC" and all that. I'm pushing 60, tilting at such windmills is a younger mans sport -- and yet.

There are not a lot of anything approaching "details", but it certainly sounds like the core of this thing is some version of "Single Level Store"(SLS),  one of the leading "features" (and and achilles heel) of the S/38 along with the concept of "A High Level Machine Architecture". Very useful as an abstraction -- see Java Virtual Machine and many others since, the devil is in the translation of virtual to real. Real hardware only runs the real -- and there is the rub.

An engadget article gives some more "detail" that makes it at least sound like this time the distance between the hardware and the SLS is tiny ... "memristors" make the memory actually single level. No actual computer memory and backing store -- although one assumes there are still faster caches and register stacks in the architecture, though one would have to see it to be absolutely sure.

But how "real" is the abstraction presented to the OS programmer, the compiler writer (really the back-end optimizer writer), and finally the application programmer?  Does it "show through" to the application layer? If not, then the issue becomes how well all this works with unmodified plain old Unix programming model code of various flavors. If it does, then there is maybe more hope for a true revolution, but it has to be BOTH very good, AND very fast ... as in VERY easy to program and runs like a banshee, else not even the middle ware guys (Web Servers, Data Bases, etc) will bother to create new versions of their products for it.

If anybody can write code that is actually not aware of "instantiation", the reading of data from disks in file or DB formats into "records / buffers / data structures" that can potentially be a step forward, though as many theorists have discovered it is also very much a two edged sword. Sever the human programmed in understanding of "temporary" (in memory) and "permanent" (written to media like disks) and all sorts of problems ensue. How does the underlying OS / programming language decide what is "garbage", ie working storage used by the program during execution, but not of use after it is done ... in some cases this is obvious, but if the programming model is changed to not make the differentiation clear, it gets very complex.

What does "permanent" mean? Is it ALL mirrored or otherwise protected? Huge amounts of real industrial programming (and resources like time/hardware/etc) are devoted to "checkpointing" where the program(s) were at so the ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) properties can be maintained through loss of power, processor failures, bus / communication network failures, disk failures, etc ... There is lots of code to make that happen. Does it change? If so, even for MUCH better, the conversion will be large.

I could likely wax on for a good deal longer. Clearly I'm curious and will be watching as this unfolds. 
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Postmodern Deconstructionist Rape

A Bad Week for Rape Culture | Power Line:

For those fortunate souls spared from the concepts of postmodernism, and deconstructionism, I'll be very brief ... you can look up Michael Foucault and Jacques Derrida on your own and attempt to arrive at a definition of these schools of "thought" (and the quotes are VERY appropriate) that were largely created to question all of the underpinnings of at least western, if not all thought. Essentially, they say that "truth" is all a matter of perspective, mostly defined by "power" and "privilege". So morals, law and even science become targets of "literary criticism" ... the ad hominem attack being as good as any and the straw-man argument being the equivalent of mathematical proof by their logic.

I'm not going to dwell on these definitions other than to say that folks like Foucault and Derrida wound my spirit. While there is no question that Middle Ages Christendom was corrupted by a bad series of Popes (see Borgia popes if you want your stomach turned), it has been quite clear since at least the middle of the 20th century that Secular Humanism has been corrupted to an even greater degree and part of the fruits of that are things like Postmodernism and Deconstructionism.

I believe that you have to be careful when exposing yourself to poison, and I find that very much exposure to things like Postmodernism and Deconstructionism have the effect of poison on my spirit. These concepts have however had a very large effect on our culture.

For those that have been involved in corporate life post '90s, at least the males are aware that "Sexual Harassment" is defined by "how the person reporting it FEELS".  In the case I was personally involved with, the "feeling" had to do with some mixture of discomfort in finding out that office mates who had helped care for a young lady when she had a broken leg by getting her lunch, water, etc also harbored "conservative political views".

 To make matters worse, they planned a Bachelor Party for a younger male co-worker, and they were supposedly "decent guys with wives that had kids and everything" ... a Bachelor Party! How could they! This would have been late '80s, it was my first experience of a "snowflake" experiencing the "horror" of the world not being exactly like she felt it SHOULD be!  If you have never experienced this, it may sound hard to believe, but it is a fact -- that charge is a LEGITIMATE charge of "Sexual Harassment" in our current USA corporate environs. Males can and do lose their jobs over things like this.

Fast forward to "rape" ... now sometimes asserted to be "unwanted kissing", and then sprinkle in "the truth is what you say or feel it is", "there is no objective truth", "western culture is a rape culture" and a witches brew of other bright ideas, and you get things like Leah Dunham and the University of Virginia referenced in the link.

We live in a society where at least all our elites are well versed in all manner of relativism, supposed noxious effects of power and privilege, as well as a strong desire to "be on the right ("The Party") side" and WELL aware of both the prizes of being on the "good" side (see Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and thousands of others we never hear about) and the penalties for being on the "bad" side (eg. Bill Cosby, Clarence Thomas, Bob Packwood, and a cast of thousands having lost their jobs, promotions, etc.

In the words from Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate". Those of us on the "bad" side from the perspective of "The Party" need to be VERY careful, or better yet, "get our minds right".  While in SOME (very few) cases as in the linked article, the forces of "the truth is what I feel it is" will go so far out on a limb that the elites can't quite strain credulity far enough to accommodate them, but it won't be often, and it certainly won't be for lack of trying!

The historical end of this is that reality finally becomes too great for the masses to ignore  and there is a revival -- of Christianity at least, if not some form of conservative republican government, ala the original founding of the US or Burke's England. But it usually takes starvation, killing and lots more badness before that comes to pass.

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Reason and Analysis, Brand Blanshard

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=aps&linkCode=ur2&tag=gm050-20&keywords=reason%20and%20analysis%20blanshard

After having this rather expensive "real practicing philosopher" book on my shelf for a long time partially read, I have finally finished the rather herculean task of completing it, although it is doubtful I will ever reach the ennobled state of claiming significant understanding of it in this mortal coil. The complexity, arcane technicalities of lexical analysis and obscurantism of thought that philosophy is drawn to never ceases to amaze me.

Let me TRY to make this somewhat simple.

The purpose of the book is to cover the various "assaults on reason" from the start of philosophy up to the present.  One can validly call that "assaults on transcendence", which in it's easiest to understand form is "God" ... and especially the particularly rational form of God introduced in the canon of Western Christianity.

To give the form of the problem, I think Mannheim does a good job:

"one must make one's choice between two views: on the one hand that there is a reason working in and through men's minds which can lay hold of a timeless structure of things: on the other, that thinking is a series of temporal events determined, like all other events, non-rationally" 

In other words, reason vs positivism. Reason (in it's most productive historical use) says roughly  "there is a grand plan, and it is discoverable because our minds happen to be made to relate to that grand plan". Positivism says there is no plan, only a pile of "events" with no "privileged frame of reference", certainly including our concepts of "reason", "meaning", etc.

Naturally, Mannheim liked the non-transcendent view, but wanted to make it privileged  ... which of course is immediately self-refuting as is all relativism, since there IS NO PRIVILEGED (eg "right", "better", etc) POINT OF VIEW ... if there aren't any universals, absolutes, etc, there can't be.

Or to put it another way in roughly the terms of Heidegger:

"As the existentialist contemplated this world, his feeling was one of nausea. Was there anything in this nightmare that he could tie to? One thing only - his own existence. Certain of nothing else, he could be certain at least that he existed, and that he was somehow fashioning his own fate. And in doing so, his safety lay in the depth of his disillusionment. He was weak; he was a pilgrim and stranger in a world not of his making; he would be defeated shortly by death; there were no principles that he could adhere to; his life therefore was to be one of anxiety and care. But for Heidegger, "deliverance from illusion is to be achieved by the man, who, opening himself to anguish, resolutely faces nothingness in anticipation of his own extinction"". 

Hard to beat that as an upbeat recruitment paragraph for  "Life without God, The Nietzschean way".

As is pointed out in the rest of the book in number of places, most philosophers in attacking reason, causality, universals, etc and attempting to replace them with mathematics, logical atomism, category differences, and a host of other chimeras, are actually unable to practice what they preach in order to even make the attempt. They are forced to use reason, causality, universals, etc in order to even get a running start at their attack.

"I attack the principle of solid ground while standing here on .... er, never mind". Only they fail to realize their predicament.

Needless to say, it gets quite hard to keep an open mind about the usefulness of all this after the first 10 or so attempts that always must be arrogantly and loudly launched -- after all, if one is to rush as Quixote to the windmill of all of human thought for thousands of years, as well as the day to day existence experienced by ones own self and all those of one's shared existence to date, one must have a quite high opinion of their own logic -- er "series of temporal brain events".

And so it goes. The vast vast majority of even all somewhat deep thinkers either fail to, or more likely refuse to, consider the difficulty factor of doing away with little basics like a rational repeatable universe that is understandable to themselves and others in the same manner taken as a "universal a priori fact". What they see as a "problem" is of course that such a universal a priori fact is hard to accept without some cause beyond "shit happens", and is perilously close to "God".

Much as in Mannheim's choice "You have to face the fact that there is a God, or there isn't", many like to jump to "there isn't" in hopes of being freed from moral stricture and eventual judgement, but like Mannheim, completely ignore the existential consequence of the no god, no order, no universals, no reason for there to be reason, meaning, etc. The abyss of despair.

The previous paragraph is the reason that I think having some understanding of how philosophy, or at least epistemology works is important and a major area of lack in modern western education.

Ideas do indeed have consequences.